Bill blockbuster: O’s an ‘amateur’

CARL CAMPANILE
May 11, 2012
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/bill_blockbuster_an_amateur_XJHYdaV5LT1vpr5I39IKrN

Bill Clinton thought so little of President Obama — mocking him as an “amateur” — that he pressed his wife last summer to quit her job as secretary of state and challenge him in the primaries, a new book claims,
“The country needs you!” the former president told Hillary Clinton, urging her to run this year, according to accounts of the conversation included in Edward Klein’s new biography of Obama.

The title of Klein’s explosive, unauthorized bio of Obama, “The Amateur” (Regnery Publishing), was taken directly from Bill Clinton’s bombshell criticism of the president, the author said.

“Barack Obama,” Bill Clinton said, according to book excerpts, “is an amateur.”

The withering criticism is incredible, given the fact that Bill Clinton is actively campaigning for Obama’s re-election.

But according to the book, Bill Clinton unloaded on Obama and pressed Hillary to run against her boss during a gathering in the ex-president’s home office in Chappaqua last August that included longtime friends, Klein said.

“The economy’s a mess, it’s dead flat. America has lost its Triple-A rating . . . You know better than Obama does,” Bill said.

Bill Clinton insisted he had “no relationship” with Obama and had been consulted more frequently by his presidential successor, George W. Bush.

Obama, Bill Clinton said, “doesn’t know how to be president” and is “incompetent.”

But Hillary resisted the entreaties, according to two of the guests interviewed for the book.

“Why risk everything now?” a skeptical Hillary told her husband, emphasizing that she wanted to leave a legacy as secretary of state.

“Because,” Bill replied, his voice rising, “the country needs you!”

“The country needs us!” added Bill.

He later even joked about the prospect of having two Clinton presidential libraries — about the only time that Hillary cracked a smile.

“I want my term [at the State Department] to be an important one, and running away from it now would leave it as a footnote,” Hillary argued.

She said she had the option of running again in 2016.

But Bill wouldn’t let go.

“I know you’re young enough!” Bill said, his voice booming. “That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried that I’m not young enough.”

“I’m the highest-ranking member in Obama’s Cabinet. I eat breakfast with the guy every Thursday morning. What about loyalty, Bill? What about loyalty?” she responded.

“Loyalty is a joke,’’ Bill shot back. “Loyalty doesn’t exist in politics.”

Bill’s verbal battle with Hillary over the presidency, if anything, intensified when daughter Chelsea showed up with her husband, Marc Mezvinsky.

“You deserve to be president,” Chelsea said.

Bill was clearly pleased that Chelsea was on his side and vowed to have allies commission polls on a Hillary-Obama matchup.

“What are you trying to do — force my hand?” Hillary said.

“I want everyone to know how strong you poll,” Bill said.

Hillary said, “Go ahead and knock yourself out.”

The book’s explosive claims were shot down last night by spokesmen for the White House and the Clintons, who closed ranks last night.

Bill Clinton’s spokesman Matt McKenna said the excerpts were “totally and completely false” and called Klein “a known liar.”

Phillipe Reines, a spokesman for the secretary of state, noted that Hillary Clinton challenged the veracity of an earlier book Klein wrote about her, “Truth About Hillary.”

White House spokesman Eric Schultz accused Klein of making up facts to sell books.

“Nobody in their right mind would believe the nonsense in this one, especially since both Secretary Clinton and President Clinton have been loyal and supportive of the president at every turn.”

Klein, a former editor of The New York Times Magazine and Newsweek, defended the book and his earlier one as factually sound.

Meanwhile, today's daily presidential Rasmussen Poll shows Mitt Romney ahead of the president with 50 percent to Obama's 43 percent. It is the highest level of support the presumptive Republican nominee has received in his matchup with Obama as well as his largest lead.

Awesome Quotes: Emanuel Cleaver on Barack Obama

"If Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House. There is a less-volatile reaction in the CBC because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president."
Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver on Obama's slack response to the unemployment crisis

Significa

Released: West Memphis Three
After over 18 years in prison, and four years after crime scene DNA was presented that found no evidence linking the trio to the Arkansas murders. Credit Eddie Vedder and Johnny Depp with an assist on the statsheet for this one...

"They were convicted for being young, goth, Wiccan metalheads at the height of the Satanic Panic. Today they walk free.”
DangerousMinds.net

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Bill Clinton Goes Vegan

As CNN Notes: "By the time he reached the White House, Bill Clinton's appetite was legend. He loved hamburgers, steaks, chicken enchiladas, barbecue and french fries but wasn't too picky. At one campaign stop in New Hampshire, he reportedly bought a dozen doughnuts and was working his way through the box until an aide stopped him." No more, as over the past year, Big Bad Bill has become Sweet William. Under the dietary guide of Dr. Dean Ornish, director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, he has lost over 20 pounds feeding on a vegan diet:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/08/18/bill.clinton.diet.vegan

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Carrie Fisher has lost 50 pounds since becoming a spokewoman for Jenny Craig, dropping to 130 pounds. She's reportedly thinking of putting on her metal bikini from Return of the Jedi again. Incidentally, Jabba the Hutt would be a good candidate for Weight Watchers...

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Jim Thome: 600 Home Runs

And it still may not be enough to get in the Hall of Fame in the age of steroids...

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America's Most Walkable Cities, 2011

1. New York
2. San Francisco
3. Boston
4. Chicago
5. Philadelphia

Source: Yahoo.com

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Acquired: Motorola

By Google, giving them a smartphone maker to stay competitive with Apple, Nokia and Blackberry...

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Discovered: Lager Beer DNA

The yeast behind the most popular alcoholic drink in the world comes from Argentina, of all places, according to scientists. It traveled from South America about 500 years ago to Germany. In return, Argentina was rewarded with Nazi war criminals. Thanks for the drink, though!!!

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Diagnosed: Pat Summitt

With early stages of dementia. She has won a record 1071 games and 8 national titles as coach for the women's Tennessee Volunteers basketball team...

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Married: Kim Kardashian

To some guy, we forget his name. Don't worry, she'll still appear in The Konformist wearing outfits that show off her ass...

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RIP
The HP TouchPad, July 1 - August 18, 2011

It would be fun to blame this on Russell Brand, their dubious spokesman, but the real culprit is Apple, whose iPad Hewlett-Packard just couldn't compete with. And if HP can't compete, good luck to Motorola, Samsung or Blackberry. (Ironically, after the TouchPad discontinue was announced, its sales skyrocketed over the Internet due to tablets previously priced at $499 and $599 on sale for $99 and $149.) The TouchPad is the tip of the iceberg for HP changes, as they are planning to spinoff their PC business (even though they're the world's biggest PC maker, a title they've held since buying Compaq in 2002) and getting out of the smartphone biz (even though they only bought Palm last year for $1.2 billion as part of a strategy to become a smartphone-tablet giant.) If this sounds to you like HP is flailing around cluelessly, you're not alone:its stock dropped more than it has since Black Monday 1987 on the news...

The Burger King Mascot, 2003-11

For some reason, BK decided its creepy looking mascot was bad for business. He actually has a semi-respectable history, with previous incarnations starting in 1955...

Nick Ashford, 70

Half of the husband-wife Motown songwriting duo behind "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" and "Reach Out and Touch Somebody's Hand"...

Jerry Lieber, 78

Half of another great songwriting duo with Mike Stoller, penned such hits as "Hound Dog", "Jailhouse Rock", "Yakety Yak" and "King Creole"...

Mike Flanagan, 59

MLB pitcher who won 167 games in his career, including 23 in 1979 while winning the Cy Young for the Baltimore Orioles. He also was part of the last O's World Series team from 1983...

Joey Vento, 71

Owner of Geno's Steaks, founded in Philly in 1966 one of the city's two most famed makers of cheesesteaks...

Last but definitely not least, farewell to Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple, arguably the man who has changed America for the better more than anyone over the last decade. Normally, we don't gush about CEOs on The Konformist, but we'll make a deserved exception for him...

Obama, centrism and the Clinton myth

Someone needs to tell the president that moving to the center is not what won Bill Clinton a second term
Robert Reich
Friday, Mar 11, 2011
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/11/robert_reich_budget_showdown_obama_congress/index.html

In the next week the action moves from Wisconsin to Washington, where the deadline looms for a possible government shutdown over the federal budget. President Obama has to take a more direct and personal role in that budget battle -- both for the economy's sake and for the sake of his reelection. But will he? Don't count on it.

