In The News: Mea Culpa… Unavoidable circumstances left me unable to supply the commentary this morning. The posse MIGHT be on it’s way with a backup.

It’s the last day of the Lame Duck congressional session and the nation’s not safe yet… There will be ANOTHER session to discuss the US auto industry’s bankruptcy, what to do about it (if anything) and other issues.

One thing DID get done. There will be a 13 week extension of unemployment benefits with a possible additional 20 weeks to be discussed.

President Bush is on his way to Peru for the Pacific Rim Conference in an attempt to push his ‘free trade’ agreement for Latin America. Expect protests.

They look like this:

Hillary Clinton will be offered the Secretary of State office in the new Obama administration.

A Washington DC judge orders the IMMEDIATE release of five Guantanamo detainees declaring the government to have no evidence whatsoever that they had done anything to be classified ‘enemy combatants’ except exist at the wrong time in history (post 9-11) at the wrong place on the planet (Bosnia).

Rep Dingell, an auto industry flack, will be replaced by Henry Waxman as chair of the congressional Energy Committee.

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Thanks to another KPIG listener, Christopher M., I have a copy of yesterday’s commentary. It will be archived and posted to the November 19 page(s) within the next hour or so. It is titled: The Legal ‘Pitchforks & Torches’ For Dick Cheney And Alberto Gonzales Have Been Sharpened And Lit - Indicted For Border Detention Center Prisoner Abuse

In The News: HAR MATEY This! The Indian Navy, doing things that navies do, has sunk a pirate vessel, allegedly a ‘Mother Ship’, near the Gulf of Aden. Maritime agencies are advising shippers to use armed crews in the region leaving NEW employment possibilities for Blackwater, along with protecting Western NGOs in lands we laid waste to… There is more information on the proliferation of private army protection for non-governmental entities at GlobalPolicy.Org.

The ‘Lame Duck’ session of congress is doing what it’s called… being lame. Harry Reid took the Auto Bailout Bill off the floor due to lack of anything resembling a consensual vote and the Big Three are on the hook… and on their own. GM may go bankrupt before inauguration day. Speaking of failing industry, there is a 20 week extension to unemployment benefits waiting on the congressional table as well. More.

GW has plans when (and if) congress goes home - The environmental regulations preventing coal mining, coal gasification facilities, and oil drilling etc near US wilderness areas are going to be expunged by executive fiat if BushBoy has his way.

It will take some time but California’s Supreme Court will hear challenges to Proposition 8.

The Obama campaign has picked senator Tom Daschle to head Health and Human Services… He has written in depth on the subject. Other appointments… The head of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, will be the next head of the Office of Management and Budget for the White House.

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In The News: Thanks to another KPIG listener, Christopher M., for the commentary rip.

Ayman al-Zawahiri the operational CEO of al Qaeda, has a new tape out. He refers to president-elect Obama as a “House N…”. More.

The Iraqi parliament, or more correctly, PART of it, has voted and passed on a first vote a SOFA of some sort with the US, but many on both sides are not happy.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi and American critics of a security agreement governing American troops in Iraq voiced their objections on Monday, a day after the Iraqi cabinet approved the pact and sent it to Parliament for ratification.

In Iraq, opposition has created an unlikely association between the followers of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who rejected the agreement out of hand, and some Sunni politicians, including ones who support the deal but are trying to wrest concessions from the Iraqi government.

Ghufran al-Saadi, a Sadrist lawmaker, said opponents had collected 115 signatures, primarily from Sadr supporters and members of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, demanding that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and several cabinet members appear in Parliament to answer questions about the agreement, which governs the presence of American troops in Iraq through 2011. Parliament has 275 members.

The Sadrists argued that the ratification process was unconstitutional and threatened to take the issue to federal court. They also claimed that the public reading of the agreement in Parliament on Monday was not legitimate because the legislative session was too noisy for anyone to hear what was being said.

Among the principal Sunni demands are amnesty for many Sunni detainees in American custody and a national referendum on the agreement.

