You can gush about Obama, but it is a good idea to appraise him critically, as his opponent next november surely will, and as we should, if we truly want an electable progressive candidate who will reverse the tide of militaristic corporatism we have sunk so deeply into.

Obama negatives: as Greenwald posted at salon yesterday, none of the three Dems have deviated from the insanity of defense spending policy...ten times the amount of our closest military rival, and more thAN 50 percent of the annual world total.

He is inexperienced, it does matter. He wears the stench of the adjacent home lot division and quick re-purchase.

NY Times:

Mr. Obama turned to Mr. Rezko for help at several important junctures. Records show that when Mr. Obama needed cash in the waning days of his losing 2000 Congressional campaign, Mr. Rezko rounded up thousands of dollars from business contacts. In 2003, Mr. Rezko helped Mr. Obama expand his fund-raising for the Senate primary by being host of a dinner at his Mediterranean-style home for 150 people, including some whose names have since come up in the influence scandal.

And when Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, bought a house in 2005, Mr. Rezko stepped in again. Even though his finances were deteriorating, Mr. Rezko arranged for his wife to buy an adjacent lot, and she later sold the Obamas a 10-foot-wide strip of land that expanded their yard.

He did not keep the "connected" acquaintance who sold him the lot, at "arms length". It is potentially as damning as anything in the non-story of white water, and that triggered an 8 year long witch hunt.

He has voted to continue funding the war, and is all for pointing the blotted "overspent on" military, at any foreign relations problem that the military option should be chosen, as an absolute last resort, to "solve".

Renewing American Leadership
Barack Obama
From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007

......To renew American leadership in the world, we must immediately begin working to revitalize our military. A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace. . . .

We must use this moment both to rebuild our military and to prepare it for the missions of the future. . . . We should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines. . . .

I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened.

We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability -- to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities.....
It sounds as if he's flirting with a pre-emptive war policy, when he needs to condemn it as a Bush era aberration.

Russ Feingold makes Obama look like a neocon, bu t he ain't running. It feels like we're settling for Obama, and his "unity" appeal. Until our militarism and the corporatism is reigned in, there is nothing to "unify" us. Obama is not talking about those critical influences, and the militarism comes down to corporatism, as well.

Posted at January 4, 2008 4:57 PM in response to From Concord, NH: Obama's Music

Congressman Miller, your "remedy":

"So Linda and I introduced a bill that would do just that. If the mortgage exceeds the value of the home, the court can limit the debt secured by the home to the value of the home and treat the rest as unsecured. And the court can then set a term of up to thirty years and an interest rate of prime plus a couple of points for risk—still a subprime loan, but not a predatory loan.

According the CRL, the legislation would make it possible for 600,000 or so families to save their homes from foreclosure. The chief economist for Moody’s thinks that’s an exaggeration—probably only 500,000 families would save their homes under the legislation."

You propose to put the distressed homeowner, his credit rating already ruined, in a new loan starting out with zero equity, instead of being "upside down"...negative equity vs. amount owed on the original loan.

Since it appears that we are only in the morning hours of a figurative day of declining home valuations, fueled as they were by the unprecedented flow of liquidity permitted by the distortion of risk perception that all of the mortgage backed paper instruments facilitated, and thus, valuations are still at ridiculously high levels, two things weighing on further valuation declines are your own lending standards "reform". and the fundamentals. An average home price cannot be much higher than what avergage household income can support. That fundamentally supported price is less than half, in some markets, of current asking prices.

The certainty is that your plan to replace upside down loans with zero equity loans at current market value, are beneficial to lenders.

In all likelihood, the distressed homeowner would be much better off walking away now, rebuilding credit rating while paying a much lower rent to live somewhere else, saving away some of the difference between the high interest mortgage payment to "own" a home still declining in value, and coming back, in five to seven years, to buy a comparable home property for 60 percent of current vaulations.

This is the reality, unless, of course, you can make an argument that increased lending restrictions in a declining economy with a 15 month glut of unsold homes, and stagnant income growth, with a growing public perception that it is better to wait until prices drop futher to buy a home, is a climate where homes with asking prices double what economic fundatmentals can support, will stabalize in value in a reasonable time frame, and quite near today's selling prices.

You probably can't make that argument, so the only certainty is that your plan supports lenders to a degree. Your lending "reform" seems to ignore the conditions that formerly made subprime loans attractive. Housing valuations were rapidly rising. The only concern of marginal buyers was getting into an ownership position with the goal of "mining" rising equity. It did not matter what the terms of a loan were. This is what supplied the constant flow of liquidity to further drive up prices.

With today's expectations, there is little incentive to buy, and even less to accept the type of lending terms you are trying to raise awareness in mortgage applicants to avoid.

There is no need or benefit to consumers for anything that you are attempting to do. Stand back and allow prices to decline to where they should be. Work on repealing the 2005 bankruptcy "reform", and on bringing affordable health care to the working poor and the middle class.

Posted at December 19, 2007 10:38 AM in response to Discussion Forum on Bankruptcy and Foreclosures

Wow...Mr. Hundt, I am shocked at your use of the "bully pulpit" extended to you here....for blatant commerical "self dealing"....