Worried congressional Democrats say the President needs to use his bully pulpit to counter defections in Democatic ranks, such as the ten Democrats and one allied Independent who on Wednesday voted against a Senate leadership plan to cut $6.2 billion from the federal budget over the rest of fiscal year 2011. They want Obama to grab the initiative and push a plan to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies and for companies that move manufacturing facilities out of the country, and a proposal for a surtax on millionaires.

Most importantly, they're worried the President's absence from the debate will result in Republicans winning large budget cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year -- large enough to imperil the fragile recovery.

But Obama won't actively fight the budget battle if the current White House view of how he wins in 2012 continues to prevail.

Shortly after the Democrats' "shellacking" last November, I phoned a friend in the White House who had served in the Clinton administration. "It's 1994 all over again," he said. "Now we move to the center."

The supposed parallel between 2010 and 1994 is something of an article of faith in the Obama White House. That's partly because so many of President Barack Obama's current aides worked for Bill Clinton and vividly recall Clinton's own shellacking in 1994. It's also because the Clinton story had a happy ending, at least electorally. The fact that Bill Clinton went on to win re-election is a source of comfort to the current White House as it looks ahead to 2012.

From this, many in the Obama White House have concluded that the president should follow Clinton's campaign script -- distancing himself from congressional Democrats, embracing further deficit reduction, and seeking guidance from big business. If it worked for Clinton, it must work for Obama -- or so it's supposed.

The superficial logic that so often passes for thought in Washington typically sees causation where there's only correlation. In fact, there's no reason to believe that Clinton's lurch rightward at the start of 1995 is what won him re-election the following November. He was re-elected because of the strength of the economic recovery.

By the spring of 1995, the American economy had bounced back, averaging 200,000 new jobs per month. By early 1996, it was roaring -- creating 434,000 new jobs in February alone. I remember suggesting to Clinton's political adviser, Dick Morris, that the president should come up with some new policy ideas for the election. Morris scowled. This election will be about the economy -- nothing more, nothing less, he said. Morris knew that voters didn't care much about policy. They cared about jobs. "The president," said Morris, "is going to say, 'You've never had it this good, and you ain't seen nothing yet.'"

The 1991-1992 recession was relatively mild as recessions go. As is typical of most recessions, it had been brought on by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates too high in response to fears of inflation -- meaning that a recovery would occur when the Fed reversed course and reduced short-term rates, which then-Chair Alan Greenspan obligingly did.

President Obama won't be as fortunate. The Great Recession resulted from the bursting of a giant debt bubble. Wall Street's irresponsible lending and speculating, negligible oversight by federal regulators, and the insatiable desire of Americans to use their homes as ATMs created a toxic mixture that exploded at the end of 2007 and continues to sicken the economy.

The Fed has kept interest rates near zero for more than a year and has opened the spigots of its discount window, without much result. Unemployment continues to hover around 9 percent. Economic growth is pathetic.

While jobs used to follow corporate profits, American corporations now rack up big profits without expanding employment. Their profits are coming mainly from buoyant sales by their foreign operations -- especially in China and India -- combined with cuts in jobs, wages, and benefits here in the U.S.

The richest 10 percent of Americans, who own about 90 percent of all financial assets, are buying again (sales at Neiman Marcus and Tiffany's are way up). But most Americans still have little purchasing power. Under a huge load of debt, worried about meeting mortgage payments, and seeing their major asset -- their home -- continue to drop in value, they're holding back from the malls.

A strong recovery cannot be sustained by the richest 10 percent. Before the Great Recession, the top 10 percent received about half of total income, but they accounted for only about 40 percent of total spending. Forty percent of spending isn't enough to convince businesses to invest in new capacity and jobs, which is why corporations are still sitting on $1.4 trillion of cash.

So many jobs have been lost since Obama was elected and so many people have entered the workforce needing jobs that even if job growth were to match the extraordinary pace of the late 1990s, year after year, the unemployment rate wouldn't fall below 6 percent until 2016. That pace of job growth is unlikely, to say the least.

If Republicans manage to cut federal spending significantly between now and Election Day while state outlays continue to shrink, the certain result is continued high unemployment and anemic growth.

Obama's challenge in 2012 has nothing to do with Bill Clinton's in 1996. He must fight the Republican plans to cut the budget deficit this year and next, and explain to the public why he's doing so. And he must convince Americans that public spending during the next few years is necessary to get the economy moving, reduce the long-term debt as a portion of the total economy, and get jobs back.

Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was secretary of labor during the Clinton administration. He is also a blogger and the author of "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future."

Sanders Calls For Progressive Meeting, Alternative To Fiscal Commission

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/12/sanders-calls-for-progres_n_782879.html

Sam Stein
stein@huffingtonpost.com
Sanders Calls For Progressive Meeting, Alternative To Fiscal Commission
11-12-10

WASHINGTON -- Clearly displeased with the initial deficit-reduction recommendations offered by the fiscal commission chairmen, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced on Friday that he will craft and introduce his own proposals as an alternative.

The Vermont Independent said that he will work with members of Congress, labor unions, seniors' organizations and others to develop alternative suggestions. And while he didn't get into the weeds, he did offer a few general areas that he hopes to target, including ending Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, chopping off Cold War-era Pentagon programs and eliminating of tax credits for big oil companies.

Of the ideas pushed by the commission co-chairmen -- former Sen. Alan K. Simpson and Erskine Bowles, former President Bill Clinton's former chief of staff -- Sanders offered the following:

"It is no surprise that these two favor draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the needs of our veterans, and education while proposing tax reductions for the wealthy and large profitable corporations... Simpson is a darling of the Republican right wing and Bowles is a former investment banker who made a fortune on Wall Street. Their plan was floated amid reports that the two were struggling to cobble together enough support on their own commission to go forward by a Dec. 1 deadline."

The likelihood that a progressive alternative for deficit reduction would get a vote in the Senate, let alone a hearing, is slimmer than the chances of Simpson and Bowles' recommendations making it to the floor unscathed. But Sander's effort isn't necessarily about getting a vote. Rather, there is, currently, one blueprint being offered for the task of deficit reduction and it's largely anathema to the progressive community. Having a second proposal out there serves the purpose of giving the negotiations a bit of bearing.

"We all know that there are a number of fair and progressive ways to address the deficit crisis that would not harm the middle class and those who have already lost their jobs, homes, life savings and ability to send their kids to college," Sanders writes, in a letter to those he's inviting for discussions. "The time has come to put these proposals into a package so that the progressive view becomes a part of the national discussion."

Obama: Better off as a lame duck?

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/11/obama-better-off-as-a-lame-duck/1

Nov 15, 2010
Obama: Better off as a lame duck?
David Jackson

A couple of pollsters have an odd suggestion for President Obama, if he wants to get something done with the new, more Republican Congress.

Announce he won't run for re-election.

Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell write in The Washington Post:

If the president goes down the re-election road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.


Schoen polled for former President Bill Clinton. Caddell worked for President Jimmy Carter, but has since been more of a political independent.

We rather doubt their analysis, however -- it's hard to see how Obama gains any leverage over congressional Republicans or Democrats by making himself a lame duck.

After he won the 1904 election, President Theodore Roosevelt announced that he would not seek re-election in 1908, a move he later regretted. It is often essential for an office holder to retain the option of taking his case to the people, if he or she cannot persuade their political opponents.

Lame duck-ism is also a reason that most second-term presidents struggle.

The last president to voluntarily forgo a re-election bid was Lyndon Johnson, amid the turmoil of the Vietnam War in 1968 and facing Democratic primary challenges from Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy.

Even then, LBJ didn't opt out of race until March 31, 1968, little more than seven months before the election.

A short-term lame duck is one thing. But two years?

There is little evidence that Obama will take the advice of Schoen and Caddell in any event.

Top political aide David Axelrod said yesterday on Fox News Sunday that he will return to Chicago in the late winter or early spring to start work on the president's re-election bid.

A Perjurer on the US Supreme Court

http://consortiumnews.com/2010/102310.html
A Perjurer on the US Supreme Court
By Robert Parry
October 23, 2010

In late 1998, when the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about a sexual affair, many on the Right insisted that the issue wasn’t the sex but the perjury. They are now confronted with a parallel case in which U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas quite clearly perjured himself to get his seat on the bench.

On Friday, former federal prosecutor Lillian McEwen, one of Thomas’s girlfriends in the 1980s, broke a long silence and confirmed that Thomas did engage in sexual harassment of women at work and did discuss pornography in the way that Anita Hill and other women described to the Senate during Thomas’s confirmation hearings in 1991.

