Republican National Convention finally accepts Ron Paul

Republican presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (AFP Photo / Joe Raedle)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/usa/news/republican-convention-ron-paul-891/

It’s not over for Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Not only is the congressman still in the race for the Republican nomination for president, but the longtime libertarian favorite is following through with his big plans for the upcoming GOP convention.

Notwithstanding a presumptive party win for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, presidential hopeful Ron Paul is still scheduled to be in Florida for the Republican National Convention next month in Tampa. What’s more, USA Today reports, is that the people running the RNC are finally ready to accept Rep. Paul and his throng of supporters.

Ron Paul supporters have previously reported that the Republican Party establishment was going out of their way to keep an event in honor of the Texas congressman — PaulFest — from being put on during the same weekend of the RNC.

“They’ve been fighting us all along,” PaulFest organizer Deborah Robinet told The Tampa Bay Times last month. “We’re Republicans. Do they want to alienate us, or do they want to bring us into the fold?”

After failing to win enough delegates during the recent Nebraska State Convention, the GOP was expected to exclude Rep. Paul from speaking at this year’s RNC. When the congressman was kept out of the 2008 event, a counter protest was staged outside. This time around Rep. Paul has remained in the race longer than all other Republican Party candidates, except Mitt Romney, and his campaign and crew of supporters insist on having him represented. Only now, however, do organizers with the Ron Paul campaign say that the RNC are dropping their fight and finally accepting the rest of the party as their own.

"They've just treated us like a friend and like a coalition," Jesse Benton, a spokesman for the Paul campaign, tells USA Today. "They have been honest brokers in working with us and treated us with respect."

Even if the congressman can’t get a full time slot to speak at the RNC, the GOP is giving him access to the University of South Florida’s Sun Dome, a decision that both sides say they were able to agree on mutually.

"We have worked closely with Congressman Paul to secure a location for this event," Kyle Downey, a spokesman for the GOP convention, adds to USA Today. Only one month earlier, RNC spokesman James Davis told the Associated Press that the GOP had received the Paul campaign’s request for a venue but was “making those assignments on a rolling basis." At the time, the Paul campaign complained that delays on part of the RNC put PaulFest in jeopardy.

"Our success brings us some clout," Jesse Benton says of the campaign’s victory.

Journalists arrested by order of House Republicans

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/224378.html

In a stunning break with First Amendment policy, House Republicans directed Capitol Hill police to detain a highly regarded documentary crew that was attempting to film a Wednesday hearing on a controversial natural gas procurement practice.

Republicans also denied the entrance of a credentialed ABC News news team that was attempting to film the event.

Josh Fox, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Gasland" was taken into custody by Capitol Hill police this morning, along with his crew, after Republicans objected to their presence, according to Democratic sources present at the hearing. The meeting of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment had been taking place in room 2318 of the Rayburn building.

Approximately 16 officers entered the hearing room and handcuffed Fox amid audible discussions of "disorderly conduct" charges, according to Democratic sources present at the arrest.

"Gasland" received strong critical acclaim and takes a critical eye toward the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," a process in which several tons of highly pressurized water and chemicals are injected into the ground, allowing valuable natural gas to escape. The practice is decried by ecological experts for destroying ecosystems and polluting groundwater. The energy industry keeps the actual content of fracking chemicals secret.

Fox had hoped to film Wednesday's hearing for a follow-up to "Gasland." A colleague of Fox's at his production company was unable to comment on the morning's events, but HuffPost expects a statement soon.

Fox did not have formal Capitol Hill credentials, but such formalities are rarely enforced against high-profile journalists. Temporary passes are easy to obtain, and if Republicans had objected on procedural grounds, they could have simply sent the crew to the front desk, rather than ordering police to arrest journalists. The right to a free press is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Documentary crews are almost never denied access to public meetings of elected government officials.

