kucinich to focus on his congressional seat

Decent article about Kucinich. Doesn’t tell the full story behind the Cleveland default, but at least it mentions how, almost 20 years later, the City leaders realized he did the right thing by not selling Muny Light to CEI.
 
Kucinich abandons White House bid
By JOE MILICIA
Associated Press Writer
1:59 PM CST, January 24, 2008

CLEVELAND–Democrat Dennis Kucinich is abandoning his second, long-shot bid for the White House as he faces a tough fight to hold onto his other job — U.S. congressman.

In an interview with Cleveland’s Plain Dealer, the six-term House member said he was quitting the race and would make a formal announcement on Friday.

“I will be announcing that I’m transiting out of the presidential campaign,” Kucinich said. “I’m making that announcement tomorrow about a new direction.”

Kucinich has received little support in his presidential bid; he got 1 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary and was shut out in the Iowa caucuses. He did have a devoted following.

Kucinich, 61, is facing four challengers in the Democratic congressional primary March 4, and earlier this week he made an urgent appeal on his Web site for funds for his re-election. Rival Joe Cimperman has been critical of Kucinich for focusing too much time outside of his district while campaigning for president.

His decision comes a month after his youngest brother, Perry Kucinich, was found dead.

Kucinich said he will not endorse another Democrat in the primary.

Kucinich brought the same sense of idealism to his second run for president as he did in his first bid. He said he was entering the race again because the Democratic Party wasn’t pushing hard enough to end the Iraq war.

Once dubbed the “boy mayor” of Cleveland, he made an unpopular decision to refuse to sell a publicly owned utility that pushed the city into default and drove him from office.

After the city’s financial troubles, the mayor faced death threats, and was forced to wear a bulletproof vest when he threw out the first ball at a Cleveland Indians game. He barely survived a recall vote.

But he lost his bid for re-election as mayor of Cleveland in 1978 to Republican George Voinovich, who went on to become governor and then U.S. senator. His life and his political career were derailed. Kucinich spent more than a decade trying to get back into politics — traveling around the country and then working as a teacher, consultant and television news reporter.

In 1994, Kucinich was elected state senator and he then won a seat in Congress in 1996. His once unpopular stand against the sale of the municipal electric system was praised as courageous. In 1998, the Cleveland City Council issued him a commendation for having the foresight to refuse to sell it.

During his time in Congress, Kucinich has been one of the most outspoken liberals, opposing international trade agreements like the North America Free Trade Agreement and marching with protesters in Seattle during a meeting of the World Trade Organization.

As a presidential candidate, he has proposed a Department of Peace, backed universal health care and supported gay marriage. He also pushed for impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.

At a debate last October, Kucinich delivered one of the night’s lighter moments when he confirmed seeing an unidentified flying object at the Washington state home of actress Shirley MacLaine. With a smile, he said he would open a campaign office in Roswell, N.M., home to many alleged UFO sightings.

Kucinich married British citizen Elizabeth Harper, in 2005, ensuring his 2008 campaign would have one dramatic difference from his first campaign. Kucinich told New Hampshire audiences during the 2004 race that he was seeking a mate. Women then vied for a date with him during a contest arranged by a New Hampshire political Web site, but nothing romantic evolved from Kucinich’s breakfast with the winner.

Link.

bush hates children

Bush and his cronies fudge the facts behind the new legislation and claim it doesn’t focus on the poor.
 
Children’s health program veto upheld, again
By Jeffrey Young
Posted: 01/23/08 01:18 PM [ET]

The House Democratic leadership again failed to win over enough Republicans to undo President Bush’s veto of a children’s health insurance bill Wednesday.

The 260-152 vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto on the measure, which would have added $35 billion to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and, Democrats assert, provided health benefits to 10 million children.

A group of 42 Republicans joined with 218 of the House Democrats in voting to override the veto.

Wednesday’s vote marked the second time the House failed to overturn a presidential veto on SCHIP legislation during the 110th Congress. Bush vetoed an earlier version of the bill in October. Congress passed the second version, which the president also vetoed, in November.

“President Bush strongly supports reauthorizing [SCHIP] in a way that puts poor children first, so he is pleased the House of Representatives voted today to sustain his veto of misguided legislation that would have expanded SCHIP to higher income households while increasing taxes,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement.

“Ultimately our goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage — not to move children who already have private insurance to government coverage.

