Matthew Rothschild at The Progressive has convinced himself that Obama is a racist and that’s why it was so easy to bail on Van Jones;
Van Jones was probably the single most prominent progressive in the Obama Administration. A founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and a leading green jobs advocate, Van Jones represented us in the White House.
And now he’s gone.
Gone because Glenn Beck and the far right hatemongers kept up an incessant drumbeat of slurs, calling him a “communist” and an “anarchist”—the branding iron of traditional McCarthyism.
We’ve seen, when dealing with the International Socialist Organization-affiliated IVAW members, how quickly they drag out the “McCarthyism” bloody shirt when they are called socialists and communists. Regardless of the fact the fact that they are indeed admitted socialists and communists.
Beck also brought up an innocuous slur Van Jones used against Republicans, one much less salty and offensive than the term Dick Cheney has used against Sen. Patrick Leahy.
Yeah, OK, but Van Jones said all Republicans are assholes with a broad brush – not knowing all of us. Dick Cheney told Leahy to “go fuck himself” – knowing Leahy and speaking to him personally. See the difference? Of course not.
And Beck flailed against Van Jones because he signed a 9/11Truth petition, along with Ralph Nader and Howard Zinn and many others. Now I have my own problems with the truthers, but signing a petition seeking a redress of grievances gets you fired in today’s America?
Well, Matthew, when you work in the White House and you sign a petition most often associated with nutty cranks, people begin to wonder whether or not you’re a nutty crank.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Van Jones is African American. And just as Bill Clinton found it convenient to dump Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders and Lani Guinier, now Obama has found it convenient to dump Van Jones, at the behest of a clear racist in Glenn Beck.
So now Obama is a racist? I’m sure that will surprise his wife and children.
Funny how Rothchild compares a crank like Jones to another crank like my fellow masturbation advocate Joycelyn Elders. I guess he forgot that Elders explained shifting money from heart disease and cancer research to AIDs research thusly; “Everybody has to die from something”.
Sometimes Black people get fired for who they are, and not for what they are. It’s a brave new world.
Just A Grunt sent us a link to this video of an interview BBC did with Lynndie England.
Clearly, the only remorse she has is that she was caught and has become a national pariah. England blames her behavior on her boyfriend, Charles Graner, and her schoolgirl crush on him. She says she did the things she did to please him and keep him. She says Graner would say “If you love me, you’ll do this”. I guess, not once, did it run through her mind that maybe she didn’t want a long term relationship with a pervert;
I guess the most disgusting part of the interview is when the interviewer asks England why she’s smiling in one of the pictures and England tries to explain that she’s not really smiling – just keeping the cigarette smoke out of her eyes (at about 4:20). The whole interview is just like that moment – she explains why what we see in the photos isn’t what’s there in front of our lyin’ eyes.
It’s a blessing for the rest of us that she doesn’t like to go out in public. The interviewer says she’s “one of the most notorious women in America”. England laments that she’s considered a “villain, a monster because I appeared in a photo for a split second in time”. She depends on manipulating the press to rehabilitate her image (ala Squeaky Fromme) and although BBC does seem to hold her feet to the fire in this interview, they can’t hide their sympathy for her.
Charlie Rangel, that guy in charge of writing tax laws in the House, has been busted owing the American people thousands of dollars in back taxes according to Byron York at the Washington Examiner;
Last week, we learned that Rangel filed a grossly misleading financial disclosure report for 2007 — failing to report at least half a million dollars in assets.
It turns out Rangel had a credit union account worth at least $250,000 and maybe as much as $500,000 — and didn’t report it. He had investment accounts worth about the same, which he also didn’t report. Ditto for three pieces of property in New Jersey.
Beyond that, we’ve learned that Rangel has failed to report assets totaling more than $1 million on legally required financial disclosure forms going back to at least 2001.
The news comes on top of revelations last year that Rangel didn’t report — and didn’t pay taxes on — income from a villa in the Caribbean. In that matter, the Internal Revenue Service gave him sweetheart treatment; Rangel paid about $10,000 in back taxes but was not required to pay any penalty or interest.
In response to the sweet deal Rangel was given to eradicate his tax cheating, Republicans are hitting back;
And then there is H.R. 735, also known as the “Rangel Rule Act of 2009.”
The brainchild of Rep. John Carter, a Texas Republican who spent two decades as a judge before coming to the House in 2002, H.R. 735 would require the IRS to give everyone the same kid-glove treatment it gave Rangel.
Yeah, fat chance that will pass – it took over two hundred years to subject members of Congress to their own legislation (thank you, Newt Gingrinch), it’ll take longer than that to get the real sovereigns of this country the royal treatment Congress reserves for itself.
