BRADLEY MANNING

Bradley Manning's attorney David Coombs, 12/3/12:

"When I'm in the courtroom, I stand up and look to my right, and, I see the United States government. The United States government with all of its resources, all of its personnel, I see them standing against me and Brad. And I have to admit to you, that can be rather intimidating. And I was intimidated. Especially when the President of the Unit ed States says your client broke the law. Especially when congress members say your client deserves the death penalty. I want to tell you though today as I stand here I'm no longer intimidated. I am not intimidated because when I stand up I know I'm not standing alone. I know I'm not alone because I turn around and I see the support behind me. I see members here today in the audience that are there every time we have a court hearing. I see what I am not going to affectionately call the 'truth batallion,' those who wear a black shirt. It has the word 'truth' on it, and they are behind me. And when I look there, I know that I also have unlimited personnel and unlimited resources."

Go to www.bradleymanning.org to learn how you can join in the struggle for Bradley Manning.

NOT TO BE MISSED

Actor John Cusack examines Barack Obama and a few issues about him -  with a bit more scrutiny than we hear from the "progressive left." Read his conversation with Jonathan Turley about the Obama administration’s "War On the Constitution."

Nauseating

What is wrong with the President sitting in a room, looking at lists and portraits of people—a Somali man, a seventeen-year-old girl, an American citizen—and deciding whom to kill? That, according to long and troubling articles in both the Times and Newsweek, is a job Barack Obama has assigned himself. His aides, notably John Brennan, his counter-terrorism adviser, portray it as a matter of taking responsibility—if we are going to assassinate someone, or call in a drone strike to take out a camp in Yemen, the President should make the call—as if our only alternative were some sort of rogue operation, with generals or C.I.A. agents shooting at will. But responsibility involves accountability, which is something, in this case, that appears to be badly lacking. Obama has not taken on a burden, but instead has given the Presidency a novel power. - Amy Davidson, The President's Kill List, in The New Yorker.

It's Starting

Holy Shit. Bond set at 1.5 million dollars each. Official press release.

This is the weekend prior to the start of the Nato Summit in Chicago. The terrorists were charged under the ridiculous Illinois terrorism statutes. They were accused of making molotov cocktails and other incendiary devices. Trumped up charges to create fear among the citizen protesters? But it looks like an FBI sting operation. Could very well be another Reichstag. There's no way to know, for sure.

But one thing we do know for sure. They are lucky..............once the NDAA is in effect there'll be no bond, no habeas corpus rights, no nada. But, the so called Patriot Act took care of most of their Constitutional rights already. Why do you think 9/11 occurred?

KILLING US SOFTLY

DENNIS PERRIN

Now comes Obama, saying precisely what Cheney said, only this time the heavens parted, earth trembled, the cosmos aligned in a more progressive direction. It didn't matter that this was Obama's personal, not political, opinion. Nor was the fact that Obama leaves gay marriage to the states particularly troubling. Indeed, facts meant relatively nothing to the faithful. It was all about feeling, projection, wishful thinking. In other words, nothing's changed. As with everything he says, Obama's statement was calculated. He conferred with pollsters, advisers, and handlers before taking the Cheney step, knowing full well that his liberal base would come crawling. (You have to love the bit about consulting his "neighbors," as if he was weeding the backyard and struck up a gay marriage conversation with the woman next door while she hanged her laundry to dry.)

Wait, there's more...

Now, you might point to Obama's murderous foreign policies, his expansion and strengthening of the surveillance state, his aggressive support for the Drug War, his coddling of corporate power, etc., and wonder how his gay marriage stance mitigates all that. Well, it doesn't.

As recent polls have shown, a large percentage of liberals support many of Obama's horrid positions, particularly his increased use of drones (which are coming to a city near you). Obama's reelection image is Warrior President, tougher than Romney, ballsier than the entire GOP. Mix in some pseudo-populist rhetoric, rail against the very corporate forces that keep him in power, play the gay marriage hand right down the middle, and a second term is all but inevitable.

Obama's Reward

Barack Obama's wallet was pilfered on Friday while he was glad handing his supporters at a campaign event at the UVM Gutterson Field House. There's a reward amounting to 1% of the take from the event to the person who turns in the culprit and returns the wallet.

When will they ever learn?

Taylor Marsh has a guest piece at Informed Comment/Juan Cole, "The Party's Over": 'There’s a reason Obama reelect doesn’t have a slogan. All they’ve got is a question: Are you in?... Pres. Obama can’t find a reelection slogan because his 2012 campaign boils down to the reality that “hope and change” has been reduced to “Republicans are worse.”' (Read her explanation here.) I don't disagree with Marsh, but she's just now realising this? Doesn't she remember the Clinton and Kerry campaigns? Establishment corporatist Democratic Party politicos have used that fear slogan before and the stupid voters just fall for it. Fucking liberals and the so-called left have only themselves to blame if they do it again in 2012.

SOTU

I've been busy with work, so this is kind of late. My take on SOTU: Obama drones or The Voice of the Hypocrite is Heard Across the Land.
Ralph Nader did an interview this week on DN! - talking with Amy Goodman about the president's speech. I still like this guy, I don't care what other people say.

Imagine Obama never mentioning the Occupy movement. Imagine Obama never mentioning the Occupy Wall Street movement, the main citizen awareness movement to be coupled with his alleged concern with Wall Street abuses. And yet he talks about advancing human dignity for all people abroad, and he never talks about a major human dignity initiative, the Occupy initiative, based on peaceful resistance to oligarchy and plutocracy. He’s a political coward. He’s got to repair back to the Oval Office and ask himself why he can’t stand for the people in this country who are really aware and trying to improve our democracy and advance justice and make government and corporations accountable.

Party on, folks

A Happy New Year gift from Barack Obama - he gives Americans and civil liberties the shaft by signing the NDAA just passed by our congress. (No surprise, it just codifies what he was doing anyway - indefinite detention of terrorist suspects.) However, with this signing, Americans can say good-bye to half the Bill of Rights. Amendments 4-9 have been nullified. If he had reservations, why the fuck did he sign it? .

Profit, war machines, cold war, what's not to love?

‎WASHINGTON POST (AKA stenographer for the Administration and the DoD):

‎"The Obama administration on Thursday hailed a new $30 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia as both a hedge against Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf and an economic windfall that could create thousands of U.S. jobs over the next decade."

Our Cowardly President

To dump Elizabeth Warren, the most qualified, most motivated and most articulate candidate for the directorship of the Consumer Financial Regulatory Bureau is an act of political cowardliness by President Obama and a boon to anti-consumer Republicans and their corporate paymasters in Wall Street.

Elizabeth Warren apparently is just too good, too smart, and too able to arouse the just concerns of millions of American families about the need to put the law-and-order wood to the corporate criminals, defrauders and reckless speculators with the savings and pensions of millions of Americans.

President Obama should realize that his back-of-the-hand attitude to his liberal and progressive supporters – who sent him to the White House – can have consequences. He believes they have no where to go. But they do. They can stay home in 2012, as so many did in 2010 to the detriment of the Democrats and many Congressional races.

[Nader - "Dumping Elizabeth Warren" - CounterPunch]

OBAMA'S ADVISORS ON EGYPT DON'T KNOW SQUAT*

"So now, in the Oval Office, we have the blind leading the blind and the blind advising the blind." - Helena Cobban on the absence of anyone in the White House who has any serious knowledge about either Egypt or the broader region. They're all full of AIPAC=lovin' yes men. (This is why I love reading Helena Cobban.)

*And neither do the western media pundits.

CHRIS HEDGES ON NPR (NO JOKE!)

NPR bills Inskeep's surprising interview with Chris Hedges this morning as a critique of the SOTU, and that it is, but Hedges also gives him a civics lesson. (My emphasis in bold.)

INSKEEP: Let me play a piece of tape here. This is from the State of the Union address, and I'm just interested what you think of the president's language as he talks about increasing the competitiveness of America.

President BARACK OBAMA: In the coming months, my administration will develop a proposal to merge, consolidate and reorganize the federal government in a way that best serves the goal of a more competitive America. I will submit that proposal to Congress for a vote and we will push to get it passed.

INSKEEP: Got some applause there.

Mr. HEDGES: Well, he quite consciously uses the language of the business community to indicate that he is pro-business.

INSKEEP: You mean the word competitiveness, talking about a...

Mr. HEDGES: Competitiveness...

INSKEEP: ...competitive America.

Mr. HEDGES: Investments in education, that kind of stuff.

INSKEEP: What's wrong with that? Don't people want America to be more competitive in the world marketplace?

Mr. HEDGES: Because government's not a corporation. Government is not about competition. Government is about addressing the necessities of citizens: health, education, housing, security, jobs, living wages, protection so that people have clean and safe water and food. It's not about business programs. And that, of course, is the ideology of the right wing, to not only to make government serve corporations but essentially reduce government and cut citizens loose.

INSKEEP: Well, you know the argument that is made against that. People will say, look, we can't afford education, the social services, all those things you just mentioned, unless the economy is strong and businesses are strong and people are making money and paying taxes.

Mr. HEDGES: Well, and they're right. But who's responsible for the debt peonage. It's not those people working extra shifts in WalMart.

INSKEEP: You're talking about the fact that the United States has a huge public debt now, much of it...

Mr. HEDGES: Yeah...

INSKEEP: ...owed to overseas investors.

Mr. HEDGES: That's the fault of Wall Street. I mean, they're the people who ratcheted it up. They're the people we had to bail out. It's not the person working on a minimum wage job, but they're the ones who are going to be made to suffer.

By the way, after you've clicked the interview link, you might want to note how NPR has named it.

Obama's School Reform Rules Gets Top Burlington Principal Fired

George Bush created No Child Left Behind, but Barack Obama - in his continuation of Bush's third term - is guilty of not living up to his campaign pledge to reform NCLB.

Michael Winerip, NY Times -

It’s hard to find anyone here who believes that Joyce Irvine should have been removed as principal of Wheeler Elementary School.

John Mudasigana, one of many recent African refugees whose children attend the high-poverty school, says he is grateful for how Ms. Irvine and her teachers have helped his five children. “Everything is so good about the school,” he said, before taking his daughter Evangeline, 11, into the school’s dental clinic.

Ms. Irvine’s most recent job evaluation began, “Joyce has successfully completed a phenomenal year.” Jeanne Collins, Burlington’s school superintendent, calls Ms. Irvine “a leader among her colleagues” and “a very good principal.”

Beth Evans, a Wheeler teacher, said, “Joyce has done a great job,” and United States Senator Bernie Sanders noted all the enrichment programs, including summer school, that Ms. Irvine had added since becoming principal six years ago.

“She should not have been removed,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview. “I’ve walked that school with her — she seemed to know the name and life history of every child.”

Ms. Irvine wasn’t removed by anyone who had seen her work (often 80-hour weeks) at a school where 37 of 39 fifth graders were either refugees or special-ed children and where, much to Mr. Mudasigana’s delight, his daughter Evangeline learned to play the violin.

Ms. Irvine was removed because the Burlington School District wanted to qualify for up to $3 million in federal stimulus money for its dozen schools.

There should be a town forum with Bernie to discuss this. The firing needs to be overturned.

Hedges: No One Cares

"The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military... And for this reason the poor have little interest in the moral protestations of liberals. We have lost all credibility. We are justly hated for our tacit complicity in the corporate assault on workers and their families..." - Chris Hedges

An 'epic' list of Obama's shortcomings...

Read it here.

Justice John Paul Stevens is no "liberal"

Justice Stevens was never as liberal as the lamestream corporate press (and a lot of progressive bloggists) would have you believe. He was and has always been a moderate, even as the SCOTUS has moved (not tilted...)... moved extremely to the right. Paul Campos:

During the 35 years that John Paul Stevens has served on the Supreme Court, the liberal federal judge has become something of an endangered species. Nothing illustrates this better than the absurd idea that Stevens has been a “liberal” justice. That a moderate justice like Stevens is now considered the leader of the court’s “liberal” wing really just goes to show that the Roberts court doesn’t have a liberal wing at all. [...]

What has changed, of course, is the rest of the court. In 2010, a life-long moderate Republican, appointed to the bench by Richard Nixon and to the court by Gerald Ford, is a “liberal” in much the same sense that, in a nation where Tea Party rallies draw large crowds, Barack Obama is a “socialist.” Since Stevens joined the court, every single new justice has been more conservative than the justices who were more liberal than Stevens at the time of his appointment. Over the past 34 years, Stevens stayed put while the entire court moved to his right. (One ironic consequence of this is that speculation regarding whether Obama will nominate someone who will “excite the left” to replace Stevens often ends up focusing on candidates who, on many important issues, aren’t actually to the left of Dick Cheney.)... MORE

Highly Recommended: "We Count! The Black Agenda is the American Agenda"

This is one fucking helluva program I recommend watching. Yeah, call me passionate.

Earlier this month, PBS Talk Show Host Tavis Smiley hosted african american leaders for a forum titled, "We Count! The Black Agenda is the American Agenda." Panelists included, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL), Cornel West and Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan. Great program: watch the rebroadcast here.

Helen Thomas on her one question for Obama

Helen Thomas, the quintessential journalist, was testing Obama's credibility. As you'll find out, the president, the quintessential pol, didn't attempt to answer her question. He didn't take Ms Thomas au serieux and didn't measure up.

Tricky Dick's Dream Come True

Weird, huh? The Dems pass a Republican health care bill and the GOP hates it. Only in America....here's Taylor Marsh in HuffPost:

'When you have Speaker Pelosi's office inviting only the boys, so called "progressives" who are insider Democrats whose only goal it is to prop up the presidency instead of focusing on strong policy, the current health care bill is what you get. Even when you go beyond the issue that Democrats willingly eroded women's rights, the fact that ... See moreDemocrats didn't even try to push for a public option reveals the fundamental failure of Democrats, because they ignored what the majority of the American people want.'

It just shows how far to the right the Democrats have gone. And the wimpshit "progressives" lost their soul to ObamaCorp and didn't have the cajones to stick up for the people!

'From throwing the American people into a system without any choice, providing private insurance companies with new customers, to using women's rights to get it done while progressive Democrats enabled it to happen, what Democrats have done is produce a Republican health care bill that Richard Nixon would have loved.'