A separate ABC News crew, which did have official Capitol Hill credentials, was also denied access to the public hearing. Huffington Post

FACTS & FIGURES

The targeting of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street movement has caused the United States to drop precipitously in a leading survey of press freedom. Reporters Without Borders was explicit in its summary of its report, saying that "the United States (47th) also owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests." Huffington Post

At 12:48 pm Wednesday, Sep 28, 2011, while working on a story about citizen journalism at the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York for PBS affiliate WNET Thirteen, John Farley was arrested, along with the demonstrators whose stories he was covering. bongboing.net

A reporter working for the NYT, Natasha Lennard, wrote to editors while covering #OccupyWallSt, "I'm being arrested." Lennard was arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, October 1, 2011. storify.com

Kristen Gwynne, a staff member at AlterNet, was also arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1, 2011. storify.com

In the dark hours of November 15, the NYPD orchestrated a raid on the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park on the orders of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Journalists soon began reporting on Twitter that they were being 'prevented from reporting about the police actions - and next, reports emerged of police harassment, abuse and even arrests. Ten journalists, some from the NPR, the Associated Press and the New York Daily News, were arrested. One journalist from the New York Post was put in a choke hold. care2.com

30 journalists were arrested at the Occupy Wall Street protests on Dec. 01, 2011 including some at the police raids on Occupy LA and Occupy Philly. The arrests occurred in 10 cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chapel Hill, New York City, Oakland and Richmond. storify.com

On Dec. 01, 2011, Free Press delivered a petition with more than 40,000 signatures to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, president of the United States Conference of Mayors. The petition called on U.S. mayors to protect First Amendment rights and to protect journalists covering the Occupy movement. storify.com

Romney profited from mortgage lenders that foreclosed on thousands

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/223103.html

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, saw profits by sinking millions into a Goldman Sachs fund that invested in mortgage-backed obligations, which were owned by lenders who foreclosed on thousands of Floridians.

By examining the candidate's May 2011 financial disclosure forms, Think Progress determined that Romney and his wife invested at least $2 million in the Goldman Sachs Strategic Income Fund (institutional class). In 2011, about 24.5 percent of that fund was invested in mortgage-backed obligations. Another 8 percent was invested in banks.

Between April 2010 and March 2011, the fund grew by 7.88 percent. Raw Story

HIGHLIGHTS

The former private-equity executive and Massachusetts governor earned more than half his income from capital gains and dividends, which are taxed at a top rate of 15 percent, rather than the 35 percent top rate for ordinary income, the filings showed. He donated $7 million to charity in the last two years, including $4.1 million to the Mormon church. sfgate.com

Since Romney did not list the fund on his 2007 financial disclosure forms, it is safe to assume he made the investment - and reaped the rewards - after the financial meltdown that began in late-2008. santarosademocrats.com

In October, Romney suggested that the solution to the foreclosure crisis was "don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom." While that process is bad for Florida homeowners, these investments show it may have been good for the Romneys. thinkprogress.org

Think Progress' Josh Israel concluded that "these and the other owners mortgage-backed securities included in this fund likely have attempted to foreclose on tens of thousands of Floridians." thinkprogress.org

An examination of civil cases filed in Miami-Dade county alone, by just the current owners of the mortgage obligations for now-defunct Washington Mutual and Countrywide, suggests more than 5,000 foreclosure cases were filed in 2010.

http://www.thinkprogress.org/

Mitt Romney’s Ties to Israeli Military Intelligence

Source: Christopher Bollyn
http://www.bollyn.com/index.php#article_13410

ROMNEY'S ISRAELI HANDLER - Orit Gadiesh, former "War Room" assistant to Ezer Weizman and Moshe Dayan, is the daughter of Israeli Brigadier General Falk Gadiesh (born Falk Gruenfeld, Berlin, 1921) and his Ukrainian-born wife. Gadiesh is chairman of the management consulting firm Bain & Company, the parent company of Bain Capital. Bain Capital owns Clear Channel, the largest radio station group owner in the United States. Clear Channel owns the networks which air the most popular radio talk shows, including The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Glenn Beck Program, The Sean Hannity Show, America Now with Andy Dean, Coast to Coast AM, The Savage Nation, The Mark Levin Show, and The Dave Ramsey Show.

Orit Gadiesh, born in Israel in 1951, has worked closely with Mitt Romney since at least 1993, and probably much longer. Romney appointed Gadiesh to his transition team when he was governor of Massachusetts. Gadiesh is the daughter of Falk Gadiesh, an Israeli brigadier general and former member of the general staff who reorganized the Israeli army in the 1950s after a stint at MIT.

Orit served in Israeli military intelligence. Her first position in the Israeli military was as assistant to Ezer Weizman, the deputy chief of staff who later became president of Israel. During the early 1970s, she worked in the war room, a bunker where Gen. Moshe Dayan was in charge. As a war room assistant to Weizman, Orit provided military leaders with documents and correspondence.

