December 28, 2008 CBC News Sunday

It's looking very scary:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak stated,"This operation will expand and deepen as much as needed. We went to war to deal a heavy blow to Hamas, to change the situation in the south."

He told a special Knesset meeting Monday, "We have nothing against the people of Gaza, but we are in a war to the death with Hamas. We are engaged in an all-out war against Hamas and its proxies."

More from the New York Times.

[Photo by Sean Stewart, Harrisburg Patriot-News]

Another proud legacy of the Bush era:

WASHINGTON -- Murders of African-American teenagers have risen 39% since 2000 and 2001, according to a report due out Monday..

Homicides in which blacks ages 14 to 17 years old were the victims rose to 927 over the two-year period of 2006-07, the last years for which statistics are available, compared with 666 during 2000-01, according to the study by criminal-justice professors at Boston's Northeastern University. The 39% increase is much greater than the rise in overall homicides, which jumped 7.4% from 2000-01 to 2006-07.

Murders rose among black teens in 2006 and 2007 as overall homicides dropped compared with the previous year. And the 2000-07 rate of increase among black teens was more than twice the rate of increase among white teens, the study found.

The authors explained that they compared two-year periods to try to limit a statistical skewing of the numbers that might have occurred if they had simply looked at differences in 2000 and 2007.

The data confirm a pattern identified earlier this year by The Wall Street Journal, which found that while most communities in the U.S. were seeing a decline in homicides, many African-American neighborhoods were continuing to see an increase. The Northeastern University research shows that the pattern is more pronounced among juveniles.

James Alan Fox, co-author of the study, attributed the numbers to a variety of issues, including cuts in funding for local law-enforcement programs that were credited with lowering the nation's record murder rates in the 1990s. "It's hard to pin down cause and effect," Mr. Fox said.

An overwhelming proportion of the killings involve black-on-black crime. The reasons for high rates of violence in African-American communities have been the subject of debate among criminologists. Some attribute it to the migration of prison culture, with large numbers of incarcerated young men returning to their communities.

Mr. Fox said the cuts in law-enforcement programs and activities geared toward youth disproportionately affect African-Americans because they are more likely than their white counterparts to come from communities where there is inadequate adult supervision, high rates of single-parent homes, inferior schools and widespread gang activity.

"Cuts in support for youth have a much greater impact on black families who don't have alternatives," Mr. Fox said.

This is one of the reasons why the proposed library closings in Philadelphia are being so strongly protested. These are neighborhoods that don't have much to begin with, and kids need a place to go.

DOWNLOAD (279)

PLAY (291)

I'm so sick of the false equivalencies and lack of context of the conservative commentators and pundits out there, who get opportunity time and time again to spin their failures as somehow the fault of Democrats.

On Meet the Press, David Gregory notes that the tone of the Bush administration changed from the promised "compassionate conservative/uniter, not a divider" to its take-no-prisoners partisanship reality. Rich Lowry acknowledges that it was so, but blames it on the sixteen year warfare of Democrats and Republicans refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the other party's president.

A couple of things…one, Bush had a very simple view of how this works. You run on your agenda, and then you’re elected and you try to pass your agenda. And that seems pretty straightforward and basically admirable to me. But a couple things happened with the tone. One, he had entered into Washington where there is this ongoing revenge warfare, between the parties. Where Republicans were going to get revenge for Iran-Contra with Whitewater and the Monica scandal and the Democrats were going to get revenge for that. And you had about a sixteen year period where neither side would really accept the legitimacy of the other party’s president.

Um, Rich? Was Bill Clinton legitimately elected to office? Was there an extraordinary and so-legally-questionable-that-SCOTUS-specifically-limited-the-precedent-to-that-one-case decision that placed Clinton in office? No? So what was the basis of the lack of respect of the legitimacy of Bill Clinton's claim to the presidency? Sour grapes over Iran-Contra.

