Obama Inc. vs. Working Families
By NoQuarter on January 5, 2008 at 8:45 PM in Clinton, Credit Card Companies, Economy, Obama
Barack Obama Sided with Credit Card Loan Sharks While Hillary Clinton Stood Against Them
Obama’s numerous corporate donors were pleased — especially The Bond Market Association’s legislative affairs guy Mike Williams. While Obama voted against the 2005 bankruptcy bill, he voted against “an important amendment, which was defeated, that would have capped credit-card interest rates at 30 percent.”
“[Obama] studied the issue,” Williams said. “Some assumed he would just go along with consumer advocates, but he voted with us on several points. He understood the issue. He wasn’t closed-minded. A lot of people [especially those corporate lobbyists] found that very refreshing.” — “Barack Obama Inc.,” Harper’s
Sen. Hillary Clinton voted for the cap on predatory credit card interest rates.
The American economy is collapsing, middle class families are floundering, home foreclosures are spreading, housing prices are diving, unemployment is up (did you see the disturbing report yesterday?), oil is at $100 a barrel, and what can working families do to thank Barack Obama in this crisis? Obama made good on his rhetoric to work with Republicans — by exploiting middle class and working people. (Dayton Amendment, U.S. Senate Roll Call Vote — Obama Nay; Clinton Yea)
“There’s a reasonableness about him,” he said. “I don’t see him as being on the liberal fringe. He’s not going to be a parrot for the party line.” — Robert Harmala of Venable, one of the nation’s top corporate law firms.
Here’s what David Sirota had to say about Sen. Obama’s vote for credit card company usury — and please note that Sirota corrects the Obama campaign’s attempt to confuse the issue:
October 24, 2007 11:13 AM
Obama Camp Feigns Outrage, Distracting From Obama’s Vote to Allow Loan Sharking
The Obama campaign is attacking the Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson for saying that Obama voted for the credit card industry-written Bankruptcy Bill in 2005, which is not true. Obama voted against the final bill. However, Obama did, in fact, vote against an amendment to that bill that cuts to the core of the matter. [...]
It was an amendment by Sen. Mark Dayton (D-MN) “To limit the amount of interest that can be charged on any extension of credit to 30 percent,” as the Senate’s website notes.
So sure, while Meyerson got the details wrong, the spirit of what he wrote is, in fact, right. Obama sided with the credit card industry on the core issue of whether it should be allowed to loan shark and charge customers more than an astounding 30 percent interest rate.
Adds Mother Jones magazine’s article, “Campaign Contributions from Credit Card Companies? Priceless“:
Obama, who made a strong floor speech in opposition to the 2005 bankruptcy bill, nonetheless voted against a key amendment that would have put a cap of 30 percent on interest rates. Financial firms, according to Ken Silverstein’s much-discussed Harper’s article “Barack Obama Inc.,” “constitute Obama’s second biggest single bloc of donors.” You’ll find nary a word about the debt crisis on his campaign web site.
Share this with your friends who are drunk with the prospects of “hope” and “change” and the end of “special influences”:
Yet it is also startling to see how quickly Obama’s senatorship has been woven into the web of institutionalized influence-trading that afflicts official Washington. He quickly established a political machine funded and run by a standard Beltway group of lobbyists, P.R. consultants, and hangers-on. For the staff post of policy director he hired Karen Kornbluh, a senior aide to Robert Rubin when the latter, as head of the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton, was a chief advocate for NAFTA and other free-trade policies that decimated the nation’s manufacturing sector (and the organized labor wing of the Democratic Party). Obama’s top contributors are corporate law and lobbying firms (Kirkland & Ellis and Skadden, Arps, where four attorneys are fund-raisers for Obama as well as donors), Wall Street financial houses (Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase), and big Chicago interests (Henry Crown and Company, an investment firm that has stakes in industries ranging from telecommunications to defense). Obama immediately established a “leadership PAC,” a vehicle through which a member of Congress can contribute to other politicians’ campaigns—and one that political reform groups generally view as a slush fund through which congressional leaders can evade campaign-finance rules while raising their own political profiles.
