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Serious stuff to screw our elections

I won't go into detail -- I just ask you to think about it. 

On the one hand, we have Mitch McConnell's and three Republican appointees to the FEC efforts to backstop action by the FEC against a real estate baron in New York state who used threats against Democrats who were making contributions to their party.

On the other hand, we have the case pushed forward to September by the US Supreme Court.  It's the case which deals with whether a right-wing film made to discredit Hillary Clinton could be shown during the final weeks of her campaign.  The basic issue is whether corporate money can be unleashed to affect campaigns.

In both cases, we have what may be the death-knell to any control over corporate support for politicians and political groups.  No, I mean really threaten our democracy, pure and simple.  Think about liberating bullies on the right like the real estate wingnut  in New York with his corporate dollars?  What do you think of unplugging corporate contributions to pro-corporate politicians and their party.

Go read the stories and think about it. Gotta go.

The sad "end of the beginning" in Iran

Trita Parsi and Reza Aslan have been two of the most quoted Iran "experts" during the past ten days.  Now they've written what they call "an end to the beginning" of the story.  Part of the problem going forward, they say, will be the interference of external groups hoping to organize and revive the protests.

Iran's popular uprising, which began after the June 12 election, may be heading for a premature ending. In many ways, the Ahmadinejad government has succeeded in transforming what was a mass movement into dispersed pockets of unrest. Whatever is now left of this mass movement is now leaderless, unorganized -- and under the risk of being hijacked by groups outside Iran in pursuit of their own political agendas. ...

... The lack of organization and execution is perhaps the most convincing evidence that the anti-Ahmadinejad movement is completely homegrown and void of any attempt to emulate the velvet revolutions of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. What is driving people to the streets is their sense of frustration and anger -- not a well-devised plan and training in clever nonviolent resistance techniques.

The leadership vacuum does not bode well for the movement's prospects of success, particularly when it comes to attracting those Iranian swing-voters to its side once more. And this creates openings for external meddling -- just not the kind you think.

Exiled opposition groups, whose political agenda sharply differs from that of the protesters in Iran -- indeed, many of these groups urged people not to vote in the elections -- have sought to fill the vacuum left by a beheaded and directionless indigenous movement. Though the outrage of these exiled groups against the Iranian government’s brutal violence is genuine, their efforts to impose themselves on the political scene have caused great frustration among opposition elements inside Iran. At a time when the movement in Iran is paralyzed, efforts by exiled groups -- groups that scorned the protesters only weeks ago for choosing to participate in the elections -- to fill the leadership vacuum are viewed as nothing less than a maneuver to hijack the movement.

This is playing right into the hands of the Ahmadinejad government, precisely because it would weaken, if not eliminate, the indigenous movement's trump card: its ability to attract the Iranian swing-voters back to its side. If the exiled opposition groups and their neo-conservative backers in the United States prevail in aiding the Ahmadinejad government, what started out as the largest Iranian mass movement since 1979 may end up as little more than the student demonstrations of 1999. Which is to say, an instance of hopes raised, then dashed. ... Foreign Policy

Franken!

He's in!

It's a unanimous decision:  5-0.  They call for the governor to certify the election.  In other words, it's the strongest possible decision.

But ...

Norm Coleman can go to the federal court system for a stay.  And/or Harry Reid could act immediately and declare Franken the elected senator. 

What?  Harry Reid acting quickly and decisively on something which would benefit all of us?  I guess not.

Update:  Coleman has conceded. Whew!

Torture again

The United States has imprisoned (in solitary) and tortured a 12- or 14-year-old kid. 

Bob Herbert reviews the case against Mohammed Jawad who is (at the very least) "no older than an adolescent" and whom we've tortured and held for six years.  Even so the Obama administration won't let him go to the outrage of many human rights groups and (this is key) the chief prosecutor of Mohammed Jawad s well as a bunch of military lawyers -- all of whom have joined the ACLU in trying to get him his freedom. Why won't the Obama administration let him go? 

