Thursday Reads

Posted: March 3, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, Labor unions, Libya, morning reads, SCOTUS, U.S. Politics, worker rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 47 Comments

Good Morning!! There’s quite a lot of news happening, so I probably won’t be able to cover everything. I’m hoping you can help me out in the comments. Anyway, here are some stories that caught my eye.

The Guardian UK: 2 US airmen killed in Frankfurt airport shooting

Two U.S. airmen were killed and two others were wounded at Frankfurt airport when a man opened fire on them at close range with a handgun, the first such attack on American forces in Germany in a quarter century.

[….]

The alleged assailant, identified as a 21-year-old Kosovo man, was taken immediately into custody and was being questioned by authorities, said Frankfurt police spokesman Manfred Fuellhardt.

Family members in Kosovo described the suspect as a devout Muslim, who was born and raised in Germany and worked at the airport.

The attacker got into an argument with airmen outside their military bus before opening fire, killing the bus driver and one other serviceman, and wounding two others, one of whom was in life-threatening condition, Fuellhardt said. He said the attacker also briefly entered the bus.

The suspect has been identified as “Arif Uka, a Kosovo citizen from the northern town of Mitrovica.” There is quite a bit more information about him at the Guardian link. The victims had not yet been identified when I wrote this.

I’m sure you heard that yesterday the Supreme Court decided that the Wesboro Baptist Church is within their First Amendment Rights when they protest homosexuality at servicemen’s funerals. However, there are some limits on the decision, according to USA Today.

The court majority made plain that states may regulate funeral protests in some situations. Roberts observed that since the 2006 Snyder funeral, the Maryland Legislature has enacted a law prohibiting picketing within 100 feet of a funeral. Roberts also noted that Westboro’s picketing would have complied with that restriction.

The chief justice said demonstrations may be regulated as long as laws are neutral — that is, not aimed at any particular views — and narrowly crafted.

In recent years, Congress and 46 states have enacted laws to minimize picketing near cemeteries during a funeral, according to a brief filed at the court by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and 40 other senators who sided with Snyder. They said state personal-injury laws, such as the Maryland one Snyder invoked to sue Phelps, supplement government picketing restrictions.

From the news reports, it sounds like the protests in Libya are starting to turn into a full-fledged war. Late last night Voice of America reported serious “clashes” in eastern Libya:

The fighting included ground clashes and airstrikes by Libyan military planes.

Witnesses said pro-Gadhafi forces stormed into the town of Brega on the Gulf of Sirte and briefly seized its oil installations and an airstrip. Opposition fighters say they recaptured both sites. Later, Western media reported loud booms that they linked to at least two bombings from Libyan aircraft.

Witnesses say military forces carried out an airstrike in the nearby town of Ajdabiya. Both towns are on the western edge of the region of eastern Libya that is now largely under opposition control.

Gadhafi is still delusional:

The fighting occurred on the same day that Gadhafi delivered a televised speech to supporters in Tripoli. He said he could not resign because he holds no political office in a system that he said puts all power in the hands of the people.

There is a lot of pressure on President Obama to do something other than mumble meaningless cliches. At CNN, they seem to be rooting for military intervention (h/t Minkoff Minx). I’m sure CNN has visions of improving their ratings by presenting lots of carnage live and in color, like they did during the two Iraq wars. But Secretary of Defense Gates is doing his best to stifle such talk.

With rebels in Libya calling for Western airstrikes on forces supporting Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates warned Congress on Wednesday that even a more modest effort to establish a no-flight zone over Libya would have to begin with an attack on the country’s air defenses and would require “a big operation in a big country.”

Mr. Gates’s caution illustrates the chasm between what the rebels and some leading members of Congress are calling for and what President Obama appears willing to do in Libya. Mr. Obama and his aides have argued that it is not yet clear that the insurgents need the help — and they have warned that the use of American airpower could fuel the arguments of those in the Middle East who see a Washington conspiracy behind homegrown uprisings.

But others disagree.

…even some members of the president’s own party sounded unconvinced on Wednesday. Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and one of the president’s chief foreign policy allies in Congress, argued that “a no-fly zone is not a long-term proposition” and warned that other nations and NATO should not be “on the sidelines” as Colonel Qaddafi’s jets begin to attack the antigovernment insurgents.

“We ought to be considering a wide range of responses, and a no-fly zone ought to be an option,” Mr. Kerry said late Wednesday. “We have a number of tools, and we should not remove any of them from the table.”