Let's remember, Mr. "History in a Vacuum" Lowry, were the Republicans guilty of crimes in the Iran-Contra scandal? They were? Quelle suprise! Was Clinton guilty of anything besides bad investing in the Whitewater scandal? Hmmm....isn't that funny...he wasn't. So the last eight years have been bad for poor George Bush, forcing him to be the nasty partisan war criminal that he is because of a sixteen year partisan war based on reality on the Democratic side and on the Republican side based on what? Being pissed that they've been caught outside the law? Well, to quote another blogger, boo-freakin'-hoo. How typically Republican.

And for the record, it's unadulterated crap that the left would never accept Bush. In the days after 9/11, Bush coasted on record approval ratings, ratings that showed that the WHOLE country--right, left and sideways--were all pulling for him. He pissed it away with declaring war on a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and ignoring the entire Gulf Coast during Katrina. The left looked at his actions, not some made-up reasoning of entitlement to the office.

Figures that once again, Lowry doesn't know his ass from his elbow. Why does he keep getting on these programs? Isn't it about time we get someone who knows what they're talking about?

Transcripts below the fold

Continue reading »

DOWNLOAD (88)

PLAY (324)

You Tube

On Meet the Press Richard Wolffe takes Rich Lowry to task for his statements about how important no attacks on US soil are as opposed to attacks overseas and how that lack of concern is extremely short sighted and unfortunately David Gregory makes sure Lowry gets to spew some more right wing talking points in response to Wolffe without giving him a chance to respond.

Full transcript to follow.

Continue reading »

Informed Comment: 230 Killed, 388 Wounded in 100 Israeli Air strikes on Gaza

Truthdig: Tragedy Repeats Itself

Petrelis Files: They don't make gay icons like they used to

Lawyers, Guns and Money: WaMu: The Power of Yes

alicublog: Tee hee over torture 

Submitted to a Candid World: Requiem for Samuel P. Huntington

It would be good to see them face charges for their torture policies. We can only hope the new administration feels the same. (h/t Avedon):

In early December, in a highly unusual move, a federal court in New York agreed to rehear a lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft brought by a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar. (Arar was a victim of the administration's extraordinary rendition program: he was seized by U.S. officials in 2002 while in transit through Kennedy Airport and deported to Syria, where he was tortured.) Then, on Dec. 15, the Supreme Court revived a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld by four Guantánamo detainees alleging abuse there—a reminder that the court, unlike the White House, will extend Constitutional protections to foreigners at Gitmo.

Finally, in the same week the Senate Armed Service Committee, led by Carl Levin and John McCain, released a blistering report specifically blaming key administration figures for prisoner mistreatment and interrogation techniques that broke the law. The bipartisan report reads like a brief for the prosecution—calling, for example, Rumsfeld's behavior a "direct cause" of abuse. Analysts say it gives a green light to prosecutors, and supplies them with political cover and factual ammunition. Administration officials, with a few exceptions, deny wrongdoing. Vice President Dick Cheney says there was nothing improper with U.S. interrogation techniques—"we don't do torture," he repeated in an ABC interview on Dec. 15. The government blamed the worst abuses, such as those at Abu Ghraib, on a few bad apples.

High-level charges, if they come, would be a first in U.S. history. "Traditionally we've caught some poor bastard down low and not gone up the chain," says Burt Neuborne, a constitutional expert and Supreme Court lawyer at NYU. Prosecutions may well be forestalled if Bush issues a blanket pardon in his final days, as Neuborne and many other experts now expect. (Some see Cheney's recent defiant-sounding admission of his own role in approving waterboarding as an attempt to force Bush's hand.)