Prior to joining Bain & Company, Gadiesh served in the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army. She is on the board of directors of the Peres Center for Peace, an organization headed by a former chief of staff of the Israeli military, Lt. General Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. The high-level Mossadnik Avner Azulay, managing director of the Marc Rich Foundation, is also on the executive board of the Peres Center.



Mitt Romney speaking at the Mossad's (IDC) Herzliya Conference in 2007



Romney greets his old friend, Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the suspected architects of the false-flag terrorism of 9/11.

Mitt Romney attended the Mossad’s “Herzliya Conference on Israeli Security” in 2007. Romney and the current Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked together as consultants at the Boston Consulting Group early in their careers.

Romney's close relationship with Orit Gadiesh and Israeli military intelligence is the real reason he is the chosen candidate of the Zionist establishment. Romney is being supported by high-level Zionists, Israeli military intelligence, and their controlled media network. This relationship between the Israeli military and Mitt Romney, a presidential candidate, should be of great concern to all Americans because this is how the Israeli military plans to drag the United States into a war with Iran.

EVIDENCE OF VOTE FRAUD SURFACES



WHO STOLE THE IOWA CAUCUS? - Edward True, 28, helped count the 53 votes in his precinct and jotted down the results. When he checked to make sure the Republican Party of Iowa got the count right, he said he was shocked to find they hadn't. "When Mitt Romney won Iowa by eight votes and I've got a 20-vote discrepancy here, that right there says Rick Santorum won Iowa,"

Who Really Won in Iowa?

There are alarming news reports that show that the tally of the Republican caucus in Iowa was manipulated giving fraudulent additional votes to Mitt Romney. In one precinct alone, where Romney received only two votes, the tally showed twenty-two, an increase of 1,000 percent! If such egregious vote fraud happened in one precinct, it most likely happened in others:

- Des Moines TV station KCCI reported that a Ron Paul backer attending his first precinct caucuses in Appanoose County, in southern Iowa, said the vote from his precinct was inaccurately reported and gave Romney 20 more votes than he actually received.

- The Paul supporter, Edward True of Moulton, told The Associated Press that he helped count the ballots cast at his precinct caucuses and that Romney received two votes. True said he was shocked to see the official results on the Republican Party website showed Romney with 22 votes in the precinct

- "I assume somebody made a typographical error," he said in a telephone interview. True said that when he contacted local Republican officials, "They said they would sort it out in the next couple of weeks, but how many primaries will have happened by that time?"

- "Santorum shrugs off report of Iowa vote errors" , 6 January 2012

IMMEDIATE AUDIT OF IOWA RESULTS REQUIRED

Edward True, 28, said at his 53-person caucus at the Garrett Memorial Library, Romney received only two votes. According to the Iowa Republican Party's website, True's precinct cast 22 votes for Romney. "This is huge," True said. "It essentially changes who won." While the mainstream media portrays this as a single typographical error it may simply be an indication of a much more serious problem. The True case is clear evidence of vote fraud and a complete audit of the Iowa tally must be done to determine if the caucus results were manipulated on a statewide scale.

When I began this article about Ron Paul and the Iowa caucus, a week before it happened, I was strongly inclined to predict that Mitt Romney was going to win, based solely on my knowledge that he is supported financially by the Crown family of Chicago, a family of high-level Zionist weapons dealers closely tied to the state of Israel. The Crown family, which profits directly from war and defense spending, also supported Barack Obama and is one of those highly-connected Zionist clans that knows how to make their candidates win elections - one way or another. Lester Crown also sits on the board of the Peres Center, along with Orit Gadiesh.

Romney’s Israeli Handler.



Orit Gadiesh (age 60) is a high-level Israeli military intelligence agent at Bain & Co. who has worked closely with Mitt Romney since at least 1993, and most likely much longer.



Orit Gadiesh, born 1951, is the daughter of Falk Gadiesh (formerly Gruenfeld) one of the Israeli army's first brigadier generals and a member of the General Staff. The Gruenfeld family immigrated to Palestine in 1939 when Falk was 18. He became a Brigadier General and was sent by Israeli military intelligence to the United States in 1952 on a diplomatic passport to study at MIT.