Already considered a potential vice-presidential nominee in 2008, Obama clearly has abundant political ambitions. Hence he is playing not only to voters in Illinois—a reliably Democratic and generally liberal state—but to the broader national audience, as well as to the Democratic Party establishment, the Washington media, and large political donors. Perhaps for this reason, Obama has taken an approach to his policymaking that is notably cautious and nonconfrontational. “Since the founding, the American political tradition has been reformist, not revolutionary,” he told me during an interview at his office on Capitol Hill this summer. …
Read all: “Barack Obama Inc.: The birth of a Washington machine,” Harper’s magazine.
Nobody who’s checked into the Rezko deal would be surprised at any of this. Obama, a civil rights attorney who specialized in low-income housing, made a real estate deal with a slumlord. In fact, this wasn’t just any slumlord. Rezko is the kind of slumlord who gives slumlords a bad name.
It astonishes me that so many people think so much of this guy. He’s a con artist and a charlatan. Of course, con artists and charlatans can make a good living, can’t they?
Apparently all one need do is appear sunny and promise people change.
Why bother with details like allowing credit card companies to charge over 30% interest? We can live off “hope.”
As some of Rezko’s tenants know, hope doesn’t burn very well:
From the Chicago Sun-Times article.
Dear lord. Now, I haven’t researched the Rezko thing — just read a few items. Tell me more if you can. Especially about the two’s associations and how intertwined they actually are.
Much of what’s known about this is in the links I’ve already provided. Rezko has contributed money to Obama’s campaigns - not a particularly damning thing in itself. But the “real estate” deal was for adjacent properties in Chicago, and property he added onto his own lawn. These deals, according to the WaPo article, happened in 2005. Also according to the WaPo, he paid more than the appraised value of the lot that he bought from Rezko, so does not appear to have gotten a break. Rezko and Obama have been acquainted for some time, and apparently Obama had solicited advice about real estate and contractors from Rezko before buying the property.
It just strikes me as implausible that Obama wouldn’t have known who this guy was. Rezko and his partners had received more than $100 million in loans from the city, state and federal governments during the 1990s. They had been in financial trouble with the city since 1998 and had complaints against the housing they’d been building with those loans since 2001 or so.
At this point, it appears that there was no other relationship between Obama and Rezko. IOW, Rezko got nothing in return that anyone’s aware of. Rezko schmoozed a great many politicians in the Chicago area. It’s just one of those things that make you shake your head when you read about them.
C’mon. This is like Whitewater. Noise.
Maybe, Cee. By no means am I an authority on Chicago; I only had a friend from Chicago who used to tell me political stories, as down-home as Jimmy Hoffa stories [I'm from Michigan] but with grander, more intricate infighting. And Chicago’s political culture is woven into Chicago’s history-remember Upton Sinclair? Cujo’s information rings true to me.
Obama seems to have a thing against Unions and all working people. He doesn’t want to get on the bad side of the Republicans before he brings us all together.
The acid test for my voting for a Democratic Party presidential candidate is the following: who, when elected president, will conduct the most thorough investigation ever in the history our country into the criminal enterprise called the Bush administration?
Which candidate, upon being elected president, will work closely with a Democratic-controlled Congress starting in 2009 to expose ALL that the outgoing Bush administration has been doing, because we are definitely only seeing the tip of the iceberg regarding criminal acts by the Bush administration?
Which Democratic Party candidate as president, for instance, will finally release the after-incident CIA damage report regarding the outing of covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson?
Which Democratic Party candidate as president will finally finish the investigation Congress started, but never completed, into all the lies the Bush administration used prior to launching an invasion against Iraq in March 2003?
