Two days ago I was naive in attributing TransCanada's motives for wanting to pause the decision about the pipeline. I took at face value the facts of declining oil prices and pressure from environmentalists, as well as the "official" explanation of wanting to wait until they had completed the route planning through Nebraska.
Others have declared it to be simply a political ploy. TransCanada's request included the estimation that the Nebraska plans might take up to 18 months. They're assuming that President Obama is going to kill the pipeline, and the delay might put a Keystone-friendly Republican in office by then.
Ralph
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
If Jeb says his brother kept us safe after 9/11 . . . then it's fair to ask if he did enough BEFORE 9/11?
Noted journalist Elizabeth Drew lays out the case that, although President George W. Bush might not have been able to prevent the 9/11 attack, he ignored the warnings and didn't even try. There is nothing new here, but that's just the point. There are powerful political forces that have steered us away from holding Bush accountable for what happened before 9/11. And we've known it all along . . . and let him get away with it.
Enter Donald Trump in the second debate. He deftly punctured Jeb Bush's proud assertion that "My brother kept us safe." All Trump said was: "When you talk about George Bush--I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time." So Elizabeth Drew's article has put it all out there for us to look at . . . again. Here are some excerpts from her article (New York Review Daily, Oct 15, 2015).
"Osama bin Laden was . . . . the prime suspect in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa. . . . [R]epeated and more specific warnings by Richard Clarke, . . . the chief terrorism adviser, were ignored. In a White House meeting on July 5, 2001, Clarke said, "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." . . .
"On July 10, CIA Director George Tenet and aides laid out for Condolessa] Rice what they described as irrefutable evidence that . . . ''There will be a significant terrorist attack in the coming weeks or months' and that the attack would be 'spectacular.' Tenet believed that the US was going to get hit, and soon. But the intelligence authorities, including covert action, that the CIA officials told Rice they needed, and had been asking for since March, weren't granted until September 17.
"Then came the now-famous August 6 Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) intelligence memorandum to the president, headlined, "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US." Bush was at his ranch in Crawford, Texas . . . none of his senior aides was present for the briefing . . . . [The brief included the warning that] 'FBI information . . . indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.' Having received this alarming warning the president did nothing.
"As August went on, Tenet was so agitated by the chatter he was picking up and Bush's lack of attention to the matter that he arranged for another CIA briefing of the president later in August, with Bush still at his ranch, to try to get his attention to what Tenet believed was an impending danger. According to Ron Suskind, in the introduction to his book The One Percent Doctrine, when the CIA agents finished their briefing of the president in Crawford, the president said, 'All right. You've covered your ass now.' And that was the end of it.
"What might a president do upon receiving notice that the world's number one terrorist was 'determined to strike in US'? The most obvious thing was to direct Rice or Vice President Cheney to convene a special meeting of the heads of any agencies that might have information about possible terror threats . . . . As it happened they had quite a bit: the administration had already been notified about some Arabs seeking flying lessons at a flight school in Arizona; [they paid with] large amounts of cash for the lessons, which they limited to just wanting to know how to fly the plane in cruise mode, not learn how to take off and land. In July, an FBI agent stationed in Phoenix wrote to headquarters warning of the 'possibility of a coordinated effort by Usama bin Laden' to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools. .
"Zacarias Moussaoui . . . aroused suspicion by paying cash for lessons at a flight school in Minnesota, also just wanting to know how to fly a 747 at cruising altitude, not how to take off or land. . . . [and he asked suspicious questions about flight patterns around New York]. In August 2001, a manager from the flight school called the FBI. Moussaoui was arrested . . . but . . . an FBI agent in Minneapolis couldn't persuade headquarters in Washington to take the matter seriously and allow a search of Moussaoui's laptop. . . .
"Had the president ordered a root and branch search of information government agencies had on potential strikes by al-Qaeda in the US, what was known about Moussaoui and the Arizona flight school would have been of great interest. Perhaps they'd have also unearthed an intelligence memo written in 1998 that said, 'we also learned that the agencies had uncovered a message between al Qaeda operatives in the United States . . . that read, 'Plans to hijack U.S. aircraft proceeding well. Two individuals have successfully evaded checkpoints in dry run at NY airport.''. . .
"When the [9/11] commission finally succeeded in its demand that Bush testify . . . the arrangement was that only two commission members could be present at a White House meeting where the president was to be questioned for only one hour, without being put under oath and with no notes taken, and with Vice President Cheney present. In fact, the administration fought the commission at nearly every turn. [Co-chairs] Hamilton and Kean later wrote that they felt that the commission had been 'set up to fail' . . . .
"On the surface, the commission report's dramatic narrative appeared to hold no high-level officials accountable for not doing more to ward off the attacks. Read closely, it was a damning indictment of Bush and Cheney . . . The commission avoided assigning individual blame in order to get a unanimous report . . . But the report, amassing all the evidence and warnings the administration had received, made it clear that there was a strong possibility that the attacks might have been prevented. The commissioners who believed this thought the facts would speak for themselves. It presented a picture of an administration not much engaged with the subject of terrorism and unresponsive to clear warnings.
"Reading the report closely and talking to commission members made it clear to me that the report was intended to stop just short of blaming Bush for his inaction . . . The commissioners didn't want to provide the nation a divided opinion. They also didn't want to upset the public too much. Thus for what might have been considered admirable motives, the devastating conclusions that should have been drawn from the available facts have remained buried and the country had essentially moved on--until Trump reopened the question.
"What is arguable about the events of 9/11 is whether they could have been stopped; what isn't arguable is that George W. Bush didn't try. . . "
Enter Donald Trump in the second debate. He deftly punctured Jeb Bush's proud assertion that "My brother kept us safe." All Trump said was: "When you talk about George Bush--I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time." So Elizabeth Drew's article has put it all out there for us to look at . . . again. Here are some excerpts from her article (New York Review Daily, Oct 15, 2015).
* * *
"The heretofore hushed-up public policy question
that Trump stumbled into is: Did George W. Bush do what he could have to
try to disrupt the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001? It's not
simply a question of whether he could have stopped the
devastation--that's unknowable. But did he do all he could given the
various warnings that al-Qaeda was planning a major attack somewhere on
US territory . . . ? [The] almost
unbearable conclusion . . . is that in the face of numerous warnings of an
impending attack, Bush did nothing. . . . "Osama bin Laden was . . . . the prime suspect in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa. . . . [R]epeated and more specific warnings by Richard Clarke, . . . the chief terrorism adviser, were ignored. In a White House meeting on July 5, 2001, Clarke said, "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." . . .
"On July 10, CIA Director George Tenet and aides laid out for Condolessa] Rice what they described as irrefutable evidence that . . . ''There will be a significant terrorist attack in the coming weeks or months' and that the attack would be 'spectacular.' Tenet believed that the US was going to get hit, and soon. But the intelligence authorities, including covert action, that the CIA officials told Rice they needed, and had been asking for since March, weren't granted until September 17.
"Then came the now-famous August 6 Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) intelligence memorandum to the president, headlined, "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US." Bush was at his ranch in Crawford, Texas . . . none of his senior aides was present for the briefing . . . . [The brief included the warning that] 'FBI information . . . indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.' Having received this alarming warning the president did nothing.
"As August went on, Tenet was so agitated by the chatter he was picking up and Bush's lack of attention to the matter that he arranged for another CIA briefing of the president later in August, with Bush still at his ranch, to try to get his attention to what Tenet believed was an impending danger. According to Ron Suskind, in the introduction to his book The One Percent Doctrine, when the CIA agents finished their briefing of the president in Crawford, the president said, 'All right. You've covered your ass now.' And that was the end of it.
"What might a president do upon receiving notice that the world's number one terrorist was 'determined to strike in US'? The most obvious thing was to direct Rice or Vice President Cheney to convene a special meeting of the heads of any agencies that might have information about possible terror threats . . . . As it happened they had quite a bit: the administration had already been notified about some Arabs seeking flying lessons at a flight school in Arizona; [they paid with] large amounts of cash for the lessons, which they limited to just wanting to know how to fly the plane in cruise mode, not learn how to take off and land. In July, an FBI agent stationed in Phoenix wrote to headquarters warning of the 'possibility of a coordinated effort by Usama bin Laden' to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools. .
"Zacarias Moussaoui . . . aroused suspicion by paying cash for lessons at a flight school in Minnesota, also just wanting to know how to fly a 747 at cruising altitude, not how to take off or land. . . . [and he asked suspicious questions about flight patterns around New York]. In August 2001, a manager from the flight school called the FBI. Moussaoui was arrested . . . but . . . an FBI agent in Minneapolis couldn't persuade headquarters in Washington to take the matter seriously and allow a search of Moussaoui's laptop. . . .
"Had the president ordered a root and branch search of information government agencies had on potential strikes by al-Qaeda in the US, what was known about Moussaoui and the Arizona flight school would have been of great interest. Perhaps they'd have also unearthed an intelligence memo written in 1998 that said, 'we also learned that the agencies had uncovered a message between al Qaeda operatives in the United States . . . that read, 'Plans to hijack U.S. aircraft proceeding well. Two individuals have successfully evaded checkpoints in dry run at NY airport.''. . .