During those hearings, Thomas angrily denied the allegations, calling them “a high-tech lynching.” Simultaneously, his right-wing allies mounted an aggressive campaign to destroy the credibility of Hill and other accusers.

The tactics worked. Thomas narrowly won Senate confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he has remained a reliable vote for every right-wing position that the justices consider.

However, it is now obvious that Thomas committed perjury as a necessary element of gaining his seat as one of nine justices on the Supreme Court – and only its second African-American. Though perjury before Congress is a felony, the Right appears to have suddenly lost its enthusiasm for demanding impeachment as the proper remedy for high officials caught lying under oath.

The new evidence of Thomas’s perjury emerged this past week following a bizarre voice-mail message that Thomas’s wife, Virginia, left for Anita Hill asking her to retract her testimony and to apologize to Justice Thomas. Hill, now a professor at Brandeis University, rejected the request and reiterated that she was telling the truth 19 years ago.

But Mrs. Thomas’s voice mail had an unexpected consequence. It spurred McEwen, now 65, to speak up in an interview with the Washington Post, which appeared in Friday’s editions.

Thomas "was always actively watching the women he worked with to see if they could be potential partners," McEwen told the Post. "It was a hobby of his."

That was a key point that Hill had raised in her televised testimony in 1991, that Thomas treated women – especially black women – as if they were prey for his sexual stalking.

Hill said Thomas had repeatedly and inappropriately pressed her for dates, including making lewd comments about pornography and once suggesting that he had detected a pubic hair on a Coke can.

“He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes,” Hill testified. “On several occasions, Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess.”

Denying All

Thomas denied everything and cast aspersions on Hill’s credibility.

"If I used that kind of grotesque language with one person, it would seem to me that there would be traces of it throughout the employees who worked closely with me, or the other individuals who heard bits and pieces of it or various levels of it," Thomas told the Senate Judiciary Committee in sworn testimony.

But McEwen told the Post that during their relationship over several years in the 1980s – while they worked together at two federal agencies – Thomas made sexual remarks in the work place, including comments about hard-core pornographic movies that he had watched.

"He was obsessed with porn," McEwen said. "He would talk about what he had seen in magazines and films, if there was something worth noting."

McEwen said Thomas also would discuss the breast sizes of women at work, expressing special interest in women with large breasts. McEwen recalled him being so impressed with the endowments of one government employee that he asked the woman her breast size.

McEwen’s statement corroborated the testimony of not only Hill but the statements made by two other women to the Senate Judiciary Committee, though those women were not called to testify.

Regarding Thomas’s obsession with women’s breasts, Angela Wright, who was one of Thomas’s subordinates at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, told Senate investigators that Thomas pestered her for dates and once asked her, "What size are your breasts?"

As the Post article noted, Wright’s story was backed up by a former EEOC speechwriter, who told investigators that Wright had become increasingly uneasy around Thomas because of his comments about her appearance.

But the Republicans challenged Wright’s objectivity because Thomas had fired her and because she had an otherwise spotty employment record. Those concerns caused Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden, D-Delaware, to shy away from calling her as a witness.

Still, the Senate panel had other corroboration of the Hill-Wright complaints. Sukari Hardnett, who worked as a special assistant to Thomas in 1985 and 1986, wrote in a letter to the committee that "If you were young, black, female and reasonably attractive, you knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as a female" by Thomas.

Though Thomas's Republican supporters called several friendly women as character references for Thomas, he apparently feared what McEwen might say if she went public in 1991. McEwen told the Post that Thomas wrote her a short note before the confirmation hearing coaching her on what she should say if asked about their relationship.

McEwen said Thomas encouraged her to take "the same attitude of his first wife" and decline to say anything, advice that McEwen followed for 19 years.

A Right-Wing Campaign

Beyond the seemingly obvious point that Thomas committed perjury to gain his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, there is also the ugliness of how the Republicans and the Right sought to victimize the women who already had been victims of Thomas’s predatory behavior. To accomplish that, an early form of the modern right-wing news media swung into action.

Though still in its pre-Fox News days, the right-wing media used its print outlets and its presence on TV and radio chat shows to demonize Hill and the others.

David Brock, then an aspiring right-wing hatchet man at The American Spectator, struck it rich by smearing Hill with the infamous description of her as “a little bit slutty and a little bit nutty.” He followed that up with a full-length assault in a best-selling book entitled The Real Anita Hill, which further denounced Hill and defended Thomas.

Brock skyrocketed to fame and fortune as the exemplar of conservative investigative journalism. However, Brock’s career path was complicated by the fact that he was gay and that the “family values” conservative movement viewed homosexuality as a sin and a perversion.

Though Brock continued as a well-paid right-wing spear-carrier into the Clinton administration, starting the spread of sexual innuendo against Bill and Hillary Clinton that would culminate in the impeachment crisis in 1998-99, Brock gradually rebelled against his personal hypocrisy.

In 2002, after his right-wing propaganda had inflicted grievous damage on individuals and the nation, Brock recanted. In a new book, Blinded by the Right, he admitted that he had defamed a number of his targets, including Anita Hill and the Clintons.

Brock also described the inner workings of the campaign to destroy Hill. Brock wrote that the propaganda operation was aided and abetted by President George H.W. Bush’s White House and right-wing federal judges.

For instance, Brock wrote that he received support and encouragement from U.S. Appeals Court Judge Laurence Silberman and Silberman’s wife, Ricky. Even after Thomas had won Senate confirmation, Silberman still was pushing attack lines against Hill, Brock wrote.

After Bush-41’s White House slipped Brock a psychiatric opinion claiming that Hill suffered from “erotomania,” Silberman met with Brock to suggest even more colorful criticism of Hill.

“Silberman speculated that Hill was a lesbian ‘acting out’,” Brock wrote. “Besides, Silberman confided, Thomas would never have asked Hill for dates: She had bad breath.”

In 1993, after Brock published his book-length assault on Hill, the Silbermans and other prominent conservatives joined a celebration at the Embassy Row Ritz-Carlton, Brock wrote, noting that also in attendance was Appeals Court Judge David Sentelle, whom Chief Justice William Rehnquist had put in charge of picking special prosecutors to investigate the Clinton administration. [For more on Silberman and Sentelle, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

These right-wing operatives – masquerading as jurists and journalists – had no regard for what was fair or true. They were committed to gaining or holding power for their ideological and personal benefit and doing so by whatever means were necessary.

Though Thomas was safely ensconced on the Supreme Court bench, the organized Right continued to target Hill. Right-wing activists pressured her employer, the University of Oklahoma’s College of Law, to fire her, contributing to her decision to resign in 1996. However, the following year, she landed a teaching job at Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

The long-running assault on Hill apparently had the goal of wearing her down and eventually coercing her into recanting her testimony, a development which could then have been used to discredit anyone who had defended Hill. That strategy – the notion that eventually Hill would buckle – apparently led Thomas’s current wife, who herself is a right-wing activist, to press Hill for an apology in a voice mail this month.

As it turned out, Virginia Thomas’s request backfired, bringing out of the shadows another compelling witness to Clarence Thomas’s vile personal behavior – and to his perjury.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

Bill Clinton back out campaigning 'for everybody that helped Hillary'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8068167/Bill-Clinton-back-out-campaigning-for-everybody-that-helped-Hillary-run-for-president-against-Obama.html

Bill Clinton back out campaigning 'for everybody that helped Hillary run for president' against Obama
Speculation about Hillary Clinton's continued presidential ambitions is rife. Husband Bill is back on the campaign trail, offering thanks to those who backed her in 2008 – and laying the foundations for another try in 2016.
Toby Harnden, American Way
16 Oct 2010

Fear and loathing in the American body politic is not confined to the anti-tax Tea Party. Across the spectrum of the Democratic party, every hue is feeling it too.

With a fortnight to go to the midterms, moderate "Blue Dog" Democrats are in big trouble. The party's left-wing "Yellow Dogs" are up in arms about being taken for granted by the White House "hippy bashers". Even black bloggers are warning President Barack Obama they won't be "pimped" for him.

In this febrile climate within the party, there is one Democratic figure whose soothing tones can help calm things down – the Big Dog himself, former President Bill Clinton. I caught up with him in Española, New Mexico, site of the first European colony in America, last week and he was on vintage form.

Gone was the red-faced, finger-wagging Bill who I saw in South Carolina in early 2008, when he exploded with anger at being accused of racism by Obama allies as the Democratic nomination slipped from his wife Hillary's grasp. Instead, Española saw Chilled Bill, a man vindicated by events and who knows he was right to warn of Obama's shortcomings.

