Category: Barack Obama

Justice Dept. Report Advises Pursuing C.I.A. Torture Allegations

Posted on by TL

We may finally begin to see justice restored in the United States of America.

Breaking news from The New York Times:

The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter.

The recommendation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, presented to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.in recent weeks, comes as the Justice Department is about to disclose on Monday voluminous details on prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the C.I.A.’s inspector general but have never been released.

When the C.I.A. first referred its inspector general’s findings to prosecutors, they decided that none of the cases merited prosecution. But Mr. Holder’s associates say that when he took office and saw the allegations, which included the deaths of people in custody and other cases of physical or mental torment, he began to reconsider.

With the release of the details on Monday and the formal advice that at least some cases be reopened, it now seems all but certain that the appointment of a prosecutor or other concrete steps will follow, posing significant new problems for the C.I.A. It is politically awkward, too, for Mr. Holder because President Obama has said that he would rather move forward than get bogged down in the issue at the expense of his own agenda.

The advice from the Office of Professional Responsibility strengthens Mr. Holder’s hand.

The recommendation to review the closed cases, in effect renewing the inquiries, centers mainly on allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Justice Department report is to be made public after classified information is deleted from it.

President Obama, it’s time to lead and let justice be served.

Republicans Still Without a Working Web Site

Posted on by TL

Since May of this year, the Republican Party has been promising us a newly redesigned Web site.  Each week, believe it or not, I go online looking for the Republican Party’s response to President Obama’s Weekly Address.

Each week, I come up empty-handed.

Now, the Republican Party is asking your help, publishing a plea for Web designers to get involved and be part of the next generation GOP site.  The link on the Home Page opens a simple form asking your level of expertise: PHP, iPhone, Flash, .NET, Facebook or Blackberry.

Apparently they don’t need anyone with HTML experience.

There is another link where you can “Tell Us What You Think” of their new Web site.

Here’s what I think: The last time the Republican Party published their own GOP Response to the President’s Weekly Address was on February 7, 2009: RNC Chairman Michael Steele Delivers Weekly Republican Address.  The headlines to the stories on the GOP Blog are not linked to the story.  Instead, readers have to search for the tiny “…FULL POST” to read stories.

The most current blog post is still this breaking news from April 30, 2009, “The State of the Website,” with an update from May 15, 2009:

5/15/09 Update: What you see here is a placeholder between what was and what is to come for GOP.com. Don’t get too used to this page–the complete rebuild is around the corner. Soon we’ll have a new look and a more enjoyable, modern, open and participatory way to share our ideals with the Country.

On Friday of last week, we chose a vendor to rebuild our website and digital presence; the two are not the same and the distinction matters—a lot. It matters especially so for us.

The website you see today is difficult to update, hard to use, and locked in a Web 1.0 environment. It is also stale. It is in need of a massive spring clean. To be fair, my predecessor and good friend, Cyrus Krohn, and his team were on the way to changing all of this. Then, we elected a new Chairman, re-grouped, re-staffed and then, finally, we locked & loaded.

The project is underway.

You will soon witness some preliminary changes and, less soon—though, faster than I have ever seen done—you will see the new GOP.com in its entirety. This is where you come in.

I know for some of these guys and gals, the Internet is still a series of tubes, but, dammit, the GOP needs to step up.  In addition to being the party of, “No!” they’re also the party of, “No Useful Web site!”

If the GOP can’t build a simple, working Web site with articles less than three months old, why exactly is anyone listening to them on any issue much more complicated, like the economy, education, global warming, or, heaven forbid, health care reform?

Gov. Howard Dean: The Democrats Need to Grow a Pair

Posted on by TL

I had the privilege of attending Netroots Nation Friday as a member of the media for Turning Left. Former Governor Howard Dean held a town hall meeting at 9:00 a.m.  I’m currently working on transcribing his comments, and I’ll publish that story tomorrow.

However, I want to share one quote that Dr. Dean shared with me when I had the opportunity to speak with him during the book signing that followed his presentation.

I stood in a rather long line, and Dr. Dean was extremely gracious with each person who came for his autograph in the book Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer.  When I finally reached the good doctor, I shook his hand and thanked him.

I then told him, if I had the chance during the large town hall meeting, I would have asked him, “When are the Democrats going to grow some, stand up, and fight for health care reform?”

Dr. Dean responded by reiterating what he said to the larger group,  “The Blue Dogs are Democrats,” he said.  “They are Democrats.”

“Ideologically?”  I asked.

“They are Democrats,” Dean repeated.  “But, you’re right.  They do need to grow a pair.”

Those were his exact words.