Which Democratic Party candidate as president will strip bare the outgoing Bush administration and expose the naked truth in the public square of all that the Bush administration has done which has caused so much damage to our nation, our military and our world relations?
In other words, we need a “Truth and Reconciliation” president, following the “lies and greed” Bush/Cheney years. And in that order. First, Truth, then Reconciliation.
Unfortunately, some of the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates have indicated that they prefer going straight to “reconciliation” while skipping the “truth” part, the uncovering of what Bush, Cheney, PNAC and the Federalist Society have really been doing to subvert our democratic society.
And the idea that exposing all the crimes committed by members of the outgoing Bush administration would somehow hurt the Democratic Party is ludicrous. Uncovering and exposing the widespread criminality of the Bush/Cheney years can only give Democratic Party candidates nationwide a boost.
So, which Democratic Party presidential candidate, when elected president, will swear to grab the Republican bull elephant by the horns, er, tusks, and open as many investigations as necessary once in the White House to get to the bottom of the most corrupt administration in American history? That’s what I want to know.
Are you the diarist at Daily Kos who had the recommended diary asking these key questions today? That was an amazing diary.
I couldn’t open the comments section because there were too many, so I’m very curious how people responded.
The most corrupt government in American history. Nothing Bush has done would have been possible without the active collusion of the Democrats, as a party, as an institution. Nothing. There will be no substantive investigations. Not Iraq. Not Katrina. Not collapse of the financial system. Not the hundred other sellings out of our health, our constitution, our liberty, our environment, our self respect, our future. None.
I should have posted most of my comments below under your message here. I certainly am with you.
(Perhaps you are grateful I didn’t post my comments under yours, since mine are certain to be far less popular on this board.)
Whatever - an important point well made. Care to venture an answer to your own inquiry?
The acid test for my voting for a Democratic Party presidential candidate is the following: who, when elected president, will conduct the most thorough investigation ever in the history our country into the criminal enterprise called the Bush administration?
I’d like to see this asked to all the candidates everywhere they appear.
Let me also an interpretation of what went on with the Chapter 11 amemdment (S. 256). The bill passed 74-25, so Obama’s vote wasn’t the deciding factor in whether it passed or failed. Given the margin by which it passed, Obama must have known that it would pass. Yet he defeated an amendment that would have made the bill less dreadful for the consumer.
In short, while giving the appearance of opposing the bill, he actually knowingly made it worse.
Maria Cantwell, our state’s junior Senator, took this dodge as well. Let’s say she’s not thought of very highly at around here, either.
Maria Cantwell, our state’s junior Senator, took this dodge as well. Let’s say she’s not thought of very highly at around here, either.
That would be putting it mildly — in my case, at least.
Let me also offer an interpretation …
she’s not thought of very highly
ataround hereLOL. Who needs grammar? It’s the thought
ofthat counts.Susan,
This is legitimate, well deserved criticism. I saw something about him backtracking on this the other day. He’s now calling for new restrictions just in time for the elections.
A good book about this practice or usury is Profits of Misery.
New,
The union leadership is pissing the membership off. They’re voting for Obama.
OT: I don’t remember who recommended the book Deer Hunting with Jesus. I’m reading it now. Great book.
The first chapter is American Serfs.
Aren’t we all now.
I’m a nonviolent person but, when I pass by those check cashing places, I wish I could firebomb them. It is terrible what they do to desperate people.
And credit cards. My god. They change the rates on a whim. I avoid using a credit card if at all possible … don’t need the stress.
I’ll look up Profits of Misery and Deer Hunting with Jesus, Cee, and put up ads for them. Sound like great, if disturbing, reads.
I live in southeast Michigan in a Republican area. Our city library is large and generous about buying books people request. When I asked them to buy “Deer Hunting With Jesus”, I was told it was already on the library’s shelves. Even Republicans have wide ranging interests, I guess.
The book contains a chapter on mortgaging large homes for marginal income buyers.
