Judge Says No to Teachers’ Campaign Buttons, but Yes to Certain Politicking

By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ

Published: October 17, 2008

A federal judge on Friday upheld New York City’s policy prohibiting public school teachers from wearing political buttons in the classroom, but said the teachers could place campaign material into colleagues’ mailboxes and hang posters on bulletin boards maintained by their union, as long as they were in areas off-limits to students.

The split decision came after the union, the United Federation of Teachers, sued over a city rule that requires teachers to remain neutral about politics while on duty to avoid any sense of pressure among students to echo their views. The union, which has endorsed Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, argued that the longstanding regulation had never been enforced and that it curtailed teachers’ right of free speech.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan said that it should be up to individual school districts to determine whether buttons in the classroom interfered with learning. He cautioned, however, that “school officials may not take a sledgehammer to freedom of expression and then avoid all scrutiny by invoking alleged professional judgment.”

The judge said that while a majority of students would probably understand that a button represented a teacher’s personal view, there would be “inevitable misperceptions on the part of a minority.”

Ann Forte, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said, “We won on the issue that was most paramount to us,” and she called the mailbox and bulletin board rulings “secondary issues.”

Norman Siegel, the civil liberties lawyer representing the teachers’ union, said that the union was pleased about Judge Kaplan’s recognition of some First Amendment rights for teachers and that it would continue to push for the right to wear buttons.

There have been conflicting court rulings over how far the government can go in regulating what teachers say in the classroom ever since the Supreme Court’s Tinker case, four decades ago, which proclaimed that neither teachers nor students “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Schoolchildren have historically been recognized as a distinctly vulnerable group, and schools have enjoyed such paternalistic powers as requiring school uniforms. Courts generally see teachers as role models given extraordinary trust and holding a special influence over their students.

The government, like any business, has the authority to tell its employees what to do so that it can continue to operate effectively. A teacher cannot spend each English period talking about baseball, or each physics class teaching false scientific theories.

The city argued that when a teacher wears a political button in the classroom, it creates an environment of intimidation and hostility toward students who do not share that view. The union, by contrast, argued that students would be able to distinguish between personal and institutional views.

Samuel Issacharoff, a professor of law at New York University, said: “The line we seek to draw is that individuals who are public employees retain the rights of full citizenship in society and do not lose them as a result of being state employees. On the other hand, they can’t use their state employment to accentuate the power of their political views. That’s the tension.”

That tension has been the subject of court cases in several states. The University of Illinois recently came under fire for urging its employees to refrain from attending political rallies and from displaying campaign bumper stickers on campus.

Part of the trouble in arriving at clear legal conclusions is the inevitable gray area that emerges when considering teachers’ roles as instructor and individual. Should teachers be allowed to write letters to the editor? Should they be able to wear buttons while walking from their classroom to the car?

Last week, the unresolved nuances were on display at Middle School 61 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where an oversize portrait of Mr. Obama that had been hanging near the entrance of the school was taken down under pressure from the Department of Education. The banner showed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other black luminaries framed by a blue sky and looking down on the man who could become the nation’s first black president.

“It only gave images of hope,” said Asher Rison, a teacher at the school. “It wasn’t about politics.”

The Department of Education disagreed, saying that whatever the intent, the banner amounted to political favoritism prohibited under the department’s rules.

At schools across the city this week, the fuzzy free-speech questions were reflected in conversations with students, parents and teachers.

At Community School 134 in the Bronx, Ken Chanko, a teacher of writing who wore a small Obama button on his jacket as he left school on Thursday, said that such miniature adornments seemed acceptable, but that large posters should not be permitted.

“I think there is a fine line,” Mr. Chanko said. “I think you can overreact from either perspective.”

Keyshawn Baker, 11, who graduated from the school last year, said that a teacher’s views displayed on clothing would not affect him. “I have my personal opinion about who I should support,” he said.

But Anita Faucette, whose son is in fourth grade at Public School 16 in the Bronx, said she would prefer that teachers keep their political preferences to themselves. “The children are impressionable and young,” she said. “They mimic what they see or they hear.”

At Middle School 61, where the Obama banner was hung, David Rampersad, a Verizon field technician whose 11-year-old daughter attends the school, said that students “should be exposed to politics” but that “they might feel pressure to swing a certain way.”

“They’re too young for this pressure,” he added. “They need to be focused on whatever they are learning in school.”

Ann Farmer and Jason Grant contributed reporting.

RNC Raids Have Been Targeting Video Activists

Hats off to our Guild colleagues doing emergency response!

RNC Raids Have Been Targeting Video Activists
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted September 1, 2008.
In the run-up to the Republican convention, Minnesota police launched a series of preemptive raids to intimidate protesters and quash dissent.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/97110/?page=entire

"St. Paul is a free country!" cried a resident of Iglehart Avenue, a neighborhood street in St. Paul, Minn., as she watched her next-door neighbor's house being overtaken by police officers on Saturday afternoon. Just one in a series of house raids over a 24-hour period the weekend before the Republican National Convention, St. Paul police surrounded the private home with weapons drawn, detaining people in the backyard, while journalists, activists and neighbors -- including several children -- looked on.

Their crime? None whats oever. No one was trespassing or engaging in acts of civil disobedience. Instead, members of I-Witness Video, a New York-based media watchdog group that records police activity in order to protect civil liberties, were holding an organizing meeting at 949 Iglehart, the home of St. Paul resident Mike Whalen, when armed police officers arrived in the early afternoon and ordered their surrender.

Among them was Eileen Clancy, founder of I-Witness Video, as well as a producer with Democracy Now! DN! host Amy Goodman and her staff had just arrived at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport when they received word that producer Elizabeth Press was in the house and being threatened with arrest.

An urgent alert had been sent by Clancy:

This is Eileen Clancy. ... The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been told that if we leave we will be detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are wielding firearms …

... We are asking the public to contact the office of St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman at 651-266-8510 to stop this house arrest, this gross intimidation by pol ice officers, and the detention of media activists and reporters.

By the time we arrived at the 900 block at Iglehart Ave a short while later, the people in the house had been handcuffed and taken out back. Police officers could be seen sitting in unmarked cars, blocking off the residential street, where a growing crowd of observers gathered in front and across the street from the blue house with green columns, straining to get a glimpse of what was happening.

With two officers flanking the entrance of the house, it was hard to see anything -- but moments later, a woman emerged from the house next door. "You guys go in my backyard," she called out. "They're handcuffed back here!" With that, the crowd rushed around to the back, where over a short chain-link fence they spotted the handcuffed group, seated and surrounded by stoic police in sunglasses.

"These are nice people," the neighbor admonished the cops. "These are good people."

Sitting with her hands behind her back, Clancy spoke calmly and deliberately as she described what had happened and answered questions from people on the other side of the fence. Someone asked whether they had been read their Miranda rights. "Fuck no!" yelled one of the detainees.

As Press would later explain, a pair of police officers had actually shown up at the house earlier that day, at 11 in the morning, asking about the owner of the house. One of them identified himself as being with the FBI. "I think that was them just checking out the scene at the house," said Press, who videotaped the officers coming to the door. They claimed to want to question a former resident about an action that had occurred a few months earlier. "We're not here from the convention," one officer said. Nervous I-Witness members didn't know what to make of it -- "We were like, this is f-d up let's get out of here," recalled Press -- but they chose to finish their meeting anyway. It was only when they were getting ready to leave that the police showed up, some 20 officers this time, with guns drawn.

Sara Coffey of the National Lawyers Guild had just left the house and was immediately handcuffed. But, as described in Clancy's alert, Press and the rest of the people in the duplex refused to let the police in because they did not have a warrant. However, at around 3:00 p.m., a warrant materialized for the adjacent space, apartment 951. "They entered through 951, detained everyone in that apartment, including the owner," recalled Press, "… and then broke into 949 through the attic." The police entered with their guns drawn, ordered everyone's hands up and handcuffed them.

Their belongings were confiscated and20searched, and the group was assembled in the backyard. But soon after the crowd gathered with video cameras and legal observers, including an attorney for Mike Whalen -- and after Amy Goodman jumped the fence to interview people and ask the cops why they were holding nonviolent people who had done nothing wrong -- they were released.

Preemptive Strikes

Unlike the preceding raids, including one targeting the convergence space of the RNC Welcoming Committee -- an anarchist group dubiously described by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher as "a criminal enterprise … intent on committing criminal acts" -- the raid on the I-Witness house was specifically designed to target media activists whose mission is to hold police officers responsible for abusing their authority. I-Witness Video was instrumental in documenting police abuse during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, during which some 1,800 people were arrested. Working in cooperation with the National Lawyers Guild, I-Witness Video led to the dismissal of charges or the acquittal of some 400 protesters. This summer, New York City authorities subpoenaed I-Witness Video for tapes from the protests. In an interview with Democracy Now! on Aug. 1, Clancy discussed the group's plans for the political conventions.

