Thom's stack - September 2006

Occasionally I link to an article that covers a story even though Thom did not mention that article.

Fri 29 September '06 National show

• The first hour of this Friday was devoted, as usual, to "Brunch with Bernie" with Congressman Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont. Senate Bill 3930 passed 65-34. Habeas corpus vote. NEI report. Abramoff had more than 400 contacts with the White House during 2001-2004. There's never been such a rubber stamp congress. Most Republican members are less right wing than the Bush administration, and more fiscally responsible. Big government is getting into our homes. Fighting terrorism. Voting machines. Bernie does not know why there was no hold yesterday. We've got to get people out to vote. Reason for going into Iraq.
• Book Signings: September 30, 2006: Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena, CA - 4pm, The Bodhi Tree, Hollywood, CA - 8pm, Annie Bloom's Books, Portland, Oregon. 7:30pm October 5, Elliot Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA. 7:30pm October 6.
• Bumper Music: Democracy is coming to the USA, Leonard Cohen.
• Article: Chance at Osama pre 9/11, sez book . According to State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III by Bob Woodward, "The CIA'S top counterterrorism officials felt they could have killed Osama Bin Laden in the months before 9/11, but got the 'brushoff' when they went to the Bush White House seeking the money and authorization."
• Guest: Conservative David Bossie, Citizens United. Book: Intelligence Failure: How Bill Clinton's National Security Policy Set the Stage for 9/11. Movie: Border War: The Battle over Illegal Immigration. He kept trying to keep the focus on Bill Clinton rather than George Bush. ( clip)
• Bumper Music: You May be Right, Billy Joel.
• Upcoming Event: When Thom was in San Francisco recently, Thom recorded an interview for Link TV. It will form part of their 4 hour special, Rich and Poor - Inequality in America. It will air on October 6 at 5pm PST (see link for other dates and times). "A special that explores the widening gulf between the haves and have-nots in the US. The evening features a stirring address by Bill Moyers in which he calls for people to rise up and demand equality and examines the challenges to democracy when wealth, power, and income are in the hands of the few. Also included are the Link TV premiere of Poverty Outlaw, a first-person account of one woman's struggle to live on and off welfare; a selection of scenes from the powerful documentary Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price, which uncovers the retail giant's assault on families and American values; and a report on the outsourcing of jobs that shows how employers around the world are waging a race to the bottom." It also features Will Durst (satirist and humorist).
• Bumper Music: We Can't Make It Here Any More, James McMurtry
• Class, economic warfare, end of democracy - a cartoon democracy.
• Bush said yesterday that the party of FDR and Truman has become the cut and run party.
• Quote: Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance., Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, about the Republican Great Depression.
• Quote: A Rendezvous With Destiny", Speech to the Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 27 June 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise...The royalists I have spoken of, the royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.
  