But while the two groups may both oppose the pact, leaders of Tawafiq, the largest Sunni bloc in Parliament, said they would be open to supporting it if some of their demands were met. “We have our own concerns, mainly because of what is not in there,” said Ayad al-Sammarai, a Tawafiq leader. “If we get a positive response, then things will change.”

A signing ceremony on Monday morning attended by Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador, and Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, marked the end of the negotiations, which took almost a year; members of Parliament cannot make further changes to what is now an international agreement.

The vote is scheduled for next Monday. If the agreement passes, it will go to the three-member presidency council for approval.

In Washington, officials acknowledged on Monday that the agreement still left some contentious issues vaguely worded, including the extent of Iraqi legal jurisdiction over crimes against Iraqi civilians in which American soldiers are accused.

Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, a Democrat who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, warned that the agreement could subject American soldiers to Iraqi prosecution and complained that parts of the agreement would be left for joint committees to resolve in the future.

That, Mr. Skelton said, could set the stage for future disputes between Iraq’s increasingly assertive government and American diplomats and commanders.
In Full @ the New York Times

40 year criminal Rethuglican senator Ted Stevens loses to Mayor of Anchorage Mark Begich. More on Minnesota, and the Georgia re-run elections.

Turncoat Demoncratic senator Joe Lieberman… all is forgiven.

The last Attorney General of the Clinton administration, Eric Holder, becomes the first of Obama’s. His specialty at the DOJ was ethics and corruption investigations.

[November 19 2008] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The Legal ‘Pitchforks & Torches’ For Dick Cheney And Alberto Gonzales Have Been Sharpened And Lit - Indicted For Border Detention Center Prisoner Abuse

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In The News: It’s like the opening of the deer season in congress. Congress is back in session and the economic bailout is under investigation. High level financial hacks like Fed Chairman Bernake and Treasury Secretary Paulson are being grilled about how a mortgage bailout became a government ==>> bank recapitalization/investment program. Convicted criminal Rethuglican senator Ted Stevens and turncoat Demoncrat Senator Joe Lieberman are gonna get some ‘treatment’ from their respective ‘parties’ (not anything Da’ Buffalo would attend or be invited to…) as well. More Political Bloodsport follows.

As General Anthony Clement McAuliffe said “Nuts!” - The Afghanistan/US government and the Talib ARE NOT going to have any peace talks at all as long as foreign troops are in country. More.

The report is out… 1/4 of the 700,000 troops committed to the ‘Gulf War’ have syndromes created by battlefield conditions(a region blanketed sometimes to the point of almost zero visibility in burning oil smoke and fumes for a start) and the drugs our own government gave them, not “Iraqi nerve gas”.

100 of the top military retirees have written Obama asking him to lift the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy which will allow gays to serve openly in the US military.

Will the Demoncratic congress bail out the auto companies (One might ask WHY? Maybe the Obama ‘Hope For Change’ slogan should really be re-coined as ‘Accept No Change’)? Will the Rethuglicans filibuster? Stay tuned.

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In The News: Iraq is ready to boil over - The al Maliki government votes for a Status of Forces Agreement using the ‘Sovereignty Portfolio’ ministers

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that an unnamed high official in Iraq said that he expected the cabinet to pass the agreement on Sunday or Monday, since it was supported by the ministers with “sovereignty portfolios” (Defense, Interior, Foreign Affairs, and Finance) More @ Juan Cole’s Informed Comment

(read Some ministers are “Capo di tutti capi” in an Iraqi/US MAFIA)… but it’s unlikely the parliament will get a quorum to vote on it. Expect it to get rammed down Iraq’s throat with the end result of MORE MAYHEM. Details.

Pakistan shuts down the Khyber Pass to battle the rebels, which also effectively shuts down the primary US supply route to Eastern Afghanistan. The Pakistani government is also claiming (correctly) the US drone incursions to hunt ‘al Qaeda’ violate their sovereignty and airspace. Also, the International Monetary Fund is about to loan Pakistan $27+- Billion dollars. More.