We're going to bring a crew to both presidential conventions. It's pretty exciting. I me an, one of the reasons we're very interested in covering the conventions is (not) because we want … bad things to happen, but because the focus of the federal government, the law enforcement agencies and all that is very keenly directed at demonstrators. And when you cover these events completely, you're able to see the patterns. The patterns emerge.

"I-Witness definitely does document things like police brutality and policing in general during situations of conflict," I-Witness member Emily Foreman, one of three members who managed to leave the house only to be followed by police and pulled over on their bikes, told a reporter with The Uptake after the raid, noting that that could make the group a target, "not because of anything illegal but because of our interest in upholding the law."

Nevertheless, the list of items police were looking for would suggest the activists were nothing short of terror suspects. "Packages and contents, firearms and ammunition, holsters, cleaning equipment for firearms, (and) weapons devices" were included in the warrant read by Whalen, who spoke to reporters shortly after his handcuffs were removed. Asked what connection he had to the I-Witness Video activists, he replied, "no connection," adding, "People needed a place to stay, and I support the work they do."

Series of Raids

All told, six raids took place in St. Paul in 24 hours, resu lting in six arrests. (Read about the other raids here.) On Sunday, the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild sent out a press release announcing that it is "seeking prompt judicial review" of the "preventative detentions" of the six people arrested, all of whom remain on "probable cause holds" in the Ramsey County Jail. According to the press release: "In Minnesota, a probable cause hold can be ordered by a police officer without a prosecutor or a judge reviewing a criminal complaint. Due to the arrest occurring on a weekend holiday, all six citizens can be held until Wednesday, September 3, 2008, without the filing of a formal charge."

The extent of the federal involvement in the raids is not entirely clear. Although they were reportedly spearheaded by the Ramsey County Sheriff's office, St. Paul Police coordinated them with the FBI. Furthermore, according to the Star Tribune, the raids were "aided by informants planted in protest groups." Indeed, as Glenn Greenwald reminded readers on Sunday, the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force spent months recruiting people to spy on activist groups planning to protest the RNC. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a bizarre but chilling story titled "Moles Wanted," about the recruitment efforts by the task force -- specifically, attempts to enlist people to "attend 'vegan potlucks' throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protesters" in a mission to "investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines."

"This is all part of a larger government effort to quell political dissent," attorney Jordan Kushner, told the City Pages at the time. "The Joint Terrorism Task Force is another example of using the buzzword 'terrorism' as a basis to clamp down on people's freedoms and push forward a more authoritarian government."

With most of the subjects of the raids eventually released, the consensus among activists at the RNC in the wake of the raids is that the police actions are mainly meant to stop protests, lawful or not, before they start. "I think what they're doing is trying to intimidate people," said Press. But even as the GOP plans to scale back its convention activities in the face of Hurricane Gustav, with multiple protests scheduled for the week, the actions of the police do not seem to be doing much to dissuade people from going forward with their plans.

The next day, a group of peaceful marchers organized by Veterans for Peace headed downtown. With armed police officers far outnumbering protesters, several marchers were discussing the raids. "It's intimidation, absolutely," VFP member Leah Bolger said. "People are harassed to no end." Although veterans groups were not among the targeted organizations, word of the raids had spread quickly among the demonstrators. "I started this work as part of the peace movement," said Bolger, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Navy. "But more and more it's about civil rights. … When I hear about the raids, it's just really upsetting and frightening," she said. But not necessarily surprising. In this era of the supposed "war on terror," she said, Americans have become used to trading civil rights for a perceived safety. "They're willing to throw away their civil liberties."

Candidates for Sale

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/22210615/candidates_for_sale
Rollingstone.com

Candidates for Sale
What do Obama and McCain have in common? The same big donors, who will expect to have their way no matter who wins

MATT TAIBBI

Posted Aug 21, 2008 9:42 AM

Remember the total, hideous, inexcusable absence of oversight that has been the great hallmark of George Bush's America for almost eight years now? Well, now we're getting to see that same regulatory malfeasance applied to yet another cornerstone of our political system. The Federal Election Commission — the body that supposedly enforces campaign-finance laws in this country — has been out of business for more than six months. That's because Congress was dragging its feet over confirmation hearings for new FEC commissioners, leaving the agency without a quorum. The commission just started work again for the first time on July 10th under its new chairman, Donald McGahn, a classic Republican Party yahoo whose chief qualifications include representing Tom DeLay, the corrupt ex-speaker of the House, in matters of campaign finance.

Apart from the obvious absurdity of not having a functioning election-policing mechanism in an election year in the world's richest democracy, the late start by the FEC makes it almost impossible for the agency to do its job. The commission has a long-standing reluctance to take action in the last months before a vote, a policy designed to help prevent federal regulators from influencing election outcomes. Normally, the FEC tries to root out infractions and loopholes — fining campaigns for incomplete reporting, or for taking shortcuts around spending limits — in the early months of a campaign season. But that ship sailed way too long ago to take the stink off the 2008 race.

"The time for setting the ground rules was earlier," says Craig Holman, a lobbyist with the watchdog group Public Citizen. "There isn't time to do much now."

That's especially true given the magnitude of what we're dealing with here: the biggest pile of political contributions in the history of free elections, nearly a billion dollars given to presidential candidates in this season alone. Because the FEC has been dead in the water for so long, it's likely that we'll still be in the dark about a large chunk of this record manure pile of campaign contributions when we go to vote in November.

But that doesn't mean that a little sifting through campaign records doesn't tell us quite a lot about who's backing whom in these races. The truth is that the campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain are being inundated with cash from more or less exactly the same gorgons of the corporate scene. From Wall Street to the Big Oil powerhouses to the military-industrial complex, America's fat-cat business leaders know that the Animal House-style party of the last eight years that made almost all of them rich with bonuses, government contracts and bubble profits is about to come to an end, and someone is going to have to pay to clean up the mess. They want that someone to be you, not them, and they've spared no expense to make sure both presidential candidates will be there to bail them out next year.

They're succeeding. Both would-be presidents have already sold us out. They've taken the money and run — completing the cyclical transformation of the American political narrative from one of monopolistic Republican iniquity to an even more depressing tale about the overweening power of corporate money and the essentially fictitious nature of our two-party system.

In layman's terms, we've gone from being screwed to being fucked. Who knows — maybe Barack Obama will surprise us if he wins the election. But if you look at the money, it doesn't look good.

Thanks in part to the dormant FEC, corporate America has had even easier access to the candidates than usual in its effort to buy off the next government before the crash. In fact, this election has seen some excellent new innovations in the area of campaign-fundraising atrocities. Chief among them is the rise of so-called "joint committees."

It used to be that campaigns could raise a maximum of $2,300 from each individual. Now, both candidates — but especially McCain, who far outstrips Obama in this area — routinely hold fundraisers in which individuals can give far more to a joint committee. Technically, the candidate still pockets only $2,300 in contributions. The bulk of the money raised — in McCain's case, a whopping $70,100, or 30 times the previous limit — goes to the state and national arms of the candidate's party, which can then spend the unprecedented haul on behalf of the candidate. "This allows CEOs to walk in the door and drop $70,100," says Holman. "It basically allows campaigns to exceed the spending limits."

McCain has raised more than $63 million via these joint committees, thanks to more than 1,000 "megadonors" who have each given at least $25,000 to his campaign effort. Obama, by contrast, has some 471 megadonors — and a close examination of their backgrounds underscores some of the differences in corporate America's attitudes toward the two candidates.

One of McCain's chief sources of corporate money is the private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, memorialized for its takeover of RJR Nabisco in the movie Barbarians at the Gate. Through the pretext of joint committees, 10 KKR executives have given McCain $285,000, and it's not hard to figure out why. Two of McCain's key campaign proposals — lowering the corporate tax rate to 25 percent and making purchases of industrial equipment fully deductible — would save a single KKR subsidiary, Energy Future Holdings, $49 million.

"Just in his tax policies alone, McCain is saving corporate America $175 billion a year," says James Kvaal, who analyzed McCain's tax policy for the nonprofit Center for American Progress.

McCain has also raked in big contributions from two other giants of the buyout world: the Carlyle Group (famous for its close ties to the Bush administration) and the Blackstone Group (whose co-founder, Pete Peterson, wrote a $28,500 check to McCain after he took home almost $1.8 billion from a public offering last year). McCain has also received monstrous sums from hedge-fund managers, attracted by his pledge to keep the tax rate on their earnings at only 15 percent. Executives and family members in a single hedge fund, Knott Partners, have contributed some $225,700 to McCain's campaign.

Then there's the predictable influx of cash from would-be military contractors. John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy whose firm builds the Superferry transport vessel, not only donated $28,500 of his own money, but bundled at least $250,000 for McCain from other donors. Donald Bollinger, who is a contractor on the controversial Littoral Combat Ship, gave $27,300 and bundled a whopping $500,000. Anyone want to bet on a decrease in Naval appropriations in a McCain presidency?

