What Olbermann’s NIE Special Comment Missed

Unmasking the Puppet Master …hiding in plain sight

[cross-posted to DailyKos and Randall's blog]

Many years ago during the worst of the paranoid breakdown of “Tricky Dick” before his forced resignation, and again during the sneaky, behind-the-scenes horrors being brought to light in those infamous Iran-Contra hearings that made Ollie North such a wingnut hero, I used to console myself with the thought…

“As long as Frank Zappa is running around free, this is still America!”

Today, as we enter year number 8 of the most damaging and destructive American administration of my [Truman+] lifetime, Frank Zappa is dead and the steady erosion of our rights and standing in the world is worse than I’ve ever seen it. But I do have another true hero of freedom to console myself with…

“As long as Keith Olbermann is running around free, this is still America!”

Maybe it’s because I was born into the US Navy (NIS planning officer) where courage and resolve and honesty and patriotism were a way of life my siblings and I were fed along with mother’s milk. Qualities completely expected and always encouraged, a reflection of total dedication to defending and preserving that which was most noble about our nation’s aspirations as a beacon of freedom in the wider world. We were proud of that even if we were always “the new kid” in our classes for moving around the country/world a lot, always picked on by the bigger kids for being outsiders or having funny accents or just for being ‘military brats’.

So when Keith Olbermann looked right into the MSNBC camera this past Wednesday and said to the current occupant of the White House that…

“The Chicken Little of presidents is the one, sir, that you see in the mirror.”

…I just had to laugh out loud. If that idiot child at 1600 was watching, the whole thing no doubt went right over his pin-sized head. I have no doubt he has no idea who the heck Chicken Little is, and hasn’t the IQ to find out. Why, as this nation was being attacked on 9-11 he was having real trouble following along with the kindergartners reading “My Pet Goat,” and was far more interested in how that story turned out than in what was happening in New York City.

God bless you, K.O., and keep you free!

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Stopping the Next War Before It Starts: The Latest NIE

16 US Intelligence Agencies agree, but not with Bush/Cheney…

With Bush and his cadre’s recent hyperbolic rhetoric introducing “World War III” in the same sentence with Iran, it looks to me like the various US intelligence agencies don’t plan to be made scapegoat once again for Bush/Cheney’s delusions of Hitlerian grandeur. They all got together this time and reported in the most recent National Intelligence Estimate that Iran does not have nuclear weapons and is years away from having nuclear weapons even if it tries really hard. CNN reported that…

A declassified summary of the latest National Intelligence Estimate found with “high confidence” that the Islamic republic halted an effort to develop nuclear weapons in the fall of 2003.

Worse, this report was prepared in December of 2006. Which explains why Cheney and the boyz were so anxious to keep a lid on it while they beat the drums toward a opening a new front in their forever-war. Ex-CIA counter-terrorism expert Larry Johnson offered this observation:

There are some unsung heroes in the National Intelligence Council who insisted on the integrity of the product. In the face of enormous political pressure to tailor information and pull punches that undermine Bush Administration talking points, the intelligence professionals did their job. They told the truth based on the facts in hand.

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Katrina Recovery in MS Goes to the Rich, Not the Poor

Two years later the color of the federal government’s hurricane rebuilding efforts in Mississippi is decidedly black and white. Which, if you think about it, probably does more to explain the 6 Days’ Horror in New Orleans that we all got to watch on television as the government hemmed and hawed and dragged its collective feet, FEMA denied entry to relief organizations from Red Cross to Baptist Conferences, and the FoxNews androids made excuse after excuse, day after day, for the obviously racist response. Which cost lives.

The Congress was not so slow in allotting billions for federal grants to help low-income residents trying to recover from the storm in the Gulf states, yet Mississippi still has not spent half of its share. Many of the homes and buildings damaged have yet to see any repairs at all.

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Another SCHIP Update:

Republican Slime Machine Targets Injured 12-Year Old

Graeme Frost speaking to reporters after delivering the Democratic radio response to Bush’s SCHIP veto.

Just when you thought Mister 22% and his Brownshirts couldn’t go any lower in their efforts to prevent millions of children from accessing health care through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program [SCHIP], they managed to find yet another sub-basement cesspool from which to spew slime.

When Bush vetoed the SCHIP legislation passed by both the House and Senate, the Democratic response was delivered by courageous 12-year old Graeme Frost of Baltimore, Maryland. Graeme and his parents, who earn ~$45,000 a year but get no employer-provided health care and with 4 children cannot afford $1,200 a month for private coverage, went public with how the SCHIP program helped them after a 2004 auto accident left Graeme and his younger sister seriously injured and hospitalized for five months.