Of course no one is screaming about the deficit now or about how much all this military action would cost–that only happens when there is talk of helping pregnant women, children, the elderly, and other powerless groups.

Here’s an article by a law professor that explains the legal implications of the U.S. getting involved in military action in Libya.

It’s possible the situation in Wisconsin could continue for months with ongoing protests and the Democratic State Senators remaining in exile. This is what happens when you elect a governor who doesn’t believe in compromise and simply wants to behave like a tyrant.

The governor isn’t budging. AWOL Democrats aren’t planning to come back. And, despite talk of deadlines and threats of mass layoffs, the state doesn’t really have to pass a budget to pay its bills until at least May. Even then, there may be other options that could extend the standoff for months.

“This is a battle to the death,” said Mordecai Lee, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “Unless one party can come up with a compromise that the other party will buy, which I doubt, this really could go on indefinitely. I could see this going on until the summer.”

We have a union contract dispute going on here in the Boston area with a lot of parallels to the one in Wisconsin. The local PBS/NPR station, WGBH, which produces much of the best content for public TV stations around the country, is playing hardball with their unionized employees, who have been working without a contract since October.

Managers of the giant Boston-based public broadcast operation and officials of the Association of Employees of the Educational Foundation, Communications Workers of America, Local 1300, have been seeking a new three-year contract to replace an agreement that expired at the end of October.

WGBH employs 850 people; Local 1300 represents 280 writers, editors, production workers, and marketing employees who enjoy using automated out reach software like Apollo.

Management has been seeking concessions that include cutting in half the company’s match for employee retirement plans and is demanding authority to redefine job descriptions. That would allow WGBH to assign employees to work across various media platforms, including TV, radio, and the Web.

Union officials said they are willing to make some concessions to preserve jobs and WGBH’s financial health, including cuts in company contributions to retirement plans. But they are not willing to go along with such provisions as allowing WGBH to outsource work without negotiations, or to terminate on-air talent without cause. Union officials said they do not want WGBH to be able to assign members to perform work outside their job description.

“If they retain the ability to outsource anything and everything, it would tend to make moot all the gains we made in other areas of the contract,’’ said Jordan Weinstein, president of the AEEF/CWA, Local 1300, and local host of public radio’s “All Things Considered,’’ the weekday news program. “This is not the warm and friendly way to deal with your employees.’’

That’s all I’ve got for now. What are you reading and blogging about today?

 

Hillary Clinton on Libya: “Nothing is Off the Table”

Posted: March 1, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, Libya, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 26 Comments

Hillary Clinton speaking in Geneva (Fox News)

CNN: From Geneva, Switzerland yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that

“nothing is off the table” as the United States works with allies to stop the bloodshed in Libya where embattled leader Moammar Gadhafi struggles to remain in power. But as the Pentagon confirms that the United States is “repositioning” naval and air forces to be prepared for any option with Libya, Secretary Clinton said there is no pending U.S. naval actions planned against Libya. “We do believe that there will be the need for support for humanitarian intervention,” she said when asked about the reports.

[….]

Clinton’s remarks come as she meets with European Union ministers. Monday the EU agreed to impose economic sanctions on Libya, including an arms embargo, freezing Ghadaffi’s assets and banning travel to Libya. This is the latest action after the United States announced similar sanctions Friday.

Speaking to reporters, Clinton said that U.S. humanitarian teams have been sent to Libya’s borders of Tunisia and Egypt. Clinton said USAID has set aside an additional $10 million for humanitarian aid including much needed medical supplies.

Today, Hillary was back in Washington, and she went to Capital Hill to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and argued, in so many words, that cutting diplomatic funds to deal with foreign crises would be penny-wise and pound foolish

The comments came a day after the US began repositioning warships and military aircraft in the Libya region.

Mrs Clinton repeated demands that Col Muammar Gaddafi “must go now, without further violence or delay”.

“The entire [Middle East] region is changing, and a strong and strategic American response will be essential, Mrs Clinton said to the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in prepared testimony.

“In the years ahead, Libya could become a peaceful democracy, or it could face protracted civil war. The stakes are high.

Voice of America provided more information on from Hillary’s Congressional testimony:

Clinton said the U.S. is sending humanitarian and military teams to help those fleeing Libya for Tunisia and Egypt. She called the situation in Libya an example of how the State Department must use diplomatic resources to sustain and advance U.S. security.