McCain has also received big money from telecommunications magnates. The senator has always been a friend to the industry: Back in 2003, just four days after AT&T sent him a check for $10,500, he sponsored a bill to ban state and local taxes on Internet service. Since 2007, McCain has taken in some $1.3 million from the communications industry. Just four members of the McCaw family, which owns the telecommunications firm Eagle River, have kicked in $123,200. McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, was a former lobbyist for BellSouth, Verizon and SBC Communications. His deputy campaign manager, Christian Ferry, was a partner to Davis at Verizon. One of his chief advisers, Charlie Black, is the head of the lobbying firm BKSH and Associates, which represents AT&T. His Senate chief of staff, Mark Buse, worked for AT&T Wireless. All told, of 66 current and former lobbyists working for McCain, some 23 come from the telecommunications industry.

Given McCain's telecom backing, it's not surprising that the senator has had one of his characteristic changes of heart. As recently as last November, McCain was staunchly opposed to retroactive immunity for telecommunication companies that took part in Bush's illegal spying on American consumers, saying their actions "undermine our respect for the law." Now, jammed to the gills with telecom cash, McCain calls himself an "unqualified" supporter of immunity, praising the telecom industry's warrantless wiretapping as "constitutional and appropriate."

All the same, plenty of other evidence suggests that much of Wall Street is betting on an Obama win. In fact, some observers believe that KKR announced a multibillion-dollar public offering this summer because it expects McCain to lose. "They're doing the public offering now so that the compensation can be taxed at the lower rate while Bush is still in office," says a strategist for a major labor union. "They're betting Obama is going to win, and they're getting their money while they can."

Other companies are getting in on the ground floor with the new chief by stuffing money in his ears. Overall, Obama is flat-out kicking McCain's ass when it comes to Wall Street contributions, raking in nearly $9 million from securities and investment executives, compared to $6.2 million for McCain. Obama has received more contributions from Goldman Sachs than from any other employer — more than $627,000 at this writing — not to mention $398,021 from JP Morgan Chase, $353,922 from Lehman Brothers and $291,388 from Morgan Stanley. Even among hedge-fund executives, who have an unequivocal interest in electing McCain, Obama is whipping the Republican, collecting $500,000 more than McCain. All of which begs the question: Why would corporate giants like these throw so much weight behind a man who promises to strip them of billions in tax breaks?

Sadly, the answer to that question increasingly appears to be that Obama is, well, full of shit. He has made no bones about his plans to raise income by soaking the rich, promising to roll back the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000, increase the top tax rate on capital gains to 25 percent and raise the top rate on qualified dividends. He has also pledged to deliver a real stomach punch to hedge-fund managers, raising the tax rate on most of their income from 15 percent to 35 percent.

These populist pledges sound good, but many business moguls appear to be betting that the tax policies, like Obama himself, are only that: something that sounds good. "I think we don't want to make too much of his promises on taxes," says Robert Pollin, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts. "Not all of these things will happen." Noting the overwhelming amount of Wall Street money pouring into Obama's campaign, even elitist fuckwad David Brooks was recently moved to write, "Once the Republicans are vanquished, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that capital-gains tax hike."

Those worried that Obama might be all talk when it comes to needed reform had a real scare in July, when the senator failed to show up to vote for the Stop Excessive Speculation Act, a bill designed to curb rampant oil speculation. Oil speculators provide the perfect microcosm of what happened to the economy under Bush. Back in 2001, investment banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan got together and created an online exchange called the ICE for trading energy commodities. The ICE ended up buying the British-regulated International Petroleum Exchange; it then opened trading windows in the U.S., allowing Wall Street investment banks to make oil-futures trades on American soil, on their very own commodities exchange, without any federal regulation whatsoever.

"In financial terms, they were playing blackjack at tables where they themselves were the dealers, in casinos they themselves owned," says Warren Gunnels, a senior policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders. "It was crazy." Trading on the ICE had a massive impact on U.S. gasoline prices, and more than one legislator wondered if energy speculators were manipulating the market, as energy traders like Enron had been before. The speculation bill was designed to regulate the ICE and place limits on trades. But on the day before Obama returned from his eight-day, eight-country, megadazzling international photo op, Democrats failed by a vote of 50-43 to force a vote on the bill, as heavy lobbying by investment banks like Goldman Sachs torpedoed the effort.

Not only did Obama not show up to vote, he appeared at a public forum three days later flanked by Jon Corzine and Robert Rubin, two former Goldman executives, to discuss how to revive the economy. Here you have the basic formula of campaign contributions in a nutshell: Powerful investment bank gives big money to candidate, needed reform requires candidate to cross said investment bank, candidate pussies out and finds way to be gone at the moment of truth, candidate resurfaces later in arms of aforementioned investment bankers.

Obama's absence on oil speculation was eerily reminiscent of his previous decision to change his mind about giving retroactive immunity to telecom companies for spying on Americans. Obama withdrew his pledge to filibuster the immunity bill right around the time the Democrats announced that AT&T would be sponsoring the Democratic convention. So no filibuster on retroactive immunity from the top Democrat — but conventiongoers in Denver will get tote bags emblazoned with the AT&T logo. So that's something.

Look, we all knew this was coming. Once Obama vanquished Hillary Clinton, it was inevitable that his campaign would start roping in the Clinton moneymen for the fall confrontation with McCain. Among those snagged by Obama were Iranian millionaire and former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman Hassan Nemazee, venture capitalist Alan Patricof and the touchingly plugged-in Wall Street power couple Maureen White (First Boston) and Steven Rattner (Morgan Stanley). Rattner and White, the former chief fundraiser for the DNC, are longtime friends of the Clintons; she quit the DNC in 2006 to build Hillary's war chest, while he backed Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont and flirted with a Mike Bloomberg presidential run. Such are the people who are now whispering in Obama's ear.

Over the summer, the Obama camp has relentlessly pushed the notion that its record fundraising is mainly the result of small online donations. The first presidential candidate to raise so much money that he could afford to eschew the spending limits that would be imposed if he accepted federal matching funds, Obama claims that he opted out of public funding so that he could have a campaign "truly funded by the American people." And indeed, he has a record number of small donors, with some 45 percent of his campaign cash coming from contributions smaller than $200.

Which is a great percentage — but it's only eight points better than John Kerry in 2004 and only 14 points better than George Bush that same year. In truth, Obama is still raising tons of money from big corporate donors. In June alone, as Obama was raking in more than $30 million from small donors, he also bagged $6 million in a single fundraiser at Ethel Kennedy's home in Virginia and another $5 million at an event in Hollywood. But time and time again, you see Obama aides boasting about how the day of the big-dollar donor is over. "More people are involved, and I think that necessarily dilutes the impact of any individual — which is probably a good thing," one prominent Obama supporter recently declared. This staunch champion of the small donor happened to be none other than James Rubin, son of former Goldman Sachs co-chairman Bob Rubin.

Obama's decision to embrace Clinton's moneymen coincided with his decision to attend a public forum on economic policy with an A list of Clinton-era economic advisors, including Rubin and Corzine. "The message is that he's going to be a friend to Wall Street, just as Bill Clinton was a friend to Wall Street," says Pollin. "Wall Street will want to be at the head of the table."

By now it should be clear what type of service Wall Street will demand. The financial disaster dumped on us by eight years of Bush's mismanagement has left America with the prospect of short-term solutions in the form of massive government bailouts, and long-term solutions in the form of reform and regulation. A big chunk of the $1 billion in cash that will be spent on the presidential race this year represents Wall Street's desire to make sure that both candidates can be counted on to make the short-term bailouts large and passionate, and the reforms gentle and halfhearted. "They want to make sure there's socialism when they need it — bailouts — and capitalism when they need that," says Pollin.

Both candidates are already falling all over themselves to signal their business-friendly approach to the economy. McCain entered this election with a reputation as a strict Goldwater conservative. "I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly," he declared. McCain also sounded off in the past about troubled quasi-governmental lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, pledging to "make them go away" and to strip them of their right to lobby.

But this year, McCain — perhaps emboldened by the $238,100 he got from seven JP Morgan Chase executives or the $500,000 bundled for him by Chase executive James Lee Jr. — caved in and supported Chase's outrageous government-backed acquisition of Bear Stearns. He also backed the recent bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — no surprise given that former Fannie Mae lobbyists are serving as his chief of staff and the head of his vice presidential vetting panel.

Obama also supported the Freddie Mac-Fannie Mae rescue, and that, too, is no surprise, given that he hired one former chairman of Fannie Mae to chair his vice presidential vetting panel and hired another former Fannie Mae chairman to serve as his consultant on housing issues. Most of us will never get within a hundred miles of a single Fannie Mae chairman, but Obama has already hired two — and he isn't even president yet.