The event, for which nearly 4,000 people crammed into the town square, was for Diane Denish, the Democratic candidate for governor. Behind in the polls, she had supported Hillary against Obama in 2008 and Bill was back to repay the debt.

Bill, hoarse-voiced but with a glint in his eye, explained that this was his 80th event. He made crystal clear just who he was representing on the campaign trail – and it wasn't Obama. "I planned to do about one stop for everybody that helped Hillary run for president because she's one of only two members of the president's cabinet who cannot participate in politics," he said.

As Secretary of State, he reminded people, is not permitted to campaign. "Then I got out here and started stirring around and realised that a lot of people were mad and even more confused and I didn't want it on my conscience so I just loaded up and started strolling around."

The Clintons are undoubtedly an unusual couple. Bill's past indiscretions are legendary and their jobs – he is now a globe-trotting philanthropist – mean that these days they see each other less often than the average American goes to the dentist.

Yet they remain together (who would have thought the Gore marriage would unravel first?) and are a remarkable political tag team.

Bill's energetic reappearance on the campaign trail comes just as rumours, some of them eagerly fuelled by the Clinton camp, swirl that Hillary might replace the hapless Joe Biden as Obama's vice-presidential running mate in 2012 or even challenge the President for the Democratic nomination if his popularity continues to slide.

Neither option makes much sense for Hillary, whose performance as Secretary of State, in which she has been supportive of the US military and sought to stiffen Obama's spine in Afghanistan, has won admirers even on the Right.

Becoming vice-president would tie her to Obama on domestic policy. Through political good fortune (not to mention calculation), she has been out of that arena for the past two years, meaning that there are no Clinton fingerprints on unpopular health care, bail-out or stimulus legislation.

Hillary has been loyal to Obama – it would have been politically foolish to appear otherwise – but her discrete job means she can remain distant from most of what he does.

It just so happens that Hillary will be out of town on November 2nd, when Democrats expect a pummeling at the polls. She'll be on the other side of the globe, in fact, on a tour including stops in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

The message is unmistakable: "Nothing to do with me!" Challenging Obama in 2012, even if he is in dire straits, would be incredibly risky. To seek to oust the first black president would split the Democrats in two and almost guarantee a Republican victory even if Hillary won the nomination. It's a non-starter.

But 2016 is different. No one takes her denials of wanting to run again at face value and aides are quietly putting it about that she still has her eyes on the White House. Her former chief strategist Mark Penn recently polled her popularity compared to Obama's.

Bill's stump speeches are helping lay the foundations of a 2016 campaign. His presence on the campaign trail, often in parts of the country where Obama is not so popular, reinforces the 2008 argument that the Clintons (in terms of power politics, it is fruitless to view them separately) can reach places Obama cannot.

It also shows that the wounds of the epic Obama-Clinton battle of 2008 have not healed. Conspicuous by his absence from Española was Bill Richardson, the current New Mexico governor, who was publicly branded a "Judas" by James Carville, the Clinton consigliere, for endorsing Obama. Richardson was never even mentioned by Denish or the former President.

After trying something new and shiny in the person of Obama and being disappointed, many Democrats are now indulging in Clinton nostalgia. "We Miss the Thrill of Bill" read one prominent sign in Española.

"He let me hug him!" exclaimed Loyda Martinez, 57, after the event. "And he hugged me back! A lot of these politicians, you can barely touch their hands. Bill has a way of connecting with the ordinary person that Obama does not." Bill's past foibles are viewed as endearing. "He like the ladies!" laughed one man as Bill posed for pictures beside a platinum blonde.

I chatted to Bill Clinton briefly as he worked the rope line. Having garnered some unwelcome headlines in 2008, he was sticking very firmly to the script this time.

"She's already answered that," he said, when I asked him if there really was any chance she might replace Biden in 2012. He turned and added: "I'll tell you what, she likes being Secretary of State and she's doing a great job."

So might she run in 2016? The Big Dog of the Democratic party paused, appeared to be about to hold forth and then seemed to hold himself in check. "She speaks for herself on these things," he said, flashing me a big grin.

Bill Clinton: ‘We may have to blow up the well’

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0629/bill-clinton-we-blow-oil-well/
Bill Clinton: ‘We may have to blow up the well’
John Byrne
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Little noticed comments from former President Bill Clinton over the weekend which he made in South Africa are perhaps -- well -- a bit explosive.

"Unless we send the Navy down deep to blow up the well and cover the leak with piles and piles and piles of rock and debris, which may become necessary - you don't have to use a nuclear weapon by the way, I've seen all that stuff, just blow it up - unless we're going to do that, we are dependent on the technical expertise of these people from BP," Clinton said.

Clinton was speaking about British Petroleum's efforts to staunch a massive leak that erupted after one of the oil rigs it was leasing blew up Apr. 20. His remarks about the explosion solution come at about 2:30 into the recording, posted below.

Matt Simmons, founder of energy investment bank Simmons & Company, suggested earlier this month that the US military could close the drill hole with a nuclear weapon.

"Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapons system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it, hopefully encasing the oil," he said.

His idea echoes that of a Russian newspaper that earlier this month suggested the US detonate a small nuclear bomb to seal the oil beneath the sea. Komsomoloskaya Pravda argued in an editorial that Russia had successfully used nuclear weapons to seal oil spills on five occasions in the past.

"Weapons labs in the former Soviet Union developed special nukes for use to help pinch off the gas wells," Live Science wrote earlier this year. "They believed that the force from a nuclear explosion could squeeze shut any hole within 82 to 164 feet (25 to 50 meters), depending on the explosion's power. That required drilling holes to place the nuclear device close to the target wells."

"A first test in the fall of 1966 proved successful in sealing up an underground gas well in southern Uzbekistan, and so the Russians used nukes four more times for capping runaway wells," the site added.

Critics of Clinton's plan have told Fox that BP is resisting the option because blowing up the well would ensure they could get no more oil.

"If we demolish the well using explosives, the investment's gone," former submarine officer and nuclear policy scholar at Columbia University Christopher Brownfield told Fox News in May. "They lose hundreds of millions of dollars from the drilling of the well, plus no lawmaker in his right mind would allow BP to drill again in that same spot. So basically, it's an all-or-nothing thing with BP: They either keep the well alive, or they lose their whole investment and all the oil that they could potentially get from that well."

Dan Quayle still pushing "Perot elected Clinton" nonsense

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/04/02/dan_quayle_still_blaming_perot_for_clinton/index.html
Friday, Apr 2, 2010
Dan Quayle still pushing "Perot elected Clinton" nonsense
For nearly 20 years, the right has been arguing that the Democrats' 1992 win should come with an asterisk
By Steve Kornacki

In 1992, Bill Clinton won a decisive victory in the presidential race, snagging 370 electoral votes and relegating George H.W. Bush to a smaller share of the vote than any incumbent president since William Howard Taft in 1912.

The right is still pretending this didn’t really happen. Oh sure, they acknowledge that Bill Clinton was elected and sworn-in as the nation’s 42nd president. They just claim it wasn’t really a legitimate victory. Case in point: an op-ed from Dan Quayle set to appear in Sunday’s Washington Post. Quayle writes:

Many remember the Reform Party of the 1990s, which formed around the candidacy of Ross Perot. I sure do, because it eliminated any chance that President George H.W. Bush and I would prevail over Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992. What started as a grass-roots phenomenon ended with 19 percent support at the ballot box -- and a majority of those voters would probably have gone Republican in a two-party race. Speaking on behalf of the Bush-Quayle campaign, to this day we firmly believe that Perot cost the Republican Party the White House.


Republicans have been blindly pushing this argument for nearly 20 years now, acting like George H.W. Bush was all set to win a second term until some crazy Texas billionaire came along and messed it all up. It’s understandable why they like this narrative: it lets them off the hook for losing the public’s confidence in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s -- and casts Clinton’s electoral triumph as an accident of history.

But let me try, one more time, to set the record straight: there is absolutely no rational reason -- none -- to believe that Perot cost Bush and Quayle the 1992 election. To understand why, let’s quickly review what happened in the ’92 campaign.

In the early stages of the race, just after the Gulf War in 1991, Bush looked positively unbeatable. As a result, every big-name Democrat -- Bill Bradley, Mario Cuomo, Al Gore, Jay Rockefeller and on and on -- backed out. And for the spring and summer of ’91, virtually no other Democrats stepped up to the fill the void. Former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas was the only active candidate until the middle of the summer, and few took him seriously.