Clinton’s testimony comes as the U.S. Congress battles over the country’s proposed budget, with some lawmakers demanding deep cuts in spending. But she warned members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that reductions in diplomatic spending could come at a high cost.

She said a failure to fund civilian missions in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq could cause military gains to erode or be erased.

Clinton said shifting responsibilities from military to civilian efforts saves money. She said the U.S. military’s total worldwide request dropped by $45 billion from 2010, while the State Department’s cost will increase by less than $4 billion.

It sounds like the US and other Western countries are nearing a decision about whether to intervene in some way in the carnage in Libya. On Al Jazeera there has been more talk of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, but a number of commentators have pointed out that this would be a very serious step. It means that those enforcing the no-fly zone would be committed to shooting down violators. It would also mean taking out Libya’s air defenses. In other words, it means military action in Libya.

It will be interesting to see what the next step will be. It certainly does feel as we are building toward something serious.

Monday Reads

Posted: February 28, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: academia, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, collective bargaining, Diplomacy Nightmares, education, Foreign Affairs, Global Financial Crisis, Human Rights, Libya, U.S. Politics, unemployment, voodoo economics, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , | 15 Comments

Good Morning!

Okay, so I’m going to show you two nifty pie charts first at The Business Insider.   They basically show how the federal balance is extremely unbalanced because expenses are growing and revenues are not growing at all.  Henry Blodgett correctly points out that there’s quite a bit of growth in ‘entitlements’.  Let me just point out that all this makes complete sense to me  What do you get in an economy that has normalized around a 10 percent unemployment rate or higher if you count the things like disenfranchised workers and the underemployed and couple that with year after year after year after year of excessive tax cuts on the uberrich who happen to be the only ones making money?  Well, you get more and more people that are reliant on unemployment and other government ‘entitlements’ and you get a huge revenue gap.  This is about the most careless set of policy choices made that I’ve seen since I first read up on the Hoover administration and the start of the Great Depression.

The “expense” pie is growing like gangbusters, driven by the explosive growth of the entitlement programs that no one in government even has the balls to talk about. “Revenue” is barely growing at all.

As we’ll illustrate with more of Mary’s charts next week, the US cannot grow its way out of this problem. It needs to cut spending, specifically entitlement spending. We hereby announce that we’ll give a special gold star to the first “leader” with the guts to say that publicly.

I’ll give a box of gold stars to any one that points out to this blowhard that the way to remove the growing entitlements is to put people back to work.  Also, giving tax money to rich people so they can invest in the BRIC economies and buy land where their money is parked in the Bahamas or Grand Caymans is a really, really stupid proposition.  We’ve needed a real jobs program for some times.  People with jobs pay taxes, buy things that are taxed, and don’t require entitlements.  How absolutely stupid do you have to be to not get that?  I don’t even need all those economics and finance degrees to figure that one out.

In the Friday Reads I mentioned that Fox News’ Roger Ailes was caught on tape encouraging colleagues to lie to Federal Investigators.  Well, it seems that lying has finally caught up with one Republican operative.  Maybe people will wake up to the Faux News’ and their dirty tricks now.  Here’s what Barry Ritholtz had to say about his scoop on the indictment.

Here’s what I learned recently: Someone I spoke with claimed that Ailes was scheduled to speak at their event in March, but canceled. It appears that Roger’s people, ostensibly using a clause in his contract, said he “cannot appear for legal reasons.”

I asked “What, precisely, does that mean?”

The response: “Roger Ailes will be indicted — probably this week, maybe even Monday.”

Well, it’s Monday. Does Rupert Murdoch know where Roger Ailes is?   Some times watching Karma unfold is a delightful thing.

I’m not sure if you’re a big enough masochist to spend time with the Sunday news shows anymore, but I do try to catch Christiane Amanpour and she delivered an interesting program yesterday.  She had an exclusive interview with one of Gadhaffi’s sons.  It was extremely interesting and I would recommend you go watch that segment. Amanpour actually traveled to Tripoli this weekend.  We will now refer to the son as Tripoli Saif al-Islam Gadhafi since he seems about as in touch with reality as Baghdad Bob did back in the day.

There was a “big, big gap between reality and the media reports,” Gadhafi told Amanpour. “The whole south is calm. The west is calm. The middle is calm. Even part of the east.”

In response to President Barack Obama’s call for Moammar Gadhafi to step down and the U.N. Security Council’s unanimous vote to impose an arms embargo on Libya and urge nations to freeze Libyan assets, Gadhafi’s son was defiant.