"When the [9/11] commission finally succeeded in its demand that Bush testify . . . the arrangement was that only two commission members could be present at a White House meeting where the president was to be questioned for only one hour, without being put under oath and with no notes taken, and with Vice President Cheney present. In fact, the administration fought the commission at nearly every turn. [Co-chairs] Hamilton and Kean later wrote that they felt that the commission had been 'set up to fail' . . . .
"On the surface, the commission report's dramatic narrative appeared to hold no high-level officials accountable for not doing more to ward off the attacks. Read closely, it was a damning indictment of Bush and Cheney . . . The commission avoided assigning individual blame in order to get a unanimous report . . . But the report, amassing all the evidence and warnings the administration had received, made it clear that there was a strong possibility that the attacks might have been prevented. The commissioners who believed this thought the facts would speak for themselves. It presented a picture of an administration not much engaged with the subject of terrorism and unresponsive to clear warnings.
"Reading the report closely and talking to commission members made it clear to me that the report was intended to stop just short of blaming Bush for his inaction . . . The commissioners didn't want to provide the nation a divided opinion. They also didn't want to upset the public too much. Thus for what might have been considered admirable motives, the devastating conclusions that should have been drawn from the available facts have remained buried and the country had essentially moved on--until Trump reopened the question.
"What is arguable about the events of 9/11 is whether they could have been stopped; what isn't arguable is that George W. Bush didn't try. . . "
* * *
If Jeb stays in the race, and especially if he brings his brother in to campaign for him, there is going to be more and more focus on this. To my thinking, that would be a good thing for the country. But it could be devastating for a failed candidate who can't have anything else go wrong.
Ralph
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Keystone pipeline deal dead -- at least for now.
The Associated Press is reporting that the TransCanada oil company behind the Keystone XL pipeline construction has asked the U. S. State Department to put its review of the project on hold. This move comes in the wake of declining oil prices, as well as the vigorous protests from environmentalists and the anticipation that President Obama was going to reject approval.
Whatever the reason, this is good.
Ralph
Whatever the reason, this is good.
Ralph
Oops. It's all falling apart for the Republicans.
The Republican debaters revolted against the CNBC moderators, complaining about "unfair" questions and format. And then they revolted against RNC Chair Reince Priebus, saying they were going to negotiate directly with the networks on debate rules.
Sunday night, campaign representatives met and hammered out some demands. All except Chris Christie, who said, 'Come on, guys. Just give us podiums and mics, and let's go."
Today four of the candidates (Kasich, Christie, Fiorino, and Trump) said they're not going to sign the letter. Trump says he will negotiate directly with the networks himself -- for himself, of course. So, in less than a week, they revolted against the revolt. Now what?
Here's how digby at Hulabaloo put it:
Ralph
Sunday night, campaign representatives met and hammered out some demands. All except Chris Christie, who said, 'Come on, guys. Just give us podiums and mics, and let's go."
Today four of the candidates (Kasich, Christie, Fiorino, and Trump) said they're not going to sign the letter. Trump says he will negotiate directly with the networks himself -- for himself, of course. So, in less than a week, they revolted against the revolt. Now what?
Here's how digby at Hulabaloo put it:
John Boehner had to resign in order that the congress avoid total chaos and possibly default on the government's debt during a presidential campaign. The RNC has just been shut out of participation in the presidential campaign. Candidates are in the employ of billionaires (or are billionaires) who are openly bankrolling the campaigns and their Super PACs --- and requiring fealty to their needs in return.Yes, but there are millions of voters out there ready to buy that snake oil. They live in an echo chamber of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and far right Republican snake oil peddlers. They don't even know that it's all hokum -- or, worse, don't care.
This is no longer a political party. It is just a sales force selling snake oil to the rubes on behalf of the 1%.
Ralph
Monday, November 2, 2015
What do pollsters mean by "likely voters"?
In a recent Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll, Hillary Clinton led Bernie Sanders by big margins. When all Democrats were considered, Clinton led by 58% to 31% -- 27 points. But when "likely voters" alone were considered, she led 72% to 23% -- a huge 49 points.
The significance turns on how these pollsters define "likely voters." Usually a big factor is whether they have voted in past elections. If that's the case here, that could mean either of two things:
1. Sanders is attracting a lot of people who have been disillusioned with prior choices and didn't vote -- but will come out in strong force to vote for Sanders.
Or
2. Sanders' supporters are people who get fired up by rhetoric but won't follow through by actually voting.
Of course, with a lead so strong and persistent as Clinton has, it may not make much difference. She's winning, even if every one who attends a Sanders rally or sends him money does actually vote for him.