This, folks, is the way of the world. Forget all the promises to make the rich pay their fair share. As the candidates get closer to office, the actual paying customers move to the front of the line.

Sadly, both candidates have an extensive history of being dependable pals of campaign contributors. Back in 2000, when Obama was a state senator in Illinois, an entrepreneur named Robert Blackwell Jr. hired him to be his lawyer, paying him a monthly retainer of $8,000 — big money for a part-time legislator with an annual salary of just $58,000. A few months later, Obama sent a letter urging state tourism officials to give a grant to one of Blackwell's companies, the amusingly named Killerspin, to fund a table-tennis tournament. Killerspin received $320,000 in public funds; Obama pocketed $112,000 in fees from Blackwell.

So far this year, Blackwell has bundled more than $100,000 for Obama's campaign. Looks like there's going to be a shitload of table-tennis tournaments all across America next year.

McCain also likes to write letters for big contributors. In 1998, four months after BellSouth contributed $16,750 to the senator, he sent a letter to the FCC asking it to give "serious consideration" to the company's request to enter the long-distance market. He later wrote letters on behalf of Paxson Communications, which donated $20,000 and let him use their company jet, as well as Ameritech and SBC Communications, which raised $120,000 for McCain at a time when they were seeking permission to merge.

McCain's still sticking by that gang. Former Ameritech chairman Richard Notebaert bundled more than $100,000 for him this year, and two of McCain's key fundraisers, Peter Madigan and Tim McKone, hail from SBC. The point is that politicians are intensely loyal to the people who give them money — and not anywhere near as loyal to the promises they've made to suckers like us. No matter who's in the White House, the direction of the government has remained remarkably stable. Clinton's treasury secretary, Rubin, was a Goldman Sachs man; Henry Paulson, the current secretary under Bush, is also a Goldman Sachs man. It'll probably be a Goldman man again next year. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. In sickness or in health, the faces may change, but the money remains. "It's not an accident that both administrations picked for leading economic advisers people from Goldman Sachs," says Pollin.

The really distressing thing about all of this is the signal it sends to Americans. Goldman Sachs posted a record profit of $11 billion last year, much of it from betting against the subprime mortgage market they themselves helped to fuck up. That little energy exchange Goldman set up, the ICE, made a profit of $240 million last year, as gas prices skyrocketed. It may suck to be you right now, but all that pain isn't so bad if you are a big oil speculator.

When you live in million-dollar Manhattan townhouses and make billions in profits betting on the pain of the ordinary foreclosed homeowner, you shouldn't get to run around on TV with the prospective president on your arm. You should be hung by your balls. But that's not the way it works, and despite what you might have heard about "change," it probably never will be.

For all the excitement that Barack Obama has garnered, and all the talk about a new day in Washington, it would be tragic if the real legacy of his election victory was to finally expose the essentially unchanging, oligarchic nature of our political system. It's the same old story: Money talks, and bullshit walks. And don't be surprised if we're the ones still walking after November.

Taps for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Weekend Edition
August 16 / 17, 2008

"You Fought in Spain"

Taps for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

By DON SANTINA

"You fought in Spain.”

When the underground leader, Victor Lazlo, spoke this immortal line to Rick Blaine in the 1942 film classic “Casablanca,” he was acknowledging that the cynical nightclub owner played by Humphrey Bogart had already stood up to the Nazis and could be counted on to stand up again. Rick was one of the good guys.

On March 21, we squeezed into in the packed Friday night emergency room of Oakland Kaiser Hospital with Ted Veltfort, another one of the good guys. He had fallen earlier in the day and was having trouble breathing. In panic, his wife Leonore had run out into the street and flagged down a taxi to take him to the hospital instead of calling 911 for an ambulance. Ironically, Ted had driven an ambulance for the Spanish Republic during the civil war. His father never forgave him for following his political beliefs to Spain in 1937.

After almost two hours, the ER doctor told us that Ted had pneumonia and they were keeping him at least overnight. Before we left, I told the doctor to take special care of him because he was one of the last veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who had fought in Spain before World War II. She looked at me blankly.

“You have to get well for the monument,” I said to Ted before we left. “It’s a week from Sunday.” He nodded.

The battle for the Spanish Republic from 1936 to 1939 is regarded by many historians as the first battle of World War II. Five months after free elections, the fledgling democratic government of Spain was attacked by a clique of army officers who had support of troops from Fascist Italy and airpower from Nazi Germany. When the democracies of Europe and the United States declared a policy of nonintervention, the desperate Spanish government put out a call for international volunteers. Young men and woman from all over the world poured into Spain to defend the republic.

Approximately 2,800 of these volunteers came from the United States to form the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, later known as the Lincoln Brigade. They came from all walks of life: seamen, students, dock workers , ranch hands, carpenters, nurses, teachers. They were multi-racial: the Brigade was the first integrated American military unit and the first to have an African-American commander, Oliver Law. They fought major battles with the Fascists in the Jarama Valley, at Brunete, Aragon, Teruel, and the Ebro River, often against overwhelming odds and with heavy casualties. Those odds worsened daily as the Nazi air force and Fascist artillery pounded the blockaded and beleaguered republic. After three years of bloody battles, the republic was defeated and the international volunteers were withdrawn.

Eight hundred volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade did not return home.

“No man ever entered the earth more honorably than those who died in Spain,” Ernest Hemingway proclaimed, but as the war correspondent Martha Gellhorn noted just as accurately, “there were no rewards in Spain. They were fighting for us all, against the combined forces of European fascism. They deserved our thanks and respect, and20they got neither.”

Back home the Lincolns were subjected to years of harassment from their own government. But while they were being blacklisted and hounded out of their jobs during the epoch when Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover were riding roughshod over the Bill of Rights, the veterans stood firm on their political convictions and remained active participants in the battles for peace and justice—demonstrating that same idealist spirit that drew them to the cause of Spain.

Richard Bermack, photographer and author of The Frontlines of Social Change: Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, noted that while doing the book “I realized that you can keep your own ideals, though it’s not an easy thing to do at all. The point of the book is to show that none of them left the struggle.”

There were about a hundred veterans left in August, 2000 when the late San Francisco supervisor, Sue Bierman, introduced a resolution to the Board to honor the Abraham Lincoln Brigade with a monument on the waterfront. The waterfront was chosen because it was the site of the historic 1934 Strike which changed labor relations on the West Coast forever. A number of participants in the strike became volunteers in Spain and returned to the City not only to work on the docks but also to become actively involved in civil right and antiwar activities, including shutting down the shipment of goods to apartheid South Africa. The monument resolution passed the Board of Supervisors unanimously.

Eight years later, on Sunday, March 30, 2008, the first American government-sanctioned monument to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was dedicated with much fanfare on San Francisco’s embarcadero. The monument, designed by Ann Chamberlain and Walter Hood, sits on a grassy area not far from the historic Ferry Building and Harry Bridges Plaza. The dockworkers are gone now, along with the cargo hooks, conveyors, and the low rumble of idling engines of cross country trucks waiting to be loaded. Stevedores, seamen and strike breakers have been replaced by joggers, bicyclists and tourists.

“Our monument is to remember a group of people who stood up to take a stand,” Peter Carroll, the historian, stated to the hundreds of people who gathered for the event. < /span>Carroll is the author of The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War.

Eleven veterans were there for the ceremonies. Among them were Abe Osheroff, whose car was firebombed while he was helping rebuild churches in Mississippi during the Klan’s reign of terror in the 1960’s; Dave Smith, who survived the Jarama Valley bloodbath, but lost a piece of his shoulder in a later battle--he could not return to his job as a machinist so he became a high school teacher and union activist; Nate Thornton, an out of work carpenter who joined the Brigade with his father, and Hilda Roberts, a combat nurse who also served in the Pacific during WWII and ultimately--as a silent antiwar witness with Women in Black.

At the dedication, Abe Osheroff stated that “the stuff we’re made of never goes away, with or without a monument because the bastards will never cease their evil, and the decent human beings will never stop their struggle.”

Abe died a week later. Ted Veltfort never made it out of the hospital; he died there on April 7; Dave Smith within a few months. Milt Wolff, the last commander of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, died in January. There are only about twenty five Lincolns left now, and soon they too will pass into history.

Dolores Ibarruri, the fiery spokesperson of the Republic also know as “La Pasionaria,” spoke these words of farewell as the Lincoln Battalion and the International Brigades left Spain in 1938:

“You can go with pride. You are history. You are legend. You are the heroic example of the solidarity and the universality of democracy…We will not forget you; and when the olive tree of peace puts forth its leaves, entwined in the with the laurels of the Spanish Republic’s victory, come back!”

Salud, brigadistas.

Don Santina is a cultural historian. He wrote the monument resolution that Sue Bierman introduced to the SF Board of Supervisors. He can be reached at lindey89@aol.com

Hillary’s in it to win it- from the pro-Hillary, anti-Obama blog

Maybe I was wrong. It is not campaign '12 but still campaign '08.