Allow me to respond first with the disclaimer that I have no ties with the company that you deliberately failed to mention....your actual future, technological competitor, nor do I stand to gain financially from what I am about to post. I am simply a satisfied customer, enjoying inexpensive, fast...EVDO Rev. A wireless internet service from the cellular carrier with the largest and fastest nationwide network; S-P-R-I-N-T.

They provide wireless internet to many of the major continental US population centers at download speeds 3 to ten times faster than ATT, and they are continually building out their network's capability. Yet, you did not mention that they offer 3G CDMA service, now today...just like in Europe. You must know this Mr. Hundt, you said that you are in the same business as Sprint is.....but you chose to keep your knowledge of Sprint's present day capabilities, from us. You also tried to convince us that your company proposed something that doesn't come close to existing yet in the US, without first describing the option of Sprint, and then letting us decide.

I enjoy this network speed, and I use a smartphone...a Palm device with an unlimited data download plan, 500 anytime minutes per month, always free "Sprint to Sprint" talk minutes, and free nights and weekends, from 7:00pm, along with full phone repair and loss insurance for.... $37.00 per month, plus tax.

You opened the door....MR. Hundt....you attempted to convince us that the service that I enjoy...reasonably priced, widely available, and "state of the art fast"...does not exist today in the US. So, I'll make a point of advising anyone how to get it. This offer is specifically open to new subscribers:
http://www.sprint.com/sero

...for more than a year. Sprint has opened what was their "employee" rate and features plan, to any new subscriber who clicks the above link and types in the email address savings@sprint.com .... and they offer a nice choice of subsidized priced phones for signing a two year contract at their low rate and fast service.

I don't want to promote any company on these forums, Mr. Hundt.... but I think that you pushed the reasonable bounds of ethics too far. You also shortchanged all of the investors and employees of Sprint PCS....I suspect why you did it... but I am not going to let you get away with it.....

Posted at July 3, 2007 4:26 AM in response to The I Phone and Me (or my company)

It seems to me that only Edwards and Vilsack are not "money party" politicians. The fact that no candidate since JFK in 1960 who was not from, or at least living in a sunbelt location at the time of announcing his or her candidacy for the presidency, only Edwards, of the so far announced candidates, is from the sunbelt, and would be most likely to offer an agenda that would include turning back the 30 year trend of increasingly uneven wealth distribution as measured by the Gini coefficient.

Posted at January 21, 2007 4:59 PM in response to An American Dream Team

It seems that many are out of touch with the "new realities". The dollar is "over", and discussions like this one are soooo....2000. They are irrelevant. The only thing propping up the dollar is Japan, for more than ten years, and lately China, printing their own currencies out of "thin air", and trading that "new money" for the US dollars that flow in to their exporters. By printing money out of "thin air", they dilute the exchange value of their own currencies, keeping them lower, in relation to the dollar, than they possibly should be, and they purchase US T-Bills with those dollars, keeping US borrowing costs lower, since public and government borrowers in the US all compete for a theoretically finite pool of lenders who will settle for 6 percent interest rates in this currency "ponzi" scheme.

People.... this is over. Before tax "reform", in 2004, an economist's study, published on the fed's own website, indicates that the bottom 50 percent of the US population controls only 2.5 percent of the wealth. The top 10 percent controls 70 percent, and the next 40 percent, just 27-1/2 percent.

These wealth "holders" now benefit. via tax "reform", to an even larger grip on the "pie". They finance and control the political agenda, and they will escape much of the economics induced misery that the people they got elected, are causing. They will never allow the legislation that you want to see, or even the shift in party control that it would require.

There is no money to "shift" from SSI to universal healthcare. There is note even enough stable purchasing power in the dollar, going forward, to even guarantee the funding of the US military at current levels.

Here is why:

....let us review the federal spending for the last eleven years. Six years of democratic control of the presidency, with the republicans in charge of the house, and 4 yrs. and 11 months of total republican control/budget management:
08/18/2006 $8,500,932,047,599.16
09/28/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06
09/29/1995 $4,973,982,900,709.39
It looks like the "Dems" ran an $833 billion deficit, during their 6 years, and the "repubs" have run up a $2,693 billion deficit, in 1-1/2 months less than a most recent, 5 year period.

The trade imbalance is now exactly double what it was in 2001.

The twin deficits are unsustainable, and it is too late to reverse the trend. Oil and commoditites will rise in price as the perception of the value of the dollar will continue to increase the number of dollars that commodity sellers will demand in exchange for their products. There will be no money to invest in alternative energy, as this crisis continues to progress. As the implosion in the domestic economy from the emerging real estate crash, accelerates the decline, you can stick a fork in the US economy and it's dollar....we're done!

Posted at August 23, 2006 12:44 PM in response to What Price Health Care?

"Jew-Hating"???? IMO, this is but one subchapter in at least a decade old, neo-con "gun barrel diplomacy" driven, christian fundamentalist influenced plot that was designed to mesh (and exploit...)with Likud's "direction":

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701906.html
CQ Transcripts Wire
Thursday, July 27, 2006; 10:49 PM

...Senator Chafee?

CHAFEE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, Ambassador.

As you said, we have a crisis and tragedy unfolding in the Middle East. And without a doubt, this is an extremely important area in the world: energy-rich, all the religious areas that are important.

