Who Wants Congress Pushing Us Into A War With Russian Over Ukraine?

McCain, Ayotte, Graham want to spend billions to provoke a war with Russia over Ukraine

Marcy Kaptur should be home demanding answers about why her constituents can't drink the water that comes out of their taps. (They can't brush their teeth or shower with it either and they can't let their pets drink it. There's cylindrospermopsin in what used to be their drinking water and, according to the EPA "the primary toxic effect of this toxin is irreversible damage to the liver." Oh, and it causes cancer in mice.) Last week, Kaptur was busy in Washington introducing legislation with Republican Jim Gerlach to give $100 million in military aid to Ukraine. That';s on top of the billion dollars in aid to Ukraine Congress has already approved. "It is a country that wants to move towards liberty and democracy," said Kaptur. "We need to help them." Is it? I'm sure some people do. Others running the show there want to move towards fascism. And others want to break the country up. I hope they work it out. The U.S. can't afford to send a billion dollars to every dysfunctional country spiraling into civil war.

The Lake Erie water problem has spread to southeast Michigan now and that state's senior senator, Carl Levin, also seems more concerned with flushing taxpayer money down the Ukrainian sewer than figuring out what to do about the drinking water for 150,000 people who live in Monroe County, a Democratic bastion in southeast Michigan, I might add, and the only county of the 7 that make up MI-07 to have voted to replace right-wing extremist Tim Walberg with a Democrat last cycle. Monroe went for Senator Stabenow with 57% against Republican challenger Pete Hoekstra. They deserve the attention of their elected officials, instead of Levin breaking with Obama to try to force more money into more lethal weapons systems for Ukraine, including surface to air missiles (which the rebels don't have and which can only be used against Russia).

President Obama, however, on Tuesday ruled out providing arms to Ukraine, one day after the country’s defense minister asked for more military assistance.

“The issue, at this point, is not the Ukrainian capacity to outfight the separatists,” Obama said.

Levin said he disagreed.

"What the president said … is not satisfactory to me, when he said 'we're hoping for a peaceful outcome,’” Levin said. “Obviously we are."

“I don’t think it’s defensible to draw a line between lethal and non-lethal as to what type of assistance we provide,” he added.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Ukraine’s wish list includes items ranging from body armor and Humvees to F-16 fighter jets.

Levin said Ukraine understands the U.S. would not send in troops, but acknowledged that if Russian forces did cross the border “it would be very difficult to stop them.”

He said Ukraine’s military leader recognize they might be undertaking a “difficult road” that could lead to a “guerilla-type effort against the Russians.”

Levin predicted that Moscow would give a “flimsy excuse” to move across the border into Ukraine.

Who does Levin think he is, John McCain? And the 2 other stooges, Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are both backing spending more money-- no offsets?-- on weapons fro Ukraine. Lindsey, a simpering, twisted and pathetic closet case afraid of his own constituents, sought to goad Obama into a path towards war with nuclear-armed Russian by braying that "The bottom line is this administration is afraid of confronting the Russians." What an asshole!

Conservative Men Further Ramp Up Their War Against Women

In the video above, from Tuesday evening, Rachel discusses Republican Party self-interest. She's a smart gal but she can't get her head around how exactly it is self-interest-- considering so many women vote nowadays-- for the Republican Party, as a party, to go so conspicuously out of its way to alienate and further alienate women as a class of people. If you ever had any doubt that the Republicans are waging a war against women-- dictated by their crazy conservative and misogynistic patriarchal base-- just watch the clip. And it's not just in primitive and backward Southern states like Mississippi. Republican governors and legislators in Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio, for example, are going full bore against women as well. In fact, wherever Republicans control both the governor's mansion and the state legislature, they are passing legislation to control women's lives and force women to give up personal freedoms.

And nationally, despite the absolute certainty it will never become law, Eric Cantor and John Boehner have gone ahead and agreed to allow the House to vote on a bill by deformed and bitter Arizona closet case/woman hater Trent Franks that will criminalize abortion nationally after 20 weeks. But what Rachel didn't have time to get into in her excellent blow-by-blow in he latest developments in the brutal Republican War Against Women is a brand new development that was breaking while she was on the air. This one is primitive, savage and patriarchal... but not Republican. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and a longtime shill for the Military Industrial Complex (as well, alas, as the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee) declared he's removing a measure aimed at curbing sexual assault in the military from a defense spending bill.

Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, offered a measure that would give military prosecutors rather than commanders the power to decide which sexual assault crimes to try, with the goal of increasing the number of people who report crimes without fear of retaliation. Mr. Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said he would replace Ms. Gillibrand’s measure-- which has 27 co-sponsors, including four Republicans-- with one that would require a senior military officer to review decisions by commanders who decline to prosecute sexual assault cases. Although Mr. Levin’s measure would change the current system, it would keep prosecution of sexual assault cases within the chain of command, as the military wants.

Mr. Levin’s decision to support military brass in their resistance to Ms. Gillibrand’s proposal sets up a confrontation between a long-serving chairman of the committee with strong ties to the armed forces and a relatively new female member-- one of a record seven women serving on the committee-- who has made sexual assault in the military a signature issue.

“They basically embrace the status quo here,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, a co-sponsor of Ms. Gillibrand’s bill. “It’s outrageous.”

A recent Pentagon survey found that an estimated 26,000 assaults took place last year. Senior military officials have repeatedly traipsed to Capitol Hill this spring to lament the problem but have been ridiculed by members of both parties of the Armed Services Committee for failing to make a dent in the problem.

In an odd twist Tuesday, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, told Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Congress could seek to replace commanders in power with state prosecutors to deal with the military sexual assault cases. “To do things as they’ve always been done is not acceptable,” Mr. Leahy said.

Mr. Leahy made his comments during a spending hearing that included Mr. Hagel and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I’m just throwing that out there,” Mr. Leahy said. “I’m not looking for an answer.”

State courts already have the authority over rape and sexual assault cases should a victim choose to go to civilian law enforcement, but such cases are rare because the military prefers to prosecute its own personnel.

“If word gets out that the military justice system is not properly attentive to these cases, military personnel will vote with their feet,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School.

The House this week is expected to pass its own defense bill, which contains provisions to punish sexual assault crimes in the military more harshly and make it difficult for commanders to overturn convictions.

The Senate bill is also expected to include measures that would provide victims of sexual assault with a special military lawyer and that would automatically remove convicted sex offenders from the military. Other expected provisions would require a commander to provide written justification for any decision commuting or lessening a sentence after a guilty verdict in a court-martial.

Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, is in the meantime still holding up the nomination of Lt. Gen. Susan Helms of the Air Force to become vice commander of the United States Space Command because General Helms overturned a jury conviction in a sexual assault case without public explanation.

“I continue to have deep concerns with Lieutenant General Helms’s decision, while a commander and courts-martial convening authority, to overturn the jury verdict of a military court-martial in which the jury found an Air Force officer guilty of sexual assault,” Ms. McCaskill said in remarks submitted to the Congressional Record.

Ms. Gillbrand may have a chance to renew her measure on the Senate floor this summer, something she will almost certainly seek. “Senator Gillibrand has nerves of steel,” Mr. Fidell said. “Whether her bill is what Congress should enact I don’t know, but I commend her for standing her ground.”

Levin, age 78, won't be seeking a 7th term in the Senate. This is another example of old men trying to control the lives of younger women. There's a deep generational and gender divide on these issues and it's tragic that a Democrat rather than some reactionary fossil like Chuck Grassley, Jim Inhofe, Richard Shelby or Pat Roberts would be holding the banner for Bronze Age misogyny-- and rape-- today.

UPDATE: A Message From The Fighters For Equality At The DCCC

Steve Israel and Co. are up in arms over the anti-Choice Republicans. Let's see how many of the top priority Frontline Democrats they fund-- like Matheson, Barrow and McIntyre for exampl-- vote with the Republicans on this.

An all-male group of House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee is expected to pass a bill today that will ban abortions nationally after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The measures makes no exception for cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s health is jeopardized.

Americans consistently rate jobs and the economy as their greatest concern, not re-fighting battles over a woman’s right to choose. The measure, sponsored by anti-woman zealot Trent Franks of Arizona, is expected to be sent to the full House for a vote next week and would effectively overturn Roe vs. Wade.