In the town hall gathering, Dr. Dean told Netroots Nation that the “Conserva-Dems” have done us a favor in the health care reform debate.  Dean noted that the Conserva-Dems are the only group at the table truly representing conservative Americans.  The Republicans have removed themselves from the table, Dean said.  They have chosen to not participate in the health care reform debate.  The Conserva-Dems, or Blue Dogs, are the only truly conservative voice at the table.

That being said, Dean told Netroots Nation the Democrats have already compromised with conservatives in that single-payer health care is off the table.

“There will be no more compromise,” Dean said.

It’s time for the Democrats to fight for the change this country needs.

Stand up now, Dems! And grow a pair.

At Least 4 Democratic Congressman Receive Death Threats Over Health Care

Posted on by TL

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The fringe right wing of movement conservatism is dangerous.

Glenn Beck jokes about poisoning Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and gets to keep his show.

Congressman David Scott had a 4-foot swastika painted over a sign in front of his office.

Congressman Scott is black.

Watch Rachel Maddow in the video above, and be careful.

And speak the TRUTH in the face of these violent, desparate lies.

UK Newspaper Dispels Myths About National Health Care

Posted on by TL

I’ve had it with the fringe right-wing health-insurance-industry-paid screaming white lunatics screaming at congressional town hall meetings.  Homeland Security needs to keep an eye on these nuts and their racist-driven attacks.

Calmer minds are prevailing in the media.  The UK’s The Guardian has begun taking these arguments to task.  Even the United Steel Workers are standing up to unmask the lunatic fringe doing the bidding of the for-profit health insurance industry:

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley has claimed that U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, 77, would not be treated for his brain tumor if he was in Britain because he is too old.

The newspaper reports that this is just not true, according to Britain’s Department of Health. “There is no ban on anyone of any age receiving any treatment,” said a spokesman. “Whether to prescribe drugs or recommend surgery is rightly a clinical decision taken on a case by case basis.”

An e-mail circulating in the U.S. claims that in England, anyone over 59 years old cannot receive heart repairs, stents or bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed. The Guardian reports that this is totally untrue.

“Growing numbers of patients over 65 with heart conditions are having surgery, including valve repairs and heart bypass surgery,” says Professor Peter Weissberg, the British Heart Foundation’s (BHF) medical director. For example, the average age at which people have a bypass operation has risen from 58 in 1991 to 66 in 2008.

San Francisco-based thinktank Pacific Research Institute has been saying that in Britain, breast cancer kills 46 percent of patients, compared with 25 percent in the U.S. They claim prostate cancer kills 57 percent of the Britons it strikes, compared with 25 percent of American victims; and that Britain’s heart attack fatality rate was 19.5 percent higher than America’s in 2005.

Breast cancer does claim more lives, proportionally, in the U.K. than in the U.S., but no where near the difference some claim, according to the 2002 database run by the World Health Organisation’s cancer advisers. For example, 19.2 of every 100,000 Americans die of breast cancer disease, compared to 24 percent in Britain. With heart attacks, 40 percent of Britons who suffer one die from it compared to 38 percent in the States.

And there’s more.

The violent and threatening thugs are not mainstream America.  They are servants of the health insurance industry, and they are getting dangerous, bringing firearms to congressional town hall meetings.

And it turns out everything they say is laughably unscientific and false.

Here’s Your Health Care Reform: Medicare for Everyone

Posted on by TL

That’s it.  Final solution.

Fix the health care system with one simple bill that eliminates the requirement that all Medicare participants be 65 years-of-age or older.  Just open Medicare for everyone.

Problem solved.

Get over it already.  If the Republican-coveted insurance companies want to survive, they’ll have to be competitive.

Personally, I don’t think they have it in them.

So, forget about them.

Open Medicare for everyone.

Problem solved.

Angry White GOP Health Insurance Co. Thugs Disrupt Dems’ Town Halls

Posted on by TL

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Who are these angry white Republicans who are disrupting Democratic congressmen and women at their town hall meetings?

Turns out they’ve been sent to these meetings by D.C. lobbying groups with ties to the health insurance industry.  Shouting out spoon-fed talking points from the insurance industry, they’re defending the millions of dollars these for-profit companies take in over our dead bodies.

Olbermann unmasked the Dems and GOP members of congress on the take from the health insurance industry.  Now Rachel Maddow exposes the lying liars recently heard screaming for the corporations at these town hall meetings.

Watch this video closely.  The insurance industry is actually claiming the proposed health care plans before congress with mandate sex change operations.

Don’t believe me?  Let’s go to Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.  Here’s their list of congressional town hall meetings.  Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is a Washington D.C. -based lobbying organization that’s run by Richard Scott, a former hospital executive.  According to Rachel Maddow, Scott was forced out of that company in the midst of a fraud investigation that resulted in the company paying a $1.7 billion fine.

That’s who these angry white Republicans are taking tap dancing lessons from.  As Maddow reports, “This is a health care industry-linked lobbying group organizing uprisings at town hall events.”

Let’s look at Freedom Works, which gives instructions on how to scream and shout at town hall meetings for that perfect YouTube sound bite, ensuring there will be no discussion, no civil discourse, at these events.

Republican strategists are claiming these shouting matches are simply Democracy in action.  What they are in fact is the absence of Democracy, wild attempts to stop dialogue, to make sure no intelligent discussion takes place. They scream and shout when anyone with a view different from their own begins to speak.  They are the voice of the health insurance industry clamping down on Democracy and each and every one of us, the American people, doing everything possible to shove us down and shut us up, so the industry can pick our pockets at will.

We see them for who they are.

So we call out these GOP insurance-industry-worshipping know-nothings, and applaud the Democrats and Republicans in congress who are seeking true healthcare reform.

Bill Clinton’s Lightning Diplomacy Frees 2 Journalists Held in North Korea

Posted on by TL

This just in from the WTAE Pittsburgh:

North Korea said Tuesday that two detained American journalists have been pardoned. The announcement came after news reports that former President Bill Clinton met Tuesday with the two journalists. ABC News reported that a government source with knowledge of the mission said Clinton’s meeting with journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee was very emotional.

The source was hopeful that Ling and Lee would leave North Korea on Tuesday night for the United States, ABC reported.

Earlier, Clinton met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il during his surprise mission to Pyongyang to negotiate the release of the two reporters, holding “exhaustive” talks on a wide range of topics, state-run media said.

Clinton “courteously” conveyed a verbal message from President Barack Obama, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a report from Pyongyang. Kim expressed his thanks, and engaged Clinton in a “wide-ranging exchange of views on matters of common concern,” the report said.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, however, denied Clinton went with a message from Obama. “That’s not true,” he told reporters.

I don’t know what was said behind closed doors, but this was incredibly fast. The fact that Clinton is not a member of the Obama Administration no doubt gave him greater flexibility in dealing with Kim Jong Il.

I look forward to hearing former President Clinton speak about this trip when he returns to the United States.

I especially look forward to hearing from Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

And I am incredibly impressed.

Kenyan Officials Flummoxed Over ‘Birther’ Controversy

Posted on by TL

I found it amusing that representatives of the Kenyan government are completely baffled by claims from the ‘birthers’ that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

From the Washington Independent:

Jon Chessoni, a first secretary at the Kenyan Embassy in Washington, can’t understand why his office gets so many baseless questions about whether Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

“It’s madness,” said Chessoni on Monday. “His father, in 1961, would not even have been in Kenya. When this matter first came up, the Kenyan government did its research and confirmed that these are all baseless claims.”

Nonetheless, Chessoni spent part of his day fielding inquiries about an image posted at the fringe conservative web site WorldNetDaily–a purported “certified copy of registration of birth” belonging to “Barack Hussein Obama II,” submitted by attorney Orly Taitz in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, part of her undying quest to get a judge to listen to the conspiracy theories about the 44th president of the United States. “I’m forcing the issue, where Obama will have to respond,” Taitz told the Website. “I am asking the judge to give me the power to subpoena the documents from the Kenyan embassy.”

Chessoni didn’t understand what Taitz was talking about or what her discovery (the gift of an “anonymous source” who’s “afraid for his life”) was supposed to prove. He showed the image to other embassy employees, who rolled their eyes at what was, for some, only the latest forgery being passed off as an official document from Kenya. “It’s a red herring,” said Chessoni. “Maybe there are not enough facts out there.”

The “birth certificate” is bogus.  We did our own debunking here on Turning Left, including the delicious revelation — which I haven’t seen reported elsewhere, by the way — that Orly Taitz misspelled her own name when she cited her Web site on the document she claims is Obama’s birth certificate.

Through all this malarkey, I can’t help but think through to that day in Matteson, IL, a few years ago, when I saw then State Senator Barack Obama sitting in his car, waiting patiently for a “Green Rally” to begin.  This event was about money for the south suburbs of Chicago, not about the environment at all.  There sat State Senator Obama, and no one noticed, except Mayor John Ostenburg of Park Forest, IL.  John stopped to chat with the man running for the U.S. Senate.

And no one else hardly noticed Obama was there.

How times have changed.

Get over it, Birthers.  Barack Obama is an American citizen, and these ridiculous attempts to prove otherwise are, well, just damn silly anymore.