2011 May 16 - Headline News

Rep. West's Q&A during the Politicizing Procurement Hearing
13 May 2011
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOH90piD5-4

Imagine a scenario in which the media outlet most afflicted with Barack Obama Sycophancy Syndrome (BOSS) - the place Chris ‘thrill up my leg’ Matthews calls home - presented a ’smoking gun’ that could implicate the Obama White House in a cover-up akin to that of Watergate but with the added scarlet letter of murder. The notion of such a thing would be like Woodward and Bernstein ignoring Deep Throat. Impossible, right? Yes, unless it did so unintentionally.

It looks like that honor may just go to none other than Michael Isikoff who, in September of 2010, wrote about an ATF strategy that involved targeting gun dealers in the United States as a means to prevent weapons from ending up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Included in Isikoff’s article is a link to what Mike Vandergoegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars - who unearthed this amazing find - refers to as the “field manual” of the Project Gurunner scandal that led to the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry last December.

The “manual” was leaked to Isikoff as the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) was wrapping up a report that was critical of the ATF’s efforts to stem the flow of weapons to cartels. Ironically, that same OIG is what Obama and Holder point to as the entity that is to conduct a thorough investigation into the origins of the scandal it appears to be involved in at some level.

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http://bigpeace.com/bbarrack/2011/05/16/did-msnbc-find-project-gunrunners-smoking-gun/

A new report out by Forbes - aptly called “The Global Debt Bomb” -
reveals that the five states roiling in the most debt are all so-called “blue”
states. The top five are: Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and
California.

And among the five most fiscally sound are three predominantly “red” states
(Utah, Nebraska, Texas) and two more politically mixed states (New Hampshire
and Virginia).

Forbes’ methodology included:

unfunded pension liabilities, changes in tax revenue, credit ratings, debt
as a percentage of Gross State Product, debt per capita, growth expectations
for employment and the state economy, net migrations and a “moocher ratio” that
compares government employees, pension burdens and Medicaid enrollees to
private-sector employment.

Source: alternet dot org
Posted by Daniela Perdomo at 5:10 pm
March 1, 2010

Barack Obama's immigration speech in El Paso, Texas, on May 10 was an exercise in electioneering and hypocrisy. Hypocrisy because while Obama complained about "politicians" blocking comprehensive immigration bills, he was one of them himself.

In 2007, when such a bill was backed by a lame-duck Republican president and had bipartisan backing from Senate heavyweights Edward Kennedy and Jon Kyl, Sen. Obama voted for union-backed amendments that Kennedy and Kyl opposed as bill killers.

In 2009 and 2010, President Obama acquiesced in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to pass cap and trade and bypass immigration, and in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's decision not to bring an immigration bill to the floor.

Both times the votes were probably there to pass a bill. Obama did not lift a finger to help.

But that did not stop the president who is constantly calling for civility to heap scorn on those who seek stronger enforcement. "They'll want a higher fence. Maybe they'll need a moat," he said to laughter from the largely Latino audience. "Maybe they'll want alligators in the moat. They'll never be satisfied."

Was that on the teleprompter or was it ad-libbed? In either case Obama was showing his contempt for those who bitterly cling to the idea that the law should be enforced.

That's no way to assemble the bipartisan coalition necessary to pass an immigration bill.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/05/obamas-hypocritical-rhetoric-immigration-reform#ixzz1MY3RBadc

Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the far left Institute for Policy Studies and a member of both Democratic Socialists of America and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

In 2008, Fletcher co-founded Progressives for Obama, with veteran activist Tom Hayden, leftist actor Danny Glover and fellow DSAer Barbara Ehrenreich.

Writing in The Rag Blog, Fletcher explains what “progressives” must do, to secure a victory for Barack Obama in 2008.

It is a grassroots vision, taking focus off the President and instead using mass action and the people’s movements to unseat and defeat Republicans and centrist Democrats.

It is a revolutionary vision, in that it calls for law breaking and “masses of people making a situation untenable.”

It is an internationalist vision, looking to revolutions abroad, both for inspiration and solidarity.

This is a “people’s power” strategy, owing not a little to recent events in the Middle East.

Comrade Fletcher says “progressives” must:

1. Forget running a candidate against Obama in 2012. That would be a sure way to alienate much of his black and Latin base. Instead, there needs to be a progressive strategy focused on Congressional races. That means identifying key races to run genuine progressive candidates against conservative Democrats and/or Republicans.

2. We need to build an electoral organization that can run such candidates. There are examples of these around the country but we need to expand, ultimately building something at the national level that rivals the vision of the National Rainbow Coalition from the late 1980s. It needs to be an organization that has a mass base and can run candidates inside and outside the Democratic Party.

3. We desperately need mass action. Wisconsin was wonderful for many reasons but one important one was the sustained presence in the capitol. A protest movement focused on power needs to be prepared to break the law, not through the actions of a few individuals, but much as happened in Wisconsin, as well as in the Civil Rights movement, with masses of people making a situation untenable.

But we also have to develop key strategic targets for our actions where we are clear on what we want them to do. This will largely happen at the local level at first, but it can also happen at the national level, such as through selective boycotts.

4. We have to think and act globally and locally. We must link with social movements around the world challenging U.S. foreign policy, providing such movements with whatever level of support we can. We cannot allow more Honduras coup situations, and we have to make it clear that U.S. policy in Afghanistan is a disaster.