“Listen, nobody is leaving this country. We live here, we die here,” he insisted. “This is our country. The Libyans are our people. And for myself, I believe I am doing the right thing.”

“The President of the U.S. has called on your father to step down. How do you feel about that?” Amanpour asked.

“It’s not an American business, that’s number one,” said Gadhafi, who was dressed casually as he spoke with Amanpour. “Second, do they think this is a solution? Of course not.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting kind of tired of watching these jerks that we supported for some time prove exactly what is meant by the label “brutal dictator”.  Could we just once fund and support some one like His Holiness the Dali Lama for a change?  It’s no wonder we still get called ugly Americans.

Speaking of Ugly Americans responsible for diplomatic nightmares, Paul Wolfowitz showed up on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN on Sunday. Could some one please tell the media we don’t need to hear from the people that screwed up Middle East Policy any more?  Why do I keep seeing this man’s face despite his obvious failures with Iraq policy and peccadilloes made public during his time at the World Bank?  I did want to point you to Zakaria’s interview with Michael Lewis on global  financial crisis. The video is here. He has some interesting thing to say about banks in Greece, Ireland, and here.  Listen for this part:

LEWIS: …And the –the anger – the anger about the Wall Street bailouts, I think, is the beginning of the Tea Party.  I mean the – the injustice of people being rewarded for failure and – and supported by the public purse, that was the source of the original outrage.

ZAKARIA: But it went in a libertarian direction…

LEWIS: It did…It – but – but a qualified libertarian direction, because a true libertarian would be outraged that these Wall Street banks are still being subsidized by the government.  And there doesn’t seem to be any move on the right to – to remove those subsidies, not any – any serious one…But – but the politi – our leadership doesn’t have an interest in – a leadership that is intent on still stabilizing the financial system doesn’t have an interest in calling attention to the outrages of the financial system.  So I think they – Wall Street got very lucky.

Wall Street did not get very lucky.  Wall Street basically has a friend in the White House and tons of people in the Treasury Department.   The Tea Party was distracted by the Health Care Bill.  The kleptocracy is still at it.  Listen to the interview, it’s an earful! Many of us think that were going to get a repeat of the global financial crisis some time soon.  Lewis and I aren’t alone on that thought.

One of the things that’s really making me mad about the current conversation on budget cuts and higher education is the public’s ignorance on just exactly how many states have disabled tenure these days.  Tenure has long been a pet peeve of right wing ideologues who feel that every one should be terminated like they are in the private sector.  Basically, the private sector thrives on political firings and uses payroll cuts as the first line of defense when the bottom line is failing because of their bad, short-sighted, and overly-political decisions.

Here’s a list of states decimating tenure as we speak from articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  You know, I’m really sorry that people have to work for private corporations and that their lives are subject to the whims of really mean people, but it’s really no excuse to take it out on those of us that have tried to carve a better way to exist. Take my word for it.  Get yourself a union and they won’t be able to take advantage of you with out taking on a a million other people who have your back!   Those of us in the public sector are willing to forego short term salary highs for long term job security.  It’s evident that a new crop of governors want every one as miserable as employees in the private sector now.  If they intend to do this to us, then I want those seven to eight digits salaries I’d be paid for the 3-5 year short brutal career on Wall Street as a PhD in Financial Economics. I even added a few old links to show you that this is nothing new.   Believe me, tenure isn’t what most people outside of academic think it is …

From Louisiana (this week):

The University of Louisiana system’s Board of Supervisors on Friday voted to approve new rules that will allow its institutions to more quickly dismiss faculty members, even those with tenure, whose programs have been closed.

At a time when the state’s financial climate makes it difficult for campuses to determine their budgets from year to year, that kind of flexibility is key, system officials said. But professors at the board meeting, including representatives of each of the system’s eight campuses, told the supervisors that such a move would erode the protection tenure provides and could ultimately make the system’s institutions unattractive to job seekers and lead current faculty members to leave.

From Nebraska (2oo3):

The University of Nebraska at Lincoln is seeking to eliminate the jobs of 15 tenured faculty members as part of its latest round of budget cuts.

The proposed dismissals, which Chancellor Harvey Perlman announced this month, would save Nebraska about $2.7-million. They are part of a plan to reduce the university’s budget by $26-million, or 12 percent, in the wake of substantial state budget cuts. The new cuts come on the heels of layoffs, proposed in March, that would affect 55 faculty

From Florida (last November) where the attempt to layoff tenured faculty was blocked by an arbitrator.  Notice the decision protected the union faculty but not the nonunion faculty.

