Friday Reads

Good Morning!

It’s one of those mornings where I could really use room service.  I’m getting to that age where rush deadlines do me in. Fortunately, Bostonboomer helped me with some great links so I’m  going to share them with you!  This first one is from Boston as well as Bostonboomer and it’s about the Elizabeth Warren campaign and some interesting local dynamics.  Senator John Kerry has committed to supporting another candidate in the primary.

In the video announcing her candidacy released this morning, Warren eschews the ivory tower in favor of a populist pitch.

“I’m going to do this,” she declares. Middle-class families, says Warren, have been “chipped at, hacked at, squeezed and hammered for a generation now, and I don’t think Washington gets it.”

She adds: “The pressures on middle class families are worse than ever, but it is the big corporations that get their way in Washington. I want to change that. I will work my heart out to earn the trust of the people of Massachusetts.”

Not since the Weld-Kerry race in 1996 could Massachusetts see a general election campaign like this.

As in that battle royale between two bluebloods, then-Governor William F. Weld and still-Senator John Kerry, the candidates would be well-financed, nationally supported, and adept at debating.

Like Brown, Weld had tremendous personal appeal, with voters seemingly entranced by his devil-may-care attitude and his decidedly non-Cantabrigian persona.

And like Warren, Kerry was viewed as too stiff to connect, especially in contrast with Weld.

But Kerry ended up besting Weld on the strength of his personal campaigning, the experience of the large cadre of Democratic operatives, and an electorate that still tilted to the left despite being in the outset of electing Republican governors for 16 consecutive years.

Warren’s first challenge, though, is to overcome a field of a half-dozen challengers who are incensed the party establishments in both Washington and Boston have largely pooh-poohed campaigns in which they have put their lives on hold to stump around the state and beg for money to finance their travels.

Here’s an item from Wired that’s bound to make you mad.  It seems the FBI is profiling all muslim believers as radicals and terrorists. What on earth has the last ten years done to our civil liberties?

The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”

At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as theunalterable word of Allah.”

 These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity.

“There may not be a ‘radical’ threat as much as it is simply a normal assertion of the orthodox ideology,” one FBI presentation notes. “The strategic themes animating these Islamic values are not fringe; they are main stream.”

The FBI isn’t just treading on thin legal ice by portraying ordinary, observant Americans as terrorists-in-waiting, former counterterrorism agents say. It’s also playing into al-Qaida’s hands.

Focusing on the religious behavior of American citizens instead of proven indicators of criminal activity like stockpiling guns or using shady financing makes it more likely that the FBI will miss the real warning signs of terrorism. And depicting Islam as inseparable from political violence is exactly the narrative al-Qaida spins — as is the related idea that America and Islam are necessarily in conflict. That’s why FBI whistleblowers provided Danger Room with these materials.

Over the past few years, American Muslim civil rights groups have raised alarm about increased FBI and police presence in Islamic community centers and mosques, fearing that their lawful behavior is being targeted under the broad brush of counterterrorism. The documents may help explain the heavy scrutiny.

Sam Stein at HuffPo thinks that Obama won’t include social security in the list of program cuts in the catfood commision redux movement.

Jilted by Republican leadership during the deficit-reduction talks that accompanied the debt ceiling debate, the Obama administration is now pulling back an offer to put Social Security reform on the negotiating table.

The president will not include changes to that program in the series of deficit reduction measures that he will offer to the congressional super committee next Monday, administration officials confirm.

During talks with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) this past summer, President Barack Obama had discussed changing the way that Social Security benefits were paid so that a lower level of benefits were paid over time. Boehner walked away from that deal, which was part of a much broader package, because of concern over a corresponding tax increase. Now, Obama is putting off support for that idea of changing the inflation formula of Social Security to chained consumer price index (CPI).