But as the Gulf War afterglow faded and the sputtering economy gained more attention, Bush’s popularity returned to earth. Several Democrats, including Clinton, Tom Harkin, Bob Kerrey and Jerry Brown, entered the race. And when, in December, Cuomo resisted a last-minute push to recruit him into the race, Clinton emerged as the clear front-runner. He was badly damaged by scandal in early ’92 and nearly overtaken by Tsongas, but by April, Clinton had emerged as the inevitable Democratic nominee.

At that point, he was given little chance of winning, mainly because of the scandals (Gennifer Flowers, draft-dodging and so on). But economic anxiety was widespread, and Bush’s job approval ratings were poisonous. He was a plainly vulnerable incumbent. This is where the Perot phenomenon took hold: With voters initially unwilling to trust Clinton, Perot stepped forward and rocketed to the top of national polls. By the late spring, he led in three-way trial heats, with Clinton lagging in a very distant third place.

Then came the Perot crack-up. Faced with media scrutiny he’d never before experienced, Perot’s erratic, paranoid and even delusional tendencies became evident to the general public. His numbers began to slide. He grew cranky – with the media and with the campaign team he’d assembled. In July, hours before Clinton was to deliver his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, Perot withdrew from the race.

Here the GOP’s “blame Perot” excuse-making falls apart, because immediately after the Democratic convention, Clinton soared ahead of Bush in polls -- by more than 20 points. This was with no Perot in the race. The explanation was obvious: Clinton, after a beautifully choreographed convention, had convinced millions of Americans to give him a second look. It had been clear for months that voters were ready to throw out Bush, but they’d been unwilling to embrace Clinton. After the convention, though, they were.

Clinton’s one-on-one lead over Bush survived for the next 11 weeks. Not a single independent poll after the Democratic convention ever showed Bush leading Clinton – not even immediately after the August ’92 GOP convention (after which Bush temporarily closed the gap, to as few as six points in one poll). By Labor Day, the Bush convention bounce was gone and Clinton was back ahead by double-digits -- a lead that endured all the way through September.

It was then, as October arrived, that Perot jumped back in the race. But his re-emergence didn’t disproportionately hurt Bush -- who, it cannot be emphasized enough, was already being drubbed by Clinton. In a CBS poll on the eve of Perot's re-entry, Clinton led Bush by 13 points in a two-man race – and by 11 in a three-way race. In other words, Clinton’s lead actually declined (very slightly) with Perot back in the mix.

Throughout October, Clinton maintained a steady, commanding advantage over Bush. Three presidential debates were held that month. In the first, Perot stole the show and earned a measurable polling bounce -- from single digits back to double-digits. In the second, Bush was excoriated for glancing at his watch, feeding the impression that he was insufficiently energized and engaged as president; his poll numbers ebbed. In the third, Bush fared better, and by the end of October, he’d pared Clinton’s lead back to the mid- to high- single-digits.

Any last-minute Bush momentum, though, was undermined on the Friday before the election when Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh indicted Caspar Weinberger, Ronald Reagan’s old Defense secretary – and, in a statement released with the indictment, implicated Bush, who had been dogged for years by questions about his Iran-Contra involvement.

The following Tuesday, Clinton nabbed 43 percent of the vote, good for 370 electoral votes. Bush finished with 37 percent and 168 electoral votes. Perot tallied nearly 20 percent, and exit polls showed that his voters were roughly split evenly on whom their second choice would have been.

In other words, take Perot out of the mix, and Clinton still wins -- handily. The argument of Quayle and other Republicans that Perot cost Bush the election would be more credible if there had been even a single independent poll after the Democratic convention giving Bush the lead over Clinton in a head-to-head race. There never was. Clinton won the race and Bush lost it -- no asterisks needed.

Obama courts the Republican right

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/pers-f01.shtml

Obama courts the Republican right
1 February 2010
Patrick Martin

The 90-minute televised meeting between President Barack Obama and the House Republican caucus, broadcast over the cable networks Friday, was an extraordinary exposure of the right-wing consensus within American bourgeois politics.

It was a demonstration of the administration’s decision, in the wake of the Republican victory in last month’s Senate election in Massachusetts and other signs of mounting popular opposition to Obama’s right-wing agenda, to shift even further to the right.

While the commentary afterwards, particularly from liberal and pro-administration pundits, portrayed the encounter as a political tour-de-force by Obama, a sort of “Daniel in the lion’s den” performance, what was remarkable was the wide area of convergence, on both specific policy measures and overall perspective, between Obama and the Republicans.

Obama cajoled and pleaded with his audience of Republican congressmen, reminding them that they had provided him political support on escalating the war in Afghanistan, adding, in a typical piece of patriotic boilerplate, “I know that we’re all united in our admiration of our troops.”

He featured in his opening remarks the announcement of a tax credit for small business “job creation,” as well as the elimination of capital gains taxes for investment in small business. “Join me,” he appealed, “there’s nothing in that proposal that runs contrary to the ideological predispositions of this caucus.”

There was no hint in his approach that his audience represented a party and a previous administration that were decisively repudiated by the American people in successive elections, or that the Republican Party’s policies and personnel are deeply unpopular, currently drawing the support of less than 25 percent in opinion polls. Watching the event, one would hardly have guessed that Obama’s party not only controlled the White House, but also held large majorities in both houses of Congress.

As he has since taking office little more than a year ago, Obama sought to politically rehabilitate the Republicans and find a means of winning their collaboration in his policies of war, austerity and attacks on democratic rights. As he and everyone else in the room well knew, the source of the erosion in public support for the administration was not its non-existent liberal reform agenda or popular hostility to “big government,” but disillusionment and anger over Obama’s repudiation of campaign promises that tapped into the popular demand for progressive change.

For their part, the Republicans made clear both at the meeting and in news interview programs on Sunday that they have no intention of budging from their policy of obstructing the administration’s domestic initiatives. They calculate that they can exploit growing disillusionment with Obama and make major gains in congressional elections in November.

Obama’s main reproach was that the House Republican caucus, while agreeing with significant portions of such initiatives as the economic stimulus bill and the health care restructuring plan, had provided zero votes in favor of the legislation. “If there’s uniform opposition because the Republican caucus doesn’t get 100 percent or 80 percent of what you want, then it’s going to be hard to get a deal done,” he complained.

Obama took eight questions from leading Republican House members, most of them calling for cuts in taxes and in federal spending. Not a single Republican suggested that any action be taken by the federal government to actually assist the unemployed—no benefits, no training programs, no jobs—nor did Obama point out their failure to do so.

Instead, the Democratic president promised to consider the Republican proposals seriously, and pointed to his support for an expansion of nuclear power plants and so-called clean coal technology as an area of agreement with Republican proposals on energy policy.

The most revealing exchange came when Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee raised the issue of Obama’s health care plan. Obama said that his policy, combining across-the-board cost-cutting with a modest expansion of health care coverage for the uninsured, was very similar to measures proposed jointly by former Republican Senate leaders Howard Baker and Robert Dole and former Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle last year.

“That’s not a radical bunch,” he said. “But if you were to listen to the debate and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot.” He went on to emphasize the conservative character of the health plan, saying, “if you look at the facts of this bill, most independent observers would say this is actually what many Republicans—is similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton when he was doing his debate on health care.”

Toward the end of the session, Obama declared: “We’ve got to be careful about what we say about each other sometimes, because it boxes us in, in ways that make it difficult for us to work together, because our constituents start believing us. They don’t know sometimes this is just politics what you guys or folks on my side do sometimes.”

The bluntness of this political cynicism is staggering. Obama in effect admits that the supposed conflict between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, which comprises the whole of official American politics, is largely a political show, a con game aimed at victimizing the vast majority of the American people.

He was warning his Republican counterparts that they were overdoing the anti-administration rhetoric in a way that was politically dangerous. They were going beyond the “just politics” mudslinging that is standard practice for the two big business parties, in a way that threatened to discredit the political system and make the usual congressional horse-trading impossible.

In response to the final question of the session, by ultra-right Texas Congressman Jeb Hensarling, about the rising federal budget deficit, Obama warned that the Republicans should not posture as defenders of the elderly against cuts in Medicare (as they have in the health care debate) or against cuts in Social Security, because that would make impossible a bipartisan approach to entitlement “reform.”

Obama’s main concern is not so much the health care plan per se, but the larger project of which it is part, i.e., gutting the basic federally-funded social programs—Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—in order to pay for the enormous budget deficits produced by the financial crisis, tax cuts for the wealthy, the bank bailout and two imperialist wars.

How To Save The Airlines

Dump the male flight attendants. No one wanted them in the first place.

Replace all the female flight attendants with good-looking strippers! What the hell, they don't even serve food anymore, so what's the loss?

The strippers would at least triple the alcohol sales and get a 'party atmosphere' going in the cabin. And, of course, every businessman in this country would start flying again, hoping to see naked women.

Because of the tips, female flight attendants wouldn't need a salary , thus saving even more money. I suspect tips would be so good that we could charge the women for working the plane and have them kick back 20% of the tips, including lap dances and 'special services.'

Muslims would be afraid to get on the planes for fear of seeing naked women. Hijackings would come to a screeching halt, and the airline industry would see record revenues.

And best of all Tiger would be on every flight.

This is definitely a win-win situation if we handle it right -- a golden opportunity to turn a liability into an asset..

Why didn't Obama think of this? Why do I still have to do everything myself?

Sincerely,
Bill Clinton

Clinton remarks on 2000 election

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/13/hillary-clinton-compares-2000-election-to-nigeria/

Clinton remarks on 2000 election have pundits in uproar
David Edwards and Daniel Tencer
August 13, 2009

A political controversy has exploded surrounding Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s frank admission Wednesday that American democracy is vulnerable to subversion.

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, Clinton addressed the issue of corruption in elections, a common problem in the West African country. After urging Nigerians always to reject election-related violence, America’s top diplomat pointed out that the US has had its own electoral problems.

“Our democracy is still evolving,” Clinton said. “You know we’ve had all kinds of problems in some of our past elections as you might remember. In 2000, our presidential election came down to one state where the brother of the man running for president was the governor of the state, so we have our problems, too.”

In reaction, the UK Guardian opined, “The Republicans will seek to exploit Clinton’s comparison of the US elections with those of an African state and for breaking the convention that leaders do not criticize fellow domestic politicians while abroad.”

And indeed that appears to be the case. A spokesperson for former Florida governor Jeb Bush said Bush “is declining to weigh in on these ill-advised comments” and instead wished Clinton a “safe and successful” journey.

“When you criticize your own country as an official of that country it obviously undermines the authority of the government,” Ilya Shapiro, of the conservative-leaning Cato Institute told ABC News. “It casts a shadow on the legitimacy of the US government as we pursue our foreign affairs. I don’t think that helps.”

But others are coming to Clinton’s defense, saying that she only expressed what everybody knows to be true.

“I think she was doing the right by giving Nigerians the sense that we Americans, we’re not perfect either,” Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told ABC News. “All countries have problems.”

“There is not a single thing that is in dispute,” the Guardian quoted Democratic strategist James Carville as saying. Carville, credited with helping Bill Clinton win the White House in 1992, said “there has to be a time when the secretary of state speaks the truth.”

The jury remains out on whether Clinton’s candid approach to international relations will help the US achieve its foreign policy goals, but this is not the first controversy to hit the secretary of state during her 11-day African tour.

On Monday in Kinshasa, Congo, when Clinton was asked about her husband’s views on a financial matter involving Congo and China, she snapped, “My husband is not secretary of state, I am.”

“You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?” she asked. “If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion, I am not going to be channeling my husband.”

On Thursday Clinton arrived in Liberia, where she is expected to show support for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the country’s president and Africa’s only female leader. Sirleaf is under pressure to resign following an inquiry into Liberia’s civil war, which took the lives of 300,000 people between 1989 and 2003, before Sirleaf was elected.

Harry and Louise are coming back to TV

Robalini's Note: That Harry & Louise are being used to push Obama's "health care" plan should scream that the plan is a bogus one. Unlike 1993, when the healthcare industry bashed the Clinton plan (which actually did promise universal care) the pharmaceutical industry sees this for what it is: a huge subsidy for big health without any promise of actual universal health coverage, no control on the money going to the health industry and little if any benefit to the people hurt by our current health system. In essence, the plan is a co-opting of people's anger at the current system (former right-wing congressman Billy Tauzin even uses Obama's mantra of "change") and promising an illusion of reform, a promise that will soon be quickly betrayed. Which, come to think of it, sums up the entire Obama agenda...

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2009/07/68494623/1

Jul 16, 2009
Harry and Louise are coming back to TV - for health care
Catalina Camia

Harry and Louise are back -- and they're switching sides.

The middle-class couple featured on TV ads that helped defeat President Bill Clinton's health care overhaul effort in 1993 will be starring in new commercials this weekend. Only this time, the couple will be going to bat for President Obama's version of a health-care fix.

The new ads are sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry and Families USA, a health care advocacy group. The multimillion-dollar campaign will run for at least three weeks, the groups say, and appear nationally on cable and network TV.

"The participation of Harry and Louise in this ad campaign clearly symbolizes how different the health reform debate is this year compared to the past," said Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA.

In the previous ads, Harry and Louise complained about health care costs and the complex nature of the Clinton plan.

Billy Tauzin, a former Republican congressman who heads the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association of America (known as PhRMA), says "this is a historic opportunity for change."

Five committees in Congress are working on legislation sought by President Obama, aimed at reducing health-care costs and getting more people health care coverage. The Senate health committee passed its version of a bill on Wednesday. Two House committees are starting work today on that chamber's bill, which includes a tax on upper-income people to help pay for it.

MR. OBAMA: RESIGN NOW

Rall.com

MR. OBAMA: RESIGN NOW
05/28/2009

With Democrats Like Him, Who Needs Dictators?

MIAMI--We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

From healthcare to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn't have the 'nads to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now--before he drags us further into the abyss.

I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions." If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in "prolonged detention." Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.

In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street.

Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't control, what Orwell called "thoughtcrime"--contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.

Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to "preventive detention" is an outrage. That the President of the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of civilization itself.

Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. Unlike the Republicans who backed Bush, I won't follow a terrible leader just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove himself from power.

"Prolonged detention," reported The New York Times, would be inflicted upon "terrorism suspects who cannot be tried."

"Cannot be tried." Interesting choice of words.

Any "terrorism suspect" (can you be a suspect if you haven't been charged with a crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this writing, a Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. has no jurisdiction. Anyone can be tried.

Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners "cannot be tried"?

The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this "entirely new chapter in American law" in a boring little sentence buried a couple past the jump and a couple of hundred words down page A16: "Yet another question is what to do with the most problematic group of Guantánamo detainees: those who pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because evidence is tainted."

In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people against whom there is a "lack of evidence" are innocent. They walk free. In countries where the rule of law prevails, in places blessedly free of fearful leaders whose only concern is staying in power, "tainted evidence" is no evidence at all. If you can't prove that a defendant committed a crime--an actual crime, not a thoughtcrime--in a fair trial, you release him and apologize to the judge and jury for wasting their time.

It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush's lawless behavior, to have to still have to explain these things. For that reason alone, Obama should resign.

Cuts in Social Security, Medicare

http://wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/ssmd-m14.shtml

US: Cuts in Social Security, Medicare to pay for bank bailouts
By Tom Eley
14 May 2009

A government report made public Tuesday indicates that Social Security and Medicare will deplete their trust funds more quickly than previously forecast. This has sparked new demands from within the US financial elite for substantial cuts in the two entitlement programs, which pay retirement and medical benefits for tens of millions of working class Americans.

The report was issued by the programs’ trustees, a group of four Obama administration officials headed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Because regressive payroll taxes on workers’ earnings fund the two programs, mounting unemployment has worsened the projections. Since December 2007, 5.7 million jobs have been lost, and the official unemployment rate now approaches 9 percent.

The slump has slowed the rate of inflation to below the level required by law to trigger a cost-of-living raise for Social Security recipients. As a result, the trustees project that in 2010 and 2011, for the first time since automatic cost-of-living raises were incorporated into Social Security in the 1970s, there will be no increase in retirement benefits, and only a minuscule 1.4 percent rise in 2012.

Since the trustees base their projections of the fiscal state of both programs by estimating future economic growth, the current slump has moved forward the projected point at which each program will begin to run a deficit. Social Security currently operates at a surplus, which the report anticipates will end in 2016, when the program would finally have to begin withdrawing from its own fund—potentially cutting into the other areas where the federal government currently funnels the money. The effective freeze in retirement benefits will be combined with substantially higher monthly premiums for many Medicare recipients.

Even by its alarmist critics’ own admission, Social Security is not about to collapse under its own weight. It would deplete its funds by 2045, thirty years from now, according to the trustees’ report. For years, Social Security funds have been used to pay directly or indirectly for reactionary federal budget priorities—including tax cuts for the rich, bank bailouts, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Obama administration has shelled out hundreds of billions, no strings attached, to the biggest financial institutions, under the false rationale that this would “kick-start” lending and generate jobs. All told, between direct cash infusions, loans, and guarantees on debt, Washington has handed over around $10 trillion to Wall Street in less than a year. In comparison, Medicare would need $13 trillion and Social Security $5 trillion over the next 75 years to remain solvent, according to the report. In other words, retirement benefits and healthcare benefits for several generations of the elderly could be secured at the cost of one year’s bailout of the financial aristocracy.