A book about the Gruenfeld family provides information about Brigadier General Falk Gadiesh. (Source: Das Leinenhaus Gruenfeld, Berlin 1967)

Romney's support from the Crown family, which is closely tied to the state of Israel and its military intelligence agencies, is most likely based on his decades of working with Bain & Company, which is headed by Orit Gadiesh, an Israeli military intelligence agent. Romney and Gadiesh have worked together at Bain since at least 1993. Gadiesh is the Israeli intelligence agent who steers Bain & Co., and who probably advises Mitt Romney on the Middle East and other matters. She served on Romney's transition team when he became governor of Massachusetts.

The following extracts provide some basic information on the Israeli agent who controls Mitt Romney:

- Founded in 1973 by former Boston Consulting Group vice president William H. Bain, Jr., Bain & Co., based in Boston, has offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Palo Alto and San Francisco. After experiencing a serious crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, Bain rebounded under the leadership of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (who had previously worked with Bain Capital, a separate company) and Orit Gadiesh, one of the few women to head a top consulting firm. It had revenues of $1.6 billion and over 4,000 employees in 2007.

Source: http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/organization/bain-company

- Orit Gadiesh

52, Chair, Bain & Company

She stands over 6 feet tall in heels. She worked in military intelligence in her native Israel. And she runs one of the world's largest, most elite business-consulting firms, with big-hitter clients like De Beers, ITT, and Dell. Twelve years ago, Gadiesh succeeded Mitt Romney as head of what was once called the KGB of consulting firms. Given her connections to the governor, it was no surprise when he named her to his transition team. Gadiesh was one of only two Bostonians listed the last time Fortune magazine published its female power list in 2000.

Source: http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/power_the_100_women_who_run_this_town/page2

A Romney victory in Iowa, I wrote, would have certainly been the result if the Republicans were to use the same dodgy telephonic tally system (Voxeo, a firm tied to Israeli military intelligence) which had been used by the Democrats of Iowa in the two previous elections. I have written extensively about how the Israeli-linked Voxeo system was used to manipulate the tallies of the Iowa Democrat caucuses of 2004 and 2008. The rigging of the Iowa caucus allows for the presidential election to be stolen at the beginning - like a baby from its crib. It now appears very likely that the Republican caucus of 2012 was also manipulated and stolen. The national importance of the Iowa caucus means that we have a right to demand an independent audit of the results. The evidence indicates that the Republican Party of Iowa is not able to provide verifiable results in a timely manner. We should not have to wait two weeks to have the results from such a simple, but important poll.

One week before the caucus I contacted the Republican Party of Iowa and spoke with three different people in their communications department about how the results would be tallied. Patrick, the first person I spoke to about the vote counting process, told me that he could not reveal how the tally would be done "for security purposes." Ryan, the second person, told me that the precincts would communicate the results to caucus headquarters in Des Moines but the way in which the precinct results were to be sent was being kept secret for security purposes.

Finally, I spoke to Nicole Sizemore, the assistant director of communications. Sizemore told me that there was no outside agency involved in the tally process and that it would be "very transparent" with oversight by observers from the different campaigns. The complete tally with "total breakdown" by precinct, she said, would be released within 14 days of the January 3 caucus. I was glad to hear this and decided not to come out with a gloomy prediction that Mitt Romney would win. With the information I had from the Republican Party of Iowa it seemed that there was a good chance for a honest and transparent caucus. It now seems that my trust was misplaced and that my instinct that vote fraud would give Romney a victory in Iowa was correct after all.

If the statement of Edward True is true and correct, the tally numbers for Mitt Romney were manipulated. If vote fraud happened in True's precinct, it probably happened in others all across the state. The tally from the Iowa caucus must be examined to see if the statewide results match the precinct results for each of the 1,774 precincts. Now that the Iowa caucus is over, the method by which the results were communicated to caucus HQ needs to be exposed and examined because, just like the Voxeo telephonic vote-counting system, this appears to have been the weak link through which the results were manipulated giving Mitt Romney his victory in Iowa.