And it’ll take even longer to get Charles Rangel, the serial tax cheat,to own up to his malfeasance and pay us what he owes us.
I’m sure you all remember the book I read and reviewed here named “Spooky 8; the final mission” and then I reviewed it’s author, Bob King, and got an email from Bob King. Technically, through all of that, Bob could have said that book was fiction and he was just drawing on his experiences and his imagination to write a novel – so technically, he’s not a phony soldier. Well, one of our readers dug up, in the archives of the local school paper in Wenatchee, WA, an interview from 2002 in which he actually claims to be a Vietnam veteran. Not only that, he claims that his experiences in Vietnam are what shaped his life. We all know from his records that he was a general’s driver in Fort Sill, OK after he dropped out of jump school – that was the extent of his military career. I guess now he’s the head janitor at Wenatchee High School. I quote from the article;
Having been at war, I realize that we are all the same, we all feel the same pain. I’m honest and fair and when I die, people will remember me as an honest man.
It seems that Cindy Sheehan and Matthis Chiroux met at Martha’s Vineyard this week and while no one was paying attention, they made a video together. Whoever took the video should have adjusted the audio – old guys like me can’t hear what they’re saying. Probably lucky for them. Here’s the video – I’ll leave the comments to you guys;
This is a real smoldering turd of a video starring TSO’s favorite journalist, Dahr Jamail, and my new penpal, Jose Vasquez, the Executive Director of Iraq Veterans Against the War. To Vasquez’ credit, when the reporter introduces him as an Iraq veteran, he admits that he never served in the war. Like Carl Webb, Matthis Chiroux and and endless list of (IV)AW members who aren’t Iraqi Veterans. But certainly we can understand her confusion – he’s wearing a T-shirt that says “Iraq Veterans” and he’s the Executive Director of an organization that calls itself “Iraq Veterans Against the War”. Many of us would automatically think he’s an Iraq veteran.
The video is 14 minutes long, and I’ve watched it five times, so you don’t have to;
To begin with, Jamail states that there have been 50,000 soldiers who have deserted since 2001. To understand the statement, you first have to understand the terms. A soldier has to be Absent Without Leave (AWOL) for 30 days before he’s considered a deserter. LTC Nathan Banks, our new friend at the Army’s Pentagon Public Affairs Office claims that they have apprehended 29,926 deserters since 2001 and that there are 2442 outstanding warrants.
So how does that compare with peacetime years;
There were 3687 desertions in 2000 which was .7% of the total force. In 2007, 4698 desertions which was .9% of the force – statistically, yes desertions were on the rise in 2007, a minuscule number when we’re talking about more than a half million people. In 2006, it was .6% (one of the bloodiest years in Iraq) and in 2003, (when the Iraq began) it was .5%. We haven’t seen the data for 2008 and 2009 yet. The fact remains that over 99% of the total force don’t desert, so I don’t know what Jamail is trying to say.
Jamail claims that the military is taking steps to prevent dissent in their ranks. “They” stopped the draft. Um, “they” didn’t stop the draft, it was ended decades ago, not part of some Bush conspiracy. He also claims that the military is blocking access to social networking media (Facebook, Twitter, etc…). That’s just false. The military is blocking access to social media ON THEIR OWN internet access points – just like every other employer. Doesn’t it make sense that only military business is conducted on military computers? Soldiers are still able to use those media on their own computers.
Vasquez claims that the only people who can’t find jobs are joining the military. The proof of that is National Guard recruiters at his college – I guess that’s why I was involved in recruiting on campus back in 1988. It was just a Bush plot for this war. I guess recruiters should recruit in nursing homes and not among the their target market. More than likely, the people who volunteer to go in the Army are the types of motivated people that any employer would love to have in their business rather than some slovenly, shitdick peacenik. Jose says it’s because recruiters know the economy is bad – or maybe they know where to find smart, motivated recruits.
Retention and recruiting has been successful through out the period since 9-11-01. All of the branches of service have met their goals nearly every year of the Bush boom. Yes, the economy has some effect periodically, but there’s no real evidence that the troops are reenlisting and joining JUST because of the economy. Vasquez makes it sound like they have no choice but to die for their country, for Pete’s sake.
Vasquez continues the myth that Pat Tilman was killed by some government plot to silence his dissent against the war. In other words, he thinks that the soldiers he says that he loves so much would treacherously kill one of their own on the order of Darth Cheney. Way to support the troops, there, Jose.
