Is the U.S. Government Interested in Right Wing Domestic Terrorism?

Posted: January 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, FBI raids, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Leland Yee

California State Senator and San Francisco mayoral candidate Leland Yee has been receiving death threats from right-wing nuts for “more than six years.”

In the past couple of days, Yee’s office has received more than one copy of the following threatening fax, which also includes slurs directed at President Obama:

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Mayoral candidate and state Sen. Leland Yee said racist death threats were faxed to his San Francisco and Sacramento offices today. They appear linked to his recent criticism of right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh.

The anonymous faxes, laced with racial epithets and misspellings, were addressed to “JoBama Rectum Sniffing Moron LEELAND LEE” and call Yee a “fish head,” according to a copy provided by Yee’s office.

The faxes include a drawing of a U.S. flag-adorned pickup truck towing a noose that is looped around what appears to be a caricature head of President Barack Obama. The document says: “Without exceptions, Marxists are enemies of the United States Constitution! Death to all Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!”

The threats apparently are in response to Yee’s criticism of Rush Limbaugh for ridiculing the Chinese President Hu Jintao’s speech at the White House last week. Watch the video:

Yesterday, Sen. Lee gave a press conference and called for a stop to the racist, violent threats has been receiving by fax, e-mail, and text message.

“I thought our country and our community were a lot better than this,” Yee, D-San Francisco, said at an afternoon news conference in the Hiram Johnson building at 455 Golden Gate Ave.

[….]

“To see, and to hear, and to receive these kinds of horrible statements and racist threats is truly angering.”

According to the article “detectives are investigating.” They previously “investigated” faxes that were sent after Sen. Yee criticized CSU Stanislaus for shredding documents regarding the amount of money paid to Sarah Palin for a speech.

What does it take to get the FBI and/or Department of Homeland Security involved in the “investigation?” We know that the NSA can and does track the communications of American citizens–without a warrant if they are characterized as “terrorists.” Yet the claim is that no one “knows where the messages are coming from.” Come on. Don’t tell me there is no way to trace the origin of these faxes and e-mails.

What is going on here? The FBI has no qualms about breaking down the doors of peace activists, but they won’t deal with racist death threats to a California public official?

Thursday Reads

Posted: January 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, fetus fetishists, Medicare, morning reads, Reproductive Rights, Social Security, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 42 Comments

Good Morning!!

The east coast is getting hit by another big snowstorm. It was snowing in New Jersey all day yesterday, according to Joanelle; and the storm had moved up to Connecticut by early evening, according to Zaladonis. It started outside my house around 8:30PM and it’s supposed to keep coming down until mid-morning. Thank goodness I don’t have to go anywhere till tomorrow.

So what’s happening in the news this morning?

The ACLU didn’t care for the joke President Obama made about TSA patdowns in his SOTU speech.

“Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car,” Obama said. “For some trips, it will be faster than flying – without the pat-down.”

Awkward laughter and a scattered applause followed as Obama smiled and chuckled.

Moments after the president made the remark, the American Civil Liberties Union fired out a Tweet that read: “President Obama makes funny about TSA pat-downs, but the violations of the Constitution are NO JOKE!”

It was accompanied by a link to a scathing report on the ACLU’s Web site, which noted complaints “from men, women and children who reported feeling humiliated and traumatized by these searches, and, in some cases, comparing their psychological impact to sexual assaults.”

I love the ACLU.

There may have been poison in the bomb that was planted along an MLK birthday parade route in Spokane, WA last week.

A bomb maker mixed chemicals with shrapnel in what law enforcement officials say was a weapon designed to inflict maximum injuries during last week’s Martin Luther King Jr. march in downtown Spokane.

Tests are being conducted to determine the type of chemical and whether it made the bomb potentially more deadly, Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said Tuesday.

“I know the bomb had some kind of chemical material inside, but we are still trying to figure out what kind. All we know there is a substance,” Knezovich said. “If there was an added dimension, it added to the lethality of it.”