Sources and Recommended Reading:


Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Wikipedia, January 2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnon_Lipkin-Shahak

Bollyn, Christopher, "Chicago's Elders of Zion and Obama's War for Profit", 14 October 2011
http://www.bollyn.com/occupy-dc

Bollyn, "ELRON - VOXEO: The Israeli Defense Firm That Tallies the Iowa Caucus", 31 December 2007
http://www.bollyn.com/elron-voxeo-the-israeli-defense-firm-that-tallies-the-iowa-caucus

Bollyn, "Voxeo's Ties to 9-11 and the Israeli Military", 5 January 2008
http://www.bollyn.com/voxeos-ties-to-9-11-and-the-israeli-military

Bollyn, "Bollyn Responds to Voxeo", 7 January 2008
http://www.bollyn.com/bollyn-responds-to-voxeo

Das Leinenhaus Grünfeld , Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1967

"In the War Room", by Glenn Rifkin, New York Times, 8 September 1996
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/08/business/in-the-war-room.html?scp=2&sq=Gadiesh&st=cse

"Israel, Big Money and Obama - Mr. Crown and the President", by Margaret Kimberley, CounterPunch.org, 20 August 2010
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/08/20/israel-big-money-and-obama/

"No Success in Iraq -- Unless You're a War Profiteer", by Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe, Huffingtonpost.com, 15 December 2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald-and-derrick-crowe/no-success-in-iraq--unles_b_1151171.html

Orit Gadiesh, Chairman, Bain & Company, MIT Sloan School of Management
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/corporate/pdf/gadiesh%20.pdf

Orit Gadiesh Interview, Harvard Business School
http://www.hbs.edu/entrepreneurs/pdf/oritgadiesh.pdf

Peres Center for Peace, International Board of Governors, Cached November 2011
http://web.archive.org/web/20100822121512/http://www.peres-center.org/fulllist.html

Peres Center for Peace, President and Executive Board, Cached November 2011
http://web.archive.org/web/20100906042623/http://www.peres-center.org/ExecutiveBoard.html

 

King starts anti-Muslim crusade in US

Republican Congressman Peter King

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/169481.html

A professor of law says that Congressman Peter King “is launching a new crusade against Muslims in the US,” by sponsoring the so-called hearings on the Radicalization of Muslims in America.

During an exclusive interview with Press TV's US Desk on Friday, author and Professor of Law at Washburn University, Liaquat Ali Khan, said that King is “arguing that there is a threat from the entire Muslim community and that mosques have become centers of radical Islam.”

Khan went on to say that King, the Chairman of the House for Homeland Security Committee, is taking actions similar to those of Republican US Senator, Joseph McCarthy, back in the 1950s.

“Joseph McCarthy also did not make any distinctions and everybody who criticized US policy was considered a communist spy,” Khan opined.

After expressing his concern over King's ignorance of the fact that Muslims in America are from various socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, Khan added, “So this broad sweep is very, very, disturbing. It doesn't respect Muslims as individuals."

Khan voiced that he was disturbed even more that the “House leadership has done nothing to stop him from launching this new crusade against the Muslims."

King has been quoted in the past of having complained that there are too many mosques in the US, and that 85 percent of American mosques and their leaders are radicalized, a figure not backed by accredited statistics.

Republicans block 9/11 health bill

The 9/11 health bill foundered its first test in the Senate

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/154777.html


Republican Senators have blocked Democratic legislation seeking to provide medical care for Ground Zero workers and people living near the site that have fallen ill.

The $7.4 billion health bill, which would provide medical treatment for thousands of first responders and residents who became ill after 9/11 attacks in 2001, needed 60 votes for passage in the Senate, but it could garner 57 voted, with 42 against the motion, The New York Timesreported on Thursday.

Republicans, who were among majority of opponents, have vowed to delay all legislations until after Congress approves tax cut extensions and a government funding measure.

Earlier on Tuesday, US President Barack Obama agreed to keep all of the Bush-era tax cuts for another two years in a bid to resolve differences with Republicans in Congress.

This is while some Democrats have expressed their fury over the generous deal for the wealthy, saying it represents a climb-down by Obama.

Meanwhile, US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who has sponsored the bill on behalf of Democrats, fumed over the rebuttal of the bill, adding that "The idea that tax cuts for millionaires would derail this legislation is simply outrageous and offensive."

"The men and women, who rushed to the burning towers and worked for hundreds of hours on the pile, did not delay and the Senate should not have delayed either, certainly not to give tax breaks for millionaires. We should not have to wait for tax deals to do what's right," Gillibrand said in a statement.

The 9/11 health bill, better known as the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, was approved by the House of Representatives in September.