“Today, another all-male group of House Republicans will interject their ideology between a woman and her doctor, effectively overturn Roe vs. Wade, reverse our rights and open yet another front in the war on women. Yet again, House Republicans are trying to prove that they’re the most extreme, anti-woman legislature in American history,” said Emily Bittner of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “House Republicans are blindly focusing on the tired ideological battles of the past like a woman’s right to choose, rather than focusing on problem-solving. And the American people know that every day House Republicans waste fighting over ideology is a day they refused to solve our country’s problems.”

General Sheehan demonstrates the fine art of apologizing when all you're really sorry for is getting caught

Retired Marine Gen. John Sheehan, testifying

before the Senate Armed Services Committee

by Ken

You remember Marine Gen. John Sheehan, right? He's the clod who in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee two weeks ago on Don't Ask, Don't Tell blamed the massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica on the "socializing" of the Dutch army -- meaning allowing openly gay soldiers and unionization. In view of the latest development, it's important to be clear about what exactly he did or didn't say. Here is the start of Philippe Naughton's March 19 report in the Times of London:

A retired American general has blamed the UN's historic failure to protect the Bosnian "safe haven" of Srebrenica on the fact that there were openly gay soldiers in the Dutch peacekeeping battalion assigned to it.

The comments from former Marine Corps General John Sheehan prompted outrage in the Netherlands, where the humiliation in July 1995 of 400 armed Dutch peacekeepers and the subsequent massacre by Serb forces of 8,000 Muslim men and boys remains a subject of acute national sensitivity.

General Sheehan, one of two Nato "supreme commanders" at the time of the massacre, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee against a proposal to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the US military.

He told the senators how the Armed Forces of various European countries had lost their combat focus after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and turned to peacekeeping because "they did not believe the Germans were going to attack again or the Soviets were coming back".

The general said that Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and other nations all took the decision that there was no longer a need for an active combat capability in the military.

"They declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialize their military -- that includes the unionisation of their militaries, it includes open homosexuality. That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war," he said.

"The case in point that I’m referring to is when the Dutch were required to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs: the battalion was under-strength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off, and executed them.

"That was the largest massacre in Europe since World War II."

Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat, chairman of the committee, was incredulous. He asked General Sheehan: "Did the Dutch leaders tell you it was because there were gay soldiers there?"

"Yes, they did. They included that as part of the problem," he replied.

"That there were gay soldiers?" the senator asked.

"That the combination was the liberalisation of the military; a net effect was basically social engineering."

Okay, there's already a bit of weaseling there at the end, when Senator Levin was trying to make sure that General Sheehan actually was saying what he had just said.

The good news is that the general's "testimony" indeed caused an uproar, more in Europe than in the U.S., not surprisingly, but even here this turned heads in a way that it wouldn't have ten or even five years ago. Enough of an uproar that the general has been forced to do some damage control, in the form of a letter dated yesterday to his Dutch counterpart, retired Marine Gen. Henk van den Breemen. It begins with a paragraph that actually sounds like an apology -- for possibly misrecollecting what General van den Breemen may have said in their conversations, and especially for dragging him into the current mess:

Thank you for our much appreciated conversations of the past week. During the mid-1990s, you and I discussed a broad range of issues and policies that reflected the social, political and financial pressures under which NATO Alliance members struggled. I am sorry that my recent public recollection of those discussions of 15 years ago inaccurately reflected your thinking on some specific social issues in the military. It is also regrettable that I allowed you to be pulled into a public debate. As a fellow Marine, I have the deepest respect for you personally and professionally. NATO and the Netherlands were well served by your leadership.

So far, not so bad. But now there's a somewhat more opaque paragraph, which ironically begins, "To be clear":

To be clear, the failure on the ground in Srebrenica was in no way the fault of the individual soldiers. The corporals and sergeants executed their orders based on the priorities of the political authorities. Unfortunately, the rules of engagement were developed by a political system with conflicting priorities and an ambivalent understanding of how to use the military. As we know, the consequences of those compromises were devastating.

And that's it. General Sheehan writes, "I wish you the very best during this Easter season," and signs off.