Constitutionally, Bush could pardon everyone involved in formulating and executing the administration's interrogation techniques without providing specifics or naming names. And the pardon could apply to himself. Such a step, however, would seem like an admission of guilt and thus be politically awkward. Even if Bush takes it, civil suits for monetary damages could still proceed; such cases, though hard to win, are proliferating. Yet most legal scholars argue that a civil suit would not the best approach here. Neuborne calls it an "excessively lawyer-centric" strategy and says judges are extremely reluctant to award damages in such cases. Conservative legal experts like David Rifkin (who served in the Reagan and first Bush administrations) argue that no accounting is necessary, since the worst interrogation techniques, like waterboarding, have already been abandoned and Obama is expected to make further changes.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOAD (267)

PLAY (184)

This Week with George Stephanopoulos marks the passings of entertainer Eartha Kitt, Nobel Prize-winning writer Harold Pinter, and director Robert Mulligan. In addition, the Pentagon has released the names of seven servicemembers killed in Iraq.

According to iCasualties, the total number of allied forces killed in Iraq is now 4,534, in Afghanistan 1,042. During this same week, Iraq Body Count confirmed the deaths of 81 Iraqi citizens.

In addition, EW pays tribute to some of the notable personalities who passed away this year. CBS gives a complete rundown.

A weary social worker writes:

I have had a ringside seat to the economic downturn this year. It is not an abstraction to me. The folks at the bottom are always the first to feel the pinch, when it comes. Clients of the agency I work at come through our doors every day requesting assistance with basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter and medications. As the year has progressed and New York State has chosen to repeatedly victimize its most vulnerable citizens, it has become more difficult to help people meet these needs. I have visited food banks with empty shelves, been told clients were ineligible for help when I knew they were and had to challenge these decisions. I have sat with clients while their applications for public assistance were reviewed by fraud investigators at social services. Our local social services department actually hired fraud investigators at the same time that it was laying off child protective workers demonstrating conclusively where our values lie and how genuinely mean spirited we are as a people. At the federal level Social Security routinely denies people eligible for benefits in the hopes that they will not reapply. Many people who receive benefits must hire a lawyer before social security will concede that they are indeed eligible. As the resources have become more limited, the level of scrutiny and inhumanity has risen accordingly.

I have, of course read about the rising unemployment numbers and the ensuing uptick in applicants for public assistance and food stamps nationwide like everyone else. It seems the chickens of Bill Clinton's (Best moderate Republican president ever)welfare reform are finally coming home to roost. We always knew that the flaw of his plan was an economy without jobs and here we are. The reform has no provision for an unemployment rate like we are experiencing now. Once again, our policy in practice serves to punish most harshly children and the elderly. Perhaps, it is time to repeal the child labor laws and begin allowing them to work 12 hour days again.

For nearly 30 years we have done our best to dismantle the safety net for the poor and struggling among us. I keep praying that we have reached the end of this folly. At 42, these policies are what I have known my entire work life. I dream about social service programs and rules that would treat people like human beings, rather than as an undesirable applicant to be culled out. I want so badly for us as a nation to stop punishing people for being poor, or elderly or a child of poor people. This holiday season was hellish as I watched scores of our clients navigate the realities of a holiday with nothing but further grinding poverty. Some days I am just weary from the strain of witnessing the suffering that goes on around me. It takes a toll that is more than physical, it eats away at the soul to see people ask for so little and receive far less.

As I contemplate how to pry a few dollars from these systems designed to humiliate and degrade my clients, already struggling with being social outcasts, chronic illness, drug addiction and mental illness I sigh audibly. I read of billion dollar bailouts and disappearing pallettes of cash as I ponder how to help a family with $400.00 so they will not be homeless in three days. I am so very tired.

From 60 Minutes Dec, 28, 2008:

For nearly two years, Steve Kroft and 60 Minutes followed Barack Obama on the long and winding road to the White House complete with interviews, never-before-seen footage, and candid moments with Obama, his family, and his closest advisors.

DOWNLOAD (238)

PLAY (288)

While much of the country laughed when President Bush dodged shoes thrown by a reporter in Iraq, Laura Bush said she "was not amused." Laura Bush wouldn't say what should happen to the reported but she believes the incident was "an assault."