Hamid Karzai’s Afghanistan ‘government’ is offering Mullah Omar , with a 10 million dollar US bounty on his head, protection in return for peace talks with the Taliban.

We can hardly afford to remodel our homes but we’re going to remodeling the International Space Station. Kitchen, bedroom, bath, reverse osmosis urine to drinking water… All the conveniences.

Congress reconvenes today and they are going to work on taking some of the 700 BILLION dollar economic bailout and use it to pay off the mostly defunct US auto industry. As Jim Kunstler at Clusterfuck Nation put it:

The dilemma is essentially this: the consumer economy we all knew and loved has died. There will be pressure from nearly every quarter to keep it hooked up to the costly life support machines even though it is dead. A different economy is waiting to be born, but it is nothing like the one that has died.

The economy-to-come is one of rigor and austerity. It is not the kind of thing that a nation of overfed clowns is used to. Do we even have a prayer of getting to it, or are we going to squander our dwindling resources on life support for something that is already dead?

A case in point: the car industry. The Big Three, all functionally bankrupt, are now lined up for bail-outs from the treasury’s bottomless checking account. Personally, I believe the age of Happy Motoring is over.

Many Americans have already bought their last car — they just don’t know it yet.

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In The News: Barack Obama is picking his staff, and journalist Andrea Mitchell is claiming they are considering Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. That would also change the senatorial equation. More.

Muqtada al Sadr has said his Mahdi army will be resuming attacks on Iraqi police, military and government agencies if the US is still in Iraq when our ‘hunting license’ expires on January 01 2009. Will there be a special session of the UN to extend our presence?

4195 Americans have died in Iraq, saving it from a situation we created. 622 dead in Afghanistan… 122 this year, the highest rate since we invaded that country (Da Buffalo opines: on the flimsiest of pretenses… That Osama bin Laden was there, and the Taliban had control over, similarity-of-purpose, or culpability for, his actions. If anything, the US brought the Talib and Osama together to fight the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Remember the outcome for Russia? The US is next. //dbaw)

A missile from a US military UAV has killed at least 12 people on the Afghan/Waziristan border… supposedly (but ‘unconfimedly’) AQ personnel.

California Proposition 8 opponents have published a list of people who spent big bucks to pass it. The Mormon ‘church’ has been targeted and ’suspicious white powders’ showed at two Mormon temples, LA and San Diego, bringing in the FBI. Also, California Attorney General Jerry Brown is going to have a trying time figuring out what to do with Prop 8. ‘enforcement, what with it leaving some LEGAL marriages, some ILLEGAL, in it’s wake.

One-Upping ‘dead presidents’… Ronald Reagan used to broadcast a Saturday radio political commentary for his supporters. Barack Obama will do the same, but high tech. More.

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In The News: Another Way To ‘Get Engaged’ - American military convoys are being attacked on BOTH sides if the Afghan/Pakistan border even as an Iraqi soldier opens fire on US soldiers, killing two.

About face, and ‘Bald-faced’ (as in ‘bald-faced LIE’)- Secretary of the Treasury Paulson says they’re NOT going to bail out the mortgagees after all… after-the-fact… we’re going to bail out the banks… You might call it ‘throwing bad money after good’… They call it ‘Re-capitalization’

The Supreme Court has lifted the ban on high power sonar used in naval exercises off the coast of California. Expect dead whales, dolphins, and porpoises on the beaches of the Golden State in the near future

The economy…

(Jim Kunstler @ Clusterfuck Nation with the meaning of “Shit Sandwich”… Click)

A half million new jobless claims were filed last week…. That’s alot, and a predictor of Xmas retail financial mayhem. Also, one out of every four hundred fifty two American mortgages last month was given notice of foreclosure.

There will be an earthquake drill in California today but there is no readily available information about any civilian participation.

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In The News: The ‘Wars’ are not going well. In Iraq, where the insurgents have held off on attacks, the SOFA agreement is still hanging fire in the Iraqi parliament. Will our hunting license expire? More.