And in addressing that, you said that, "We are actively engaged in New York in identifying lasting solutions to bring about a permanent peace in the Middle East. To do so, however, requires that we have a shared understanding of the problem. The United States has a firm view that the root cause of the problem is terrorism, and this terrorism is solely and directly responsible for the situation we find ourselves in today."

And you're a brilliant man. That statement doesn't make any sense. Terrorism is a device. There's got to be something deeper for the root case. Can you go a little deeper?

BOLTON: Well, I think the statement really refers to the conflict in Lebanon.

Now, I think the real root cause is the absence of a fundamental basis for peace in the region. And I think that striving to get to that point is the objective of our diplomacy now; not to simply acquiesce and a return to the status quo ante, but to see if there's not a way to turn the hostilities that are now going into shifting the basis on which we really deal in the region.

And that's why we have resisted calls for an immediate cease- fire, which has the risk of simply returning to the status quo ante.

Nobody is under any illusions about the complexity of the problem......

When you consider the following "background", it seems to explain how decisions that the Bush admin. made in 2001, to "shift toward Israel" along with the opinions of Bolton, Feith, and Rumsfeld that Israel should retain "biblical lands" and land Israel occupied because it "won the war", have resulted in the current lack of U.S. influence....or will.....to broker a cease fire:

http://harpers.org/sb-six-questions-for-wayne-white-2308402183.html
Posted on Sunday, July 23, 2006. Wayne White, now an Adjunct Scholar with Washington's Middle East Institute, was Deputy Director of the State Department's Office of Middle East and South Asia Analysis until March 2005.....

1. Condoleezza Rice is leaving for the Middle East. Is her trip likely to lead to any favorable diplomatic outcome?

I don't think so. At least not anytime soon..........
I believe her activities have been tailored to give the impression of action while not designed to make any real progress toward the urgent ceasefire that should be everyone's highest priority.
Consider that the new Bush admin., more than nine months before 9/11, according to Paul O'Neill and others present at the first Bush national security meeting, abandoned pursuit of a diplomatic solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict, and shifted to a focus on toppling Saddam and an Israel bias:

http://www.mclaughlin.com/library/moo_transcript.asp?id=33
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN'S "ONE ON ONE"

GUEST: RON SUSKIND, AUTHOR
RE: "THE PRICE OF LOYALTY"

TAPED: THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2004
BROADCAST: WEEKEND OF JANUARY 24-25, 2004

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The price of loyalty. In an extraordinary literary collaboration, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill shared his memories -- plus 19,000 pages of official documents -- with a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. The resulting book is a first x-ray of the inside of the Bush White House.....

....MR. SUSKIND: It was the first meeting of the National Security Council. The president presided, talked about how the National Security Council works,......

......MR. SUSKIND: And Condoleezza Rice. The president described this is the way it works. He threw it to Condi, said Condi will be managing this process.

And then he set policy right at the start of the administration. He said first off, we're going to pull out of the Arab-Israeli conflict. There's nothing we can do to help those people. He talked about that for a while. Colin Powell expressed immediately reservations, saying if we do this -- this is 30 years of U.S. policy. We have been fully engaged. If we do this, we will unleash Sharon and it will tear the fabric of the Mideast. And the president said at some time, a show of force can be really clarifying. That's not a direct quote, but almost.......

......MR. MCLAUGHLIN: He said Clinton overreached and it all fell apart.

MR. SUSKIND: About the Mideast.....

.....MR. SUSKIND: Well, it sounded to people in the meeting as though it was, you know, preordained and scripted, meaning that this meeting was going to be about Iraq. Not everyone knew that prior to the meeting, based on the briefing documents that were available. But what became clear immediately at that point is it would be essentially a presentation on Iraq and what to do....

http://www.issues2000.org/2004/George_W__Bush_Foreign_Policy.htm

President Bush echoed the [pro-Israel] view: 'We're going to correct the imbalances of the previous administration on the Mideast conflict. We're going to tilt back toward Israel." Bush continued, 'If the two sides don't want peace, there is no way we can force them.' Colin Powell said, 'a pullback by the US would unleash Sharon and the Israeli army.' ; Bush added, 'Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things
Source: The Price of Loyalty, by Ron Suskind, p. 71-72 Jan 13, 2004

Consider that this article documents the Bush appointments to the DOD and State Dept. of several folks, including Perle, Feith and Bolton, who advocated, back in 1996, removing Saddam, and supporting the retention by Israel, of the "biblical lands", and Rumsfeld's officially distributed opinion that Israel won the "so called occupied" territory, in war.....a seemingly counterproductive opinion, compared to longstanding U.S., M.E. policy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A45652-2003Feb8
Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy

....The Bush administration's alignment with Sharon delights many of its strongest supporters, especially evangelical Christians, and a large part of organized American Jewry, according to leaders in both groups, who argue that Palestinian terrorism pushed Bush to his new stance. But it has led to a freeze on diplomacy in the region that is criticized by Arab countries and their allies, and by many past and current officials who have participated in the long-running, never-conclusive Middle East "peace process.".....