An independent arbitrator on Friday ordered Florida State University to rescind layoff notices to several tenured faculty members and slammed how administrators there had decided which jobs would be cut.

In a major victory for the state’s faculty union, Stanley H. Sergent, a Sarasota-based lawyer picked by the university and the union to arbitrate the dispute, held that the university had failed to clearly justify its choices to eliminate certain positions, and had violated a provision of its faculty contract calling for it to try to protect the jobs of those faculty members who had continuously worked there the longest.

In his 83-page decision, Mr. Sergent wrote that the only reason the university had declared certain departments “suspended” was “to allow the effective layoff of all faculty and the selective recall of certain faculty,” apparently for the sake of creating a subterfuge to avoid having to comply with a contractual requirement that it lay off tenured faculty members last. Mr. Sergent characterized the reasoning used by a dean in eliminating one faculty member’s job as “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.”

The arbitrator’s decision applies only to 12 tenured faculty members who belong to the campus chapter of the United Faculty of Florida, and does not cover nine other tenured faculty members who do not belong to the union and also received notices of pending layoffs last year.

From Washington State (May2009):

Community colleges in Washington State could soon be able to lay off tenured faculty members much faster than normal, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

At its regularly scheduled meeting next month, the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges will decide whether to declare a financial emergency — a move allowed by a state law passed in 1981 to deal with budget crunches. Such an emergency would speed up the process for laying off tenured faculty members in that they would get only 60 days’ notice of layoffs and the grounds on which they could appeal the decision would be limited, the Post-Intelligencer reported.

I would also like to take this space to mention that I no longer have access to Social Security and that my state pension and the matches that I get from the State basically are what the private sector donates to social security on the behalf of private sector workers.  Many states have pension plans that replace Social Security.  Therefore, I’m personally not getting any thing ‘special’ from taxpayers.  Also, when the defined benefit plan showed up short this year, they decreased the contributions to my optional retirement plan and the others who selected that option to make up the shortfall in the defined benefit pool. Wall Street stole my appreciation and then the state took more from me to pay for their problems in other folks’ annuities.  Other state employees–like me–paid for that shortfall.  It came from our compensation.  I’ve just about had it up to here with reading a bunch of grumbly idiots on other blogs that have no idea how state employee pensions are managed and funded.  If you want to go after high paying state employees that are worthless, try taking it out on the university football coaches and the damned governor’s staff for a change.  It’s not us little guys!

Anyway, it’s Monday morning and I’m a curmudgeon today.  Think I’ll spend the day with the TV off and I’ll stay here on Sky Dancing with the sane people!  Now, where’s my coffee?

What’s on your reading and blogging list?

Thursday Reads

Posted: February 24, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: A My Pet Goat Moment, abortion rights, Foreign Affairs, Libya, morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, worker rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 61 Comments

Good Morning!!

Some of us have been watching Al Jazeera live on-line a lot lately. Suddenly Comcast wants to get into the act, so they are holding talks with the Arab network about putting them on U.S. cable TV.

Al Jazeera confirmed in a press release earlier this week it was meeting with Comcast on Tuesday about adding the 24/7 Al Jazeera English news network to Comcast’s cable lineup.

In 2006, the English-language version of Al Jazeera pushed hard get on Comcast’s lineup up but lost that battle.

Al Jazeera says it can also be seen in local markets in Vermont, Ohio and Washington, D.C. A deal with Comcast would give it a huge national imprint, and force Comcast’s competitors to follow suit.

Al-Jazeera’s Washington bureau chief Abderrahim Foukara made his own plea on Tuesday in Time magazine.

“The hope is that after what people have been able to see on Al Jazeera in its coverage of Egypt, that cable companies may not just see the material benefits of having Al Jazeera available, but also the wisdom,” he told Time in an interview.

Wouldn’t it be great if the channel *replaced* Fox News? Anyway, that’s my good news story for today.

Yesterday, Dakinikat posted audio of a prank phone call made to Wisconsin’s wacky governor, Scott Walker by a gonzo blogger from upstate NY who pretended to be David Koch of the notorious Koch brothers.

Now Horrible John Hinderaker at Powerline is fighting back (warning: right wing blog). The left is waging “war” against the Koch Brothers and Hineraker has set himself up as their defender.