When I glanced quickly at the letter, I thought General Sheehan was apologizing to General van den Breemen for misrepresenting comments made in their conversations in the '90s, and was explaining that all those conflicting political priorities and that ambivalent understanding of how to use the military, all of that had just slipped his mind during his original testimony. 

Then I read it a little more carefully, and it occurred to me that just possibly what he's saying is that those political "compromises," that "ambivalent understanding of how to use the military," which led to such "devastating consequences" -- what all that is, is the very "socializing" of the Dutch military he was whining about in the first place. You know, with the inclusion of gays, as Senator Levin had made certain he was testifying, and unionizing of the army, all of which added up, you'll recall, to "a force that was ill-equipped to go to war."

In other words, it just may be that, even as General Sheehan is apologizing to General van den Breemen for misrecollecting the exact words of their conversations, what he's actually saying is: "What I said before." Only without actually saying it, 'cause you get jumped on if you dare to tell God's honest truth about, you know, those people, and I don't mean people who join unions.

Here's how my colleague Jim Burroway summarized his reading of the letter at Box Turtle Bulltetin:

This is a climbdown from Sheehan’s placing blame on individual gay soldiers in Srebrenica, but it is not a complete disavowal of Sheehan’s position. In this letter, he now shifts his blame to “a political system with conflicting priorities and an ambivalent understanding of how to use the military.” This echoes accusations hurled by opponents to DADT that allowing soldiers to serve with honesty and integrity — two core values of all branches of the armed services — somehow represents a political meddling in the conduct of military affairs. (I would also hasten to add that civilian control of the military is also a core value insisted upon by our founding fathers and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.) So while media outlets and DADT repeal advocates may celebrate over this climb-down, I have a feeling that Sheehan’s position hasn’t changed one bit.

I have a feeling that Jim's feeling is exactly right. It seems clear that General van den Breemen isn't satisfied, because the letter was clearly released at his end. However, even if you accept that General Sheehan has genuinely changed his position in some substantive way, there remains the rather important question of General Sheehan's committee testimony, assuming his testimony had any importance. My colleague Chris Geidner reports at Metro Weekly:

The letter to Breemen, however, did not alter the testimony given by Sheehan. In a response from the Senate Armed Services Committee, a spokesman told Metro Weekly via e-mail, ''We have not received any communication from Gen. Sheehan, at least not yet.''

MORE ON DADT: THE WHITE HOUSE'S POSITION
ISN'T AT ALL MUDDLED (SNICKER, SNICKER)

Am I the only one who's coming to think of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs as just the next in succession to the line of odious Bush regime press secretaries? Does the guy ever actually answer a question? And is it my imagination that there's a tone of mockery, or even scorn, when talking about anyone who isn't in lockstep agreement with an administration policy from the left?

A colleague provides this transcription of an exchange at today's press briefing:

Q: Over successive weeks, Congressman Barney Frank has asked the White House to clarify whether it would like to see legislative action taken this year on “don’t ask, don’t tell.”  He’s said that direction from the White House has been muddled, and then at one point said that you guys were actually sort of ducking whether or not you wanted to see legislation action taken on repeal.  Would the President like to see that law --

ROBERT GIBBS:  Well, Carol, I would just say this. I don’t think what Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates have enunciated on this appears muddled to anyone. I don’t -- there is a process that’s in place to move forward on the President’s commitment to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

I don’t -- Admiral Mullen is the first chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to sit up in front of Congress and say that the law ought to be repealed -- not somebody who is retired, not somebody who is long past their commitment of serving their country, but somebody who sat up there and said that. And Secretary Gates and the commission at the Pentagon have taken some important steps.

We’re following that process.  We’ll see where the legislative road takes us as we continue to build support to keep the commitment that the President has made.

Well, excuse me, Mr. Press Secretary, but this still seems to me kind of muddled as to what the president actually wants to happen and what he might be prepared to do to make it happen. And you may have noticed that you didn't address Congressman Frank's unanswered question at all.

The one thing that's kind of new is the cavalier dismissal of all the high-ranking former military offices who have come out for DADT repeal. Granted, it could be viewed that you are speaking of the potential impact on the process of testimony from the sitting chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but you'll forgive me if the reference to "not somebody who is retired, not somebody who is long past their commitment of serving their country" sounds sneering if not outright contemptuous of a lot of distinguished retired officers who probably don't think of themselves as "long past their commitment of serving their country."

