Now...About That Bus

Yet another constructed scandal by the rightwing press. It's even made it into an editorial cartoon at the Tribune-Review:





Ha. Funny.



Mediamatters has a whole page of criticisms from the Sean Hannity and other wing nuts - "It's a waste of tax payer money!" they charge. "It's MADE IN CANADA!" the cartoonist asterixes.



But there are two of them. Did you know that? Probably did.



But did you also know that:

The vehicle was commissioned by the Secret Service, which has always hired buses for election campaigns and retrofitted them to provide suitable protection for presidents and rival party nominees.



But the Service decided to commission its own vehicles, reasoning that the initial total outlay of 2.2 million dollars for two buses would soon pay for itself over a projected 10-year lifespan.

Because:

In the past, those tours were a big headache for the service. The process started with a commercial tour bus and a renovation process that put the old TV show Pimp My Ride to shame.



"It was extremely expensive to lease one of these buses and then put in proper armoring, proper communications equipment," says former Secret Service Director Ralph Basham, who's now with Command Consulting Group. "And then at the end of the contract you had to restore these buses back to their original state."

Oh! So they're for presidential elections (among other things)! So once the Republican candidate is set, he/she will get one of the buses for the campaign!



You didn't see that in the cartoon, did you?



And where did these two buses come from? Canada, right? Not exactly:

The government bought the two coaches for $2.2 million from retailer Hemphill Brothers Coach, based in Tennessee. It installed custom interior upgrades into the Prevost shell, which accounted for about half the cost.

And would it surprise you to learn that the Hemphill Brothers (Joel and Trent) are campaign donors - to Republican candidates?

• Joel Hemphill in 2006 $7,100 to Republican candidates
• Joel Hemphill in 2004 $2,000 to Bush Cheney
• Trent Hemphill in 2010 $3,000 to Republican candidates
• Trent Hemphill in 2006 $3,100 to Republican candidates
• Trent Hemphill in 2004 $4,000 to Bush/Cheney

So if the coaches were constructed in Canada (and it looks as though they were), then we have a company in Red State Tennessee owned by two Republican campaign donating brothers that outsources work to foreign employees.



And pointing out where the buses were made is a criticism of the Obama Administration?



Funny what the Trib (and the rest of the right wing media) leave out, huh?

Torture News - Good, Bad and Ugly

From last Thursday:

The Justice Department inquiry into CIA interrogations of terrorist detainees has led to a full criminal investigation into the deaths of two people while they were in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Thursday.

The attorney general said that he accepted the recommendation of a federal prosecutor, John Durham, who since August 2009 has conducted an inquiry into CIA interrogation practices during the Bush administration. Holder said Durham looked at the treatment of 101 detainees in U.S. custody since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and concluded that only these two deaths warranted criminal investigation. Holder said Durham found some of the 101 had never been held by the CIA.

And more from the Washington Post:

The Justice Department did not say which cases are being investigated, but U.S. officials said they are the death of an Afghan, Gul Rahman, in 2002 at a prison known as the Salt Pit in Afghanistan, and that of an Iraqi, Manadel al-Jamadi, who was questioned by three CIA officers at Abu Ghraib in 2003.

In the case involving the Salt Pit, known as a “black site” because the U.S. government did not officially acknowledge its existence, a CIA officer allegedly ordered Afghan guards in November 2002 to strip Rahman and chain him to the concrete floor of his cell. Temperatures plunged overnight, and Rahman froze to death. Hypothermia was listed as the cause of death and Rahman was buried in an unmarked grave.

Jamadi, the Iraqi, was captured on Nov. 4, 2003, by a Navy SEAL team hunting a terrorist cell thought to be responsible for a bombing in Baghdad. After initial interrogation efforts, he was transferred into CIA custody and was taken to Abu Ghraib. There he was hooded, placed in an orange jumpsuit and shackled to window bars in a shower room, where he died.

Jamadi’s body was put on ice to preserve it for autopsy. U.S. soldiers posed for photographs with the body — including some in which they gave the thumbs-up sign — provoking international outrage when news organizations showed the images.

The "Good" is that there are now criminal investigations into the torture related deaths that occurred during, at with the OK of, the Bush Administration.