Under the bill, $3.2 billion has been earmarked over the next eight years in order to monitor and treat injuries that people sustained due to exposure to toxic dust and debris at ground zero.

The bill also allocates $4.2 billion to compensate for job and economic losses as there are nearly 60,000 people, who have enrolled in health monitoring and treatment programs related to the 9/11 attacks.

Five Yards and a Cloud of Dust

By: Willian Rivers Pitt
Source: Truthout
http://www.truthout.org/five-yards-and-a-cloud-dust57820



Last week, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) made it clear to any and all that he was going to vote "No" on the health care reform package currently being considered by the House. His argument was simple, and on many levels, entirely correct: the current bill is half a loaf, does not contain any kind of public option and is a big, fat giveaway to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Alarm bells started ringing all over the White House, and Representative Kucinich found himself invited for an Air Force One trip with the president. The plane landed, and Representative Kucinich emerged with an announcement that he would, in fact, be voting "Yes" on the bill. Moreover, he immediately swung into action and began whipping votes to make sure the bill gets passed, a move his colleagues described as "unprecedented."

What happened? Did Kucinich cave under pressure? Was there some savage arm-twisting going on during that plane ride? Perhaps. It is more than likely, however, that Mr. Obama sat Kucinich down and explained to him that failure to pass this health care bill would be, politically speaking, the end of the world for his presidency, and for the Democratic Party in general.

"I left with a real sense of compassion for our president and what he's going through," said Kucinich. "We have to be compassionate towards those who are called upon to make decisions for this nation. It's not an easy burden that he has taken up. One of the things that has bothered me has been the attempt to delegitimatize his presidency. That hurts the nation when that happens. He was elected ... this is a defining moment for whether or not we'll have any opportunity to move off square one on the issue of health care. I think it's important that - we have to be very careful that the potential of President Obama's presidency not be destroyed by this debate."

If that sounds more than a little strange to you, you're not alone. Representative Kucinich wasn't talking about the relative merits of the current proposal, or about what needs to be done to improve it. The nuts-and-bolts discussion was left aside in favor of a big verbal hug for the president, and this coming from one of Obama's most vocal Democratic critics in the House.

It would appear, at long last, that Mr. Obama and his administration have finally figured out what so many people have been trying to tell them since they came into office. They are in a war of extermination against an entrenched and ruthless foe. The GOP has no interest in working with the White House on anything. They want to beat the president wherever and whenever they can, not out of any sense of principle or because they disagree on issues of policy, but because they want to get back the power they lost in 2006 and 2008. If it wasn't health care, it would be something else.

After a year of ramming his head into the brick wall of bipartisanship, Mr. Obama finally seems to understand the nature of the fight he is engaged in, and the nature of the opponents arrayed against him. The fact that it took so long to realize the patently obvious fact that these people don't care about anything beyond slicing his hamstrings has made his task that much more difficult, and now it is crunch time. This was almost certainly the message Mr. Obama conveyed to Representative Kucinich, and given the alacrity with which Kucinich has moved to support and defend the White House, it must have been one hell of a convincing argument.

Robert Reich, who served as Labor Secretary under President Clinton, knows all too well what happens when the GOP successfully pulls out all the obstructionist stops and upends a major policy initiative by a Democratic president. In fact, he learned those lessons the last time a push for health care reform was undertaken. Reich wrote:

Health care reform is necessary, and House Democrats should vote for it because it's best for the nation. They should also remember the political lessons of history. To paraphrase Mark Twain, history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme. As the White House and the House Democratic leadership try to line up 216 votes to pass health care reform - and as Republicans, aided by the National Association of Manufacturers and abetted by fierce partisans like Newt Gingrich, try to kill it - I can't help thinking back to 1994 when the lineup was much the same.

I was serving in the Clinton administration at the time. In the first months of 1993 it looked as if Clinton's health care proposal would sail through Congress. But the process dragged on and by 1994 it bogged down. We knew health care was imperiled but none of us knew that failure to pass health care would doom much of the rest of Clinton's agenda and wrest control of Congress out of the hands of the Democrats. In retrospect, it's clear Republicans did know.

...
In early September, William Kristol of the Project for the Republican Future spelled out the next stage of the Republican battle plan: "I think we can continue to wrap the Clinton plan around the necks of Democratic candidates." And that's exactly what they did. On November 8 voters repudiated President Clinton. They brought Republicans to power at every level of government. Democrats went from a controlling majority of 257 seats in the House of Representatives to a minority of 204, and lost the Senate.