The most extraordinary story in the news these days is the all-out assault that the Left is mounting against Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Enterprises. A day doesn’t go buy–hardly an hour goes by–without some new attack being launched against these two lonely libertarians.

Why? Simply because they are rich–their company is one of the best-run and most successful in the world–and conservative. The Left is trying to drive them out of politics and, more important, to deter any other people of means from daring to support conservative politicians or causes.

Awwwww….those poor, poor babies.

According to the Washington Post, Walker himself is “urging others to take stands against unions.” I guess he doesn’t want to be out on that limb by himself, and he doesn’t realize that the more governors are out there with him, the sooner the limb will break off and send them all crashing to the ground. Oh, by the way, he did the urging during the aforsaid prank phone call in which he believed he was speaking to David Koch. ROFLOL! From the WaPo:

He said he communicates regularly with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and has spoken with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. And Walker has suggested that his counterparts in Michigan and Florida seek to address their budget problems in part by demanding major concessions from public workers.

“There’s a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big,” Walker said this week. “This is our moment.”

His comments about his GOP brethren came in an unusual forum: a recorded telephone conversation with a liberal blogger purporting to be conservative financier David Koch.

Oh man, Scott Walker will forever be a joke. And speaking of jokes, did you hear that Rick Santorum spoke out on the Wisconsin protests?

All-but-declared presidential candidate Rick Santorum is stirring the pot when it comes to government entitlements, comparing the pro-union protesters in Wisconsin to drug addicts in withdrawal.

“They are acting like their drug is being taken away from them,” Santorum told a small gathering of South Carolina Republicans Monday night, according to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal.

The comments came the same day thousands of protesters rallied outside the Wisconsin state capitol for the second week, upset with Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to limit collective bargaining rights for public-sector employees. Walker says the plan is necessary to stem the state’s budget crisis while pro-union groups say the governor is trying to curb long-held labor rights under a guise of fiscal responsibility.

Meanwhile, Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who is widely expected to seek his party’s presidential nomination, added he thinks those who support government entitlements – including the recent health care law – are “no better than a drug dealer.”

“They give you a subtle narcotic to make you feel better as you do worse,” said Santorum.

Gee, why do I think Santorum’s White House bid is going nowhere fast?

Speaking of wingnuts (and we have been), Georgia legislator Bobby Franklin is waging an all-out war on women.

There’s a new bill on the block that may have reached the apex (I hope) of woman-hating craziness. Georgia State Rep. Bobby Franklin—who last year proposed making rape and domestic violence “victims” into “accusers”—has introduced a 10-page bill that would criminalize miscarriages and make abortion in Georgia completely illegal. Both miscarriages and abortions would be potentially punishable by death: any “prenatal murder” in the words of the bill, including “human involvement” in a miscarriage, would be a felony and carry a penalty of life in prison or death. Basically, it’s everything an “pro-life” activist could want aside from making all women who’ve had abortions wear big red “A”s on their chests.

Could that really pass–even in Georgia?

In more serious news, the carnage in Libya continues.

“It’s a massacre, you can never imagine what’s going on here,” says the man, who is in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

Protests in Libya have been met with violent and brutal opposition by supporters of leader Moamar Gaddafi….

‘Amairr’ says that Libya is not a state and that Gadafi’s regime is ‘not a government’.

“It’s a militia, it’s a gang,” he says.

He says Gaddafi has brought in militias from Africa who are ‘shooting anyone who stands’.

He says the Libyan nation says it feels betrayed by other countries who are concentrating on getting their citizens out rather than helping Libyans.

Some are even calling it a potential genocide.

ISLAMABAD: “We are in the midst of a massacre here” a witness told Reuters. According to Franco Frattini, Italy’s Foreign Minister, “as many as 1,000 people have likely been killed in Libya as leader Muammar Qaddafi cracks down on protests against his rule.”

The Libyan army, air force and navy have completely fractured and there has been a de facto secession of the eastern half of the country. Al-Jazeera is reporting that some air force fighters loyal to Gaddafi have “opened fire on crowds of protestors.”

The Libyan Navy is reportedly firing on residential targets onshore and senior army officers still loyal to Qaddafi have been ordered to execute soldiers refusing to fire on unarmed protestors.

Qaddafi, the longest serving dictator on the face of the planet, continues to hold fort in Tripoli scheming to kill a million if need be to save his crumbling dictatorship. Anti-Qaddafi elements have already taken over Benghazi, Sirte, Tobruk, Misurata, Khoms, Tarhunah, Zentan, al-Zawiya and Zouara but most of these elements are unarmed and thus at risk of being slaughtered by heavily armed pro-Qaddafi forces.