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http://emergingcorruption.com/2011/04/bill-fletcher-jr-%E2%80%93-leading-socialist-calls-for-mass-actions-law-breaking-to-re-elect-obama-in-2012/

The young boy was questioned by Secret Service for his Facebook posting.

A Tacoma seventh grader faced federal interrogation at school for what he posted on his Facebook page. His mom said it all happened without her knowledge or permission.

Timi Robertson said she had just finished lunch with a friend Friday when she got a phone call from her son's school."I answered it, and it's the school security guard who's giving me a heads up that the Secret Service is here with the Tacoma Police Department and they have Vito and they're talking to him," Robertson said.

After Osama bin Laden was killed, 13-year-old Vito LaPinta posted an update to his Facebook status that got the Feds attention.

"I was saying how Osama was dead and for Obama to be careful because there could be suicide bombers," says LaPinta.

A week later, while Vito was in his fourth period class, he was called in to the principal's office.

"A man walked in with a suit and glasses and he said he was part of the Secret Service," LaPinta said. "He told me it was because of a post I made that indicated I was a threat toward the President."

The Tacoma school district acknowledged a Secret Service agent questioned Vito and that it was a security guard who called Vito's mom because the principal was on another call. The school district said they didn’t wait for Vito’s mother to get there because they thought she didn't take the phone call seriously.

"That's a blatant lie," Robertson said.

The teen’s mom says she rushed to Truman Middle School immediately and arrived to discover her son had already been questioned for half an hour.

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http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-secret-service-the-feds-question-a-tacoma-seventh-grader-for-a-facebook-comment-about-president-obama-and-suicide-bombers-20110516,0,5762882.story

This DAY in History:

May 16, 1868:
Senate acquits Johnson of high crimes and misdemeanors

On this day in 1868, the U.S. Senate votes against impeaching President Andrew Johnson and acquits him of committing "high crimes and misdemeanors."

In February 1868, the House of Representatives charged Johnson with 11 articles of impeachment for vague "high crimes and misdemeanors." (For comparison, in 1998, President Bill Clinton was charged with two articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice during an investigation into his inappropriate sexual behavior in the White House Oval Office. In 1974, Nixon faced three charges for his involvement in the Watergate scandal.) The main issue in Johnson's trial was his staunch resistance to implementing Congress' Civil War Reconstruction policies. The War Department was the federal agency responsible for carrying out Reconstruction programs in the war-ravaged southern states and when Johnson fired the agency's head, Edwin Stanton, Congress retaliated with calls for his impeachment.

Of the 11 counts, several went to the core of the conflict between Johnson and Congress. The House charged Johnson with illegally removing the secretary of war from office and for violating several Reconstruction Acts. The House also accused the president of hurling slanderous "inflammatory and scandalous harangues" against Congressional members. On February 24, the House passed all 11 articles of impeachment and the process moved into a Senate trial.

The Senate trial lasted until May 26, 1868. Johnson did not attend any of the proceedings and was not required to do so. After all the arguments had been presented for and against him, Johnson waited for his fate, which hung on one swing vote. By a vote of 35-19, Johnson was acquitted and finished out his term. Presidents Johnson and Clinton are the only presidents for whom the impeachment process went as far as a Senate trial. Nixon resigned before the House of Representatives could vote on impeachment.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/senate-acquits-johnson-of-high-crimes-and-misdemeanors?catId=9

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Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 - July 31, 1875) was the 17th President of the United States (1865-1869). Following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Johnson presided over the Reconstruction era of the United States in the four years after the American Civil War. His tenure was controversial as his positions favoring the white South came under heavy political attack from Republicans.

When the Southern states seceded, Johnson was a U.S. Senator from Greeneville in East Tennessee. As a Unionist, he was the only Southern senator not to quit his post upon secession. He became the most prominent War Democrat from the South and supported Lincoln's military policies during the American Civil War of 1861-1865. In 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of occupied Tennessee, where he was energetic and effective in fighting the rebellion and beginning the transition to Reconstruction.

Johnson was nominated as the vice presidential candidate in 1864 on the National Union Party ticket. He and Lincoln were elected in November 1864 and inaugurated on March 4, 1865. Johnson succeeded to the presidency upon Lincoln's assassination on April 15, 1865.

As president, he took charge of Presidential Reconstruction - the first phase of Reconstruction - which lasted until the Radical Republicans gained control of Congress in the 1866 elections. His conciliatory policies towards the South, his hurry to reincorporate the former Confederate states back into the union, and his vetoes of civil rights bills embroiled him in a bitter dispute with Radical Republicans.[3] The Radicals in the House of Representatives impeached him in 1868, charging him with violating the Tenure of Office Act, but the Senate acquitted him by a single vote.

Johnson's party status was ambiguous during his presidency. As president, he did not identify with the two main parties - though he did try for the Democratic nomination in 1868 - and so while President he attempted to build a party of loyalists under the National Union label. Asked in 1868 why he did not become a Democrat, he said, "It is true I am asked why don't I join the Democratic Party. Why don't they join me ... if I have administered the office of president so well?" His failure to make the National Union brand an actual party made Johnson effectively an independent during his presidency, though he was supported by Democrats and later rejoined the party as a Democratic Senator from Tennessee from 1875 until his death of a stroke at 66.[4] For these reasons, he is usually counted as a Democrat when identifying presidents by their political parties.[5] Johnson was the first U.S. President to undergo an impeachment trial; the senate fell one vote short of removing him from office. He is commonly ranked by historians as being among the worst U.S. presidents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson