What would you do with a man who was convicted of planting a bomb on an airplane that killed 73 people? The plane was blown up in the air, an explicit act of terrorism. What if this same man orchestrated bombings of hotels that killed numerous people, including a high-profile and completely innocent Italian businessman. What if he was arrested and convicted of plotting to blow up an auditorium full of students, trying to get to Fidel Castro? (He actually had the equipment to do it when arrested – this is no pizza delivery boy.) What if he supervised torture, attaching electrodes to penises, kicking an eight month pregnant woman in the belly, killing the baby? What if he forced a mother to watch as he crushed lit cigarettes on her baby?

Such a man ought to be shot or hanged or at least incarcerated for life without parole. I favor his death in a most painful manner.

His name is Luis Posada Carriles. He now lives in Miami. The Venezuelan government would like to extradite him and try him, but get this – the U.S. refused to allow the deportation because they fear the Venezuelans would torture him. He’s roaming free in this country, and will apparently never pay a price for his crimes against humanity.

The Bush Administration reserves the right to bomb countries that harbor terrorists. If they are consistent in enforcing this policy, they should now unleash B52’s and fighter jets on Washington, D.C.

I’m linking here to Mike because that’s what we bloggers do. We link to one another. Mike will pick up on the link, and he’ll come here and read what I say, and he might comment. It’s only fair. He put up something really interesting, and I commented over there. If he comments here, the circle will be complete.

Mike’s a smart guy, but when it comes to politics, it’s really hard to tell about people. As with religion, some very smart people can believe some very weird stuff. But Mike, for all his weirdness, is having a revelation of sorts, and it is one so important that I hope other bloggers link to me as I link to him, or bypass me and link directly to him. What he has discovered (and he is not surprised, I must emphasize), is that Obama is being duplicitous about NAFTA. Obama really supports NAFTA in its current form. He’s just trash-talking it because he wants to win the Ohio primary. Ohioans, in their dense stupidity, think they’ve been hurt by NAFTA.

Go and read Mike’s post, please, so I don’t have to repeat everything here.

Sometime I’m going to read more about NAFTA. All I have is vague impressions. I assume that the treaty was written by and crafted to benefit American corporations, and that no one spoke for Mexican campesinos at that time. They don’t matter. I assume it was merely a continuation of our old habits – imperialism, we used to call it. We need two things from backward countries, mainly those to the south of us – cheap labor and cheap commodities. We do not, repeat, do not, want them to develop. Quite the opposite. If they try to do so, we will fight them every step of the way. At the same time, there are things we need to protect – “intellectual property”, we call it – our ideas and patents on seed technology and our weapons technology and, of course, our movie and music industries, but not our jobs, as our leaders and our corporations don’t care about our jobs, and think we are overpaid anyway.

So NAFTA, if crafted correctly, would give us access to their cheap labor and commodities while protecting our most important assets. But not our jobs.

So I assume that when NAFTA was crafted, it would be done so with hardly any input from workers here, none from those abroad, and when the expected fallout occurred, that economists working for American corporations and the universities and think tanks they support would tell us how really good NAFTA is for us. That’s how it’s done – it’s a circle back-pat, to be delicate. (They did negotiate “side agreements” on labor and the environment in response to public pressure fourteen years ago, but that was just window dressing.)

Fallout from NAFTA? Loss of jobs here. Mexican farmers have been devastated by cheap corn going down there, and in turn are coming here in droves to work the underground economy undercut our wage structure. And our corporations hire them for less than they would have to pay Americans. Win-win.

But it’s all theoretical – I mean, Ohioans really aren’t that stupid, and might know a thing or two, and there really is a massive migration from south to north going on since NAFTA passed. But our economists tell us that this is all good, or that if it is bad, that it wasn’t caused by NAFTA.

(Just a side note – in Mike’s links, they talk about how good NAFTA has been for us, and give NAFTA credit for every positive thing that has happened these last fourteen years since its passage, assuming if two things happen at once, once caused the other. Much of that is probably devil-in-detail kind of stuff, some of it just professional manipulation of statistics, but the interesting thing is this – they only talk about what is good for the U.S. – not Mexico or Canada. And they don’t talk about the migration.)

Anyway, here’s something critical – our politicians of both parties are supported by the corporations who crafted NAFTA, and are not going to do anything to change it. In fact, they will support its expansion to every other backward country foolish enough (or whose politicians are bought enough) to go along. So Clinton and Obama, who are bashing NAFTA in public in Ohio, are not serious. So it would make sense that they would reassure Canadian leadership by back channel not to pay attention. And that’s what they did. That’s what Mike wrote about.