Jawad confessed to having hurled a grenade into an Army vehicle and seriously injured all three occupants.  Pretty bad stuff.  Can't really blame the military for prosecuting him. Except when you get to the bottom line.  The confession was thrown out of court when it was shown the confession was made in desperation.

There is no credible evidence against Jawad, and his torture-induced confession has rightly been ruled inadmissible by a military judge. But the Obama administration does not feel that he has suffered enough. Not only have administration lawyers opposed defense efforts to secure Jawad’s freedom, but they are using, as the primary basis for their opposition, the fruits of the confession that was obtained through torture and has already been deemed inadmissible — without merit, of no value.

I'd like to know -- wouldn't you? -- just exactly what President Obama's role was in opposing human rights groups, military lawyers, and the very Army prosecutor who was responsible for building the case against Jawad and who uncovered his ill treatment by the Army.

Colonel Vandeveld is no longer on active duty and has joined the effort by military defense lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union to secure Jawad’s freedom. Six years of virtual solitary confinement, he said, is enough for someone who was not much older than a child when he was taken into custody.

More than enough.

______________

But perhaps not enough for some people.  If you don't yet know about the flap created by NPR's ombudsman, Alice Shepard, who effectively defends NPR's habit of avoiding the use of the word "torture" even when it's indisputable, then you might want to get an update from Glenn Greenwald this morning.  He, too, heard Shepard trying to defend herself against criticism on NPR's "On the Media" last week and has been following the firestorm following Shepard's defensive memo posted at NPR.   Greenwald has gone on to post updates on the torture issue this morning, including autopsies of torture victims.

As long as we have media and public figures either defending torture or ducking the issue, our national embarrassment and disgrace will grow.

All wrong about healthcare

Health care is not a bowl of cherries

Or a carton of milk, or a loaf of bread.

Both George Will and Greg Mankiw basically argue that we don’t need a government role because we can trust the market to work — hey, we do it for groceries, right?

Um, economists have known for 45 years — ever since Kenneth Arrow’s seminal paper — that the standard competitive market model just doesn’t work for health care: adverse selection and moral hazard are so central to the enterprise that nobody, nobody expects free-market principles to be enough.

To act all wide-eyed and innocent about these problems at this late date is either remarkably ignorant or simply disingenuous. ...Paul Krugman [emphasis added]

Cheney's secretive February '01 Big Oil project: it's getting underway today

Symbolically, the sale, broadcast on television, coincided with the formal handover by American forces of security arrangements in urban areas to Iraqi forces ...  NYTimes

Sale?  Auction? Of what?  Used tanks and Hummers? Nope, oil.  Exploitation of those rich oil field Dick Cheney and his colleagues had their eyes on -- those shallow, accessible, vast pools of oil second only to those of Saudi Arabia, they say -- is up for grabs at an auction taking place today in Iraq.

The oil companies are so eager for a crack at Iraq's vast oil wealth that they are willing to overlook some big negatives: It's a country still at war. There's a lot of political opposition to foreign oil companies. There's no guarantee the contracts awarded at this auction will even be honored.

On the other hand, Big Oil has not had an opportunity like this for decades.

No one knows for sure how much oil Iraq has. "It's been poorly explored because of all the political turmoil there," says Roger Diwan, a partner at the consulting firm PFC Energy. "With the Iraq-Iran war, the embargo, sanctions and the second gulf war here, we really haven't had a good look at what's in Iraq since the late 1960s." ...NPR

The average Iraqi isn't very pleased at the thought of foreign companies coming in to exploit the oil fields.  The oil companies are dependent on the amount of good will they can drum up in Iraqis ministries.

Now is the hour to look at what went on in that secretive meeting on "energy policy" in the White House in February of 2001. 

"'What makes Iraq special,' says Diwan, 'is [that] there is room for all the big oil companies at the same time, and for all them to have sizable projects. Everybody will get something fairly large.'"  And they've been waiting patiently for eight years and four months. 

Of course, it may not have turned out exactly as Cheney and big oil dreamed.  They don't exactly have full control of the situation as American conquerors.  Instead, they will be partners with the Iraqis -- facilitators in the process of getting the oil out of the ground.  Not a bad deal.  Halliburton is already there.