Knezovich said early talks indicated the chemical could have been a compound used in common rat poison. Rat poison has been added to bombs in the Middle East for the stated purpose of acting as an anti-coagulant – which inhibits the ability of bleeding wounds to clot.

A new Gallup poll shows that most Americans don’t want cuts in Social Security, Medicare, education, anti-poverty programs, or defense, but they still want Congress to deal with the deficit before raising the debt limit.

Hmmm….what do they want to cut then? When Gallup looked at the results based on political persuasion, they found that Democrats were more willing to cut defense while Republicans wanted cuts in funding for the arts. Figures….

Glenn Greenwald has a nice post on the bipartisan lack of empathy for whistleblower Bradley Manning. It’s a quiz based on this discussion from the Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Go take the quiz. It seems Glenn has the flu. I feel for him, since I had a really bad case recently. Feel better soon, Glenn.

Remember the scam that was used to smear ACORN awhile back? From Alternet, Planned Parenthood may have been targeted with the similar smear campaign.

In what is perhaps one of the most craven actions of a deeply craven movement, anti-choice scam artists apparently affiliated with Live Action Films and Lila Rose of undercover “gotcha film-fame” appear to have attempted an “ACORN-like” hoax on Planned Parenthood Federation of America by sending people into Planned Parenthood health centers in six states posing as sex traffickers seeking health care for young girls who were “part” of their supposed sex trafficking rings.

In response, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder describing the visits and asking for an investigation.

In a statement, PPFA said:

Last week, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) alerted federal authorities to a potential multistate sex trafficking ring. Over a five day period, visitors to Planned Parenthood health centers in six states said they were seeking information from Planned Parenthood about health services Planned Parenthood could provide to underage girls who were part of a sex trafficking ring. Subsequent to alerting U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Planned Parenthood learned the identify of one of those involved and believes these visits are likely a hoax by opponents of legal abortion seeking to discredit Planned Parenthood, which delivers preventive health care and abortion services to three million women each year.

PPFA reports that men, sometimes accompanied by a woman, “visited at least 11 Planned Parenthood health centers in six states within a one-week time frame.” The visits were made between January 11th and January 15th to health centers in Virginia, Indiana, New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Arizona. “Among them was a clinic in Tucson, Ariz., which Planned Parenthood said was visited on the 15th, a week after [emphasis added] the shooting rampage in that city that critically injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Unbelievable!

Soooooo…. What are you reading this morning?

What Obama Left Out of His SOTU Address

Posted: January 26, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Gulf Oil Spill, Gun Control, jobs, SOTU, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , | 32 Comments

After Obama’s pro-corporate, cliche-ridden SOTU speech filled with right wing talking points, I think anyone with a brain has to admit that the mask is off. This man is Ronald Reagan without the folksy anecdotes and charisma (I never saw it, but supposedly he had it).

The speech last night demonstrated once and for all that Obama is heartless, self-involved, and narcissistic. He cares nothing about the fate of ordinary Americans, or what will become of this country once he has eliminated the middle class. The only thing he cares about is making sure he has a soft life giving speeches and serving on boards of directors after he leaves the White House.

To accomplish that Obama needs to try not to piss off too many rich people and he has to finish the job that Reagan, Bush I and Bush II started–handing over the U.S. treasury to the wealthiest 1% and in the process destroying the country.

I read the SOTU speech carefully, and there are quite a number of important topics that President Obama completely failed to address. Here are some relevant words that were never even mentioned in Obama’s 2011 SOTU address:

middle class
poor
poverty
hungry
homeless
school lunches
guns
firearms
gun control
unemployment
women’s rights
reproductive rights
Guantanamo
torture
rendition
drones
Gulf of Mexico
oil spill
BP
seafood
AIDS

How could this man get up and address the country without once mentioning the rapidly ballooning poverty and homeless rates and the millions of unemployed Americans–many of whom have completely exhausted their benefits? How could he talk about our schools without mentioning the many children who are struggling to get an education while living on the streets or in families who can’t afford enough food?

How could he talk about the shootings in Tucson without discussing the need for some kind of rational gun control?

How could he freeze government salaries and ask Congress to freeze discretionary spending for five years while recommending more corporate giveaways and tax cuts for corporations?