This is only one section. The rest is equally heartbreaking.
The recently passed Energy Appropriations Bill had 25 billion in loan garantees for the Nuke industry.
look and see if or how he voted on this.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?tab=bills&id=400629
Exactly. I wanted to add that to the story — the Harper’s article has info on Obama’s ties to that nuke company — but it was off-topic.
Betcha anything that if we polled all of the people who voted for Obama on Thursday night, only a tiny percentage would even know about his patronage on behalf of Exelon.
What I should do is use your link + Harper’s + see if I can find more, and post another piece on it.
(P.S. That Harper’s article is a great read. It’s one of those well-written articles that flows so beautifully that it’s a pleasure to read.)
If you look at “working families” as constituents vs Corporate interest it tells one what his priorities are and as Valerie Wilson said in her book, another angle in the room.
The Harpers artical was a good read, I will be looking for more as well. Good Hunting.
Working Families need Nuclear Energy
I just gave a small donation to Edwards. I wish it could be more. I’m not feeling the Obama love either.
Hillery wont take the Insurance companies off the table when it comes to health care for all Americans. This bothers me. Plus, she will be a punching bag for 4 years for the Republicans smear mongers. Those assholes will have a hay day with her, and just bring it all back agin, because the morons have to change the subject, as they dont want to talk about the issues. The GOP makes lots of money off Bill and Hillery. Shes a cash cow for them. That leave Edwards and Obama for people like me so far.
Cee, I mentioned and wrote at length about Joe Bageant’s “Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches From America’s Class Wars.”
Not to quibble but I would say it is NOT O/T. It relates directly to this post. Here’s why: working class Americans are getting screwed economically. Their supposed champions, the Democrats, are supposed to speak up and advocate on their behalf. Instead, not only are they not advocating for them, like in this instance with Obama, they are actively aiding and abetting the “economic royalists.” (FDR phrase.)
http://www.amazon.com/Deer-Hunting-Jesus-Dispatches-Americas/dp/030733936X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199613464&sr=1-1
ps. I believe this is one of the 2 or 3 most important books out there right now.
And may I make a friendly suggestion? After you read the Amazon reviews, buy a copy. Read it, or peruse it. And then give it to the candidate who is running for Congress, or Senator, or the Governor’s office in your neck of the woods. And encourage them to hold it aloft from the podium, and discuss in their stump speech.
In ‘92 Clinton held aloft and discussed Bartlett and Steele’s “What’s Wrong With America.”
This book can influence the national discussion.
Wethornet, Howard Dean I’m waiting for your phone call.
Not to quibble but I would say it is NOT O/T.
Right. It was too late to change it after I hit add comment…like typos and such.
OMG. This book!! Who wants a job cutting dead sows out of a crate?
I wonder what would it take to bring progressives back in mass to help people like this.
When he talked about liberals being beaten on the picket lines in the old days I thought of the movie Matwan.
The author has a blog
http://www.joebageant.com/
So, he voted against a very modest crumb of an amendment to a horrendous bill package, but voted against the entire package… and you want to focus on this as some sort of cautionary tale of his accession to greed and corruption?
Sorry, but if this is all you’ve got, I just started feeling a little better about Obama.
There are PLENTY of examples on positions one could compare between these two where Obama would look to be the better choice…
… one of the best such illustrations is provided by the following quotes from The Daily Kos (not all of them directly from the candidates):
San Francisco: “Will you join Sen. Chris Dodd’s hold and proposed filibuster on any FISA bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecoms?”
Sen. Joe Biden: “Yes.”
Barack Obama: “To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”
Hillary Clinton: “I am troubled by the concerns that have been raised by the recent legislation reported out of the Intelligence Committee…As matters stand now, I could not support it and I would support a filibuster absent additional information coming forward that would convince me differently.”