Before wrapping up its business for the year in December, Congress approved legislation to extend SCHIP at its current funding level through March 2009.

Link.

another reason to be wary of obama

Obama praises Reagan? What is Obama’s platform again? Change? Funny, but the Reagan years were much like the Dubya years. Hopefully we’re taking his statement out of context.
 
 
Debunking the Reagan Myth
By PAUL KRUGMAN
January 21, 2008

Historical narratives matter. That’s why conservatives are still writing books denouncing F.D.R. and the New Deal; they understand that the way Americans perceive bygone eras, even eras from the seemingly distant past, affects politics today.

And it’s also why the furor over Barack Obama’s praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown. The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics.

Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. “The Reagan-Bush years,” he declared, “have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”

Contrast that with Mr. Obama’s recent statement, in an interview with a Nevada newspaper, that Reagan offered a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

Maybe Mr. Obama was, as his supporters insist, simply praising Reagan’s political skills. (I think he was trying to curry favor with a conservative editorial board, which did in fact endorse him.) But where in his remarks was the clear declaration that Reaganomics failed?

For it did fail. The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.

When the inevitable recession arrived, people felt betrayed — a sense of betrayal that Mr. Clinton was able to ride into the White House.

Given that reality, what was Mr. Obama talking about? Some good things did eventually happen to the U.S. economy — but not on Reagan’s watch.

For example, I’m not sure what “dynamism” means, but if it means productivity growth, there wasn’t any resurgence in the Reagan years. Eventually productivity did take off — but even the Bush administration’s own Council of Economic Advisers dates the beginning of that takeoff to 1995.

Similarly, if a sense of entrepreneurship means having confidence in the talents of American business leaders, that didn’t happen in the 1980s, when all the business books seemed to have samurai warriors on their covers. Like productivity, American business prestige didn’t stage a comeback until the mid-1990s, when the U.S. began to reassert its technological and economic leadership.

I understand why conservatives want to rewrite history and pretend that these good things happened while a Republican was in office — or claim, implausibly, that the 1981 Reagan tax cut somehow deserves credit for positive economic developments that didn’t happen until 14 or more years had passed. (Does Richard Nixon get credit for “Morning in America”?)

But why would a self-proclaimed progressive say anything that lends credibility to this rewriting of history — particularly right now, when Reaganomics has just failed all over again?

Like Ronald Reagan, President Bush began his term in office with big tax cuts for the rich and promises that the benefits would trickle down to the middle class. Like Reagan, he also began his term with an economic slump, then claimed that the recovery from that slump proved the success of his policies.

And like Reaganomics — but more quickly — Bushonomics has ended in grief. The public mood today is as grim as it was in 1992. Wages are lagging behind inflation. Employment growth in the Bush years has been pathetic compared with job creation in the Clinton era. Even if we don’t have a formal recession — and the odds now are that we will — the optimism of the 1990s has evaporated.

This is, in short, a time when progressives ought to be driving home the idea that the right’s ideas don’t work, and never have.

It’s not just a matter of what happens in the next election. Mr. Clinton won his elections, but — as Mr. Obama correctly pointed out — he didn’t change America’s trajectory the way Reagan did. Why?

Well, I’d say that the great failure of the Clinton administration — more important even than its failure to achieve health care reform, though the two failures were closely related — was the fact that it didn’t change the narrative, a fact demonstrated by the way Republicans are still claiming to be the next Ronald Reagan.

Now progressives have been granted a second chance to argue that Reaganism is fundamentally wrong: once again, the vast majority of Americans think that the country is on the wrong track. But they won’t be able to make that argument if their political leaders, whatever they meant to convey, seem to be saying that Reagan had it right.

Link.

what’s a few hundred lies here and there?

The Bush administration lied to make a case for war? Really? I’m shocked.
 
 
Study: False statements preceded war
Hundreds of false statements on WMDs, al-Qaida used to justify Iraq war
The Associated Press
updated 11:30 p.m. PT, Tues., Jan. 22, 2008

WASHINGTON – A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration’s position that the world community viewed Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

“The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world,” Stanzel said.

WMD, al-Qaida links debunked
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

“It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida,” according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. “In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.”

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq’s links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell’s 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

Media ‘validation’
The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

“The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war,” the study concluded.

“Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, ‘independent’ validation of the Bush administration’s false statements about Iraq,” it said.