  These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. But in their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, for over a century and a half, the flag, the constitution, stand against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike. And the flag and the constitution stand for democracy and not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection."
• Quote: Harry S Truman, March 29, 1952 "Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner" speech (mp3 ftp):
  "And where have the Republicans been in this fight for morality in Government? Do they come out and vote with us to keep the special interests from robbing the public? Not at all. Most of them are on the other side. It's the same thing when you come to the question of the conduct of Government officials. The Republicans make a great whoop and holler about the honesty of Federal employees, but they are usually the first to show up in a Government office asking for special favors for private interests, and in raising cain if they don't get them. These Republican gentlemen can't have it both ways--they can't be for morality on Tuesday and Thursday, and then be for special privileges for their clients on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I don't think the "black is white" campaign of the Republican Party is going to succeed. I think the voters are going to see through this holier-than-thou disguise that our Republican friends are putting on. All the tricks of Republican propaganda cannot make the people forget that the Democratic Party has been working for their welfare."
• Thom: So, if Bush wants to use Truman and Roosevelt, hey! We'll do that, we'll go there. No problem.
• Wendy Wang of Talk Radio News. Just back from Guantanamo Bay. Very solemn place. Barbed wire, guards. Saw very little of daily life of detainees. Saw only a few detainees walking around. Internees not detainees. They had no idea when the conflict will end so they could be three a long time. The Right Wing talk show hosts with her were horrified that detainees had Korans and there were black arrows painted pointing towards Mecca. There was a parker lounger in an interrogation room, as well as a shackle fixed to the floor. They thought it was too luxurious.
• Guest: Robert Greenwald. Movie: Iraq for Sale. Thom saw the screening in Portland last week. The best documentary on the issue behind the issue of Iraq, investigative reporting. People are buying the movie from the web site then arranging screenings, a way to be active. CACI corporations provided over half of the interrograters at Abu Graib. The people at the top made millions.
• Bumper Music: Around the Sun, REM.
• Guest: Joshua Casteel was an interrogator at Abu Graib, and was featured in the film "Iraq for Sale". His unit went in after the torture had been made public. The torture simply went elsewhere. He wrote reports about the torture he saw for the military. Contractors worked there, made up at least 40-40% of personnel at menial and analyst levels.
• Iraq occupation update.
• Article: After Burst of Violence, as Many as 60 Bodies Are Found in Baghdad.
• Article: Iraq Contractor's Work Is Further Criticized. Quote: "This is the lens through which Iraqis will now see America," Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said. "Incompetence. Profiteering. Arrogance. And human waste oozing out of ceilings as a result."
• Article: Congressmen say Iraq war weakens military response to other crises.
• Ann called: Congress never declared a war on terror, but the bill just passed says that Bush can determine the right to freedom until the war ended. Bush wrote to Congress saying he was going to war in Iraq because of 9/11, but that was a lie. War on poverty, etc., were rhetorical wars.
• We heard about Jose Padilla because it was leaked. The administration won't say if there are any others.
• Bumper Music: What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong.
• Billy Sunshine from Santa Cruz, California called. Upcoming Event: Thom will be on Billy's 3 - 5pm show on KRXA on Sunday at 3:15pm. This is banned books week. We the People is probably the most subversive book that Thom has written.
• Foringo? in NYC had an idea for a cartoon, if there is anyone out there who can draw. Three elephants stampeding away in terror from a mouse. A man with a document - Uncle Sam holding the constitution - getting trampled. The mouse should look like bin Laden. The elephants would be labeled the House, the White House and the Senate. He'd like to see it on Daily Kos or some place.
• Gordon Smith said they would pass the bill and wait for courts to decide on the legality of the habeas corpus stripping provision. That buys them 2 years. And another moderate justice could be replaced by a right winger in that time. Watch the court races.
• We need to double efforts and contributions before the elections.