I remember how shocked we were the morning after the votes were counted. I asked one of Clinton's political advisors what had happened. "It was health care," he said, simply. (That advisor, by the way, is now in the Obama White House.)

Today's Republican battle plan is exactly the same as it was sixteen years ago. In fact, it's been the same since President Obama assumed office. They never were serious about compromise. They were serious only about regaining power. From the start, Republicans have remembered the lesson of 1994. Now, as they prepare to vote, House Dems should remember the lesson as well.

How and why the endgame for this health care legislation will play out has become quite clear at this point. Shamefully enough, this thing has to get passed, not because it is in the best interests of the American people, and not because it is a good bill. It has to get passed to salvage this presidency, to keep Congress from returning to Republican rule, and to show whoever might still be watching that this White House can crack the procedural whip and actually make use of the super-majority they've squandered so completely to date.

It is a disgraceful situation, but as Reich points out, victory (such as it is) beats the hell out of the alternative. Kucinich saw it that way, at least.

Bad, Worse, Worst and Beyond

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Monday 26 November 2007

Fear is just another word for ignorance. - Hunter S. Thompson

Once upon a time there was Bad, and there was Worse, and there was Worst, and that used to be it. Those were the only parameters necessary when the time came to assess the severity of a given situation and decide if the thing was merely wrong, actually dangerous, or just plan ridiculous. Bad, for example, was Gerald Ford's full pardon of Richard Nixon, which came in tandem with his decision to let Nixon keep the tapes. That's pretty straightforward, and the provided example should be clear enough: Bad means something is pretty damned bad.

Worse, by comparison, was Oliver North's sale of missiles to the same Iranian government that killed more than two hundred Marines in Beirut back in '83, followed by his illegal funneling of that sale's proceeds to fund a pack of kill-crazy fascists in Central America who shot some nuns and other non-combatants down like dogs using the good bullets they bought with thrice-laundered American tax dollars.

All of which was taking place as Reagan slid further into the senility that eventually left him capable only of pretending to be the president. Rather than deal with the reality of the situation, however, the decision was made to hand the entire hyper-weaponized machinery of the federal government over to a bunch of wild boys nobody ever voted for, whose abuse of that power rapidly devolved into a mind-bending crime spree that almost got their uncomprehending boss impeached.

As for Worst, well ... that's simple enough. Worst was a box in the cargo hold of Air Force One that left Dallas with John Kennedy inside of it, and was the blood pooling beneath Robert Kennedy's head as he lay dying on a dirty kitchen floor in California, and was Martin Luther King Jr. shot dead through the throat on some inconsequential Memphis hotel balcony, and was Medgar Evars shot dead in his driveway while his wife and children watched and wailed, and was Malcom Little who became Malcolm X who became El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz before a dozen gunshots put him down like Evars to die before the eyes of his wife and children.

That is a fair sampling of Worst, but only for openers, because this file is the biggest of the three by orders of magnitude, fairly bursting with names and events that sound in the reading of them like a roll-call of doom and nightmare, for that is precisely what they are.

Worst was as terrible as it could get, or so it was believed, until now, until the creation of a new fourth category became unavoidably necessary. The bewildering and terrifying fact of the matter is Worst has been fully and completely trumped by the times, relegated to silver-medal status and the lower podium. The grim reality of this brave new deranged world is the nation is now swarming with so many new and different horrors, which were upon us in one brief and ravaging eyeblink of time. It went beyond Worst just that fast.

As such, the new category is titled Beyond.

Beyond, for starters, is the fact nearly every American citizen stands surrounded by a confluence of mortal perils that threaten to completely unravel and eviscerate their country. Nearly every American will be severely and painfully affected should these dangers turn lethal ... and yet hardly anyone in America actually knows this. Almost nobody understands or recognizes the cocked and loaded gun pressed against their collective head, even as the trigger is slowly yet steadily squeezed and there are live rounds sitting in the chamber waiting for the hammer to drop.