But the vast payouts to Wall Street and the imperialist wars abroad require the plundering of Social Security and Medicare. After giving hundreds of billions to the banks and setting a new record for military spending, Obama has no other credible target for “fiscal discipline.” Yesterday the White House revised upwards its budget deficit estimate by 5 percent from February to $1.84 trillion.

Secretary Geithner’s dual role as Wall Street frontman and “trustee” of the retirement and health care for the working class underscores the duplicitous nature of the Obama administration. Disregarding the trillions he has handed over to the banks, Geithner claimed yesterday that “there is no more important long-term fiscal measure than gaining control of the growth of Medicare costs.”

The first target for cuts will be Medicare, followed by Social Security. Geithner explained: “After we have passed health-care reform that puts our nation on a path to lower growth in health-care costs and expanded affordable coverage, this president will work to build a bipartisan consensus to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security.”

Geithner’s reference to “bipartisan consensus” is Washington code for the sort of reform that can bring the most far-right, pro-market forces aboard. To make sure the significance of this was not lost, Geithner reiterated that Obama “explicitly rejects the notion that Social Security is untouchable politically.” Republican lawmakers reacted favorably.

Thus, after only four months, the historical significance of the Obama administration’s “domestic agenda” has come into focus. As it took a Democratic president, Bill Clinton to undo welfare, it will be a Democrat in the White House who takes the axe to Medicare and that last vestige of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Social Security.

The freeze in cost of living increases for Social Security and increased user payments for Medicare are only the beginning. The Obama administration used the release of the new data to amp up its demands for what it calls a “major overhaul” of health care in the US.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, also a trustee of the two programs, called the report “a wake-up call for anyone concerned about Medicare. ... it’s another sign that we can’t wait for real, comprehensive health care reform.”

In fact, the revelations on Social Security and Medicare only served to underline that Obama’s health care “reform” will be predicated on a sharp curtailment of the provision of medical services to the working class. The entire effort will take as its starting and ending point the defense of the profit margins of the various “players” in the health care industry—the insurance corporations, the HMOs and the pharmaceuticals.

Earlier this week, Obama gained pledges from representatives of five health industry trade groups and the Service Employees International Union that they would “try” to rein in costs by 1.5 percent per year for the coming decade. There will be no penalties for non-compliance and Congress is likely to authorize generous tax incentives to pay for cooperation. Obama claims that the voluntary pledges could result in an increase in annual health care costs of 5.5 percent compared to the currently forecast 7 percent for the coming years. In other words, even in the best-case scenario, the health care burden on workers would increase only slightly less rapidly.

The industry players have been tempted to cooperate with potentially lucrative promises from the Obama administration. “Groups like the insurance industry hope that cuts to their payments would be offset by new rules that would require all Americans” to pay for private insurance plans, the Wall Street Journal reports. Other groups “want to head off regulations that could pose new burdens or curb their profits.” (“Health-Care Providers Pledge to Try to Curb Costs.”)

Frozen out of Obama’s discussion on health care reform are advocates of government-run or “single-payer” health insurance schemes, such as those that prevail—and are being rolled back—in Canada and Western Europe.

On Tuesday, police removed about thirty nurses and doctors from Senate Finance Committee hearings convened to consider financing changes to the health care system. The health care workers had launched a protest against the exclusion of single-payer advocates from the discussion.

Any new health care bill will be funded by cuts in other social programs and taxes on workers. On Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that a health reform bill would be on the House floor by July 31. According to an analysis by the Associated Press, “the final financing package is likely to include a mix of tax increases and spending cuts in federal health programs. Among the possibilities are tax increases on alcoholic beverages, tobacco products and sugary soft drinks, and restrictions on other health care-related tax breaks, such as flexible spending accounts.”

An article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, “Idea on Hill: Taxing Health Benefits,” pointed to a growing consensus among lawmakers and Obama administration officials that workers’ health care benefits should be taxed to pay for any reform.

Ensuring the best health care and a secure retirement for all is not a technical, but a political question. The looming attack on Social Security and the transparent bankruptcy of Obama’s health care “reform” are dictated by powerful financial interests who believe that workers should work until they can work no longer, and that thereafter they should expect little or nothing in the way of public assistance or medical care to maintain themselves. That is considered too costly.

There is no resolution outside of a struggle against this financial aristocracy. The medical industry must be wrested from the hands of the insurers, pharmaceuticals and for-profit hospital chains and placed under the democratic control of its doctors, nurses and health care workers, who will determine how medicine’s enormous potential can be best deployed to meet human needs, ensuring long and healthy retirements.

The Great Wizard of Oz

Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and Bill Clinton are caught in a tornado, and off they whirled to Oz.

They finally make it to the Emerald City and came before the Great Wizard.

"What brings you before the great wizard of Oz?"

Jimmy Carter stepped forward timidly: "I've come for some courage."

"No problem!" says the Wizard. "Who is next?"

Ronald Reagan steps forward, "Well......... I....... I think I need a brain."

"Done," says the Wizard."Who comes next before the great and powerful Oz?"??

Up stepped George Bush sadly and said, "I'm told by the American people that I need a heart."

"I've heard it's true!" says the Wizard. "Consider it done."

There is a great silence in the hall. Bill Clinton is just standing there, looking around, but doesn't say a word. Irritated, the Wizard finally asks, "What do you want?"?

"Is Dorothy here?"

Harry S. Truman is rolling over in his grave

From Conspiracy Nation ( http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html ):

(Melchizedek Communique, MC031609) Harry S. Truman is rolling over in his grave due to the latest antics of George W. Bush. And a special division of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, charged with response to former presidents rolling over in their graves, is on high alert.

It was Fitzgerald, the mighty U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois, who had responded earlier when, here in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln had been rolling over in his grave. But this latest restlessness of the deceased Harry S. Truman has stunned even the case-hardened Fitzgerald.

When Harry S. Truman left the White House in 1953, "he had to take out a bank loan to tide him over in private life. He had no official government income or support except for his Army pension of $112.56 a month." But Truman had too much honor to accept any money for "endorsements" and "consultings". Said Truman, "I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency." [1]

It was beneath the personal honor of Truman to trade off the presidency for "speaking fees" and such.

Gerald Ford was the first to decide, "What is honor, compared with speaking fees?" Ford cashed in by giving paid speeches and by joining some 20 corporate boards. [1]

Then good old Ronald Reagan soared past Ford in income by trading the prestige of the U.S. presidency for $2 million annually. [1]

Along came George H.W. Bush, father of "Dubya" Bush. "Poppy" Bush raked in $$$ millions on the lecture circuit, after he left office in 1993. [1]

"Bill Clinton, though," notices The Week magazine, "has taken the moneymaking ability of ex-presidents to a new level." Today (Nov. 2008), "thanks to thousands of speeches, lucrative consulting jobs, and book advances and royalties, he and Hillary are worth more than $100 million." [1]

Who says the U.S. presidency isn't for sale?

Asked in November 2008 about his plans, Dubya Bush replied, "I'll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol' coffers." [1] Now, in an update ironically titled, "Replenishing the ol' coffers", The Week magazine reveals that George W. Bush "announced he was launching an international speaking tour." The Dubya Bush Replenishing The Ol' Coffers International Speaking Tour is scheduled to begin tomorrow, March 17th (St. Patrick's Day), in Canada. [2]

It is not known if Dubya Bush will be guzzling Jim Beam whisky during the tour. It has been rumored ol' Dubya has been hitting the sauce pretty hard. [3]

The special division of Patrick Fitzgerald's Rolling Over In Their Graves department is on high alert. Harry S. Truman could not be reached for comment.
------- Sources -------
[1] "Briefing: Life after the White House", The Week magazine, Nov. 21, 2008, p. 15
[2] "Replenishing the ol' coffers", from "Good Week For" section of The Week magazine, March 20, 2009, p. 6
[3] Melchizedek Communique MC022809
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/mc022809.html

Roubini Sees Global Gloom After Davos Vindication

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6A9lCHrtAqk

Roubini Sees Global Gloom After Davos Vindication
By Simon Kennedy

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- At the World Economic Forum two years ago, Nouriel Roubini warned that record profits and bonuses were obscuring a “hard landing” to come. “I really disagree,” countered Jacob Frenkel, the American International Group Inc. vice chairman and former Israeli central banker.