I am on the mailing list for some reason of a North Carolina Democratic party organization in which the entire newsletter focuses on atacking Obama and pushing Clinton with the hope that they canget enough delegates to switch votes in Denver.

Here is one blog - with comments to give you a flavor.
Norm


http://alegrescorner.soapblox.net/

http://alegrescorner.soapblox.net/showDiary.do;jsessionid=A1D22554F6C1A7B454320FB473F3FCF6?diaryId=526

ALEGRE'S CORNER
We're not finished folks - not by a long shot!
Bill To Speak at Convention
by: Alegre
Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:22:18 PM EDT

Ok I briefly had to give Camp BHO credit for getting out ahead of something I'd planned on teasing them for. In tonight's report on the campaign and convention, Andrea Mitchell ran through today's latest developments re that video SimoFish took at that fundraiser last week - where Hillary told the gathering that she wanted to see her name put into nomination so people could unite behind BHO etc. (BTW - nice to see the MSM are only taking a WEEK to catch up to the rest of us on this story - used to be they ignored this sort of thing altogether!).

No comment on that bit where BHO craps all over the notion of a catharsis for Hillary's delegates at our party's convention. We all know which end of his anatomy he's talking out of when he says stuff like that.

Mitchell closed the report by noting that BHO had yet to offer Bill a chance to speak at our convention. I sent a quick note to a couple friends saying that yeah... the only two-term Democratic President to come along in generations and BHO hadn't yet shown a bit of class and asked him to address the delegates? How messed up is that?

Make the jump, there's more...
Alegre :: Bill To Speak at Convention
So I thought for a split second this evening, well fair play to them - they got out ahead of this one for once. MSNBC just fired up a report noting Andrea's update - that camp BHO have announced that Bill would be speaking the night after Hillary gives the key note speech.

...the Obama campaign, in an effort to quiet talk of the Obama-Clinton drama, has offered Bill Clinton a speaking role on Wednesday night at the Democratic convention -- before the vice presidential running mate speaks.

Thing is, the night before the nominee's acceptance speech is typically the night they run through the roll call vote, as Jonathan Alter notes here...

The sticking point is almost certainly about timing. Hillary is scheduled to speak Tuesday, Aug. 26. But the balloting for the nomination normally takes place Wednesday night. The Obama people are reconciled to Tuesday being Clinton Night ... but they don't want the pro-Hillary floor demonstrations to mar the Obama message on Wednesday.

Ok hang on... re that credit thing? I take it back. Sounds like by giving Bill a chance to speak on Wednesday, he's trying to short-circuit any sort of meaningful roll call vote.

Ya know we can get around all of these head-games if the Superdelegates would just back the grown-up in this race and send up Hillary to go against McCain in the general election.
Tags: Obama, roll call vote, convention, Democrats, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, (All Tags)
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Bill To Speak at Convention | 26 comments
by: you @ soon

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clueless, clueless, clueless. (4.00 / 7)
i think obama's notion of a catharsis is "oh no, the women are going to get emotional!"

he's deficient in empathy, and doesn't understand the need to validate the achievements of hillary's campaign. the way he sees it, there were no achievements. get over it.

obama's cluelessness was illustrated in the video of him talking to reporters about angry hillary supporters. his answer was, "we're talking to hillary - we aren't talking to THOSE PEOPLE."

he's used to his own campaign structure, where people support him because... well, because he's obama. with hillary's supporters, it's different. people were drawn to her because of the issues. i don't agree with her on some things - the AUMF, for instance - but overall, she has the best policy positions. obama thinks talking to hillary will ensure that we will all "get over it".

the problem is, hillary isn't responsible for our actions, and obama can't deal with - or even communicate with - people who disagree with him, so he's writing us off. that's how he's planning on wasting our quadrennial opportunity to gain control of the presidency. it will go down the toilet because of the weaknesses of this man.
by: campskunk @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 21:37:47 PM CDT
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Because he dragged it out, the conflict will overshadow his message (4.00 / 7)
Mr. Conflict-Avoidant inflamed a conflict by trying to avoid it.

Tee hee.
by: catfish @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 21:41:45 PM CDT
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O is passive/aggressive (4.00 / 3)
Don't you think?
by: Politica @ Fri Aug 08, 2008 at 00:35:12 AM CDT
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Oh yeah. Nothing makes me more hostile than the phrase (4.00 / 2)
"above the fray." Grrr!
by: catfish @ Fri Aug 08, 2008 at 01:12:47 AM CDT
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Of Course He Doesn't Need Catharsis (4.00 / 7)
He's sitting pretty thanks to the Toxic Trio (Dean Pelosi and Brazile). They allowed this inexperienced arrogant jerk (hi Cheetos!) with a paper-thin resume to declare Mission Accomplished and take control of our party.

He don't need no steenkin' catharsis.

But ya know what? Hillary's 18 million supporters and our delegates DO need this and we're not going to shut up and go away until they do right by us by putting OUR CANDIDATE on the ballot in Denver.

Superdelegates - CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
by: Alegre @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 21:44:53 PM CDT
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I've got to be honest (4.00 / 6)

I'm ambivalent about pressing for a vote. I know that a vote is the right thing to do. Its sets a terrible precedent to forgo a vote in such a close election.

But I don't think a vote is going to change much. In the first place, everything that has been said over the past couple of weeks makes it clear that the vote will only occur if Obama sanctions one and he's only going to sanction a vote if he is absolutely certain that he will win. Where's the democracy in that? That's an election only Robert Mugabe can love.

Second, its not going to make me shut up and go away. Last June all I wanted was an acknowledgment of the sexism. Now I'm radicalized and entrenched in my refusnik posture.
by: dbrown04 @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:15:05 PM CDT
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hillary knows that, of course. (4.00 / 5)
a vote would embarrass obama more than being forced to avoid a vote would, apparently ;-)

obama has the choice- but he doesn't have any GOOD choices. that's the price he has to pay for stealing the nomination.
by: campskunk @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:19:29 PM CDT
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I've had this thought myself. (4.00 / 2)

Since we're spending this much time on something that should be a given, it makes you wonder if we're being side-tracked by a red herring. And if there's no roll call, it won't be a convention in the real sense. BHO will look really bad. Oppression in the name of fake unity. Why is it up to him to decide this anyway? Isn't it the Democratic voters convention, where they're represented by their elected delegates?

And it's taking attention away from the fact that with ALL the votes counted, including Florida and Michigan, Hillary wins the popular vote by 285,000.
by: Sharyn @ Fri Aug 08, 2008 at 17:02:38 PM CDT
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Just watched a film of Bill talking to the press about Obama. (4.00 / 9)
He said some things about how the press treated Hillary, and alluded to the idea that BO started the negativity, but the press made it look like Hillary did. He said that in January when this is all over, he would like to sit down and talk to them more in depth. He had some fire in his eyes, and some anger, and we all have no doubt about what he is thinking of saying in January. Too bad he can't just say what he really wants to say during his speech at the convention. Now that would make history! And maybe that is what they are all worried about. If Obama and his followers had just behaved themselves instead of being so dirty and sexist during the campaign, then Obama wouldn't have to spend all his big happy, look at me-I'm the one, moment worried ,looking over his shoulder, and not sleeping at night. That's Karma, Baby.
by: Hopscotch @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 21:38:34 PM CDT
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I Can't Wait Until Bill's Free to Really Let Loose (4.00 / 8)
on that @sshole. Seriously.

But then if we somehow manage to convince those supers to back Hillary (HI SUPERS!) and she goes on to kick McCain's sorry backsidei n the general (which you all know she will!) he may need to hold his tongue a while longer.

He'll be first Laddie after all - right? :o)

Superdelegates - CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
by: Alegre @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 21:47:00 PM CDT
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I'd like to hear (4.00 / 1)
the first Laddie rip into them.

But, yes, if they are under investigation and prosecution, I guess he'd better wait.
by: Gary McGowan @ Fri Aug 08, 2008 at 17:39:43 PM CDT
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Obama scared of vote (4.00 / 6)
Obama must be really really scared of a real vote because he's really scared of Bill Clinton. Krugman calls Obama's Bill aversion bizarre. Here's Krugman on the topic:

Obama's big economy speech, last week:

Back in the 1990s, your incomes grew by $6,000, and over the last several years, they've actually fallen by nearly $1,000.

"Back in the 90s?" Why not, "When a Democrat was president?" "Over the last several years?" Why not, "under Bush?"

A prominent Democratic Hillary supporter once told me that Obama gives him "post-partisan depression." Indeed - his apparent unwillingness to take such clear shots is starting to seem bizarre.

Source: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
by: dbrown04 @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:06:52 PM CDT
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Obama trashed (4.00 / 6)
the 90's, Bill's presidency, Hillary, and the Clintons relentlessly during the primaries. Now he celebrates it, talks of it as the good 'ol days, like he was some how connected with it and had always been a fan. It is unforgivable, which is why many loyal Clinton supporters would rather chew glass than support Obama.