Thu 28 September '06 National show

• Rape as a legal technique of interrogation?
• Article: Rushing Off a Cliff - you must read this. "Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser... They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.". This is not even the "compromise" bill. Max Cleland story. Anthrax, Patriot Act. Article: Will The Next Election Be Hacked?, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Thom wrote articles 3 years ago. Senator Carl Levin spoke out against it, but did not say he would filibuster it. Constitution being shredded. Oath of president and senators and representatives to protect the constitution. Long rants. "These guys must be on acid". Could Snowe and Collins, Republicans of Maine, be swing votes? Call your senators on 866 808 0065 and tell them to filibuster it. Some of the toll free numbers are being disconnected. The non-free number is 202 225 3121. Get out of jail free card for Bush, etc. and private contractors in Iraq. It does not immunize the military. Let us know what they say. This is treason. ( clip)
• Bumper Music: No Sugar Tonight, The Guess Who.
• Quote for the day: "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt, Republican.
• Bumper Music: Hand Me Down World, The Guess Who.
• A lot of people called in and told of their experiences contacting their senators.
• Lena called, she's a Moslem who was overjoyed when she arrived in America. Many coming here are fleeing torture. This is very sad. Bush always got free pass. This too shall pass.
• Thom: "Welcome back to the radio support group of, by and for we the people of the United States of America and we citizens of a planet that we would like see living in peace and with people having respect for each other. No, this is not wussie. This is actually the strongest position that one can take; that peace and co-operation and harmony is a good and desirable thing among humans. The guys who are running around going, 'Ah, we need more war, we need to kick buts, shoot them', they're the weak ones. They are the cowards. They are the fearful ones. The George W. Bushes of the world."
• Guest: Michael Ratner, Center for Constitutional Rights. He's been focused on the habeas stripping - removal of habeas corpus issue in the military commissions act. Tyranny coming to America today. Legal residents and undocumented workers will be able to be arrested and detained and won't be able to go to a court. What's to stop other countries to descend to this new level, and kidnap Americans and hold them forever? The habeas corpus measure he supported lost 48-51. They thought they had senators Hagel and Collins but lost them at the last minute. The Republicans allowed the Democrats to put in 5 amendments. The main bill is being debated and should be voted on soon.
• Taking my Country Back: Patricia Madrid, Attorney General for New Mexico, running for 1st district. Opponent Heather Wilson. Both have been serving 8 years.
• Bumper Music: I'm the Decider, Paul Hipp.
• Clip of Carl Levin who asked for regular reports of detentions and interrogations. When told that they had only to ask, he gave details of other information that he had asked for in the pat and not received.
• Bumper Music: Clinton is to Blame-O, The Freedom Toast.
• Victoria Jones of Talk Radio News. New book: State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III, Bob Woodward. He seems to have developed spine, uncovering the cover-ups of the Bush administration to the mass market. Quote from 60 Minutes: "According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. "It’s getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week. That's more than 100 a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces," says Woodward. The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. "The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], 'Oh, no, things are going to get better,'" he tells Wallace. "Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know," says Woodward. Senate Bill 3930 is going to go through, Democrats are afraid of being portrayed as being weak on terror during the run up to the election.
• Hillary Clinton gave a great speech about Senate Bill 3930, but unfortunately did not end it with, "And therefore I am putting a hold on this bill". She quoted from "Washington's Crossing (Pivotal Moments in American History) , David Hackett Fischer. Quote: George Washington "often reminded his men that they were an army of liberty and freedom, and that the rights of humanity for which they were fighting should extend even to their enemies." To another officer with 221 Hessian prisoners of war, George Washington said, "Treat them with humanity, and Let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren." As historian Edmund Morgan says, Washington had "made the war itself an example of what the Revolution meant."
• Guest: Jumana Musa, Advocacy Director, Amnesty International USA. Very concerned about the legislation senate is discussing. Ill-advised, will cause more problems that solutions. Hillary Clinton said, "We must hold on to our values and set an example that we can point to with pride, not shame. Those captured, for example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are going nowhere. They are imprisoned now." They aren't getting tried tomorrow. The membership has been mobilized. Not sure that they have 40 votes to filibuster. It does not specify non-Americans. Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was picked up in O'Hare airport, not on the battlefield. Habeas Corpus. There are only about 200 Guantanamo cases, so they are not clogging up the courts. Coerced evidence will be permissible. Definitions before the act v. after the Act.
• Bumper Music: Livin on the Edge, Aerosmith.
• Quote: "When General Washington lead his soldiers across the Delaware River and onto victory in the Battle of Trenton, he captured nearly 1000 foreign mercenaries and he faced a crucial choice. How would General Washington treat these prisoners? The British had already committed atrocities against Americans, including torture. As David Hackett Fischer describes in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Washington's Crossing, thousands of American prisoners of war were 'treated with extreme cruelty by British captors.' There are accounts of injured soldiers who surrendered being murdered instead of quartered, countless Americans dying in prison hulks in New York harbor, starvation and other acts of inhumanity perpetrated against Americans confined to churches in New York City.
  
  Well, you can imagine, the light of our ideals shone dimly in those early dark days, years from an end to the conflict, years before our improbable triumph and the birth of our democracy. General Washington announced a decision unique in human history, sending the following order for handling prisoners: 'Treat them with humanity, and Let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren.' George Washington understood that how you treat enemy combatants can reverberate around the world. We must convict and punish the guilty in a way that reinforces their guilt before the world and does not undermine our values." Hillary Clinton.
• Bumper Music: When the Ship Comes In, Bob Dylan