One of those bullets is named George, just like his father, and he is an unimaginably dangerous fellow. People still don't know that the man sitting in the Oval Office of the White House is actively working to destroy all the American government he can get his hands on, because doing so is literally the bedrock of what passes for his political ideology. Many newsroom pundits saw him veto legislation to provide twelve million children with health insurance, but brushed it off as nothing more than the act of a standard-issue fiscal conservative. A renegade few on other news shows believed his veto was actually motivated by the need to snatch the cash set aside by the bill, so he could keep feeding the financial beast his disastrous Iraq war has become.

Both opinions were almost entirely wrong, but had just enough gristle on the bone to pass muster. Of course, Bush dropped the veto on two Democratic domestic spending packages; and, of course, he needs more money so he can keep losing two wars at the same time; and, of course, these trains of thought reinforce the conventionally-accepted story line of American politics; and that's nice for the TV people, but has nothing to do with the truth of the deal.

Bush vetoed those bills for one reason and one reason only: They were going to create government programs that worked. The very idea is rank heresy for privatizers like Bush, whose ultimate goal is to privatize everything from Social Security to health care to the pigeons in the park, because that's where the money his friends and constituents have been lusting after can be found.

A government program that actually and effectively serves the people is an intolerable thing to George, because that is the single best argument against privatization. If we know anything at all after all these gruesome years, it is that Bush simply will not tolerate the existence of any fact or idea that might disrupt the spinning, clanking, gear-grinding clockwork inside that craven pretzel-dented bone-sack that wobbles above his spindled, slumping shoulders. If he doesn't already believe in something, or if something contradicts the popsicle-stick infrastructure of his beliefs, whatever it is can basically go to Hell, because it isn't going anywhere else.

He vetoed those bills because they were going to work, period, end of file.

There is a man in the Oval Office of the White House working an agenda for the destruction of American government. His partner, Mr. Cheney, has been just down the hall taking care of the rest of the job. Subpoenas are ignored, documents are not delivered, Americans are put under surveillance without warrants by the NSA with assistance from nearly every phone company in the country, deep-cover CIA spies are blown to silence critics and whistleblowers, American citizens are imprisoned and denied rights that have been around for a thousand years, direct orders to fraudulently elevate terrorism threat levels are issued to provide cover for uncomfortable news reports, like the report on how many blunt warnings came in before 9/11 but were ignored got itself bounced to the back pages after the White House began yowling about the imminent destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty.

That is not even close to the half of it all, and this basic truth cuts to the heart of the matter: The quickest way to destroy the functionality of American government is to destroy the rule of law itself. Declare the Executive supreme and beholden to nothing, flood the Department of Justice and the federal courts with lickspittle political loyalists with no personal code of honor, upend the balanced counterweight of the separation of powers, terrify the populace into submission to avoid any hue and cry, roll out the grand distraction of war to get the flags waving and the newsrooms into line, and never obey any law or regulation imposed by anyone, ever.

This is what has been done to America, and it turned out to be a frightfully simple task. Once the rule of law is gone, there is nothing left to defend American rights and freedoms, nothing left to bring justice to the unjust, nothing left to stop those powerful few who aren't about to let quaint anachronisms like the Constitution, or pesky ideas like the ones that became the United States, get in the way of their work.

None of this information has ever been reported by the smart people on the cable TV news shows. Much of it may not have even occurred to most of them. Pundits don't get paid to think or be smart, so much as they get paid to shout and have stupid hairstyles and deliberately miss the point of every pressing issue they address. This guarantees nobody accidentally provides real and valuable information to the American people during any news broadcasts, and that is what mostly keeps many Americans dumbly frightened and easily managed.

The final product of this process is today's American body politic, almost completely unaware of the gun at their head, a body politic without the protection of law or basic rights and does not know it, a body politic that is altogether lost and wandering and afraid, for reasons they don't begin to understand. That is an unbelievably dangerous state of affairs, a real threat to the very survival of the United States. It is, simply, Beyond.

This barely scratches the surface of the situation as a whole, and that fact alone is pretty much Beyond even Beyond all by itself. If the national economy doesn't collapse before springtime now that debt has again become a bad thing and the dollar is turning into pudding, if Pakistan doesn't fall apart and lose control of its nuclear weaponry, if Iraq and Afghanistan magically stop being lost causes, and if George and Dick actually decide to obey the law and leave office next year, there will only be fifty more disasters left sitting on our national plate.

Only fifty? Boy, that would just be wild, almost like a vacation, really. It's good to have something to look forward to. I guess.

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William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress.

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