..........One of Abrams's mentors, Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, led a study group that proposed to Binyamin Netanyahu, a Likud prime minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999, that he abandon the Oslo peace accords negotiated in 1993 and reject the basis for them -- the idea of trading "land for peace.
" Israel should insist on Arab recognition of its claim to the biblical land of Israel, the 1996 report suggested, and should "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."

Besides Perle, the study group included David Wurmser, now a special assistant to Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, and Douglas J. Feith, now undersecretary of defense for policy. Feith has written prolifically on Israeli-Arab issues for years, arguing that Israel has as legitimate a claim to the West Bank territories seized after the Six Day War as it has to the land that was part of the U.N.-mandated Israel created in 1948. Perle, Feith and Abrams all declined to be interviewed for this article.

Rumsfeld echoed the Perle group's analysis in a little-noted comment to Pentagon employees last August about "the so-called occupied territories." Rumsfeld said: "There was a war [in 1967], Israel urged neighboring countries not to get involved . . . they all jumped in, and they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in that conflict. In the intervening period, they've made some settlements in some parts of the so-called occupied area, which was the result of a war, which they won."............

......The State Department pressed for continued negotiations and pressure on Sharon to limit the scope of his military response to Palestinian suicide bombers, while the Pentagon and the vice president's office favored more encouragement for the Israelis, and less concern for a peace process which, they said, was going nowhere anyhow........

But the administration did make a series of statements and gestures intended to restrain Sharon's response to suicide bombings, and to reassert the traditional U.S. policy that Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank had to cease. At the urging of Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Bush publicly embraced the idea of a Palestinian state.........

These policy goals were put on paper, by the people in the Bush admin.,who are now carrying them out, as far back as in 1996. There is reliable evidence from former U.S. treasury sec'ty Paul O'Neill, and from other attendees to the first., Jan. 30, 2001 Nat'l Security Council meeting of the new Bush admin., to support the notion that abandoning of the Israel/M.E. peace policy goals of all post 1952, U.S. presidents, was announced as the new policy, along with a "shift toward Israel", and Bush pronouncing that "Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things", and then the meeting shifted to Iraq policy, which has dominated the agenda, ever since.

9/11 was still over nine months away, and there was and is, nothing happening that would contradict the present results of a pre-9/11 policy shift that replaced diplomacy with the use of U.S., and now IDF, military force.

Democratic elections have been held in Lebanon, in Iraq, and in the Palestinian state, and the problem is that the U.S. and Israel do not approve or accept the will of the voters who live in those "newly democratic" states.
There seems to be no acceptance by the U.S. or Israel, of the possibility that the voters in all three jurisdictions were influenced to vote for candidates that offered a militant opposition to the armed forces of both the U.S. and Israel.

It seems that the policy of the new, closer U.S./Israeli alliance is to try to kill the entire armed opposition. It isn't working out too well in Iraq, and it won't work in Gaza or in Lebanon, either.

Matt if you were an Arab, especially a male in young/middle adulthood, living in Iraq, Gaza or in Lebanon, how would you have reacted to the elections of Mr. Sharon and Mr. Bush and the policies that they pursued together? How would you react if you were living in one of those places, now? Would it make a difference if you were a sunni muslim, experiencing the effect of the rise of shia influence, unleashed as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq?

Since the policy pre-dates 9/11, it follows that the Bush mantra that "9/11 changed everything".....is bullsh*t propaganda.....
Israeli Jews are no more "victims", than Americans are, as a consequence in both countries, of too many voters duped or somehow persuaded to vote for "leaders" who act against the best interests of almost everyone!

Posted at August 17, 2006 11:45 AM in response to And This War Was For . . . What?

Architect,

Permit me to share some of the influences on my opinion that "our leaders" are among those who "hate us for our freedom", and are "terrorizing" us!

Just as he was "working from Wyoming, last year, when Bush was playing guitar and delivering a birthday cake to John McCain, while Katrina was destroying New Orleans, Mr. Cheney was again on vacation, at the same time that Mr. Bush was....this year, when the first "red alert" terror warning in post 9/11, US history was issued:

www.whitehouse.gov
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
August 10, 2006

Press Gaggle by Tony Snow
Aboard Air Force One
En route Green Bay, Wisconsin

9:33 A.M. CDT

.........Q When did the President first learn about this plot and the investigation into it?

MR. SNOW: Again, we're being a little careful on operational details. I think it's safe to say to what I said before, which is he certainly has been extensively briefed over the last few days as the operation that took place became more and more imminent.

Q Was part of that during the teleconference on Sunday?

MR. SNOW: Let's see, what day was Sunday, that was the 6th? Yes. Yes. ....

.........Q Are there details about his talk with Blair overnight, you can give? What time it occurred?

MR. SNOW: There was no overnight. That report is false, so there are no details on the fallacious report.

Q But the President, himself, approved the red alert?

MR. SNOW: Correct. It was a recommendation by the Homeland Security Council, by Secretary Chertoff and others.

Q When did he approve it?

MR. SNOW: Yesterday..........

Q Can I ask you about timing again -- not to keep harping on this, but yesterday when you talked about raising the white -- you know, saying the Democrats might want to raise the white flag --

MR. SNOW: This was not done in anticipation. It was not said with the knowledge that this was coming.

Q So the Vice President, when he did his incredibly rare conference call with reporters, also didn't know about it at the time?