The response from the West has been anemic at best. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “condemned” Libyan dictator

Muammar Gaddafi for ignoring his call to stop violence against protestors, which the UN chief stressed to the Libyan leader during a 40 minute conversation this week. “What he (Gaddafi) has d one is totally unacceptable,” Ban told journalists on Wednesday.

“After such long and extensive discussions and my strong urging, and even appeal to him, he has not heeded,” he added. “This is not acceptable.”

Ban warned that the volatile situation in the North African nation could take several directions—many of them dangerous.

“The situation is developing rapidly towards a very dangerous situation,” he said. “Therefore we need to very carefully monitor the situation.”

Um…how about actually doing something? Like maybe enforcing a no-fly zone or sending in UN peacekeeping troops as the Libyan’s have been pleading for you to do?

Reuters informs us that “the world grapples for a response.”

Yet, there seemed little cohesion and urgency in a global response, even as Washington and Brussels spoke of possible sanctions against a man whose 41 years in power have been marked by idiosyncratic defiance of the West.

“It is imperative that the nations and peoples of the world speak with one voice,” Obama said. “The suffering and bloodshed is outrageous.”

The oil exports which Gaddafi used to help end his isolation in the past decade have given him means to resist the fate of his immediate neighbors, the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt, who were brought down by popular unrest in the past few weeks.

It’s always about oil, isn’t it? Talk about people acting like drug addicts….

Anyway, I’ll keep my eye out for updates on the rapidly changing situation in Libya.


What are you reading and blogging about today?

Presidents’ Day Reads

Posted: February 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Bahrain, Diplomacy Nightmares, Drone Warfare, Egypt, Foreign Affairs, income inequality, Libya, morning reads, Psychopaths in charge, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, worker rights, Yemen | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 51 Comments

Good Morning! It’s “Presidents’ Day.” Talk about a generic holiday. We used to mark two presidents’ birthdays in February–Washington’s birthday on the 22nd and Lincoln’s birthday on the 12th–but now we just have a Monday in February when everything goes on sale, and pictures of Washington and Lincoln are used to sell cars and mattresses. At least some of us get the day off work.

There’s an awful lot of news happening, and I’m guessing there could be a even more happening Libya by the time you start reading this. The latest is that protesters are in Tripoli, and the family of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is vowing to fight the protesters “to the last man standing,” according to Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam in a really monotonous, rambling speech yesterday.

Anti-government protesters rallied in Tripoli’s streets, tribal leaders spoke out against Gaddafi, and army units defected to the opposition as oil exporter Libya endured one of the bloodiest revolts to convulse the Arab world.

Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi appeared on national television in an attempt to both threaten and calm people, saying the army would enforce security at any price.

“Our spirits are high and the leader Muammar Gaddafi is leading the battle in Tripoli, and we are behind him as is the Libyan army,” he said.

“We will keep fighting until the last man standing, even to the last woman standing…We will not leave Libya to the Italians or the Turks.”

He also warned of “rivers of blood.” But those may be famous last words. From the Guardian UK:

In fast-moving developments after midnight, demonstrators were reported to be in Tripoli’s Green Square and preparing to march on Gaddafi’s compound as rumours spread that the leader had fled to Venezuela. Other reports described protesters in the streets of Tripoli throwing stones at billboards of Muammar Gaddafi while police used teargas to try to disperse them.

“People are in the street chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great) and throwing stones at photos of Gaddafi,”an expatriate worker told Reuters by telephone from Tripoli. “The police are firing teargas everywhere, it’s even getting into the houses.”

There was also plenty of protesting going on in other Middle Eastern countries:

Libya’s extraordinary day overshadowed drama elsewhere in the region. Tensions eased in Bahrain after troops withdrew from a square in Manama occupied by Shia protesters. Thousands of security personnel were also deployed in the Iranian capital, Tehran, to forestall an opposition rally. Elsewhere in the region unrest hit Yemen, Morocco, Oman, Kuwait and Algeria.

At Asia Times Online, Pepe Escobar wrote a couple of days ago that the protests in Bahrain could soon spread to Saudi Arabia. That is one fascinating article.

In Wisconsin, protesters say they aren’t going anywhere.