Wed 27 September '06 National show

• There's a new Gallop poll just out; 53% blame President Bush for Osama bin Laden not having been caught.
• David Thibault, Cybercast News Service. He's had chemotherapy, is feeling better, and waiting for a bone marrow transplant. He's had well wishers from listeners. David is honest. Michael lied to Thom yesterday - Saddam was not celebrating 9/11 - he condemned it. National Intelligence Estimate. Bill Clinton, how well the 2 presidents dealt with Al Qaeda, attacks. Condi Rice spoke to the New York Post saying they were just aggressive. David said that Bush was more interested in the economy. ( clip)
• Clip:
  Tim Russert: Q It's interesting. Here's what the American people said in a recent poll: Is the U.S. involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan creating more terrorists or eliminating terrorists. And look at that, overwhelmingly, 54 percent, a clear majority, believe we are creating more terrorists.
  Dick Cheney: I can't buy that.
  Interview of the Vice President by Tim Russert, NBC News, Meet the Press. Focus on whether it was Bush or Clinton who was more responsible is my team-your team, but there are larger stakes. Americans need to understand their own history. There's a campaign to rewrite it.
• Bumper Music: I've always been crazy, Waylon Jennings.
• Quote: George Washington "often reminded his men that they were an army of liberty and freedom, and that the rights of humanity for which they were fighting should extend even to their enemies." " Washington's Crossing (Pivotal Moments in American History) , David Hackett Fischer. To another officer with 221 Hessian prisoners of war, George Washington said, "Treat them with humanity, and Let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren." As historian Edmund Morgan says, Washington had "made the war itself an example of what the Revolution meant."
• Clip:
  Q: You said, first of all, that al Qaeda has been degraded. Actually, the report said al Qaeda's leadership has been degraded, but that its ranks have increased. You also just --
  Tony Snow: But operational -- okay.
  Q: Let me just finish and go through here. You also said that -- you're talking about things the administration has done and, yet, the intelligence estimate is taking this into account and coming up with this conclusion that the factors fueling this growth of the movement, they report, outweigh the vulnerability of the movement and will do so for some time. That's not "we're safer."
  Tony Snow: No. It talks about jihadism.
  Q: It's also not "we're winning."
  Tony Snow: Well, it doesn't draw judgments like that. You've read the National Intelligence Estimate.
  Q: I'm practically quoting verbatim from the report. I could read it.
  Tony Snow: I know, but -- look for "we're not winning." Please show me --
  Q: The President has said, we're not winning -- we're winning.
  Tony Snow: The President says we're winning...
  Press Briefing by Tony Snow.
• Article: Tony Snow’s Challenge: ‘Please Show Me’ Where The NIE Says ‘We’re Not Winning’.
• This is all about the NIE report from April, before Zarqawi was killed, and it said things would get better if he was killed. There's a more recent report since which is even worse for the administration, which we will not be allowed to see until after the elections. Congresswoman Jane Harmon has written a letter to Negroponte demanding its earlier release. Fran Townsend said the work would not be complete until January.
• Article: Beware the NIE: Careful, Democrats: The Notion that the Iraq War is Creating More Terrorists May be False., Robert Dreyfuss.
• Bumper Music: I Won't Back Down, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.
• Book Signings: September 30, 2006: Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena, CA - 4pm, The Bodhi Tree, Hollywood, CA - 8pm.
• Bumper Music: Big Boss Man, Elvis Presley.
• Clip: Condoleeza Rice testimony before the 9/11 Commission, April 8, 2004:
  Condoleeza Rice: I remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States, he talked to people about this, but I don't remember the al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.
  Richard Ben-Veniste: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB.
  Condoleeza Rice: I believe the title was bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States.
• Clip:
  George Stephanopoulos: How do you answer Administration critics who say that the Administration's actions have unleashed, have helped unleash, the very hostilities you hoped to contain?
  Condoleeza Rice: Well, first of all, those hostilities were not very well contained, as we found out on September 11th.
  Interview on ABC This Week With George Stephanopoulos, July 16, 2006.
• Clip: "I think my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take these attacks. All you have to do is to read the 9-11 Commission to know what he and his administration did to protect Americans and prevent terrorist attacks against our country. I’m certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled ‘Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States’ he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team." Hillary Clinton
• Ellen Ratner of Talk Radio News. She's at the Senate where they are discussing senate bill 3930, the compromise military commissions bill. It was altered in conference. Senator Levin went through it blow by blow. This bill is so bad that they can take a green card resident and declare them an enemy combatant and put them in prison for the rest of their lives without taking them to court. What Washington said (see above). The democrats are not going to filibuster. It's the end of America.
• Guest Larry C Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. A friend in CIA told him they had been saying what the NEI report said for 3 years. He wrote about it, looked at statistics a year ago. There were 175 "significant attacks" in 2003; this has risen to 651; a record. He's never known any folks so out of touch with reality. Clip of Bush in full rant mode (below).
• Clip: "You know, I've heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived, and kind of "we're going to stir up the hornet's nest" theory. It just does