MR. SNOW: I don't think so. You'll have to ask, but I can say from our point of view at that point we didn't.

Q Can you say anything about the possible al Qaeda connection?

MR. SNOW: No.

Q Can I ask on a different topic? Can you clarify the Karl Rove call to Joe Lieberman and what that was all about?

MR. SNOW: It was a personal call. Yes, as I sent you -- in fact, I may get Karl back here, if you're interested.

Q Yes.

MR. SNOW: It's probably best to let him describe, because he was in on the call. But this was not a call after the polls closed; it was not a political offer; it was not a political conversation. It was a personal conversation. And, you know, he's expressed some willingness to do it, so maybe I'll just grab him -- yank his tie and make him come back here.

Q That would be great. .......

Consider the comments that Cheney and RNC Chair, Ken Mehlmen were making....supposedly in response to Ned Lamont's primary victory, after Bush has already authorized a "red alert", but before the world was told.....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/08/14/
By insinuating that the sizeable majority of American voters who oppose the war in Iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy, Vice President Cheney on Wednesday may have crossed the line that separates legitimate political discourse from hysteria.

Cheney's comments came in a highly unusual conference call with reporters, part of an extensively orchestrated and largely successful Republican effort to spin the obviously anti-Bush message of Ned Lamont's victory over presidential enabler Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary.
In the transcript above, a White House reporter also described Cheney's "call" to reporters as, "incredibly rare conference call"....

Architect, the press "gaggle" with Tony Snow, is time stamped at 10:33 am EDT, on Aug. 10. Snow answered that Bush had made the decision to issue the first red "terror alert", of his presidency....yesterday, and that Cheney was not involved in that decision.....how credible does that sound, to you? If Snow had said that Cheney was involved, it would have been an admission that Cheney's comments were made with the knowledge that there would be a "red alert" following his "vote for democrats, and we'll get hit again", message. IMO, that is orchestrated terrorist propaganda.....

Would the following be reported about a US administration that was committed to fighting a "long war", on terror?

www.team4news.com
While terror plot unfolded, Bush administration tried to cut funds for explosives detection

WASHINGTON The Bush administration quietly tried to cut six (m) million dollars that earmarked for developing new explosives detection technology even as the British terror plot was unfolding.
Officials wanted to use the money instead on federal building protection. Congressional leaders rejected the idea.

It's one in a series of Homeland Security Department steps that have left lawmakers and some of the department's own experts questioning the administration's commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.

An investigation by The Associated Press shows the department failed to spend 200 (m) million dollars in research and development money from past years, forcing lawmakers this summer to rescind the money.

The Bush administration has also been slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year. The terrorist plot to blow up trans-Atlantic passenger jets would have involved liquid explosives.
....and....it's not like liquid explosives is a recent threat scenario, either:

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2006Aug10
Mishap Foils First Plot to Blow Up Jets
Thursday, August 10, 2006
By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer

A mysterious chemical fire in a seedy Philippine hotel in January 1995 foiled the first plot to blow American airliners out of the sky with liquid bombs _ a grisly scenario allegedly planned by extremists arrested in Britain.

British authorities said Thursday they had thwarted a terrorist plot to simultaneously blow up 10 aircraft heading to the U.S. using explosives smuggled in hand luggage in a plan that police described as"mass murder on an unimaginable scale."

The alleged plot was grimly reminiscent of a plan developed in late 1994 and early 1995 by Ramzi Yousef, who is serving a life sentence without parole in the United States for masterminding the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

Yousef planned to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners over the Pacific and even carried out a test bombing in December 1994, smuggling nitroglycerine onto aPhilippine Airlines jet in a contact lens solution bottle.

The explosive detonated near Okinawa, killing a Japanese man after Yousef had gotten off the plane in Cebu, Philippines. The plane managed to land safely in Okinawa.

At the time, however, authorities had no idea of the link between the blast and Yousef. That would come later after an intensive investigation of the strange events that unfolded on the night of Jan. 6, 1995, in Suite 603 of the Dona Josefa apartment-hotel, located near Manila's raucous red-light district.

........Under intensive interrogration over time, Murad gave up a plot _ to kill the pope and blow up American planes. Corraborating evidence was found on a laptop and diskettes found in Suite 603.

Three days after Murad's arrest, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued a security alert for all American airliners flying over the Pacific, including a ban on hand-carried liquids, aerosols and shaving cream.

Yousef slipped out of the country and made his way to Pakistan, where he was arrested a month later and sent to the United States. Murad was extradited to the United States the following April and testified against Yousef.

Both are serving sentences of life without parole at the Florence Super-Max federal prison in Colorado.

Robert H. Reid, correspondent-at-large for The Associated Press, was chief of bureau in Manila in January 1995.
Let's see...the US Justice Dept. has had these f**kers in custody for more than ten years.....and only this past week, after deliberately not funding research to detect the type of terrorist threat that they planned nearly 12 years ago, and killed an airline passenger as they tested their method....have US and UK passengers been banned from carrying liquids and gels onto airliners, and no technology was developed in all that time.....funding was actually blocked recently.....to bring screening machines "on line" at airports.

Doesn't President Bush seems more like the "terrorist" "in chief", or at the very least, incompetent and "clueless", than he does, the "commander in chief", now that we see what has transpired, in the fullness of time? The following was written before Bush and Cheney, caught on tandom vacations last year, during the "long war on terror", had their asses handed to them over their collective, delayed, and incompetent, crony sabotaged, disaster relief response:

www.washingtonpost.com
Vacationing Bush Poised to Set a Record
With Long Sojourn at Ranch, President on His Way to Surpassing Reagan's Total

By Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 3, 2005; Page A04

WACO, Tex., Aug. 2 -- President Bush is getting the kind of break most Americans can only dream of -- nearly five weeks away from the office, loaded with vacation time.

The president departed Tuesday for his longest stretch yet away from the White House, arriving at his Crawford ranch in the evening to clear brush, visit with family and friends, and tend to some outside-the-Beltway politics. By historical standards, it is the longest presidential retreat in at least 36 years.

The August getaway is Bush's 49th trip to his cherished ranch since taking office and Tuesday was the 319th day that Bush has spent, entirely or partially, in Crawford -- roughly 20 percent of his presidency to date, according to Mark Knoller, a CBS Radio reporter known for keeping better records of the president's travel than the White House itself. Weekends and holidays at Camp David or at his parents' compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, bump up the proportion of Bush's time away from Washington even further....
Bush made sure that the press reported that he had ended his 5 week vacation, last year, "2 days early", to do his much criticized, "fly over" of the devastated Gulf coast, in AF-1, on his flight back to DC that ended his vacation.

The only time I recall Bush interrupting a trip to Crawford, in "mid-stream", was his middle of the weekend flight to DC to sign the law that transferred Michael Schiavo's spousal guardianship over his brain dead wife, Terri's, long term medical care issues. Would a benevolent POTUS, during a "lomg war" that he himself declared, choose this record for his legacy? The vacation reputation is something he could have controlled, if he was benevolent, and if he gave a sh*t. When you observe what "they" do, their words take on new meaning, or are rendered meaningless.....

....but another year has passed.....and "here they go again"....the first code red "terror alert" in the 4 years and 11 months since 9/11 is issued, concerning a "real" threat that has been known about for a dozen years, but ignored by the administration's TSA and DHS, but not before Cheney, once again on vacation at the same time as Bush is....is afforded an opportunity to make a rare telephone conference call to reporters to spew some partisan crap designed to put more fear in us, if we make the bad decision that Connecticut democrats had made the day before....and vote the "wrong way" !. Mehlman of the RNC picked up Cheney's terroristic talking points and spewed them further, that afternoon.

Architect, so how do you call it? Are "our leaders" engaged in a "vote control", domestic terror propaganda campaign, or are the just the most lazy and incompetent executives to lead us in a "WoT", and just the beneficiaries of an incredible string of lucky coincidences, as to the timing of what they say about "terror", vs. the background of current events and competing news stories that are either muted because of the timing of their alerts, or take on unintended prominence, as Cheney's Aug. 9 comments did, after the Aug. 10, "red alert"?

Posted at August 16, 2006 11:49 AM in response to George Bush and the Politics of Terror

Sorry Larry, Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane and their editor Bill Keller, seem to be involved in some sort of a Dick Cheney "circle jerk". I don't know what to make of the "reporting" of either of them, or of Dick's accusation, detailed on my tpmcafe blog.... Lichtblau & Risen, on 6/22/06: " Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database......."
Scott Shane, on 9/21/01:

http://fox59.trb.com/bal-te.money21sep21,0,2732416.story
From the Baltimore Sun
Authorities trying to track money back to bin Laden
September 21, 2001
".......Funding on that scale would not necessarily have required large international bank transfers of the kind often seen in cases involving drug cartels or corrupt regimes. That could limit the ability of the National Security Agency to follow the money through its electronic intercepts of such transactions, which are carried out by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), headquartered in Belgium........"

Posted at July 10, 2006 11:29 AM in response to House Intel Chief Misses the Boat

Nevermind waiting 50 years....words are not adeqaute to convey how I look at you, now, after this:

....But how will the readers of history 50 years from now look at us? Will they say, “I hope I would have been one of those who stood really firmly against the evils of Salafism, while others were kind of soft on terror and use of force?” Or will they say, “I hope I would have been one of those who understood from the start that the Iraq war was a crime and a mistake, that ‘War On Terror’ could not be invoked as an endless excuse for whatever the president wanted to do, and that American leadership in the world would be seriously weakened by irresponsible use of our power. ” As opposed to those who were too spooked by Bush, too vulnerable to worries about Democrats seeming soft, too distracted by the stupid few – like Michael Moore or perhaps some sub-faction of MoveOn.org – who criticized even the use of force against the Taliban.....

[1] A new president, in 2001, appointed by the SCOTUS in a hotly contested election, where his own brother, governor or the state with the most voting controversy and the closest vote, was accused of interfering with an orderly recount, and was later exposed for his part in the coverup of a "sham" partisan, felon's "purge" list of registered voters.

[2] Many of this president's key appointments came from the member's list of PNAC, a group of hawk conservatives who openly stated that it would probably require a "new Pearl Harbor" type of incident to achieve the timely, considerable increases in defense spending that was a core goal of PNAC.

[3] With approval ratings below 50 percent, just 6-1/2 months into his term, the president took a 5 week vacation. It was later learned that he covered up the fact that, early in his vacation, he was briefed about specifics of the terror attacks that took place a month later and when the facts were reported, he tried to stop public disclosure of the briefing content. Three months after the 9/11 attacks, the president enjoyed an 87 percent job approval rating.

[4] This president came back from vacation to preside, just days later, over the period on his watch that the 9/11 attacks took place. He declared, just 5 days later:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html
September 16, 2001

Remarks by the President Upon Arrival
The South Lawn

(located in Bush's last quote on the page...)
....."Never did anybody's thought process about how to protect America did we ever think that the evil-doers would fly not one, but four commercial aircraft into precious U.S. targets - never."

It took 32 months to expose the fact that the president had lied...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A9449-2004Apr13&notFound=true
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A16

While planning a high-level training exercise months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. military officials considered a scenario in which a hijacked foreign commercial airliner flew into the Pentagon, defense officials said yesterday.....

[5] Less than a month after 9/11, the president ordered U.S. military attacks, and then an invasion and occupation if Afghanistan.
Here is a sample of the history and sentiment that stood in the way of such an attack, before
9/11"

Bin Laden comes home to roost
His CIA ties are only the beginning of a woeful story
By Michael Moran
MSNBC
NEW YORK, Aug. 24, 1998

....HINDSIGHT OR TUNNEL VISION
It should be pointed out that the evidence of bin Laden’s connection to these activities is mostly classified, though its hard to imagine the CIA rushing to take credit for a Frankenstein’s monster like this.

It is also worth acknowledging that it is easier now to oppose the CIA’s Afghan adventures than it was when Hatch and company made them in the mid-1980s. After all, in 1998 we now know that far larger elements than Afghanistan were corroding the communist party’s grip on power in Moscow.....
Mr. Schmitt, if I tried to number all of the reasons that I found your "too distracted by the stupid few...who criticized even the use of force against the Taliban" statement appalling, I would run out of numbers and space. On what basis did you buy the Bush administration's immediate release of the "fairy tale" that a "cave dwelling kidney patient" was the "patsy", fingered by the PNAC cabal at 1600 Penn. Ave., just minutes after the 9/11 attacks?

How 'bout this "gem" from the 9/11 Commission:

(Text. Version) http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrFin_App.pdf.
Origin of the Funds (Page 14)

To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used
for the 9/11 attacks .....this claim is almost certainly wrong, because Bin Ladin was not personally financing al Qaeda during this time frame..... Ultimately the question of the
origin of the funds is of little practical significance.

You sir, have bought into an unsubstantiated wad of very disturbing propaganda, and your writing displays your blind acceptance of enough of it to enable your "conclusions".

Doesn't the skeptic in you, wonder how all east coast air defense systems failed to intercept on 9/11, how it was that "Patriot Act I" was already compiled, and on the shelf, ready for nearly unanimous congressional passage, why Bush first opposed an independent 9/11 Commission investigation, and then failed to create anything resembling an independent commission, and even then, refused to cooperate with commission he did appoint?

Dosen't the Bush "track record" since, give you pause....the lies and misstatements to justify war with Iraq, Powell's phoney Feb. 5, 2003 presentation to the U.N., that his aid of 16 years, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson described as "The lowest point in my life." ?

Are you at all curious why the 9/11 Commission and the Robb-Silberman Commission were specifically not authorized to investigate the Bush administration's handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence info, or why the promised release of the "phase II" report by Sen. Pat Robertson's Senate Select Intelligence Committee, has been postponed since July 2004, and divided again recently, to further postpone results of the Bush administration's handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence info?

I just wanted to give you a brief recap, Mr. Schmitt, of some of the details that you had to be uncurious about, to keep your place in an "ivory tower", while I'm relegated to being "on the fringe", because I have been persuaded to think the worst, of an administration that could make my impression that they are war criminals, guilty of conducting "aggressive war", and traitors, strongly suspected of complicity in the 9/11 attacks, and the intended discrediting and then disbursement of the former covert "talent" and it's management, at CIA....they could make my outraged and highly negative impression of them, go away, if they had a defense to disclose, that would clear them of wrongdoing.

You facilitate them, Mr. Schmitt, by giving them a "pass" that is "win win", for you, and especially for them. You seem like a sharp, articulate man, Mr. Schmitt...so why have you "bought in" to enough of their propaganda to allow yourself to make the statment that I've quoted in the beginning of this post? I think that the answer is that you decided, years ago, that your "cred" would be strengthened if you questioned as little of what they've fed you, as you could get away with.

Consider that, by doing this, you've relegated yourself to a judgment by more curious, more skeptical, and better informed folks who you once shared many principles and ideals with, that you are an irrelevant, "sell out".

How do these folks, less accepting than you; with their informed, legitimate, relevant, questions, deserve your condescending contempt?
You take at least as much away from them, as the precious "credibility" that you worry they may usurp from you. You are "credible" to do exactly what, Mr. Schmitt? Is it to "rubber stamp" the dubious, BS tale that the Bush administration tries to pass off for "what happened on 9/11"?
Where are your "facts", what do you stand for?