How could he talk about cutting the deficit without getting us out of the two wars we’ve been fighting on borrowed money for longer than any other war in U.S. history?

How could he talk about competition for jobs without seriously addressing corporate outsourcing or the possibility of the government creating jobs as Roosevelt did during the last Great Depression?

I was sickened by Obama’s call for “sacrifice.”

The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can’t just stand still. As Robert Kennedy told us, “The future is not a gift. It is an achievement.” Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age.

And now it’s our turn. We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. (Applause.) We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit and reform our government. That’s how our people will prosper. That’s how we’ll win the future.

Bullshit! What sacrifice are you going to make Mr. President? What sacrifice will you ask of your corporate masters, of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America? Do tell. No, the sacrifice you talk about is to be borne by public employees (who, btw, are “disproportionately Black”), the citizens of states that will go bankrupt, the poor, the elderly, and the shrinking middle class.

I was nauseated by Obama’s call for universities to

open their doors to our military recruiters and ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.

The “divisive battles of the past?” Meaning the fight to end the Vietnam War? The endless war that has now been exceeded in length by the mess in Afghanistan?

I was also disturbed by Obama’s claim that Americans “share common hopes and a common creed.” Really? What hopes do I share in common with John Boehner or Michelle Bachmann? What “creed” is he referring to? If it’s Christianity, many of us don’t share that either.

There was so much wrong with Obama’s speech last night. But worst of all was the President’s complete lack of compassion for those who are suffering while bankers and CEOs get bailouts and tax cuts. Much of the corporate media has either praised Obama’s speech or made excuses for it. Here’s an antidote from Patrick Martin at the World Socialist website:

Obama displayed utter callousness and indifference toward the social distress of tens of millions of Americans. There was virtually no reference to unemployment or the staggering growth of economic inequality, and no proposals for creating jobs for the 17 million workers who are jobless or forced to subsist on part-time and temporary work.

The words “poverty,” “foreclosures,” “hunger” and “homelessness” were not uttered, despite sharp increases in all four during the first two years of Obama’s tenure.

Listening to Obama’s desultory remarks, one would never have guessed that just 28 months ago the American financial-corporate elite brought the American and world economy to its knees, precipitating the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The speech was a paean to American capitalism and the very financial bandits who are chiefly responsible for the catastrophe facing the American people.

Obama boasted of the good fortune of corporate America, which is making more money than ever. “The stock market has come roaring back,” he declared. “Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.” Under conditions of near double-digit unemployment, he claimed to have “broken the back of this recession.”

The state of our union is not strong. Our society is sick and getting sicker by the day. We desperately need leadership, but it doesn’t seem like we’re going to get it soon. I don’t know what the answer is, but Barack Obama is not going to help us find it.

Live Blog: SOTU 2011

Posted: January 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, Surreality, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 106 Comments

Just how bad will it be? Document the atrocities as you watch and/or listen to the State of the Union Address tonight. I don’t know how much of it I can stand to watch–I may check in and out.

The one thing that has me slightly interested is watching Boehner’s reactions. Will he burst into tears? That would be fun. You can watch the live stream of C-span’s coverage of the SOTU here, beginning at 8PM.

At least someone talked some sense into our Reagan-adoring President. He’s decided not to call for cuts in Social Security and Medicare–not that that will stop him from approving them. But it must have dawned on him that he might need at least a few middle class and elderly votes to get reelection next year.

But there is plenty of stupid in the speech according to multiple advance reports. Remember the dopey “nonsecurity” spending freeze Obama proposed awhile back? Well he still wants a freeze, only now he’s going to make it for five years instead of just three. {sigh….}

At Open Left, Paul Rosenberg reacts:

He may not be ready to gut Social Security just yet, but he has definitively jettisoned 70 years of economic history. Government no longer steps in to spend money when consumer demand fails. Instead, government works hard to make matters even worse. With state and local budgets once again being cut across the country, there will clearly be net decreases in government spending as far as the eye can see. Herbert Hoover would be so proud!

[….]