Recall the Obama product.
by: grlpatriot @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:22:06 PM CDT
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And he praised St. Ronnie (4.00 / 5)
was that a capper for the books or what. Glass chewing right now.
by: catfish @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:28:53 PM CDT
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Don't remind me (4.00 / 4)
I had almost forgotten that the pandering suck-up praised Ronnie. (Crunch, crunch, crunch)

Recall the Obama product.
by: grlpatriot @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:51:57 PM CDT
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Funny that (4.00 / 5)
the press is starting to play nice with Bill and Hillary now that they realize that the Precious has no chance in hell without the Clintons. It's pathetic really. You just can't talk shit about the Clintons, lie and smear them, then act like none of it every happened and expect them to prop up their Precious.

Recall the Obama product.
by: grlpatriot @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:16:00 PM CDT
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Or maybe they're bored. Their readers are (4.00 / 4)
that poll came out voters have heard enough already! About Obama. LOL.

My Repub boss, who is a really awesome boss, said after Hillary suspended her campaign "well it looks like the Clintons are finally done for good, they'll never get near the White House again." Immediately sounded like he was tempting fate.
by: catfish @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:26:14 PM CDT
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Heh, He Clearly Didn't Know About Her Secret Weapon (4.00 / 6)
That'd be US in case anyone's wondering (waves - hi cheetos!).

Superdelegates - CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
by: Alegre @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:33:08 PM CDT
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It's more exciting now (4.00 / 4)
that both Hillary and Bill are back in the news. Everyone is excited again. Obama fatigue has set in. He's a dullard. The Clintons are smart, witty, gracious, and wickedly brilliant and they don't need a teleprompter to prop them up either.

Recall the Obama product.
by: grlpatriot @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:58:37 PM CDT
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There is always something new (4.00 / 3)
with them. Always a story. I almost hear banjos playing in my head when they creep back into the news, they liven up the place fo sho ;)
by: catfish @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 23:06:35 PM CDT
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Too funny: Top of Google News tonight is All Clinton/Obama (4.00 / 6)
Thought he could just ignore the Clintons and they would go away, he picked the wrong time to go on vacation. (My top story on Google News looked like this Thurs evening):

Democrats Release Platform
Clinton Repays Debt to Schools
Clinton may seek roll-call vote at Dems' convention
A Catharsis in Denver?
Deconstructing Hillary
Clinton convention roll still not fixed
What Does Hillary Want?
Clinton supporters to march at Democratic Convention
Clintons creating new headaches for Obama (did he bring this on himself?)
Clinton to supporters: 'Yell and Scream,' then back Obama (love that one)
Report: Bill Clinton to speak in Denver
...
'I am not a racist,' ex-president Bill Clinton asserts (,_ might be my favorite)

by: catfish @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:22:30 PM CDT
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Wowzer (4.00 / 5)
Guess BHO was right when he was whining about not having enough time to take on McCain in the GE so they had (JUST HAD) to short-circuit the primary process so he could get to work.

THen he takes a vay-cay-shun and look what happens.

DOH!

Superdelegates - CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
by: Alegre @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:31:20 PM CDT
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Those Clintons have stamina! (4.00 / 5)
The youngest candidate in this race seems to need the most rest. Take that, ageist millenials!
by: catfish @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 23:04:06 PM CDT
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BTW... LOVE IT! n/t (4.00 / 3)


Superdelegates - CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
by: Alegre @ Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 22:31:45 PM CDT
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Best news all Summer (4.00 / 1)
I don't understand how Bill speaking on WEDS, can hurt anything,

CS--can you explain that to me,

It makes me very happy they're both there.

Also, This VP talking, I don't understand that either,

WHO iS THAT??
by: sammorg @ Fri Aug 08, 2008 at 08:29:43 AM CDT
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WE ARE FIGHTING A WAR HERE, PEOPLE (0.00 / 0)
Lets' look at Hill's words (and not the lying NYT version)...

Hillary Clinton [speaking on camera with gun pointed at her head]: "I happen to believe that we will come out stronger if people feel that their voices were heard and their views were respected. I think that is a very big part of how we actually come out unified. Because I know from just what I'm hearing, that there's incredible pent-up desire [to stop the horrible wars and to free the United States of America from the slime mold that is eating the economic lower 80% of our population alive]. And I think that people want to feel like, `O.K., it's a catharsis, we're here, we did it, and then everybody get behind Sen. Obama.'[There is not even an ice cube's chance in hell that his nomination could mean anything but DISASTER for our country and we damn well know it.] That is what [we want to convince the DNC] most people believe is the best way to go. No decisions have been made. [We have a window of opportunity here.] And so we are trying to work all this through with the [corrupt and dangerous] DNC and with the [corrupt and dangerous] Obama campaign."

We are fighting a war and Hillary knows it and is very limited right now as to what she can say or do. She is being held prisoner by the DNC, the cartel media, and by a big ugly tragic mass of can't-think-outside-the-box popular opinion. She is a prisoner. And yet she is STILL A LEADER, leading even as she has a gun to her head as she speaks (figuratively speaking; a misspeak and her candidacy is dead.) It's there for the few who can see it.

She is molding the situation; she is shaping it. But it is WE who must act to free her.

She said: "Delegates can decide this on their own. They don't need permission. They can decide under the rules of the DNC....

"What we want to have happen is for Sen. Obama to be nominated [she has a gun to her head] by a unified convention of Democrats. [Yes, right... Hillary really believes her soldiers who have sacrificed so much for the differences they know exist between her moral character and Obama's--who have sacrificed so much for a capable leader to be nominated--she believes they will drop all that and unite behind Senator Zero. My ass they will.] And as I have said, the best way I think--and I could be wrong [she reminds us that she has a gun to her head]--but the best way I think to do that is to have a strategy so that my delegates feel like they have a role, and that their legitimacy has been validated. It's as old as, you know, as Greek drama. [Where the actors performed behind masks and played more than a single role, and where the audience saw not actors upon a stage, but IDEAS in their own minds motivated by a PASSION FOR MORAL TRUTH unlike today's celebrities and their "Look at me! Look at me!" "Admire me."] You know, there is a catharsis. [Yes, right... she wants the convention to be transformed into a wake for the death of her as a candidate. My ass she does.] I mean, everybody comes and, you know, they want to yell and scream and have their opportunity, and I think that's all to the good. [Obama loves his mobs. Hill is motivated by progress, not screaming. We know that.] Because then, you, everybody can go, `OK, great, now let's go out and win'" And that's what we want people to feel. We do not want any Democrat either in the hall or in the stadium or at home walking away saying, `Well, you know, I'm just not satisfied, I'm not happy.' Because, I mean, that's what I'm trying to avoid."

That's what I'm trying to avoid too, Madame President. I hear you.

Weekend Edition
June 13-15, 2008

From Glory Boy to PW Songbird

John McCain: War Hero or North Vietnam's Go-To Collaborator?

By DOUGLAS VALENTINE

If you have no idea what war is about, thank your gods. It is not what you see in Mel Gibson movies, nor is it hidden within the Big Lie Big Brother tells you about Pat Tillman’s heroic “Army of One” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When my father was in New Guinea with the 32nd Division in 1942, his fellow American soldiers would point their long Springfield rifles skywards and shoot at American pilots flying overhead.

“Glory Boys,” the long-suffering ground troops called them.

The pilots had comfortable quarters beside the airstrip in Port Moresby. When orders for a mission came down, they’d climb in their planes, rattle down the runway, and soar over the Owen Stanley Mountains with the clouds in spotless uniforms, breathing fresh clean air. The Glory Boys weren’t trapped in the broiling jungle, in the mud and pouring rain, their skin rotting away, chewed by ghastly insects, bitten by poisonous snakes, stricken with cerebral malaria, yellow fever, dysentery, and a host of unknown diseases delivered by unknown parasites.

If the Fly Boys perished, it was in a blaze of glory, not from a landmine, or a misdirected American mortar, or a Japanese bayonet in the brain.

One day my father and his last remaining friend, Charlie Ferguson, were walking through the jungle up to the front line. One the way they passed a group of bare-chested Aussies in khaki shorts sitting round a grindstone sharpening their knives. Every once in a while one of the Aussies would hoist his rife and casually put a bullet into a Japanese sniper who had tied himself into the top of a nearby tree. Not in any place that would outright kill him, but some place painful enough to make the point.

A little further toward the front line, my father and Charlie came upon Master Sergeant Harry Blackman, an adult man in his forties, regular army, a grizzled combat veteran. A few days earlier in a fight with the Japanese, a young lieutenant, a “90-Day Wonder,” had curled up in a fetal position when he should have been directing mortar fire. As a result, US mortar rounds landed on several US soldiers. Blackman, in front of everyone, took the lieutenant behind a tree and blew his brains out.