How anyone - liberal or conservative or libertarian - can find Hillary Clinton trustworthy is a mystery to me. That opinion is based on far more than the above quote, to be sure. This kind of equivocation on THE MOST CRITICAL ISSUES TO THIS NATION’s CORE HEALTH are vintage Hillary.
What makes you think it’s “all you’ve got”? Are you kidding me? Just read the various posts on Obama here the last couple of weeks. Then go over to Taylor Marsh’s or some of the other links here.
As for what the problem this is, it’s the mendacity. To quote what I wrote earlier:
In short, while giving the appearance of opposing the bill, he actually knowingly made it worse.
He made it worse, knowing it would pass.
I’ll let the people who trust Hillary Clinton speak to that issue, but her voting record’s been better than Obama’s from my perspective.
Not from mine…
There are a few “bellweather” votes worth remembering and applying the greatest weight in evaluating the character of a Presidential candidate. The vote against a “less bad” amendment to a criminally bad bill that he voted against en toto is not one of those votes, IMO.
Congress abdicating its responsibility for making the decision to declare war by providing advance authorization on the basis of “blind trust” IS one such bill.
The strength of his position on retroactive immunity for Telcos is another, IMO.
Based on these, and a few more I am aware of, Hillary cannot share a stage with Obama.
My primary concerns are those of state, war and peace, constitutional rule of law, balance of powers, the Bill of Rights, delegated and reserved powers all trump social issues at this moment in history. Without this governing infrasture, any move toward economic justice is doomed to failure, and bound to end up being corrupted beyond recognition.
And while I share the traditional liberal view of the importance of a redistribution of wealth, I do not share your enthusiasm for doing it in targeted industries with strings and a whole new bureaucratic control structure to enforce it. Freedom, and the responsibility that goes with it is still important to me.
Ill-gotten gains derived from structural deformities in the system are what need to be reversed at the level of their root cause. The truely poor and helpless should benefit from an honest federal structure, but creating entire industries where the sweat of one citizen’s brow is directed, controlled and regulated by politicians, and its value arbitrarily assigned does not appeal to me in any industry. The only legitimately federalized industries are those whose primary value is derived from “commons” - energy, and specifically oil, is a principle example.
Certain aspects of Medicine may fit that bill as well, like pharmaceuticals, but the actual grunt work in the delivery of medical care is far away from that and bound to create a mess no better than the one we are in now. How long it would take to reach it would depend on the veracity of those running the program, and their political taskmasters. Anyone who views such a prospect with optimism is in desperate need of a reality check.
So, how one views the relative value of each of these candidates depends on their priorities. If personal or class gain without regard to the long term consequences or what it costs the laborers who are enslaved by such a system is your top priority, Hillary may look pretty good.
If one’s priorities are closer to mine, they might share my very different view of the candidates.
And yet, the systems “run by politicians” manage to deliver better performance, as measured by life expectancy and price per capita, than ours. Social Security is far more efficient than any similar commercial plan. Yet somehow we always seem to have to “fix” it by making it private.
As I’ve mentioned before, if you want everyone to contribute, we all pay taxes. As for the bigoted reference to people who live off the sweat of someone else’s brow, I invite you to spend a few months doing minimum wage work. It’s not fun, and it’s not anywhere near profitable enough to pay health insurance with and still live.
And please allow me to add that blaming Obama for this monstrosity they called “banktrptcy reform” because he didn’t vote for a small amendment that would make the bill slightly more palatable, but then voted against the entire package is rather unfair. Perhaps he hoped to convince more of his peers to defeat the entire bill. Perhaps his principled stand was that he did not want to contribute to anything that would allow supporters of the bill to lean on in order to justify THEIR positions.
Answer this question: If EVERYONE had voted for BOTH the Amendment and the Bill, how much better off would we be today? How much of a difference would it make?
Now, what if EVERYONE had voted AGAINST the amendment AND the Bill? How much better off would we be with that result?