Do yourself a favor, link to Mike, link to me, let’s make a circle link. Let’s spread the word amongst ourselves. Obama and Clinton are lying about NAFTA. Mike exposed them.

It’s going to get a lot dumber than this before it is over.

Now there must be one floating around somewhere that has Bill answering the phone and trying to sneak out the back door.

From Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michale Pollan:

The great turning point in the modern history of corn, which in turn marks a key turning point in the industrialization of our food, can be dated with some precision to the day in 1947 when a huge munitions plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, switched over to making chemical fertilizer. After the war the government had found itself with a tremendous surplus of ammonium nitrate, the principle ingredient in the making of explosives. Ammonium nitrate also happens to be an excellent source of nitrogen for plants. Serious thought was given to spraying America’s forests with the surplus chemical, to help out the timber industry. But agronomists in the Department of Agriculture had a better idea: Spread the ammonium nitrate on farmland as fertilizer. The chemical fertilizer industry (along with that of pesticides, which are based on poison gases developed for the war) is the product of the government’s effort to convert its war machine to peacetime purposes. As Indian farmer activist Vandana Shiva says in her speeches, “We’re still eating the leftovers of World War II”.

Corn produced by ammonium nitrate has been in super abundance since the policies of the Nixon Administration set it off, and prices have usually been depressed even as farmers grew more and more. But corn is now selling for over $5.00 a bushel, the result of yet another government program – ethanol. Government is now using up the surplus it created. The snake is consuming its own tail.

Before free market enthusiasts respond that this is yet another example of government meddling screwing things up, think back to that time in our history, the Great Depression, when farmers produced so much that they had no market for their product. Market economics in agriculture, as in health care and utilities and education and mail delivery, apply wonderful academic theories to a real world that simply doesn’t respond.

Where have I seen this before … where? It appears as though Barack Obama is playing the numbers game. He claims that 90% of his donations come from small donors. At the same time, the Federal Election Commission says that half of the money he has raised comes from heavy hitters – contributions of $1,000 or more.

Who’s right?

It’s and old game. Both are telling the truth, though Obama is deliberately trying to mislead us. Of all the people who have given him money, 90% have done so in small increments. But of all of the money he has raised, half of it came from large donations.

Obama is talking about the number of donors, the FEC about the amount of money raised.

Obama is trying to give us the impression that he is running a little guy’s campaign. Not true.

I listen to the Thom Hartmann show – not every day for sure, so I could be wrong about this. He has tried throughout the course of the campaigns to have all of the candidates on. He says, however, that certain of them refused to come on unless they could control the format. They wanted control over which questions could be asked. He doesn’t do that. He would not say who set these conditions, but Hillary or Obama, so far as I know, have never appeared on his show.

It reminds me of another show I saw during the 2004 campaign. It was called a “Town Hall Debate”, and the premise was that Bush and Kerry would be fielding questions from the audience, rather than the reporters who usually act as buffers. But there were ground rules, which were accepted without question: People had to write out their questions in advance, and the questions the candidates wanted to answer were preselected. People would be allowed to read their questions, but if they deviated from the way the question was written and accepted, the mike would be cut off. The normal journalist-buffer was replaced by censors.

Bush one time (I think he was in New York) decided to accept questions from innocent bystanders. I can imagine his aids scurrying, the phone calls behind the scenes, the raw panic. And sure enough, right away, a woman asked him how many civilians he had killed in Iraq. “Oh, I don’t know – twenty or thirty thousand?” It obviously was not something he thought about much. But more importantly, it was not a question any self-respecting journalist would have asked. That’s why they are chosen to moderate these debates – they protect the candidates from the public.

Democrats have debated twenty times now, and we’ve come to accept the format. There is always some famous journalist moderating. And to become famous in journalism, a reporter has to establish with the politicians that he is dependable, that he won’t ask any hard questions. The big names – Brokaw, Jennings, Russert, WIlliams, Blitzer, Cooper – are all dependable. Dan Rather was once dependable, but got uppity one time and lost his job. They form a club of sorts, a protective shell around the candidates. Sure, they supply a little heat now and then, but we’re used to that – they make a big deal out of little things. They don’t talk about the big stuff.