The "Bad" is that this narrowing of an investigation leaves out a whole mess o' torture:

“It is difficult to understand the prosecutor’s conclusion that only those two deaths warrant further investigation,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “For a period of several years, and with the approval of the Bush administration’s most senior officials, the CIA operated an interrogation program that subjected prisoners to unimaginable cruelty and violated both international and domestic law. The narrow investigation that Attorney General Holder announced today is not proportionate to the scale and scope of the wrongdoing.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA created a network of secret prisons around the world to confine “high-value” al-Qaeda operatives. The detainees were subjected to what the agency called “enhanced interrogation techniques” — escalating forms of duress that began with slaps to the face and ended, in three cases, with prolonged bouts of waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

Among those held by the CIA were leading al-Qaeda figures, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who was waterboarded 183 times after his capture in March 2003.

Let's all say it together, children: Torture is illegal. Approving the use of torture is illegal. Both happened during the Bush Administration, though he tried to cover his tracks by having his office of legal counsel declare it not-torture.

The Good, Bad and Ugly can be summed up in this from the Post:

The Obama administration closed the CIA prisons and barred the use of the enhanced techniques. The Justice Department said it would not prosecute any CIA personnel who acted in good faith and followed the guidance of the Office of Legal Counsel.

As I pointed out in this recent Jack Kelly blog post, none of that actually flies. None of it gets the Bush Administration off the hook - and none of that gets the Obama Administration off the hook either.

From the Conventions Against Torture (signed into US Law in 1996), Article 1:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

And Article 2:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

And:

An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

So which is worse? Committing a war crime (as the Bush Administration obviously did) or letting the war criminals get away with their crimes (as the Obama Administration is obviously doing)?

As a patriotic American, the day after celebrating our nation's independence, I hang my head in a quiet itching disgust.

A very unlame duck

Via Talking Points Memo:

Senate Passes... Everything

Today in the Senate, they passed (by unanimous consent) the defense authorization bill that Republicans held up over objections to repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell just two short weeks ago; they passed by a voice vote the 9/11 First Responders Health bill that had been the subject of so much drama and debate; and they passed by a 71-26 vote the START nuclear treaty with Russia despite Republican objections to that as well.

And now, for good measure, they are currently voting to confirm Mary Helen Murguia to be a judge in the Ninth Circuit.

The Braintrust Omits Facts To Smear Obama

Yea, I know - Quelle Surprise!

From today's Op-Ed page at The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

The Obama administration's astoundingly counterproductive practice of releasing captured enemies is no way to fight a war.

A new report to Congress from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says 150 of 598 Guantanamo Bay detainees released as of October are "re-engaging in terrorist or insurgent activities" or suspected of doing so, according to The Washington Times. And of those 150, 83 remain at large.

And:

Catch-and-release consequences are deadly. Victory in the war on terror is less likely. Future terrorism is more likely. If this administration doesn't stop putting politics ahead of war's grim realities, it risks ending up with terror victims' blood on its hands.

That's some pretty serious stuff, right?

The Obama Administration/blood on its hands/released Gitmo detainees re-engaging in terrorism.

Now let's take a look at the report the Braintrust cited (what, you didn't think I'd wouldn't find it?). Here it is.

The part the Braintrust uses:

As of 1 October 2010, 598 detainees have been transferred out of Department of Defense (DoD) custody at the U.S. Naval Base, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO) detention facility. The Intelligence Community assesses that 81 (13.5 percent) are confirmed and 69 (11.5 percent) are suspected of reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities after transfer. Of the 150 former GTMO detainees assessed as confirmed or suspected of reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities, the Intelligence Community assesses that 13 are dead, 54 are in custody, and 83 remain at large.

And now the part the Braintrust omits (btw, it's the very next paragraph):

On 22 January 2009, the President signed Executive Order 13492, calling for a comprehensive interagency review of the status of all individuals currently detained at Guantanamo Bay. Every decision to transfer a detainee to a foreign country under this review was made after a full assessment of intelligence and threat information. Since the implementation of Executive Order 13492 and under the enhanced interagency review process, 66 of the 598 detainees noted above have been transferred. Of those 66 individuals transferred since January 2009, 2 are confirmed and 3 are suspected of reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities. [Emphasis added.]

Wait wait wait!

So there've been only 66 detainees released from Gitmo since January, 2009? That must mean that the remaining 532 were released by the Bush Administration.