Here is a question I do not know the answer to: How did Hillary vote on the bankruptcy bill (we already know she supported the amendment)? As I said, I do not know the answer, I have a pretty strong suspicion of what it is. If she did vote for the package, I think the phenomenon of her supporters creating an issue out of this thing begins to take on an even worse odor…
I cannot edit my comment, so I will respond to report that contrary to my suspicions, Senator Clinton voted AGAINST passage of S. 256 - and I stand chastised and corrected on that suspicion. Her vote here renders this argument by her supporters fully legitimate, and though I am not a “fan” I am happy to say that. I far prefer honest political disagreement to jerry-rigged talking points designed to obfuscate the real positions of any candidate.
And while I agree with those who believe Hillary’s position throughout this bill is superior to that taken by Obama, I remain convinced that there are higher priorities where what I have seen of Obama is far more appealing to what I’ve seen from Clinton. I’m not going to go into all of my concerns about her as a candidate here, but I will say that there are not many times in history where the ethical foundation of so many of the most important issues is so completely clear as those we face today - which I have identified earlier. I appreciate a candidate willing to recognize that clarity and stick his/her neck out with a clear and unambiguous commitment to the right side of those arguments when (s)he knows it will earn him/her powerful enemies. I’ve seen that more from Obama on the issues I consider to be of greatest urgency than I have seen from any “leading” candidate from the major parties in many years.
No candidate is perfect, and all of us are entitled to our opinions. Every vote is a trade-off, and for many it ultimately comes down to priorities. So those of you unhappy with the support Obama is receiving, by all means, throw up these discussions of dissent. But please do not assume those of us on the left of center who remain unconvinced are only maintaining that position out of ignorance or some underdeveloped sense of independence from the mob.
Come November, one of us is going to have to make a decision about setting aside our differences to support the other, if this nation is to have any hope to cling to at all. The choice will be to do that, or split into “principled factions” with third party candidates and withdraw from involvement, resulting in another 408 years of absolute horror… if we last that long.
Thank you.
I agree that we are all entitled to our opinions and loathe it when someone is savaged for daring to disagree. I support John Edwards but would not suffer too much angst voting for Hillary Clinton. I think she is a smart, tough, lady and having her in the White House would guarantee that there wouldn’t be anymore conservative clinkers nominated for an all ready lopsided Supreme Court.
I am not a Barak Obama fan. I was somewhat ambiguous in my feelings until that little bit with him attacking Senator Clinton over something Bob Novak printed in his column. Bob Novak? That just left a bad taste in my mouth. Then there was the bit about attacking Unions as special interest groups as well as some other things.
That all said, I will vote for a Democrat over any damn Republican. If I have to hold my nose with both hands and write with a pencil in my teeth I’ll vote Democratic in November. I just would like to be voting for this time instead of against.
Um… I think it’s common knowledge by now that neither Biden, Obama nor Clinton bothered to show up to support Dodd on the FISA filibuster.
More proof that lip service from candidates is alive and well. Integrity? Not so much.
blockquote>Comment by Cee | 2008-01-05 21:39:23
A good book about this practice or usury is Profits of Misery.
Cee, I went to Amazon to check out the book. I’m 98.7% sure you meant “Merchants of Misery: How Corp. Amer. Profits From Poverty.” Below is an Amazon reviewer’s take on Michael Hudson’s book.
(”Profits of Misery” is about inpatient psychiatric care, which I may need as I watch and try and thwart greedy, clueless Rethugs and spineless Dims destroy this great country. ;-))
http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Misery-Corporate-America-Profits/dp/1567510825/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199612288&sr=1-3
Yes. Forgive. I moved most of my books to the third floor and couldn’t locate it last night.
I just found it. This book also deals with auto, trade school, rent to own scams and slumlords.
This was written back in 96. I remember it was around that time that I saw one of those check cashing places open up in the burbs.