Last night’s debate was no different. I found very little that Obama and Clinton disagree on – they both accept the woefully inefficient private insurance model for health care. Neither will do anything about NAFTA. (Well, they’ll study it – another way of saying it.) Both offer unqualified support for Israel. Both will keep troops in Iraq, committing only to a drawdown that will likely never happen. Both agreed that Bill Clinton did a good thing when he illegally attacked Kosovo in 1999. Both agree that the Russians are now officially a bad actor, now that they have dissed the U.S. (On a humorous note, Obama was spared having to answer a question about Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Putin’s likely successor. Clinton fielded that one, and Obama meekly agreed with her comments. Phew!)

Anyway, these candidates do not disagree on anything that I can discern.

So it comes as no surprise that the journalists in the aftermath find themselves analyzing minutia. Was Clinton out of line in complaining about getting the first question? Did Obama land any punches? Was she churlish? Peevish? Why doesn’t his charisma come through like it does when he has an audience all to himself?

And, of course, the questions that are not asked. Who’s paying for your campaign? Senator Clinton, how can you say you’re going to fix our health care system when you take more money from the health care industry than any other candidate? Senator Obama – what’s with you and the Wall Street financial houses? (Campaign finance reform is never discussed – ever.) What are your plans for Social Security? Will either of you attack our inequitable tax system which punishes working people? Scale back the tax cuts for the wealthy? Go after the USA PATRIOT Act? Fight immunity for telecoms? Attack Iran? Privatize Iraq’s oil?

The list goes on, but that’s why the journalists are there – to make sure these questions don’t get asked.

I’d like to see a debate some time where they open up the floor to the audience, uncensored, and no planted questions, please, Hillary. But that will never happen – we saw what happened when Bush so foolishly did it. He got real and hard questions. He was embarrassed. And so too would our candidates be embarrassed as people held their feet to the fire about Iraq, single payer, NAFTA and outsourcing and immigration. That’s why we pay these journalists – not to ask these questions.

PS: Washington Rule #8: You can agree with any concept or notional future option in principle, but fight implementation every step of the way.

Note: The following post ran on January 18, 2007, and has been one of the most widely read since we started this blog. It seems appropriate to run it again. We know as much about Barack Obama now as we did then.

—————————————————————–

I’ve been suspicious of the Obama parade from the beginning – it’s been my experience that ‘attractive’ Democrats whom the media fawns over and regard as safe can usually trace their roots back to the Democratic Leadership Council, otherwise known as the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

Obama’s no easy case, though. There are messages in the smoke.

Alexander Cockburn, as left as left can be, has written a couple of pieces on Obama. This was before the media discovered him. That’s a recent phenomenon.

Here’s Cockburn:

It’s depressing to think that we’ll have to endure Obamaspeak for months, if not years to come: a pulp of boosterism about the American dream, interspersed with homilies about “putting factionalism and party divisions behind us and moving on.” I used to think Sen. Joe Lieberman was the man whose words I’d least like to be force fed top volume if I was chained next to a loudspeaker in Camp Gitmo, but I think Obama, who picked Lieberman as his mentor when he first entered the U.S. Senate, is worse. I’ve never heard a politician so desperate not to offend conventional elite opinion while pretending to be fearless and forthright.

That’s right – Joe Lieberman is Obama’s mentor, and Lieberman brags that Obama picked him, not the opposite.

Cockburn also notes that Obama, around the time that Murtha was making a stink about Iraq, spoke before the elite of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Democrats fled Murtha, few with more transparent calculation than Obama who voyaged to the Council on Foreign Relations on November 22, there to ladle out to the assembled elites such balderdash as “The President could take the politics out of Iraq once and for all if he would simply go on television and say to the American people ‘Yes, we made mistakes’”, or “we need to focus our attention on how to reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq. Notice that I say ‘reduce,’ and not ‘fully withdraw’”, or “2006 should be the year that the various Iraqi factions must arrive at a fair political accommodation to defeat the insurgency; and , the Administration must make available to Congress critical information on reality-based benchmarks that will help us succeed in Iraq.”

Smooth as syrup. There’s a wave of discontent in this country, voiced in the November elections, that we want out of Iraq – no redeployment or scaleback, but o-u-t. No worthy politician can ignore this. But the war from the beginning has been an elite undertaking with unstated objectives. Americans have only been cajoled and frightened into following, and are seeing more clearly now.

It is going to take a politician of considerable skill to 1) heed to public demand to get out, and 2) keep us in. The media, subservient to power as always, will glom on to any politician who can serve those objectives. So, for now, Obama is their man.