Again, to state my own preference: I wish we lived in a time and place where Sanders' views and policies would be mainstream enough for him to get elected. I've even contributed to his campaign, because I want him in the race pushing Hillary to the left. But I'm not convinced that he can win a general election.
My bottom line is that we have to elect a Democrat -- for the Supreme Court, if for nothing else. I respect my progressive friends who scorn such an unprincipled stance; I encourage them to go all out for Sanders. If the consequences of a Republican victory were not so dire and so long-lasting for SCOTUS, I might be with them.
Ralph
The significance turns on how these pollsters define "likely voters." Usually a big factor is whether they have voted in past elections. If that's the case here, that could mean either of two things:
1. Sanders is attracting a lot of people who have been disillusioned with prior choices and didn't vote -- but will come out in strong force to vote for Sanders.
Or
2. Sanders' supporters are people who get fired up by rhetoric but won't follow through by actually voting.
Of course, with a lead so strong and persistent as Clinton has, it may not make much difference. She's winning, even if every one who attends a Sanders rally or sends him money does actually vote for him.
Again, to state my own preference: I wish we lived in a time and place where Sanders' views and policies would be mainstream enough for him to get elected. I've even contributed to his campaign, because I want him in the race pushing Hillary to the left. But I'm not convinced that he can win a general election.
My bottom line is that we have to elect a Democrat -- for the Supreme Court, if for nothing else. I respect my progressive friends who scorn such an unprincipled stance; I encourage them to go all out for Sanders. If the consequences of a Republican victory were not so dire and so long-lasting for SCOTUS, I might be with them.
Ralph
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Good News #8: employee owned grocery chain
Who knew? I've been a regular customer at my neighborhood Publix supermarket for many years. But I just learned a new reason to support them with my business.
Publix Super Markets, Inc., which ranks #102 on the Fortune 500 list of corporations, is owned by its employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. From CEO to bag boys, everyone who works there becomes an owner of shares in the company.
The CEO and the board are directly responsible to the people who work for the company, not to anonymous stockholders who are only concerned about share prices and profit.
I call this good news -- a small step toward returning our economy to the people and their interests, instead of the investors in abstractions like credit default swaps and hedge funds. It's not socialism, but it is much closer in spirit to Bernie Sanders' democratic socialism than anything the Republicans might dream up as a way to enrich their billionaire benefactors.
Ralph
Publix Super Markets, Inc., which ranks #102 on the Fortune 500 list of corporations, is owned by its employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. From CEO to bag boys, everyone who works there becomes an owner of shares in the company.
The CEO and the board are directly responsible to the people who work for the company, not to anonymous stockholders who are only concerned about share prices and profit.
I call this good news -- a small step toward returning our economy to the people and their interests, instead of the investors in abstractions like credit default swaps and hedge funds. It's not socialism, but it is much closer in spirit to Bernie Sanders' democratic socialism than anything the Republicans might dream up as a way to enrich their billionaire benefactors.
Ralph
Yes, sometimes it IS the gun that kills people
There were two separate incidents last week, one in a doctor's waiting room in Texas and one in an Alabama supermarket, where a gun actually shot people. In each of these unrelated cases, the gun owner had a concealed carry permit and the gun went off accidentally when it was dropped by the owner.
In Texas, a woman had a handgun in her purse, which she dropped onto the reception desk counter. The gun went off, a bullet went through a wall and hit a patient in the next door examining room. In Alabama, two men were shopping. The one carrying the gun dropped it, and it went off somehow hitting both men.
Nobody was seriously injured in either case. But it does refute the simplistic NRA retort that "Guns don't kill people, people do." They're trying to say that guns themselves are not dangerous to have around. That just is not true. The only guns safe to have around are unloaded guns -- with no ammunition anywhere nearby. Add to these stories the countless ones where an innocent child finds a loaded gun, plays with it, and accidentally shoots another child.
Ralph
In Texas, a woman had a handgun in her purse, which she dropped onto the reception desk counter. The gun went off, a bullet went through a wall and hit a patient in the next door examining room. In Alabama, two men were shopping. The one carrying the gun dropped it, and it went off somehow hitting both men.
Nobody was seriously injured in either case. But it does refute the simplistic NRA retort that "Guns don't kill people, people do." They're trying to say that guns themselves are not dangerous to have around. That just is not true. The only guns safe to have around are unloaded guns -- with no ammunition anywhere nearby. Add to these stories the countless ones where an innocent child finds a loaded gun, plays with it, and accidentally shoots another child.
Ralph
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