Now the fun part - let's run some numbers!

Overall, there've been 598 detainees released with 150 of them confirmed or suspected of re-engaging in terror activities. That's about 25% (150/598=0.250836).

Since January 22, 2009, there've been 66 detainees released with 5 of them confirmed or suspected of re-engaging in terror activities. That's about 7.6% (5/66=.075758).

So before January 22, 2009, that means there were 532 detainees released (598-66=532) with 145 (150-5=145) of them confirmed or suspected of re-engaging in terror activities. That's about 27% (145/532=0.272556).

Whose blood on whose hands? The rate of "re-engagement" during the Bush Administration was about 3.5 times higher than it is during the Obama Administration.

Yet again the braintrust over at Richard Mellon Scaife's Tribune-Review omits key facts to smear the Obama Administration.

Yea, I know. Quelle surprise!

Oh Come ON!!

From MotherJones:

In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A "confidential" April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.

The previous month, a Spanish human rights group called the Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners had requested that Spain's National Court indict six former Bush officials for, as the cable describes it, "creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture." The six were former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; William Haynes, the Pentagon's former general counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and John Yoo, a former official in the Office of Legal Counsel. The human rights group contended that Spain had a duty to open an investigation under the nation's "universal jurisdiction" law, which permits its legal system to prosecute overseas human rights crimes involving Spanish citizens and residents. Five Guantanamo detainees, the group maintained, fit that criteria.

Here's the cable.

The depth of my disappointment knows no limit. Same with my disgust.

What Krugman Said

Krugman is it completely right:

The roots of current Democratic despond go all the way back to the way Mr. Obama ran for president. Again and again, he defined America’s problem as one of process, not substance — we were in trouble not because we had been governed by people with the wrong ideas, but because partisan divisions and politics as usual had prevented men and women of good will from coming together to solve our problems. And he promised to transcend those partisan divisions.

This promise of transcendence may have been good general election politics, although even that is questionable: people forget how close the presidential race was at the beginning of September 2008, how worried Democrats were until Sarah Palin and Lehman Brothers pushed them over the hump. But the real question was whether Mr. Obama could change his tune when he ran into the partisan firestorm everyone who remembered the 1990s knew was coming. He could do uplift — but could he fight?

So far the answer has been no.

Krugman posits that it's Obama's habit of "negotiating with himself" before negotiating with Congress that's the culprit.

Here's the thing: given the animosity the Right has for the president, given how their leaders have stated publicly that they want to shut down every administration proposal, how DO you negotiate with a party that wants to kill your agenda.

Let them kill half of it?

Krugman's right. Obama should fight, he should be fighting and he should have fought more.

Compromise, Civility??

Huffingtonpost has some analysis:

Barely an hour after President Barack Obama invited congressional Republicans to post-election talks to work together on major issues, the Senate's GOP leader had a blunt message: His party's main goal is denying Obama re-election.

In a sign that combat and the 2012 elections rather than compromise could mark the next two years, Sen. Mitch McConnell on Thursday called for Senate votes to repeal or erode Obama's signature health care law, to cut spending and to shrink government.

"The only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won't veto any of these things," McConnell said in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The Senate Republican leader's confrontational tone was in sharp contrast to the posture Obama took Wednesday in the face of a new GOP-controlled House and Republican gains in the Senate. Obama followed up Thursday morning by inviting Republican and Democratic congressional leaders for talks on Nov. 18 and challenging his own Cabinet to make Washington work better.

Look at who's being compromising and who's being civil. As it had been for two years.

And look where it's got the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile:

[Tom Donohue, President and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce] intends to spend his new political capital by reconfiguring the country's economic policies the same way that large corporations have always wanted to: by cutting taxes, slashing regulation, forging trade deals with foreign countries, and reducing the deficit.

He'd like to start by chipping away at the President's legislative achievements such as health-care and financial reform, which must still be implemented at the regulatory level. In short, the battles between the chamber and the White House are far from over. "Oh, hell no," Donohue laughs. "They are in the second inning."

How does Obama compromise with a party that wants nothing more (and nothing less) than to see him out of office in January, 2013? A party where 4 out of 10 think he's Constitutionally ineligible to be President in the first place?

They're not gonna compromise, Mr President. You may want to live according to Luke 6:27-31, but they're treating you according to Psalm 109.8.