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Carl Levin Has A Surefire Way To End The War: Tax The Rich To Pay For It

Actually, it isn't just Carl Levin who is standing up and saying that if Obama wants to escalate the war in Afghanistan he's going to have to figure out how to pay for it without charging our great, great grandchildren, Bush and Cheney having already bankrupt our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Keep in mind that each additional soldier in Afghanistan costs around $1 million, which means $40 billion MORE if 40,000 new troops are added. Three very senior Democrats in the House, David Obey (WI), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, John Murtha (PA), chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and John Larson (CT), chairman of the Democratic Caucus introduced legislation that would impose a surtax beginning in 2011 to cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“For the last year, as we’ve struggled to pass health care reform, we’ve been told that we have to pay for the bill-- and the cost over the next decade will be about a trillion dollars,” the three lawmakers said in a joint statement. “Now the president is being asked to consider an enlarged counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan, which proponents tell us will take at least a decade and would also cost about a trillion dollars. But unlike the health care bill, that would not be paid for. We believe that’s wrong.”

Discussing the idea earlier this month, Murtha said he knew the bill would not be enacted and that advocates of a surtax were simply trying to send a message about the moral obligation to pay for the wars.

“The only people who’ve paid any price for our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan are our military families,” Murtha, Obey and Larson said in a joint statement. “We believe that if this war is to be fought, it’s only fair that everyone share the burden.”

The bill would require the president to set the surtax so that it fully pays for the previous year’s war cost. But it would allow for a one-year delay in the implementation of the tax if the president determines that the economy is too weak to sustain that kind of tax change. It also would exempt military members who have served in combat since Sept. 11, 2001, along with their families, and the families of soldiers killed in combat.

Levin was more specific about where the tax burden should fall: an “additional income tax to the upper brackets, folks earning more than $200,000 or $250,000” a year, could fund more troops, Levin, will announce in an interview on “Political Capital With Al Hunt this weekend.

The impetus and support for the Afghan war is with Republicans but there's no way they'll support a war that has to be paid for, especially not by rich people. The Republican strategy is to run up big bills with wasteful wars in order to kill off social programs like Medicare and Social Security. Last spring when Obama presented his supplemental war budget the first time he had overwhelming Republican support, but when it came back from the Senate with some price tags on it to pay for other Administration priorities, the GOP bailed en masse. In fact, the money would have been cut off if just another few Democratic congressmen who had run on anti-war platforms had stuck to their words and opposed the supplemental. As is only 32 courageous Democrats broke with the war machine and did do that.

This week Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation offers Obama some advice he'd be wise to take: take seriously, very seriously, the letter the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent requesting an alternative to escalation is Afghanistan.

The legislators write that their "perspectives have manifested…via Congressional Progressive Caucus Member-led legislation" including: a timeline for eventual troop withdrawal, prohibiting funds for additional troop surges, reorienting the mission so that 80 percent of US resources are devoted to economic and political development and 20 percent towards security, and prioritizing diplomacy and development over the use of force.

"We now have an opportunity to realign our defense development and diplomatic engagement to ensure political, economic, and social security for a nation deeply impoverished," the letter closes. "This new tack, if taken today, can transform the conflict while remaining consistent with America's strategic interests."

The clock is ticking. Is there anything we can do about the criminals Chimpy the Prez and "Big Dick" Cheney? (Tick-tock, tick-tock.)

"That Cheney, by his own admission, had revised the talking points in an effort to have the reporters examine who sent Wilson on the very same day that his chief of staff was disclosing to [NYT reporter Judith] Miller [Valerie] Plame’s identity as a CIA officer may be the most compelling evidence to date that Cheney himself might have directed Libby to disclose Plame’s identity to Miller and other reporters.

"This new information adds to a growing body of evidence that Cheney may have directed Libby to disclose Plame’s identity to reporters and that Libby acted to protect Cheney by lying to federal investigators and a federal grand jury about the matter."

-- investigative reporter Murray Waas,
in a report this week on Crooks and LIars

by Ken

At least the lords of Ruddigore, under the term of their Witch's Curse, only had to do one crime a day, once every day, forever. (Okay, to be technical, the terms of the curse were "one crime or more," but a mere onespot would get the job done.) Whereas the Bush regimista have spent night onto eight years now committing every war crime they could wrap their heads around and shredding the Constitution.

I would include "shredding the economy," but again, to be technical, this was done under the terms of "Republican governance," much of which is not -- astonishingly enough -- strictly speaking illegal. Of course that still leaves a goodly amount of plundering and profiteering that clearly falls on the far side of the law, and should certainly be available for inclusion on anyone's master list of "high crimes and misdemeanors" -- the constitutional specification for impeachment, of course.

Is there anything we can do here?

It's not a matter of retribution or "getting even." There's an important principle at stake. Because while the judgment of history on these people is likely to be fierce, that really isn't enough. The principle is that when you allow crimes to go unpunished, that tends not only to legitimize the behavior but to encourage the criminals and the people who follow them to do even worse stuff.

I'm not smart enough to know in what form the perpetrators of the Bush regime's crimes can still be held to account. In retrospect it becomes ever clearer that both Chimpy the Prez and his master, "Big Dick" Cheney, should have been impeached. Now we know that hindsight is 20/20, but this isn't just retrospective wisdom. Since it became clear the kind of extremist, law-be-damned regime this was going to be, there have been plenty of people shouting for impeachment, both before and after then-incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously declared it "off the table."

But hold on before jumping all over Speaker Pelosi. I am not at all saying that her political calculation was necessarily wrong. The fact is that a movement for impeachment against the president and vice president (and it would have crucial to do both, ideally in the same time frame, not only as a matter of basic criminal justice, but as an assurance that in the admittedly unlikely event that the president was actually removed from office, that office wouldn't simply have been turned over to that spawn of Satan . . . I mean to the vice president) wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

Even in the regime's second term, as it began falling apart, and then starting in 2007 with the Democrats in nominal control of both houses of Congress, there would have been no support from Republicans (and remember that what drove Richard Nixon out of office was growing Republican support for impeachment and almost surely, if he had allowed it to come to that, for conviction) and probably not all that much support from congressional Democrats, among whom impeachment was considered risky, dirty-fucking-hippie-type behavior.

Some observers said, "So what? It's important to get some kind of official condemnation of the regime's high crimes and misdemeanors on the record. And perhaps so. But consider, might it not have been worse to have an impeachment movement flicked off, for permanent dismissal as a partisan witchhunt? In other words, a larger version of the charge routinely hurled at the hardy band of Democratic House and Senate committee chairmen who actually tried to investigate even a tiny bit of the regime's rampant lawlessness after the congressional takeover?

Which hasn't entirely prevented additional investigations and revelations from materializing. And in just the last couple of weeks we've had Big Dick's almost certainly legally self-incriminating statements about his role in making possible the regime's use of waterboarding, which got Rachel Maddow all excited, and which Sen. Carl Levin for one agreed needed to be investigated to get the information on the record.

And just a few days ago crackerjack reporter Murray Waas dropped the bombshell on Crooks and Liars from which I've quoted above. Drawing on "a still-highly confidential FBI report," Waas reports that Big Dick admitted to federal investigators "that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light," acknowledging "that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer."

I don't know what to do about this, but I have a pretty good idea of the consequences of doing nothing. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

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For the U.S. auto industry to survive, we need the best minds to join to forge a possibly viable restructuring. Instead we get clowns and saboteurs

by Ken

Here are three statements issued last night in response to the Senate's 52-35 refusal to provide bridge loans to help tide GM and Chrysler over into the new year.

First from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

Given the unhappy choice between a bridge loan and bankruptcy, Democrats have always believed that we must give the Big Three and the millions of Americans they employ every possible chance to succeed.

By rejecting every good-faith bipartisan compromise -- including those from the White House and Senator Bob Corker -- it is now abundantly clear that Republicans have no interest in keeping the Big Three from collapsing.

Because Republicans failed to act, three million Americans are more likely than ever to lose their jobs and our economy is at risk of suffering even greater damage. Our hearts go out to those families who will now have to deal with this burden as the holidays near.

Republicans may think that rejecting this legislation sent a message to the auto industry. Instead, they sent a message to every single American that they are more interested in settling scores than solving problems.

Then from Michigan Sen. Carl Levin -- an interested party, obviously, but still an informed one:

Congress should not recess and leave town without voting on the proposal to provide emergency bridge loans to our domestic auto industry. The consequences of our failure to act will be extremely harmful to our economy and to the lives and welfares of millions of working Americans in communities across our country.

I call on the leaders of the Senate to keep us in session, and let us go back to work tomorrow to try to fashion an agreement that will keep our domestic auto industry operating into next year and beyond. We certainly owe that much to all Americans who will be harmed by our failure to act here tonight, and that is most Americans since a failure tonight will be felt throughout our economy and in every community across this country.

Finally this from California Sen. Barbara Boxer:

Change is on the way, but it didn't come tonight. The American people will see who stands for the middle class of this country and who doesn't. Who cares for the working people and who doesn't.

Even the White House grasped the urgency of providing bridge loans to keep the U.S. automakers going until the next administration can take a stab at working out a major restructuring -- maybe, yes, involving nationalization (from a colleague: "Nationalization is the worst option, except for all the others") -- aimed at establishing a viable future for the industry, and preventing the large-scale further downward economic spiral that would accompany a collapse of the U.S. automakers.

It was the fringiest of the fringe rightists, people like Jim DeMint (R-SC), David "Diapers" Vitters (R-LA), and Tom Coburn (R-OK), who in concert with senators like Alabama's Richard Shelby who don't like to talk about the extent of state subsidies to foreign automakers with plants in their states led the charge against a more rational approach to the subject.

Not that the task would be easy.

The only hope for the U.S. automakers is neither a bailout nor bankruptcy but a genuine restructuring, a substantial overhaul that takes full account of the realities of the U.S. economy and marketplace and finds a workable way to harness the human and physical resources currently committed to the industry.

If we're lucky, there is a way this could all be accomplished, based on a coupling of some real economic brainpower and political knowhow -- "a way," note. Whereas there are undoubtedly thousands of ways that large-scale federal funds could be committed to the auto industry and wind up simply poured down a rathole. You know, the way the TARP billions seem to be disappearing without a whimper from the White House or the Treasury or the wingnut or Wall Street fringes. (As a colleague wrote in the wee hours last night: "The sheer economic logic of a loaning a fraction of the money to the auto industray that we've given away to Wall Street ought to be a no-brainer.")

Man oh man, those are some crappy odds: the chance of finding the one workable solution vs. all the money-down-the-drain business-as-usual ones. And understand what it means, which would be to bring together:

* on a good-faith basis, the knowledge, vision, and creativity of legitimate experts, people who genuinely understand the realities of the industry and of the economy, meaning people other than the strategic "visionaries" who got both the industry and the U.S. economy into their present states; and --

* in the event that a really hard-headed yet potentially workable plan can be developed, the political ingenuity and muscle to sell it to a Congress and public best by not just economic panic but legitimate apprehension about the

From those people, after all, come "economic" arguments that are painstakingly crafted frauds, like the wild misrepresentations of actual U.S. labor costs and the willful failure to consider the massive concessions already made by the United Auto Workers and the costs to U.S. manufacturers of health care and large pension-drawing retiree pools, and more important the failure to even look at the overwhelming portion of the per-vehicle cost of Big Three production which has nothing to do with labor. As a colleague writes, the Republican deal-wreckers "were not asking any concessions from the dealers or the creditors or the suppliers, just the blue-collar workers."

And there's no question that many of the obstructionists are driven by this thundering opportunity for union-busting. It's what these people believe in, and what they do. They really and truly despise people who work with their hands and yet have the temerity to think they should be treated as anything but menial sevants.

Late word is that economist Paul Stiglitz is advocating Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the U.S. automakers, a solution that most observers of the industry regard as its death knell. On the simplest level, the evidence is overwhelming that customers -- in the event that we ever actually have customers for new cars again -- will not buy cars from a company in bankruptcy. Apart from busting the UAW, the only likely result of Chapter 11 for the automakers is the purchase of selected chunks of their businesses by foreign companies. (Ritual bashers of the U.S. makers either forget or don't know that they're still in possession of substantial technology that other countries, notably China, would be only too happy to acquire, and for that matter that they have expanding markets outside the U.S., notably in Africa.)