“We’ll be here Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday — as long as it takes,” Gary Lonzo, a union organizer and former Wisconsin corrections officer, said Sunday as he watched protesters banging drums and waving signs here for a sixth day in a row. “We’re not going anywhere.”

As the protests went on through falling sleet and snow, some lawmakers suggested that a compromise might yet be possible over the cuts that Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, has proposed. A spokesman for Dale Schultz, a moderate Republican senator, said that Mr. Schultz supported Mr. Walker, particularly in his assessment that the state budget situation was dire, but that Mr. Schultz also hoped to work to preserve collective bargaining rights.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s Democratic State Senators are staying in Illinois until further notice.

“This is not a stunt, it’s not a prank,” said Senator Jon Erpenbach, one of the Democrats who drove away from Madison early Thursday, hours before a planned vote, and would say only that he was in Chicago. “This is not an option I can ever see us doing again, but in this case, it’s absolutely the right thing to do. What they want to do is not the will of the people.”

Either I missed this story completely, or the US corporate media ignored it. An exiled religious leader, Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has returned to Egypt after 50 years and may be trying to “stealing the revolution,” according to a retweet from Mona Eltahawy (h/t, Wonk the Vote). Quaradawi made a speech to more than a million people in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday. During the rally,

Google executive Wael Ghonim, who emerged as a leading voice in Egypt’s uprising, was barred from the stage in Tahrir Square on Friday by security guards, an AFP photographer said. Ghonim tried to take the stage in Tahrir, the epicentre of anti-regime protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, but men who appeared to be guarding influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi barred him from doing so.

Ghonim, who was angered by the episode, then left the square with his face hidden by an Egyptian flag.

Uh oh….

Remember Raymond Davis, who was arrested in Pakistan for shooting two Pakistani men on the street? He was more or less outed as a CIA agent during his trial. The U.S. has been trying to save him from murder charges by claiming he had diplomatic immunity. But the trial has gone on anyway, and now it’s definite that he’s CIA.

Raymond Davis has been the subject of widespread speculation since he opened fire with a semi-automatic Glock pistol on the two men who had pulled up in front of his car at a red light on 25 January.

Pakistani authorities charged him with murder, but the Obama administration has insisted he is an “administrative and technical official” attached to its Lahore consulate and has diplomatic immunity.

Based on interviews in the US and Pakistan, the Guardian can confirm that the 36-year-old former special forces soldier is employed by the CIA. “It’s beyond a shadow of a doubt,” said a senior Pakistani intelligence official. The revelation may complicate American efforts to free Davis, who insists he was acting in self-defence against a pair of suspected robbers, who were both carrying guns.

[….]

The Pakistani government is aware of Davis’s CIA status yet has kept quiet in the face of immense American pressure to free him under the Vienna convention. Last week President Barack Obama described Davis as “our diplomat” and dispatched his chief diplomatic troubleshooter, Senator John Kerry, to Islamabad. Kerry returned home empty-handed.

Many Pakistanis are outraged at the idea of an armed American rampaging through their second-largest city. Analysts have warned of Egyptian-style protests if Davis is released.

Oh dear, another diplomatic nightmare for our indecisive President to deal with. BTW, has he said anything about the bloody massacres in Libya yet?

The New York Post has a nasty takedown of Mitt Romney by Josh Kosman, author of a book on how private equity firms could cause the next economic crisis.

…the former private equity firm chief’s fortune — which has funded his political ambitions from the Massachusetts statehouse to his unsuccessful run for the White House in 2008 — was made on the backs of companies that ultimately collapsed, putting thousands of ordinary Americans out on the street. That truth if it becomes widely known could become costly to Romney, who, while making the media rounds recently, told CNN’s Piers Morgan that “People in America want to know who can get 15 million people back to work,” implying he was that person.

Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, bought companies and often increased short-term earnings so those businesses could then borrow enormous amounts of money. That borrowed money was used to pay Bain dividends. Then those businesses needed to maintain that high level of earnings to pay their debts.

Romney in 2007 told the New York Times he had nothing to do with taking dividends from two companies that later went bankrupt, and that one should not take a distribution from a business that put the company at risk.

Yet Geoffrey Rehnert, who helped start Bain Capital and is now co-CEO of the private equity firm The Audax Group, told me for my Penguin book, “The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy,” that Romney owned a controlling stake in Bain Capital between approximately 1992 and 2001. The firm under his watch took such risks, time and time again.

I’m going to leave you with this video from The Ed Show live in Madison, Wisconsin.

What are you reading and blogging about today?

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