It is of great concern to me that your mindset is all too typical of the folks who have the information and justification to oppose and challenge the legitimacy of every "effing" word uttered by members of the Bush administration, but can't or won't follow through on what the "record" of these thugs is telling us is the appropriate response, each and every time.

The "Jay Rockefellerization" of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, has spread to a much larger venue...it is on display for all to see, here, as well.

Your way of thinking, Mr. Schmitt, as, like Mr. Beinart, you try to remain safely distant from
"the stupid few – like Michael Moore or perhaps some sub-faction of MoveOn.org", may even achieve your goal of making others who think like you, "more electable". I see it, though, as just replacing one group who don't put importance on truth and justice, with another who are too concerned with attaining power to acknowledge that the "devil, is in the details". I don't want to live in a"Remember the Maine, world. I don't think living that way, bothers you so much, Mr. Schmitt.

Posted at June 11, 2006 3:49 PM in response to How Will A Future Beinart View US?

The reality of the effect of the sudden crisis of the twin deficits has yet to sink in. From federal budget surplus in 2001, to $2.2 trillion in new debt now, and $700 billion combined (on the books deficit and off the books Iraq war "supplements") annual current and future deficits, at minimum, into the forseeable future.

The CIA's World Factbook estimated the U.S's 2005 GDP at $12.41 trillion, ranking it at the time as the 35th most indebted country in the world by percentage of GDP at 64.7% of GDP. By comparison, the Factbook's 2005 estimate of China's debt was $242 billion with an estimated 2005 GDP of $8.182 trillion. Of the 206 listed countries in the Factbook the combined debt was $38.54 trillion. Of that world wide debt, the US owes approximately 22%....

In 2003 $318 billion was spent on interest payments servicing the debt, out of a total tax revenue of $1,952 billion
[1]
The interest payments on the rising federal debt, in a climate of rising interest rates, will soon excede 25 percent of the annual federal budget...a debt trap that will trigger greater deficits and a spiral of fiscal decline.

The trade deficit, $427 billion annually in 2001,was $805 billion, in 2005, before the full effect of $1 billion/day spending (borrowing) for 14 million bbls per day of American imports of petroleum equivalents. The new, sustained $70 bbl price of oil was a 4th qtr., 2005, development.

In 1979, at the time of the last dollar crisis induced inflation wave, the domestic savings rate was 10 percent, and now it is negative, for the first time since 1933.

U.S. borrowing to support the "twins", sucks up all of the yearly savings in the entire world. The coming dollar collapse will solve many of the problems, ironically, that some of you seem misguided enough to believe can be solved by spending money that the U.S. people and there government no longer possess, and will soon proabably not even be permitted by current foreign lenders, even to borrow.

Energy independence, I fear, armed with the facts to back up my opinion, will come almost overnight, on the morning when the dollar sinks to now unthinkable levels. We produce no manufactures goods, and we will be unable to borrow the funds or possess the dollar purchasing power to import those goods...so..trade deficit and energy dependence...solved. How much to spend to fight the "war on terror"....a bankrupted federal government will be the solution to that question, too.

Face the fact that there is no money...no savings...no manufacturing base....only red ink, and mounting debt service burden...in a time of rising interest rates. The "wealth" and purchasing strength of the U.S. consists solely of a deteriorating credit rating. It's over, whether you debunk or dismiss the facts. There is one option left...it will be played. Pre-emptive threats of war will be made against China and Russia, but probably not early enough to convince Russia, which might even be possible from the current U.S. position of relative military strength, to agree to unilateral nuclear disarmament now, or face total annihilation.

Thinsk I'm "nuts"? I'm trying to describe our current situation, with the facts as they are, as the numbers and trends show that they are, and by examining what are realistic options are, based on the resources at hand, the military resources that we spent so much treasure on.

If you've got anything to offer, beyond, "Noooo yer wrong !!!" I'd love to read it. The truth is, you don't, and it will probably be quite some time until you confront where we are, what we have to work with, and the avoidance that will probably get in the way of doing the inevitable at the best possible time to increase the odds of success. I sometimes can't believe that I've arrived here....but this is where the numbers show where we are now, and it sure isn't pretty....but I'm trying to face this crisis by describing it, and the one desperate option to deal with desperate times, by trying to discuss whether to use our only advantage....threats of use of overwhelming military force, from the mouths of neocons who could probably seem convincing to Russian and Chinese leaders. Yes, I think that it has come to this...that Cheney, at least, was born to pull something like this off...or die trying. Cheney most likely has been briefed as to how untenable the dollar's circumstances are, and he needs only to look at the prices of oil and gold, or of copper, for confirmation. You can leave the choice of whether to "leverage" the U.S. military investment into a "return" that is palatable to an American populace that is no longer capable of even conceiving a view of the hardship that is coming, much less rise to the challenge and meet it with quiet, constructive resolve.

Sabre rattling with resolve for actual follow through...pre-emptive, "example setting" nuclear strikes against Russia or China, are just the potential "quick fix" solution that Americans have come to expect. It's just a variation on Bush's strategy to deal with the "post 9/11 world".

This time, IMO, it is different, because it is actually neccessary to consider the "option" of pre-emptive war, to solve or buy time to come up with solutions to a real problem...the death of dollar purchasing power, by the end of this decade.

Posted at June 10, 2006 1:40 PM in response to Why Terrorism