As my father and Charlie waked through the jungle they saw Harry Blackman perched on the lower limb of a huge tropical tree, babbling incoherently among the butterflies and flowering vines, driven stark raving mad by sorrow and jungle war with the Japanese.

Several days later my father was sent on a patrol into Japanese held territory. He was the last man in a formation moving single file through the jungle. Plagued by malaria and exhaustion, he kept falling behind. Around noon, a group of Japanese soldiers sitting high up in trees dropped concussion grenades on the patrol. As he lay on the ground, unable to move, my father watched the Japanese slide down the trees. Starting with the point man on patrol, they pulled down the pants and castrated each man, before clubbing him to death with their rifle butts or running a bayonet into his gut.

War. If you’re a Glory Boy like John Sidney McCain III, you really have no idea what it is. You drop bombs on cities, on civilians, maybe on enemy forces, maybe on your own troops. Glory Boys like John McCain rarely get a taste of the horror they inflict on others. Their suffering rarely extends beyond the high anxiety that they might get shot down and that some bombarded mob on the ground might take its revenge.

Magically, my father was spared that day when his patrol was slaughtered. Against regulations, he had stolen a cross-swords patch and sewn it on his shirt sleeve. At the age of 16, he thought it looked cool. On the morning of the patrol, when the new “90-Day Wonder” told him to take it off, my father said “Sure.” He and the lieutenant stared at each other for a while and then the lieutenant moved away. Insubordination was the least of anyone’s worries. No one expected to survive the patrol, anyway.

When the Japanese who had ambushed the patrol got to my father, they stood poised to mutilate and kill him. Then they saw the cross-swords patch. They apparently felt that dear old dad was an important person with inside information about American forces. Instead of killing him, they took him prisoner. When they realized he was just a stupid kid, the Japanese sent him to a POW camp in the Philippines.

Being a POW is what my father and John McCain have in common; although their experience as POWs was as different as their class and their character.

Class indeed has privileges, and while the government refused to provide my combat-veteran father with medical benefits for his malaria, McCain, who spent ten hours of his life in mortal danger, was decorated with the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart.

And thus the “war hero” myth was born.

McNasty

In the fall of 1967, Navy pilot John McCain was routinely bombing Hanoi from an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. On October 26, he was trying to level a power plant in a heavily populated area when a surface-to-air missile knocked a wing off his jet. Banged-up John McCain and what was left of plane splashed into Truc Bach Lake.

A compassionate Vietnamese civilian left his air raid shelter and swam out to McCain. McCain’s arm and leg were fractured and he was tangled up in his parachute underwater. He was drowning. The Vietnamese man saved McCain’s sorry ass, and yet McCain has nothing but hatred for “the gooks” who allegedly tortured him. As he told reporters on his campaign bus (The Straight Talk Express) in 2000, “I will hate them as long as I live.” (1)

Americans have to hate people, and dehumanize them as “gooks” or “rag-heads” in order to drop bombs on them. Stirring up such hatred is the forte of the US government, as witnessed by its Israeli-driven PR campaign against Arabs and Moslems. That’s why Bush and his media minions tied “brutal dictator” Saddam Hussein to 9/11 – so Americans would hate Iraqis enough to kill and abuse them in a thousand ways, everyday, for five years. Or, according to McCain, for 100 years if necessary.

The flip side to the equation is that people generally hate those who drop bombs on them. When the Germans dropped bombs on London, the Allies called it Terror Bombing. The French resistance especially hated the Germans, especially after the Gestapo set up shop in occupied France in 1940.

Likewise, Iraqi and Afghani resistance fighters hate the Americans (who more and more resemble the Germans of 1940) for occupying their countries. They especially hate our Gestapo – the CIA – and its torturers. But that’s War for you, and John McCain is lucky the locals didn’t eat him alive – like Uzbek nationalists trapped in a horrid prison camp in Afghanistan nibbled on CIA officer John “Mike” Spann shortly after Spann summarily executed a prisoner. Spann was killed in the ensuing riot, shortly before the CIA and its Afghan collaborators massacred the remaining Uzbek prisoners on 28 November 2001.
The Vietnamese had good reason to hate McCain. On his previous 22 missions, he had dropped God knows how many bombs killing God knows how many innocent civilians. “I am a war criminal,” he confessed on “60 Minutes” in 1997. “I bombed innocent women and children.” (2)

If he is sincere when he says that, why isn’t he being tried for war crimes by the U.S .Government?

In any event, the man who rescued McCain tried to ward off an angry mob, which stomped on McCain for a while until the local cops turned him over to the military. McCain was in pain, but suffering no mortal wounds. He was, however, in enough pain to break down and start collaborating with the Vietnamese after three days in a hospital receiving treatment from qualified doctors – something no other POW ever enjoyed.

War is one thing, collaborating with the enemy is another; it is a legitimate campaign issue that strikes at the heart of McCain’s character…or lack thereof.

There are certainly degrees of collaboration. As a famous novelist once asked, “If you’re a barber and you cut a German’s hair, does that make you a collaborator?”

Being an informant for the Gestapo, or its stepson the CIA in Iraq, and informing on the resistance and sending them to their death, is different than being a barber. In occupied countries like Iraq, or France in World War Two, collaboration to that extent is an automatic death sentence.
The question is: “What kind of collaborator was John McCain, the admitted war criminal who will hate his alleged torturers for the rest of his life?”

Put another way, how psychologically twisted is McCain? And what actually happened to him in his POW camp that twisted him? Was it abuse, as he claims, or was it the fact that he collaborated and has to cover up?

Covering-up can take a lot of energy. The truth is lurking in his subconscious, waiting to explode. A number of US officials, including Andrew Card, have commented on McCain’s inexplicable angry outbursts.

In a July 5 2006 NewsMax.com article, former Senator Bob Smith (R-NH), was quoted as having said about McCain: “I have witnessed incidents where he has used profanity at colleagues.... He would disagree about something and then explode.” Smith called it “irrational behavior. We've all had incidents where we have gotten angry, but I've never seen anyone act like that."

So, you say, McCain has a short fuse behind the plastered TV smile. So he calls his colleagues assholes and shit-heads. In high school they called him “McNasty.” That’s just how he is. Always was, always will be.

Well, maybe. And maybe it’s not a quality we want in a president. And maybe that repressed anger actually has its roots in a Vietnamese POW camp, where John McCain betrayed his forefathers and his country.

The Admiral’s Bad Boy

In the forced-labor camp where my father was tortured by the Japanese, the POWs killed anyone who collaborated. Indeed, the ranking POW in my father’s camp, an English Major, made a deal with the Japanese guaranteeing that no one would attempt to escape. When four prisoners escaped, the Major reported it. The Japanese sent out a search party, which found the POWs and brought them back to camp, where they were beheaded on Christmas morning 1943.

The POWs held a war council that night. They drew straws, and the three who got short were given a mission. A few hours later, under cover of darkness, they crept to the major’s hut. My father had gotten one of the short straws and kept watch while the other two POWs strangled the Major in his sleep.

That’s how it happens in real life.

McCain, in his carefully prepared statements, claims he was tortured while in solitary confinement, and that is why he signed a confession saying, “I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors.” (3)

However, on March 25, 1999, two of his fellow POWs, Ted Guy and Gordon "Swede" Larson told the Phoenix New Times that, while they could not guarantee that McCain was not physically harmed, they doubted it.

As Larson said, "My only contention with the McCain deal is that while he was at The Plantation, to the best of my knowledge and Ted's knowledge, he was not physically abused in any way. No one was in that camp. It was the camp that people were released from."

Guy and Larson’s claims are given credence by McCain’s vehement opposition to releasing the government’s debriefings of Vietnam War POWs. McCain gave Michael Isikoff a peek at his debriefs, and Isikoff declared there was “nothing incriminating” in them, apart from the redactions. (4)

McCain had a unique POW experience. Initially, he was taken to the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison camp, where he was interrogated. By McCain’s own account, after three or four days, he cracked. He promised his Vietnamese captors, "I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital."

His Vietnamese capturers soon realized their POW, John Sidney McCain III, came from a well-bred line of American military elites. McCain’s father, John Jr., and grandfather, John Sr., were both full Admirals. A destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, is named after both of them.

While his son was held captive in Hanoi, John McCain Jr., from 1968 to 1972, was the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Pacific Command; Admiral McCain was in charge of all US forces in the Pacific including those fighting in Vietnam.

One can only wonder when the concierge at the Hanoi Hilton started taking calls from Admiral McCain. Rather quickly, one surmises, for the Vietnamese soon took John Boy McCain to a hospital reserved for Vietnamese officers. Unlike his fellow POWs, he received care from a Soviet doctor.

“This poor stooge has propaganda value,” the Vietnamese realized. The Admiral’s bad boy was used to special treatment and his captors knew that. They were working him.

For his part, McCain acknowledges that the Vietnamese rushed him to a hospital, but denies he was given any "special medical treatment."