Why has 70 years of macro-economic history and understanding been tossed out the window, in favor of returning to the darkness of pre-macro ignorance? This is a variant of the question that Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman have been asking in anguish for many moons now. Why has a rage to punish the poor, and even the middle class completely taken over and displaced the commonsense interest in preserving the basic stability of the economy through as quick a recovery as possible?

I don’t know….because he’s stupid? Or maybe just evil? Whatever the reason, we’re headed for more hard times.

At FDL, David Dayen writes about The Triumph of Austerity and the Abandoning of the Unemployed

An economy with 9.4% topline unemployment is sick. This is not a time to deal with a sick patient by planning a regimen for diet and exercise five years from now. The patient needs immediate help, and he’s not even going to hear soothing words to that effect from anyone in the political class, let alone get the medicine needed.

In the process, this pre-emptive bow to the austerity hysterics, at least in the short term, may be good for poll numbers but terrible for the long-term economy.

Let’s face it. This man couldn’t care less about Americans being out of work, losing their homes, and falling into poverty.

What can we do to make this bearable? Let’s look for little bits of humor and/or surreality. If you have ideas for drinking games, feel free to propose them (I don’t drink, but don’t mind a contact high).

Once the speech is over, there could be some laughs in the Republican responses. Crazy-ass Ayn Rand fan Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) is giving the official response. MSNBC has a preview. Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, one of the people to blame for the horrendous Obama presidency, has a few things to say about Ryan.

Ryan is an Ayn Rand-quoting zealot, one of the Republican Party’s self-styled “Young Guns.” He’s spent his adult life inside the Beltway, on the political right, with no experience in the world of business, labor, the executive branch or the private sector. Incubated in a right-wing think tank, writing speeches for Jack Kemp and William Bennett, he was elected to Congress at age 28. Ryan became the most loyal of loyal foot soldiers in the Congress presided over by Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert, a fact Ryan now glosses over as he describes those Congresses as “corrupt.”

Ryan has been dubbed a Republican “thinker” by national reporters desperate to find someone they can praise in a party that was extreme before the Tea Partyers came to town. But, in fact, his rhetoric is a barely varnished echo of the ravings of Glenn Beck. He accuses Obama of a “treacherous plan,” saying that Democrats have a “hardcore-left agenda,” and claims that Democrats are steering the country “very far left, very fast” – a direction he describes as “completely antithetical to what this country is about.”

This sort of rhetoric, once scorned as sophomoric at best, is now common currency on the Republican right. While Ryan will be careful to avoid such language in the GOP response to the State of the Union, he’ll reveal his ideological zealotry in the policies he will propose.

Most of those policies will come from Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a budget manifesto published last year that The Post’s Ezra Klein aptly described as “nothing short of violent.”

Yep, the guy’s a complete wingnut, but van den Heuval is also permanently discredited as a representative of liberal thought.

And that’s not all, CNN will broadcast an alternative Tea Party response to the SOTU by Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minnesota).

{hysterical laughter}

Paul Ryan may be a wingnut, but Bachmann is truly insane. Surely her speech will be good for a few laughs even in these dark times. According to CNN’s Political Ticker,

Her themes tonight will be “making sure Congress is not spending more than its taking in,” “no tax increases” and the importance of “acting within the bounds of the Constitution.”

Hmmm…I never knew that Congress actually handled money.

Greg Sargent provides CNN’s rationalizations for airing Bachmann’s speech.

CNN, which is taking some criticism from both sides for agreeing to air Michele Bachmann’s response to Obama’s speech tonight, sends over a statement justifying the move:

“The Tea Party has become a major force in American politics and within the Republican Party. Hearing the Tea Party’s perspective on the State of the Union is something we believe CNN’s viewers will be interested in hearing and we are happy to include this perspective as one of many in tonight’s coverage.”

Hmmm…I was going to suggest that maybe CNN’s decision to air her speech just might be driven by a desire to curry favor with the Tea Party. This statement doesn’t do much to suggest otherwise.

The Tea Party is now one of two major opposition parties in our three-party system. Who knew?