Come January, of course, while many of the same loonies will still be present, the overall makeup of the Senate changes considerably. Meanwhile, it's pointed out that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson could in fact find money for bridge loans in his giant TARP slushpile, and that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke too could undoubtedly find the money if he wishes.

I guess we'll see.

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SOME DEMOCRATS TRAVEL TO THE GREED ZONE AND LOSE SIGHT OF THE BALL

If you believe Bush was fairly elected in 2000, you may also believe his puppet government in Iraq is also a democracy. But you'd be wrong. Today two haughty Inside-the-Beltway establishmentarians, one from each of the Insider political parties-- the terrible one and the less terrible one-- returned from Iraq demanding we exchange Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for a better model. The Democratic Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the ranking Republican on the committee, John Warner spent a few minutes in the Greed Zone, and came back warning that "in the view of politicians in Washington, and of the American people, 'time has run out' on attempts to forge a political consensus in Baghdad."

Does this mean that Levin and Warner have finally come to their senses and are demanding the impeachments of Cheney and Bush? Not on your life! "Mr. Levin said that in his view, the political stalemate in Iraq could be attributed to Mr. Maliki and other senior Iraqi officials who were unable to operate independently of religious and sectarian leaders. 'I’ve concluded that this is a government which cannot, is unable to, achieve a political settlement,' Mr. Levin said. 'It is too bound to its own sectarian roots, and it is too tied to forces in Iraq which do not yield themselves to compromise.'”
Levin, from Tel Aviv no less, called on the Iraqi Parliament to oust Maliki. His choice of venues alone was sure to shore up support for Maliki from the ridiculous government of the Greed Zone.

Warner stopped short of calling for Maliki's ouster but he agreed with Levin the Rove's talking points about Iraq make sense.

“While we believe that the ‘surge’ is having measurable results, and has provided a degree of ‘breathing space’ for Iraqi politicians to make the political compromises which are essential for a political solution in Iraq, we are not optimistic about the prospects for those compromises,” the joint statement said.

Tomorrow's Washington Post calls Levin's statement "the most forceful call for leadership change in Iraq from a U.S. elected official."

These congressional fact finding missions to the Greed Zone are colossal wastes of money and energy and of no value whatsoever. Yesterday's report by 7 military men stationed in Iraq in the NY Times is worth more than what every damn senator has had to say since the start of this catastrophe. "The tours, carefully conducted by the Defense Department, generally include visits to the Green Zone for consultations with U.S. and Iraqi officials, trips to forward operating bases and joint security stations involved in Petraeus's new counterinsurgency program, and heavily guarded tours of open markets, often in Anbar province, where a U.S. alliance with Sunni sheiks has calmed the region."

A few easily fooled imbeciles like Washington Congressman Brian Baird have been impressed and have switched to the Cheney Coalition. He now says he will not vote for any future withdrawal timelines. "We are making real and tangible progress on the ground, for one," Baird said, "and if we withdraw, it could have a potentially catastrophic effect on the region." He seems to have forgotten that Bush's unprovoked war of aggression and occupation of the country has already had not a potentially catastrophic effect, but an actual one-- on the region and beyond. The citizens of southern Washington should through him the hell out of office. "Last Friday, Baird told the Olympian, a newspaper in his district, that he now believes the United States should stay in the country as long as necessary to ensure stability."

Similar reactions have come from a Republican in Democratic clothes, Tim Mahoney (FL), which was totally predictable even as Rahm Emanuel was strong-arming a real Democratic candidate, Dave Lutrin, out of the way so he could out Republican closet case Mark Foley and insert newly minted "Democrat" Mahoney in his place, where he would help Emanuel and Hoyer get better parking spots and bigger offices-- while voting his heart for the GOP agenda. Less predictable was the response from Jerry McNerney (CA), an actual Democrat who seems to have drunk the Kool Aid in Baghdad. We're waiting for a clarification from him.

Will the Iraq Campaign have to start running ads like this one against Democrats? I think so.