In a 2nd stage insurgency, the insurgents manage to organize planned coordinated attacks, and yesterday’s attacks in the Khyber Pass, on the main highway, on the Afghan/Pakistan border, seem to indicate that the West’s strategy for conquering the hinterlands is NOT going well. The NATO convoys were routed and supplies looted. Details.

President Bush and Barack Obama discussed the $25-50 BILLION dollar auto industry ‘bailout’ the other day. In return for his support of that, the Democrats will support his ‘free-trade’ agreement with the government of Colombia. More.

Da’ Buffalo has something to say here… Save the auto industry? For what? Shouldn’t we be retooling these factories and retraining the workers to build high quality commuter bicycles and small electric vehicles for the disabled or unable, reclaiming small community structure to create micro-economic environments where the people who live in an area don’t need to commute literally hundreds of miles a day to accomplish the daily tasks and afford to live near their work? And NO LIP-SERVICE EITHER… Where THIS buffalo lives, the city is talking about re-creating itself as a ‘telecommuting city’. The number of folks who live here with the skillset that would allow for that sort of work arrangement could be counted on one of my hooves. IF the city I live in IS going to ‘wire’ itself in such manner, it would seem more economically practical to create a ‘call-center city’… Even a wino who sells rodeo tickets in some boiler room telemarketing operation could do an entry level call-center operator job.

The only problem… Call center operators don’t make the wages needed to pay the local exorbitant rents… So my town continues to pander to commuters… and not-so-indirectly, the US auto industry. It’s time (High Time… giggle) to change all that.

James Kunstler has a little bit to say about what’s coming up shortly in the way of the old American industrial lifestlye:

Clusterfuck Nation

Presto Change-o

As the election campaign ground on like a 3000-mile race between a greyhound and an armadillo, the media kept harping on Barack Obama’s vague promises of “change.” We now know what the main promise was: regime change, right here in the USA, not in some place where the natives wear strange headgear.

Mr Obama’s victory was a moment of epochal exhilaration, not least because he appears to be a decent and intelligent person self-made from a humble background - someone who has personally bought tube socks in the K-mart, worried about money, and made many trips in a subway car.

The current occupant of the White House, however, has sedulously prepared for his successor the biggest shit sandwich…

…the world has ever seen, and there is naturally some concern that Mr Obama might choke on it.

The dilemma is essentially this: the consumer economy we all knew and loved has died. There will be pressure from nearly every quarter to keep it hooked up to the costly life support machines even though it is dead. A different economy is waiting to be born, but it is nothing like the one that has died. The economy-to-come is one of rigor and austerity. It is not the kind of thing that a nation of overfed clowns is used to. Do we even have a prayer of getting to it, or are we going to squander our dwindling resources on life support for something that is already dead?

A case in point: the car industry. The Big Three, all functionally bankrupt, are now lined up for bail-outs from the treasury’s bottomless checking account. Personally, I believe the age of Happy Motoring is over. Many Americans have already bought their last car — they just don’t know it yet… [In Full]

…and just in case you thought the ‘brains of the outfit’… the ones who helped create this mess, know what they’re doing (Some say “They DO!”):

US drops plans to purchase toxic mortgage assets
12/11/2008 16h15

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US authorities are scrapping plans to buy up toxic mortgages securities and shifting the focus of a massive financial rescue plan, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Wednesday..
.
.
.
.
The program approved by Congress was initially aimed at buying up so-called toxic mortgage securities that were clogging the financial system, but analysts had warned that such a plan could prove difficult to implement with prices hard to fix.

In the meantime, US officials had moved to emulate plans in Britain and elsewhere to tackle the credit squeeze by investing directly in banks. In Full, AFP via Google

Meanwhile… Despotism rears it’s ugly head in the form of ‘Hot Rides’ for US Police Departments… Will the sales of police cruisers save the US auto industry? Quote: “It’s really a homeland security machine, not a cop car,“

SAN DIEGO, Nov. 12 (UPI) — A new technologically advanced police cruiser was unveiled to hundreds of U.S. police chiefs at a recent San Diego convention, experts say.