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Bush Vetoes SCHIP, Governors File Suit

Dems Struggling for Override Votes

For the fourth time during his reign of terror, George Bush used his veto pen to reject reauthorization and expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance program [SCHIP], in defiance of the wishes of a solid 72% majority of the American people and a Veto-Proof majority in the Senate on this completely bipartisan bill.

The 6.6 million children who were covered did have their coverage extended through November, the SCHIP funding from last year expired this past Sunday. The 4 million more children this bill would have covered are SOL, as usual.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are scrambling to come up with the two dozen extra votes they need to override the veto, but it’s not looking very hopeful. Senator Edward Kennedy weighed in over at Daily Kos with a challenge to the President, but then he’s a Senator holding a veto-proof majority on this legislation.

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House Votes to Ignore Bush SCHIP Threat

SCHIP Expansion Passed

As I reported last month when the Congress was on its summer vacation, President Bush promised in July to veto any legislation reauthorizing and expanding the State Children’s Insurance Program, a.k.a. SCHIP.

He’s stuck to that promise even as members of his own party – and a large swath of its right-wing ‘base’ – have turned on him over this issue. Many Congressional Republicans facing re-election next year have been getting an earful from the constituents back home about children’s health care and the millions of working poor and middle class children who are functionally uninsured. It’s a public health issue. It’s a moral issue. It’s a big political thorn in the side. But, as usual, Silver spoon George is deaf and dumb. There’s just something about providing health care to other people’s children he can’t stomach. And since he keeps reminding us that he’s the Decider-er, that’s that.

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John Grisham Steps On Iowa Republicans’ Toes

In an interview this past Thursday with the Des Moines Register newspaper, best-selling author John Grisham made more news with his entrance onto the political stage than with his new book, scheduled for release Monday [September 24].

Grisham slams war, tells book’s Iowa ties appeared in Friday’s Register, featuring scant information about the book and lots of quotes about his political opinions.

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US Foreign Policy Gone All Wrong

I’ve always been rather fond of the Foreign Service, the idea that diplomacy is an important aspect of establishment and maintenance of a global economy, the furtherance of progress and human rights. Always more effective than war, as well as less deadly.

So it was with interest that I read a report from the Denver Research Group dated 9-15. In which they report things that should definitely be of concern to Americans. The gutting of both intelligence capabilities and diplomatic standing during the Bush-II presidency have been significant, and may prove difficult to rectify when they’re gone (scheduled for January 20, 2009).

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Saber-Rattling 101:

How to Scare the Bejesus Out of Tyrants and Tin-Horns

The buzz on the left has been insistent for a couple of weeks now about what the Bush administration is planning to do about Iran’s apparently insane Shi’ite political leader and his nuclear ambitions. The carrier fleet and their escorts have been deployed to the Gulf, the rhetoric has kicked up a few notches about how accessible Iran’s nuclear facilities are to air and sea strikes, there’s even been some talk of a draft. Because Iran’s got a heck of an army and they could march it into Iraq if it felt the need.

There are of course many reasons to doubt that our current war-loving band of chicken-hawk miscreants in Washington are really dumb enough to attack Iran, particularly since Israel issued a statement on Wednesday that they’d be willing to live with a nuclear Iran. So long as it’s just power, of course, as opposed to weapons.

Thus it was with a wry smile and a roll of the eyes that I saw the several news reports about 5 ACMs – Advanced Cruise Missiles – mounted with 5-150 kiloton nuclear warheads (these qualify as tactical nukes as opposed to strategic ones on ICBMs that boast multiple megaton warheads) that were ‘accidentally’ flown from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana on August 30. Oops.

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“Suffer the little children…”

President Bush promised in July to veto legislation reauthorizing and expanding the decade old State Children’s Insurance Program [SCHIP] to include about 3.3 million more children in addition to the 6.6 million already enrolled, and expanding eligibility requirements. The bill had bipartisan support on the Hill, but Bush objected on philosophical grounds.

The philosophy is well known by now – Grover Norquist’s vision of shrinking government until it’s small enough to “drown in a bathtub.” Which might seem hypocritical coming from the man responsible for the largest increase in government since the New Deal, but we’re not supposed to notice that. This is the man who glibly sells our children’s economic future to China at the rate of $10 billion per month ($3,800 per second) just to keep his war of aggression going against the nation of Iraq. So it can’t really be about cost…

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