I wish that common sense and facts were enough to defeat Obama. I don’t think that will happen. He is the favorite of the media now and many uninformed voters will just follow the parade so that they can march with the “cool kids“. And that’s what the Obama campaign has become; a cult of personality. Much style, little substance. Media adores Obama.(At least until it takes it upon itself to knock him off the pedestal they have placed him on.) Savages Hillary no matter what she says or does. Ignores Edwards and his authentic progressive, populist message. Thus the media controls the elections to a great extent. I think this fight has all ready been lost. Sadly there are far more airheads that want to be cool than those that want to be smart.
kenoshaMarge, I could not agree more where the undue influence of the Mass Media is concerned. In fact, one of my daydream projects would be to write a booked called “Reclaiming Reality: The Role of Media Ownership Consolidation in the decay of democracy, and how to fight it.” This is certainly a HUGE topic.
That said, I wish I’d placed my “2008-01-06 08:51:02″ post under yours here, because much of what I wrote there was inspired by your other comments. Too late for that now, so I am posting to catch your attention, in hopes I might be able to stimulate some discussion with you, or at least some reflection.
Thanks
DeighvedHSternMD,
The problem is not getting me to discuss things, the problem is to get me to shut up. I am a old lady with a big mouth and an interest in seeing my 7 granddaughters inherit a world that is at least as good as the one I knew and somewhat better than the medieval world the rich, the greedy and the foolish would inflict on us all.
I support candidates based on what I think they can and will do for the country. I do not get tingly or run after “Rock Star” candidates. I stopped doing that a short time after puberty. See, I told you it was hard to shut me up.
Barack beholden to no special interests, unless they have an usury fee!
Food rationing to continue but with fewer items
Hazem al-Jumaili, Azzaman,
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m39860&hd=&size=1&l=e
Heckuva job.
The myth of sectarianism - The policy is divide to rule
Dahr Jamail
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m39851&hd=&size=1&l=e
Catastrophic success!
Textbook example, Negroponte’s Salvadoran Solution!
Speak of the devil…
Tasked with details, one gets an alarming narrative:
Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott would be proud:
Let’s see how long this witness lives:
Good cop, bad cop.
Bad cop, worse cop?
But there’s not enough report about the success in Iraq!
We’re trying to play both sides of the fence.
Turns out this author was quite prohpetic.
Edwards is right, we need to get out of Iraq.
The Iraq numbers for occupation should include troops stationed in Kuwait and surrounding countries as well…
Edwards is right, we need to get out of Iraq.
And NOW!
At risk of pissing off some folks I must say that I believe what I read on an Iraqi blog about the recent death of two US soldiers in Iraq who were shot by an Iraqi soldier.
The claim is that they were beating a pregnant Iraqi woman.
I’m also glad you brought up the Salvador Option and the plan to divide Iraq.
People don’t want to touch that topic. Look back at the old Oded Yinon plan and compare it to what is happening now.
The clown Ralph Peters also wants Pakistan divided.
When reading it I was reminded that Johnnie went to Pakistan before Bhutto was killed.
The story about the Iraqi soldier killing two American soldiers was carried yesterday on CNN.com in Arabic and English. I didn’t have time to read the whole thing, so I don’t know whether they mentioned the part about kicking the pregnant woman, but given the U.S. military’s history in Iraq I would not doubt it.
Cee, do you have a link where the story about the beating of the pregnant woman is mentioned? Can this be authenticated or is it just rumor so far?
Thanks, Mr. M! Dahr Jamail is a phenomenon. He “gets” Iraq in a way that the recognized “experts” never will.
More Iraq reality:
http://arablinks.blogspot.com/
While we spend two or three billion dollars a week on the war, sixty percent of Iraqis will have the food rations they depend on cut in half for a year for lack of four billion dollars.
cee, kenoshamarge, etc. over at firedoglake.com is a long story about the iraqi pregnant women/gi’s killed situation.
Thank you for the info.
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someone else\’s game against predators…
Good work. Keep it up….
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