Carbon Motors Chief Executive Officer William Li said his company’s Carbon E7 police cruiser was designed to enhance law enforcement efforts with automatic license-plate scanners and other advanced equipment…
.
.
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The vehicle is equipped with sensors that can detect weaponry, a biodiesel engine and a drive-train that improves the cruiser’s mileage. While its per unit cost wasn’t reported, the company has touted the vehicle’s available 300-horsepower. [In Full @ UPI]

Connecticut officially declares that same-sex marriage IS legal in that state. In California, Proposition 8 lawsuits and hearings will be ongoing.

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The United States learned a lesson from the Vietnam War: that it is unlikely, except in the event of self-defense, that regular civilians will execute the life-threatening orders that are given to them by military authority.

The solution of policy makers was to create an all-volunteer force that negated the need for a draft.

This translates into a mercenary force composed of America’s disadvantaged: a sector of the U.S. demographic that is particularly susceptible to military recruitment for lack of other options and finding themselves with deployment orders again and again.

This Veterans Day, U.S. Soldiers Say ‘Stop the War’

By Benjamin Lewis and Brandon Neely, AlterNet
November 11, 2008

On this day, Veteran’s Day, we would like to express to the American public why we, veterans of the Global War on Terror, have chosen to refuse orders to reactivate into military service. We are direct witnesses to the horrors of this war, having experienced its atrocities at their source, and we have decided that we can no longer carry out these illegal and immoral policies.

We believe that veterans and active-duty GIs are in a key position to stop illegal and unjust war, and we are inspired by the resistance of troops who stood against the war in Vietnam. One of the preeminent reasons for the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam was increasing dissent among the active-duty troops stationed abroad and at home. By the end of the war, there were entire units refusing to participate in combat, many going as far as outright mutiny.

The United States learned a lesson from the Vietnam War: that it is unlikely, except in the event of self-defense, that regular civilians will execute the life-threatening orders that are given to them by military authority. The solution of policy makers was to create an all-volunteer force that negated the need for a draft. This translates into a mercenary force composed of America’s disadvantaged: a sector of the U.S. demographic that is particularly susceptible to military recruitment for lack of other options and finding themselves with deployment orders again and again.

To compensate for huge pitfalls in recruitment since the invasion of Iraq, the military has resorted to recalling former service members. This policy is known as “involuntary activation” and utilizes deactivated service members who still have time on their contracts in the Individual Ready Reserves (IRR) to fill shortcomings in specific job specialties. The abuse and misuse of this policy has escalated under the current administration to such a degree that it can now only be viewed as a “backdoor draft” that targets the same disadvantaged individuals the military sought out for enlistment, namely because they are better at not questioning orders.

However, we have now begun to question these orders. We are veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and members of the IRR who have refused or will refuse any activation orders that would lead to us serving an unjust and imperial U.S. foreign policy. It is a prevailing notion that this refusal is unpatriotic, but we consider our actions the only choice. Not only did the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan do great harm to the people of those countries, but it undermined the ostensible goal with which the wars were begun: Instead of stopping terrorism, it has proliferated terrorism, an expectation that was predicted well before the war started.

By refusing activation, we are refusing to participate in wars that serve the purposes of furthering the careers of politicians and high-ranking officers. We openly support other IRR members who follow in these footsteps. The military is a force that rules through fear of retribution for disobeying its will. In reality, more than a third of IRRs simply refuse to report to duty. Most of the rest report out of fear that the military will change their discharge status or prosecute them for desertion, but up to this point, prosecution has been rare. Members of the IRR are not under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and thus far, the military has had a practice of not prosecuting them with criminal charges unless they report in some form or function to activate. Very few willingly volunteer for activation.