[Obama] lobbed up the first signal flare during the run-up to his 2004 senate race, when his name began to feature on Democratic Leadership Council literature as one of the hundred Democratic leaders to watch.

The DLC doesn’t necessarily pre-select candidates, but they do keep an eye out for possibilities. Obama has been on their watch-list for some time. Now that they see his sex appeal, they may rally behind him. He could be Hillary without the polarizing effect, a real possibility to hold the office.

Obama has voted to close filibuster on both of Bush’s Supreme Court selections, to re-up the Patriot Act, for “tort reform”. He’s sent up plenty of signals that he could be Republican-lite enough to be ‘electable’ – code word for no threat to power.

Obama is one of those politicians whom journalists like to decorate with words as “adroit” or “politically adept” because you can actually see him trimming to the wind, the way you see a conjuror of moderate skill shove the rabbit back up his sleeve. Above all he is concerned with the task of reassuring the masters of the Democratic Party, and beyond that, the politico-corporate establishment, that he is safe. Whatever bomb might have been in his head has long since been dis-armed. He’s never going to blow up in the face of anyone of consequence.

There’ll be other candidates testing the wind. Vilsack, another DLC guy, might catch on. Anyone of the left need not apply – Feingold has already ascertained that there is no support among those who matter for a man who really would get us out of Iraq, who really would change our health care system, who really cares about campaign finance reform. We’re pretty much stuck with the DLC, sex appeal, and no substance.

Obama had his fingers stuck in the wind as always. He bends to every breeze, as soon as he identifies it as coming from a career-threatening quarter. This man is no leader.

“My mom made pancakes every single morning at our house,” he said, with a smile of fond reminiscence. He stopped abruptly. “My wife!” he corrected. “I called her my mom. My wife.”

— Mitt Romney hands a nice Freudian slip to Dana Milbank.
(2/1/2008)

So John McCain was having an affair! So says the New York Times, which has released a bombshell story on McCain’s intimate relationship with Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist with the firm of Alcalde & Fay, which represents telecommunications clients.

One, I’m impressed. The old guy still has it. If anything, these revelations will help him among libido-challenged senior citizens. He’ll score a few more votes among the Viagra set.

Also, it’s revealing, if only a tad so, of the culture in Washington, DC. Did anyone think that sex is not an arrow in the lobbyists’ quiver? Iseman brings little educational background . She was trained as an elementary education teacher in a minor college. She was originally hired as a secretary. But she was known to fly on campaign flights with McCain, to the point where his staff was concerned that the relationship might be romantic.

Once elected, our senators and congressman likely have a whole array of sexual options that were not available before. Those who succumb to temptation are subject to bribery and intimidation. If the Bushies are wiretapping them, as seems highly likely (why else the frantic rush to cover up past abuses with telecom immunity?), their votes can be had on any issue. That might explain why majority Democrats have been doormats for the Bush agenda.

I’m surprised that the Times, which sat silently on a wiretapping bombshell during the 2004 presidential election, let go with this story. That in itself is a story. There’s no Republican alternative to McCain now, so benefit accrues solely to the Democrats. The mainstream media in general has been kind to Obama and Clinton (while marginalizing Edwards and the other Democratic candidates). Both of them enjoy impressive corporate backing, Clinton from the health care industry and Obama from the financial houses. These two candidates are obviously favored in the game.

That’s not a good thing. There’s great sound and fury in American political campaigns, and little substance. Liberal candidates will say anything to appeal to members of that particular base, and then, like Bill Clinton, ignore them once elected. After all, liberals have nowhere else to go, and never threaten to withhold their votes. They are like puppies. Once a candidate is elected, and financial backers are at the head of the line.

The money behind candidates is an important story that is only rarely covered by mainstream media. The Times is making a between-the-lines statement in reporting what goes on between the sheets.

Anyway, congratulations to John McCain, carrying on at once with a trophy wife and a succubus (the one that we know of, anyway). I salute him, as does AARP.

I like this piece, Liberal Bias is A-OK, by J.D. Porter, who is a senior at Columbia University.

He hoists conservatives by their own petards. Anyway, if the campuses are indeed liberal (that is only a teeny tad true, owing to the fact that most PHD’s are liberals), then conservatives ought to just suck it up and get in there and demand more conservative professors. The market will supply. That the David Horowitz crowd instead relies on intimidation and runs to the legislature seeking repressive legislation speaks volumes.