Link.

the american dream – working two jobs?

Does the upper class and ruling elite really believe this shit? And how can they say this and get (re)elected? You want economic stimulus? Bring back the WPA.
 
 
Bachmann: I’m ‘Proud’ That ‘We Have People Working Two Jobs’ And ‘Longer Hours’
Think Progress
January 16, 2008

Topping Congress’s agenda as it returns this week is a plan to “jump-start the economy and try to shorten the slowdown that many economists say has already begun to take hold.”

Today, Rep. Eric Cantor (VA), the chief deputy Republican whip in the House, unveiled his proposal to stimulate the economy. His legislation — the so-called Middle Class Job Protection Act — does nothing for the middle class. Instead, it reduces the corporate tax rate by 28 percent.

At a press conference today unveiling the stimulus proposal, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) justified the conservative plan to give tax breaks to corporations — instead of working Americans — by arguing that people actually like working long hours:

I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs.

Bachmann’s version of the American Dream is apparently working two full-time jobs and struggling to get by.

Yesterday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that corporate tax cuts, such as the one proposed by Cantor, “may be less cost-effective in the short term” and less effective than a stimulus plan consisting of “tax rebates, extended unemployment benefits and a temporary increase in food stamps.”

Bachmann may be taking her cues from her bosom buddy President Bush, who on Feb. 4, 2005, told a divorced mother of three: “You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that.”

Link.

rep. wexler calls for impeachment

Excellent speech calling for Cheney’s impeachment.
 

 

rep tim ryan rails against the administration

Bravo.
 

gulf of tonkin faked?

World:
Remember how we told you that North Vietnam attacked one of our warships in the Gulf of Tonkin back in 1964, which forced our hand to respond with full-on military action (but not a war, mind you)? Well, we lied. We just needed an excuse to firebomb the country. Sorry. That was the only time. Okay, that’s not true. But that was the last time it happened, honest. Well, maybe not. Umm, it will never happen again?

Sincerely,

The United States of America
 
 
Report Reveals Vietnam War Hoaxes, Faked Attacks
Published on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 by Agence France Presse

North Vietnamese made hoax calls to get the US military to bomb its own units during the Vietnam War, according to declassified information that also confirmed US officials faked an incident to escalate the war. The report was released by the National Security Agency, responsible for much of the United States’ codebreaking and eavesdropping work, in response to a “mandatory declassification” request, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) said Monday.

From the first intercepted cable — a 1945 message from Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh to his Russian counterpart Joseph Stalin — to the final evacuation of US spies from Saigon, the 500-page report retold Vietnam War history from the perspective of “signals intelligence,” the group said in a statement.

During the war, North Vietnamese intelligence units sometimes succeeded in penetrating US communications systems, and they could monitor American message traffic from within, according to the report “Spartans in Darkness.”

On several occasions “the communists were able, by communicating on Allied radio nets, to call in Allied artillery or air strikes on American units,” it said.

“That’s something I have never heard before,” Steven Aftergood, director of the FAS project on government secrecy, told AFP.

But he said that probably the “most historically significant feature” of the declassified report was the retelling of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident.

That was a reported North Vietnamese attack on American destroyers that helped lead to president Lyndon Johnson’s sharp escalation of American forces in Vietnam.

The author of the report “demonstrates that not only is it not true, as (then US) secretary of defense Robert McNamara told Congress, that the evidence of an attack was ‘unimpeachable,’ but that to the contrary, a review of the classified signals intelligence proves that ‘no attack happened that night,’” FAS said in a statement.

“What this study demonstrated is that the available intelligence shows that there was no attack. It’s a dramatic reversal of the historical record,” Aftergood said.

“There were previous indications of this but this is the first time we have seen the complete study,” he said.

Link.

rwanda

If you want to feel like a horrible Westerner – or human for that matter – watch “Hotel Rwanda”. And if that’s not enough, read We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, which is much more graphic and detailed about the atrocities. Hotel Rwanda is PG-13 so they don’t show much. Apparently Darfur is the Rwanda of the 21st Century. I know very little about it. Next research project. Is the West as negligent in Darfur as it was in Rwanda, Papua, Burma/Myanmar, etc.? Probably. Oh well, American Idol is almost on. (I don’t know which smiley represents sarcasm so I thought a sad, perplexed, distraught smiley would do.)

As an aside, Don Cheadle is excellent in Hotel Rwanda.