Vasquez also claims that in his 14 years in the Army Reserves, he never got any counter-terrorism training. He was a medic. What part of his job would change in a counter-terrorism environment? Think they have some ninja bandaids or self-propelled stretchers for terrorist operations?
Vasquez, Chiroux, Webb all had no problem drawing their paychecks until they were about to be deployed to war – yet we’re supposed to believe that their motivations were completely altruistic. I’ve told Vasquez that if he was as truly dedicated to his military profession as he’s claimed, the politics wouldn’t have prevented him from deploying and doing his job as a medic.
Vasquez was a medic, Chiroux was a journalist, Webb was a generator operator, Agosto and Bishop repaired radios, Andre Shepherd handed out volleyballs in Iraq because he was too incompetent to repair Apaches. I’m just sayin’….
Jamail claims that because he found some soldiers five years ago that sandbagged on their patrols in Iraq (Jamail uses the “Search and Avoid” term from Vietnam), he claims avoidance of their duties is “widespread” throughout the military. I’d like to see some proof of that – proof beyond a few IVAW members who claim it. We’ve already seen how he falsifies the desertion rates to suit his reportage, we have to assume he does the same in this instance.
By the way, one of Jamail sources in his book for the origins of sandbagged patrols is Geoff “Stolen Valor” Millard.
Jamail also claims that new Private Travis Bishop was jailed for “resisting” despite the fact that he filed for conscientious objector status. He fails to mention that Bishop went AWOL for a week before he filed for CO – that’s why he got a year in jail.
So there’s your introduction to the “new” (IV)AW Executive Director. Pretty much the same as the old director. Still willing to smear the troops, still advocating for desertion, still just another (IV)AW member who hasn’t been to Iraq, yet wears the T-shirt.
I first read of the rumor that CIA chief Leon Panetta offered his resignation on Wednesday at Ace of Spades. The White House denies those reports, however. Fox News wrote that ABC News reported a shouting match in the White House;
ABCNews.com on Monday cited reports that Panetta, frustrated by several administration actions and discussions with regard to the CIA, got in a “profanity-laced screaming match” with a senior staff member last month and has also threatened to leave. Panetta reportedly was upset over potential plans to open an investigation into alleged CIA abuse of terror suspects.
Kimberly Strassel at the Wall Street Journal writes this morning that Panetta is the White House’s fall guy for their erratic policy on torture and the CIA agents who followed their orders;
If the latest flap over CIA interrogations shows anything, it’s that Mr. Panetta has officially become the president’s designated fall guy.
The title has been months in the making. Mr. Obama is contending with an angry left that’s riled by his decisions to retain some Bush-era counterterrorism policies. He’s facing Congressional liberals still baying for Bush blood. He’s hired Attorney General Eric Holder, who is giving the term “ideological purity” new meaning. Mr. Obama’s way to appease these bodies? Hang the CIA and Mr. Panetta out to dry.
Actually, it explains Obama’s odd choice of Panetta for the office of CIA Director in the first place. Putting the highly-partisan Eric Holder in the Justice Department and a politician like Panetta at the CIA guaranteed Obama a shot at distracting us from his domestic agenda while the obamistas pursued the Bush Administration’s policies. Who knew that Panetta would take his job seriously?
Yesterday, Ace reported that the Wall Street Journal quoted the CIA’s IG report that Pelosi did indeed know about interrogation techniques that the CIA employed. So I guess the Obama Administration will eventually have to rid themselves of Panetta since they don’t need him to pass their domestic agenda.
In the Washington Post this morning, Obama advisers tell the Post that it’s impossible for the President to move forward without looking backward;
“I think he is determined to make sure we are on the right course going ahead, but you cannot just ignore the past, especially when Congress is doing its inquiries and reviews and we’re going to be facing these issues as a result of court cases, as a result of congressional actions,” [John O. Brennan, an assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism] said. “I think he is making sure that he makes the best decisions, and sometimes you cannot just wipe the slate clean. You have to deal with what the facts are, or you have to actually try to make sure you can ascertain the facts — as opposed to the hyperbole that is out there.”
Yeah, like we able to deal with the facts from the 9-11 Commission in regards to the Clinton legacy as it related to the September 11th attacks. Remember how Jaime Gorelick was able to block an effective examination of those facts?
Lennox Yearwood, Jr. calls himself “Reverend” but I can’t find a church where he ministers. He calls himself a Second Lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve, but I can’t find a record. There are volumes about him on the internet, for example, on Wikipedia, that wax endlessly about his “activism”, but hardly mention his military service. When it suits him, he mentions it, but only as a shield. Here’s his profile at IVAW; (more…)