“The president’s recommendation for deficit reduction will not include any changes to Social Security because, as the president has consistently said, he does not believe that Social Security is a driver of our near and medium term deficits,” said White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage. “He believes that both parties need to work together on a parallel track to strengthen Social Security for future generations rather than taking a piecemeal approach as part of a deficit reduction plan.”

“There will be no Social Security in the recommendations,” Brundage added.

The White House’s decision to take Social Security reform off the table for the time being, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is largely consistent with the president’s viewpoint that the program is not a contributor to the deficit and should be dealt with in separate discussions. The administration brought it in to the “grand bargain” talks with Boehner, an official relayed, because the president was a party to those talks. With respect to the super committee’s negotiations, he will have no seat at the table and is merely outlining his preferences for reform.

The move also makes obvious political sense. Democrats have long worried that they would upset their base should they be seen as the ones chipping away at retirement benefits, certainly after House Republicans took heat for passing a budget that would convert Medicare into a voucher-based program.

Many radical christianists have infiltrated places like the armed services and law enforcement in hopes of gathering steam come the great war against whatever the end war is supposed to be.  I’ve never been much for fiction reading and the left behind series seems like as bad as fiction can get.  There’s been complaints at the Air Force academy for years.  One of my cousins who is a devote catholic was told be students in her math class that she needed to come to prayer services and become a real christian.  That was back in the early 90s and I don’t think it’s got much better.  Evidently, one top air force general is switching the air force back to neutral.

A top US Air Force official, in an attempt to ensure the Air Force adheres to the Constitution as well as its own regulations and policies, issued guidelines that calls on “leaders at all levels” to take immediate steps to maintain “government neutrality regarding religion.”

In his policy memorandum dated September 1, but sent Tuesday to all major commands, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz said, “Leaders … must balance Constitutional protections for an individual’s free exercise of religion or other personal beliefs and its prohibition against governmental establishment of religion.”

The First Amendment establishes a wall of separation between church and state and Clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution specifically prohibits a “religious test.”

The memo was issued a month after Truthout published an exclusive report revealing how, for two decades, the Air Force used numerous Bible passages and religious imagery to teach nuclear missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons, a decision that one senior Air Force officer told Truthout last month should have “instantly” resulted in the firing of the commanders who allowed it to take place.

The Air Force immediately suspended the mandatory Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare training immediately following the publication of Truthout’s report. David Smith, a spokesman for the Air Education and Training Command told Truthout last month the ethics training “has been taken out of the curriculum and is being reviewed.”

“The commander reviewed it and decided we needed to have a good hard look at it and make sure it reflected views of modern society,” Smith said.

The decison angered Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) who fired off an angry letter to Secretary of the Air Force Michael B. Donley criticizing the move and demanding Donley provide him with a report detailing “actions taken” by the Air Force that led to the suspension of the ethics training.

One more interesting political piece via the Christian Science Monitor that says that Romney may actually be a “tougher foe” than Governor Goodhair for Obama.  My guess is because he sounds sane compared to Perry, but here’s what the CSM says.

Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, frames Obama’s prospects this way: “He’s eminently beatable, and Republicans smell this. But in electoral politics, it’s always compared to whom.”

As of now, the GOP race seems to have boiled down to a choice between Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. That, of course, could change, especially if a major new prospect enters the race. But for the sake of argument, let’s say either Governor Perry or Mr. Romney will get the nod.

Polls show that GOP voters believe Perry is electable, but polls of general election voters show Romney faring better than Perry against Obama. The Real Clear Politics average gives Obama a four-point lead over Perry but just a one-point lead over Romney.

Among independent voters, Romney has the clear advantage. In the latest survey by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling (PPP), Perry’s favorability with independents is just 23 percent (with 51 percent seeing him unfavorably). Romney is seen favorably by 44 percent of independents, and unfavorably by 39 percent.

I’ve just got a bad case of noodley brain today, so do let us know what’s on your reading and blogging list this morning and I’ll head back to the coffee pot?