There can be no promise that President-Elect Barack Obama will stop the stressful and unfair techniques of back-to-back deployments, “stop-loss” or the “backdoor draft” that are damaging the psychology of veterans in irreparable ways. Nor that he will stop encouraging global violence by unlawful uses of force. It is in this vein that we turn to organizations like Courage to Resist, Iraq Veterans Against the War and many other large-scale and grassroots organizations to solicit change in a largely unrepresentative democracy, and to allow the voices of the people to ring through the halls of the Capital.

Benjamin Lewis, former Marine Corps mortarman, Iraq veteran, IRR recall resister, peace activist

Brandon Neely, former U.S. Army Military police officer, Iraq veteran, IRR recall refuser

[Source]

In The News: Something must have happened while I was gone. George W. shows Barack Obama around the White House and the Obama team IS working on a plan to close down gitmo…

Stan Goff put it this way, and this Buffalo, for one, is waiting for concrete action on this constitutional travesty IMMEDIATELY after Mr. Obama takes the oath on January 20 2009:

“We have some serious evils in our faces right now; and if we are going to confront them, then we need to list them, organize against them, and make that opposition felt in the principalities and powers. Big pharma.
Big food.
Big war.
Big oil.
Big banks.
Big prisons.
And the big-dick culture of me-first domination and revenge.

I have a litmus test, if anyone is interested.

Let’s see if Guantanamo is closed in the first month of the new administration.” [In Full]

Also of note, from Informed Comment Global:

YES WE CAN WHAT?
BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM

America appears to be swept up in a feel-good moment, but as much as Barack Obama wows people as a public speaker and wordsmith, as much as his candid, inclusive style represents an antidote to everything rotten redolent of George W. Bush, as thrilling as it is for black Americans, who have proudly claimed the mulatto son of a Kansas mother and Kenyan father as one of their own, and by his precedent feel empowered by his victory, the feel-good moment has not yet arrived, or if it has, it is cruelly illusory.

That Obama gives good speeches is a given, his acceptance speech stands as one of the best ever, good enough to rouse even jaded political commentators to goose bumps. Good enough to drive people to tears, not just Americans but even foreigners. I watched the acceptance speech in Kyoto with a classroom full of Japanese students and by the time the 16-minute speech had ended, a good number of students were crying.

“Wow. What did you think of that speech?” I asked.

“I wish we had a leader like that,” said one.
“It’s so powerful when he says ‘Yes We Can’!” chimed another.
“I am so moved, he is kind to everyone,” answered a third.

And despite misgivings rooted in a media analyst’s appreciation for Obama’s truly awesome and awesomely manipulative gift for language, I too was almost speechless after hearing his speech. It was such a sterling performance, so brilliantly crafted and so naturally read from two strategically placed teleprompters that it seemed like he was talking from his heart to his closest friends.

Barring a few tired, over-worn clichés about Wall Street and Main Street, barring the braggadocio of American exceptionalism and the incantatory, quasi-religious refrain “Yes We Can,” Obama’s speech was a speech for the ages, down to the touching review of a century of history as imagined through the eyes of a 106 year old voter, taking us back to “before there were cars on the road and planes in the sky” to the moon landing all the way on to the promise he made to his kids, that a puppy would be accompanying them to the White House.

Finding time to embrace erstwhile bitter rivals John McCain and Sarah Palin, finding time to include every one who didn’t vote for him in his mandate to be the president of one and all, he seemed a man incapable of having enemies.

And therein lies the problem. Obama wants to play nice, and to do that in a contentious, demanding job, he needs to surround himself with people who are not so nice. This became immediately obvious with his first and most important political pick, Rahm Emanuel for White House Chief of Staff.[In Full]

In California, Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger says he won’t just support Obama, he’ll push for bipartisan behavior in the state government and called for a temporary sales tax increase with a 14 billion dollar deficit looming.

California turns against it’s gay population? The ACLU and other organizations are working on overturning the Prop. 8. There are demonstrations around America… particularly focussed on the ‘churches’ who supported the bill.

In Alaska, ‘New Florida’… they’re STILL counting the votes. Details.

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