If only we had smarter politicians and a less embarrassing media! Oh well…let’s make the most of it. I look forward to reading your reactions.

Countdown to SOTU

Posted: January 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Republican presidential politics, SCOTUS, SOTU, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , | 8 Comments

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

We’re going to be live blogging the SOTU address to night so be sure to join us.   However, dribs and drabs of SOTU preview are hitting the media channels already.  It’s probably good to do a round up of them before we settle in with our popcorn and disappointment.

ABC’s Jake Tapper is part of the White House entourage. Here’s a list of things he has that will be covered tonight by President Obama.

Pursuing a path of deficit reduction and government reform, President Obama will tonight in his State of the Union address call for a ban on earmarks and he will propose a five year budget freeze on non-security related discretionary spending, ABC News has learned.

The proposals come as the president prepares to tackle the deficit and debt and as he faces a House of Representatives in Republican hands, many of whose members include those affiliated with the Tea Party who may be willing to embrace both moves.

The president will propose some new spending in certain areas that address the speech’s theme of “How We Win the Future”: innovation, education and infrastructure. But those increases will be proposed within the context of a proposed partial budget freeze.

In other words, the President’s State of the Union address will embrace the politically expedient while denying the obvious.  Our country has a severe lack of critical mass of buyers with incomes to support their own discretionary spending.  We also have levels of unacceptable unemployment all over this country which means less taxes and more outlays.  To not specifically address what we know from 70 years of economic theory directly and continue living in a Reagan-like stupor over what really drives things like jobs and GDP growth is just morally reprehensible for any educated person in a leadership position.  Look at that picture up there.  There appears to be a huge group of them.

Earmarks aren’t a huge deal as I’ve showed in post after post on the actual numbers of the budget deficit. They make up less than 1 percent. That’s a political potato chip and no one seems to be able to eat just one. No wonder all the economists left the west wing and have been replaced by investment banker/lawyers. You can only fight an uphill right wing meme so long coming from a Democratic President.

ABC has a SOTU primer up that gives some history and sets some expectations. They believe that POTUS will make hay of the productive lame duck session.

While the election was heated, there has been a move since to tamp down the rhetoric and move toward bipartisan solutions. The lame-duck period after the election was particularly productive as Democrats and a few Republicans passed a number of bills before Republicans took control of the House this month.

Obama will likely point to this period as the way government should work. Obama will likely point to this period as the way government should work. Republicans grumbled at the time that Democrats took advantage of the lame-duck session, passing legislation before Republicans officially took control of the House in January.

If there is a possibility to get some infrastructure spending through at any meaningful level, then I could experience a little sense of relief.  TPM believes that even some key Republicans will go along with that type of spending. Of course, that actually is a bit of an earmark isn’t it?  Doesn’t every congressperson want their share of road funds or that new airport?  How these get chosen and funded might just mean we see more earmarks in reality.  However, any government spending that increases demand and spurs jobs at this point is preferable to none.  I’d even take a few bridges to no where at this point.

One area the Republican party’s anti-spending crusade puts them in a bind is infrastructure spending. Repairing roads and bridges, modernization, etc. have historically been bipartisan priorities — but they’ve also always cost a lot of money.

Ask Republicans whether they want to include transportation infrastructure in their calls for broad spending cuts, and you don’t get a very specific answer.

“We’ve got to learn how to prioritize and do more with less in all areas of government,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor at his weekly press conference today. “It just is what it is. In the terms of transportation, we’ve got to figure out ways how to leverage dollars, how to come up with innovative ways to address the nation’s ailing transportation infrastructure.”

The biggest problem getting these through congress will have to do with the Federal Accounting system as much as anything.  You see, the government doesn’t depreciate or amortize things like battleships and dams.  Expenditures are fully expensed so in terms of the budget deficit, things will get worse in the short term. This means there has to be a cease fire on the ‘size’ of the deficit on these kinds of items.  Their benefits last for years.  They create do create jobs and jobbers.  The problem is they are an upfront cost and we live in a world of political football rhetoric that includes deliberate misunderstanding of economics as well as economics deniers.

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