However….two weeks into his stay at the Vietnamese hospital, the Hanoi press began quoting him. It was not “name rank and serial number, or kill me,” as specified by the military code of conduct. McCain divulged specific military information: he gave the name of the aircraft carrier on which he was based, the number of US pilots that had been lost, the number of aircraft in his flight formation, as well as information about the location of rescue ships. (5)

So McCain leveraged some details to get some medical attention. That’s not anything too contemptible. And who among us civilians is to judge someone in the position?

On the other hand, according to one source, McCain’s collaboration may have had very real consequences. Retired Army Colonel Earl Hopper, a veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, contends that the information that McCain divulged classified information North Vietnam used to hone their air defense system.

Hopper’s son, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Earl Pearson Hopper was, like McCain, shot down over North Vietnam. Hopper the younger, however, was declared “Missing in Action.” Stemming from the loss of his son, the elder Hopper co-founded the National League of Families, an organization devoted to the return of Vietnam War POWs.

According to the elder Hopper, McCain told his North Vietnamese captors, “highly classified information, the most important of which was the package routes, which were routes used to bomb North Vietnam. He gave in detail the altitude they were flying, the direction, if they made a turn… he gave them what primary targets the United States was interested in.” Hopper contends that the information McCain provided allowed the North Vietnamese to adjust their air-defenses. As result, Hopper claims, the US lost sixty percent more aircraft and in 1968, “called off the bombing of North Vietnam, because of the information McCain had given to them.” 6

The Psywar Stooge

McCain was held for five and half years. Collaborating during the first two weeks might have been pragmatic, but he soon became North Vietnam’s go-to collaborator for the next three years. Given the quality of the military information he allegedly shared, his situation isn’t as innocuous as the pragmatic French barber who cuts the hair of the German occupier. McCain was repaying his captors for their kindness and mercy.

This is the lesson of McCain’s experience as a POW: a true politician, a hollow man, his only allegiance is to power. The Vietnamese, like McCain’s campaign contributors today, protected and promoted him and in return, he danced to their tune.

Not content with divulging military information, McCain provided his voice in radio broadcasts used by the North Vietnamese to demoralize American soldiers.

Vietnamese radio propagandists made good use out of McCain. On June 4, 1969, a U.S. wire service headlined a story entitled "PW Songbird Is Pilot Son of Admiral.” (7)

The story reported that McCain collaborated in psywar offensives aimed at American servicemen. "The broadcast was beamed to American servicemen in South Vietnam as a part of a propaganda series attempting to counter charges by U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird that American prisoners are being mistreated in North Vietnam."
On one occasion, General Vo Nguyen Giap, the top Vietnamese commander and a nationalist celebrity of the time, personally interviewed McCain. His compliance during this command performance was a moment of affirmation for the Vietnamese. His Vietnamese handlers thereafter used him regularly as prop at meetings with foreign delegations.

In the custody of enemy psywar specialists, McCain became what he is today: a professional psywar stooge.

It is impossible to prove exactly what happened to McCain short of traveling to Vietnam and tracking down his captors, and picking up thee trail where it begins. According to The Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain, McCain says he only collaborated when he brutally tortured by his Vietnamese captors and a wicked Cuban he referred to as Fidel. (8)

He says his confession led him to a suicide attempt.

“In the anguished days right after my confession,” McCain said in his autobiography Faith of My Fathers, “I had dreaded just such a discovery by my father.”

But as McCain discovered, dear old dad did know.

“I only recently learned that the tape I dreamed I heard playing over the loudspeaker in my cell had been real; it had been broadcast outside the prison and had come to the attention of my father,” McCain said. “If I had known at the time my father had heard about my confession, I would have been distressed beyond imagination, and might not have recovered from the experience as quickly as I did.”

But wait! McCain did not commit suicide. In fact, he’s alive, running for President on the “war hero” ticket, and promoting more war everywhere. The new McCain feels no distress at having been a collaborator or a war criminal – if he ever did.

According to Fernando Barral, a Cuban psychologist who questioned McCain in January 1970, “McCain was "boastful" during their interview and "without remorse" for any civilian deaths that occurred "when he bombed Hanoi." McCain has a similar recollection, writing in his [autobiography] that he responded, "No, I do not" when Barral asked if he felt remorse.” (9)

McCain told [Barral] that he had not been subjected to “physical or moral violence,” and “lamented in the interview that ‘if I hadn't been shot down, I would have become an admiral at a younger age than my father.’”

“Barral said McCain boasted that he was the best pilot in the Navy and that he wanted to be an astronaut.” The Cuban psychologist concluded that McCain was [a] ‘psychopath.’” (10)

"He felt superior to the Vietnamese up there in his plane, with all his training," Barral recalled.

Psychopath McCain emerges, now, as a contemptible elitist, stewing in the crucible of his class conscience, the ultimate right wing psywar stooge.

McJekyll and McHyde

There are no public records from other POWs to confirm McCain's self-aggrandizing claims, but his detractors, like fellow POWs Ted Guy and Gordon "Swede" Larson, and Colonel Hopper, have yet to be discredited or silenced by McCain’s PR team.

Hopper, Guy and Larson are part of a larger movement concerned with the fate of the 2,000 American veterans still missing in Vietnam. They’ve been pressing McCain to own up to his POW experience, drop the “war hero” posturing, and do more to provide a full accounting of the POWs and MIAs who were not as fortunate, privileged, or willing to collaborate as the would-be president.

McCain’s supporters are trying to quiet detractors by ignoring them. "Nobody believes these idiots. They're a bunch of jerks. Forget them," said Mark Salter, McCain's chief mythologist. Salter is credited by casting McCain as a modern Teddy Roosevelt, “the war hero turned domestic reformer.” (11)

By in large the Salter strategy has worked. The American media accepts McCain’s “war hero” myth as gospel and, in so doing, bolsters the “straight talk” image so essential to his success in politics. In a recent TV interview with John Kerry, victim of the Swift Boat Heroes for Truth Movement in the last election, another “fortunate son,” Chris Wallace, actually took umbrage when Kerry criticized McCain. Son of media admiral Mike Wallace, Chris made Kerry admit that McCain was a hero.
When it comes to psywar, the Vietnamese have nothing on the good old USA.

McCain learned his lesson well from the Vietnamese propagandists who used him for their psywar projects. But it’s not the collaboration that makes John McCain unfit for office; it’s the fact that he has managed to rewrite his collaboration into political capital. “He’s a war hero, respect him, or die.”

As a pedigree, the McCain family’s stature rests on the status and prestige of its achievements in the military: rank, medals, and most importantly to John McCain’s presidential campaign, the image of warrior masculinity: the straight talking maverick of the Republican Party, the 21st century rendering of Teddy Roosevelt.

Not exactly. In his current presidential campaign, he’s cozying up to the hate-mongering Christian right he once criticized. He’s reversed positions on so many issues that his Democratic rivals have assembled his contrasting statements into “The Great McCain Versus McCain Debates. (12)

Underlying the Jekyll-Hyde reversals is McCain’s hidden past of collaboration. Somewhere in the unplumbed human part of John Sidney McCain III, he knows his POW experience contradicts the war hero image he projects. This essential dishonesty, this lie of the soul, is a sign of a larger lack of character - like the major in my father’s POW camp, but without the come-uppance.

McCain is not some principled leader, not a maverick cowboy fighting the powerful. He’s a sycophant. He believes in nothing but power and will do anything to attain it. He explodes in anger when challenged because, when a criticism hits to close to home, it goes to straight his deep-seeded shame.

McCain’s handlers have turned his unspeakable reality into a myth worthy of Teddy Roosevelt. No wonder the Glory Boy has stuck around Washington so long.

Doug Valentine is the author of The Hotel Tacloban, the story of his father’s experiences in a Japanese POW camp in World War Two. The Hotel Tacloban is available at Mr Valentine’s websites http://www.DouglasValentine.com and http://valentine.sb2.authorsguild.net
Brendan McQuade assisted Mr Valentine by providing timely research for this article.

Mr McQuade can be reached for interviews about this article at: 860-334-3661

Notes

1. C W Nevius, Marc Sandalow, John Wildemuth, “McCain Criticized for Slur,” San Francisco Chronicle, 18 February 2000

2. Ted Rall, CommonDreams.org. February 6, 2008.

3.Ted Rall, CommonDreams.org. February 6, 2008

4. Sydney Schanberg, APBNews.com, 25 April 2000, citing Isikoff, Newsweek, 1 January 2000.

5. Ted Sampley, “Luck Of The Admiral's Son Not For "Grunts" U.S. Veteran Dispatch, October 1999.

6. Sampley page.

7. See attached PDF version of Eugene Cannon 2 June 69 press release.

8. http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/index.htm

9. Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, March 11, 2008; C01

10. Ibid.

11. Sasha Issenberg, Boston Globe.

12. http://www.democrats.org/page/content/mccaindebates