No more. “Roubini was intellectually courageous, and he called the shots correctly,” says Frenkel, whose AIG survives only on the basis of more than $100 billion of government loans. “He gained credibility, and he deserves it.”

This week, New York University’s Roubini returned to the WEF and the Swiss ski resort of Davos as the prophet of the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression - - joining the ranks of previous “Dr. Dooms” who made their names through contrarian calls that proved correct.

Even as he wins plaudits for his prescience, Roubini, 50, says worse lies ahead. Banks face bigger credit losses than they realize, more financial companies will require state takeovers and the world economy will keep shrinking throughout 2009, he says.

“The consensus is catching up with me, but it’s still behind,” Roubini said in an interview in Davos. “I don’t know what some people are smoking.”

‘Catastrophic’

As long ago as February 2007, Roubini was writing on his blog that “the party will soon be over,” and warning of “painful consequences for the U.S. and the global economy.” By last February, his tone had become apocalyptic, raising the specter of a “catastrophic” meltdown that central banks would fail to prevent, triggering the bankruptcy of large banks with mortgage holdings and a “sharp drop” in equities.

The next month, Bear Stearns Cos. failed, to be taken over by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a government-backed deal. Then, in September, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. went bankrupt, prompting banks to hoard cash and depriving businesses and households of access to capital. The U.S. took over AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index suffered its worst year since 1937.

“I was intellectually vindicated,” Roubini says. “But I was vindicated by having an economic disaster which has political and social consequences.”

Predecessors

Roubini’s predecessors in the role of economic nay-sayer include some well-known names: Joseph Granville, publisher of the Granville Market Letter, who forecast the stock-market declines of 1976 and 2000; Henry Kaufman, who as a managing director at Salomon Brothers projected rising interest rates that led to a U.S. recession in the early 1980s; Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, who predicted the 1987 stock crash; and Yale University’s Robert Shiller, a former colleague of Roubini’s, who forecast the end of the dot-com bubble in his 2000 book “Irrational Exuberance” and said in a second edition in 2005 that the U.S. housing market had undergone the biggest speculative boom in U.S. history.

Granville, 85, says the key to being an outlier is not to doubt your analysis.

“I don’t have anything to do with emotion,” says Granville, who’s based in Kansas City. “Keep your head, follow the numbers and ignore the rest.”

Roubini was born in Istanbul, the son of an importer- exporter of carpets, and spent his childhood in Israel, Iran and Italy. It was while living in Milan from 1962 to 1982, he says, that he became attracted to economics: “Economics had the tools to understand the world, and not just understand it but also change it for the better.”

International Economics

After a year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he earned an economics degree at Milan’s Universita’ L. Bocconi and then his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1988, where he specialized in international economics.

Jeffrey Sachs, he says, became his “role model” at Harvard by demonstrating that economists could shape public policy -- as Sachs did by lobbying for poor countries to have their debts relieved by richer governments. Sachs is now a professor at Columbia University.

“You sensed there was something beyond academia, that you have to figure out the big issues of the global economy,” says Roubini. “You have to be engaged, and can’t just be in an ivory tower.”

For much of the 1990s, Roubini combined academic research and policy-making by teaching at Yale and then in New York, while also spending time at the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve, World Bank and Bank of Israel.

Joining Clinton

By 1998 he had attracted the attention of President Bill Clinton’s administration, joining it first as a senior economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers and then moving to the Treasury department as a senior adviser to Timothy Geithner, then the undersecretary for international affairs and now Treasury secretary in the Obama administration.

Roubini returned to the IMF in 2001 as a visiting scholar while it battled a financial meltdown in Argentina. He co-wrote a book on saving bankrupt economies entitled “Bailouts or Bail- ins?” and opened his own global consulting firm, which now employs two dozen economists and publishes a popular Web site and blog.

“Nouriel has a rare combination of economics and the real world, and so has great insight because of that,” says Shiller. “He looks into the details and rolls up his sleeves.”

Roubini says working on emerging-market blowouts in Asia and Latin America allowed him to spot the looming disaster in the U.S. “I’ve been studying emerging markets for 20 years, and saw the same signs in the U.S. that I saw in them, which was that we were in a massive credit bubble,” he says.

Still a Pessimist

With that bubble now popped, Roubini remains more pessimistic than economists elsewhere. The IMF forecasts global growth of 0.5 percent this year and bank losses from toxic U.S.- originated assets of $2.2 trillion. By contrast, Roubini sees the global economy shrinking this year, and banks writing down at least $3.6 trillion -- compared to the $1.1 trillion disclosed so far.

While the U.S. government is resisting nationalizing its biggest banks, Roubini says it will have no choice because they are now “effectively insolvent.” And the outcome may be even worse than even he anticipates if governments fail to take aggressive steps to recapitalize banks and revive their economies, he says: “The risk of a near-depression shouldn’t be underestimated.”

Roubini, who’s now working on a book about the crisis, says he takes no particular pleasure in his role as Dr. Doom or the attention it brings him.

“I’m not a permanent bear,” he says. “I’ll be the first to call a recovery, but I just don’t see it yet, and it’s getting uglier.”

Gay leaders furious with Obama

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16693.html

Gay leaders furious with Obama
By BEN SMITH & NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON
12/17/08
Rick Warren, Obama’s pick to give the inaugural invocation, backed the California ban on same-sex marriage.

Barack Obama’s choice of a prominent evangelical minister to perform the invocation at his inauguration is a conciliatory gesture toward social conservatives who opposed him in November, but it is drawing fierce challenges from a gay rights movement that – in the wake of a gay marriage ban in California – is looking for a fight.

Rick Warren, the senior pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California, opposes abortion rights but has taken more liberal stances on the government role in fighting poverty, and backed away from other evangelicals’ staunch support for economic conservatism. But it’s his support for the California constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage that drew the most heated criticism from Democrats Wednesday.

“Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans,” the president of Human Rights Campaign, Joe Solomonese, wrote Obama Wednesday. “[W]e feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination.”

The rapid, angry reaction from a range of gay activists comes as the gay rights movement looks for an opportunity to flex its political muscle. Last summer gay groups complained, but were rebuffed by Obama, when an “ex-gay” singer led Obama’s rallies in South Carolina. And many were shocked last month when voters approved the California ban.

“There is a lot of energy and there’s a lot of anger and I think people are wanting to direct it somewhere,” Solomonese told Politico.

The selection of Warren to preside at the inauguration is not a surprise move, but it is a mirror image of President Bill Clinton’s early struggles with issues of gay rights. Obama has worked, and at times succeeded, to bridge the gap between Democrats and evangelical Christians, who form a solid section of the Republican base.

Obama opposes same-sex marriage, but also opposed the California constitutional amendment Warren backed. In selecting Warren, he is choosing to reach out to conservatives on a hot-button social issue, at the cost of antagonizing gay voters who overwhelmingly supported him.

Clinton, by contrast, drew early praise from gay rights activists by pressing to allow openly gay soldiers to serve, only to retreat into the “don’t ask, don’t tell” compromise that pleased few.

The reaction Wednesday in gay rights circles was universally negative.

“It’s a huge mistake,” said California gay rights activist Rick Jacobs, who chairs the state’s Courage Campaign. “He’s really the wrong person to lead the president into office.

“Can you imagine if he had a man of God doing the invocation who had deliberately said that Jews are not going to be saved and therefore should be excluded from what’s going on in America? People would be up in arms,” he said.

The editor of the Washington Blade, Kevin Naff, called the choice “Obama’s first big mistake.”

“His presence on the inauguration stand is a slap in the faces of the millions of GLBT voters who so enthusiastically supported him,” Naff wrote, referring to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. “This tone-deafness to our concerns must not be tolerated. We have just endured eight years of endless assaults on our dignity and equality from a president beholden to bigoted conservative Christians. The election was supposed to have ended that era. It appears otherwise.”

Other liberal groups chimed in.

“Rick Warren gets plenty of attention through his books and media appearances. He doesn’t need or deserve this position of honor,” said the president of People for the American Way, Kathryn Kolbert, who described Warren as “someone who has in recent weeks actively promoted legalized discrimination and denigrated the lives and relationships of millions of Americans.”

Warren’s spokeswoman did not respond to a message seeking comment, but he has tried to blend personal tolerance with doctrinal disapproval of homosexuality.

“I have many gay friends, I’ve eaten dinner in gay homes. No church has probably done more for people with AIDS than Saddleback Church,” he said in a recent interview with BeliefNet.

In the same interview, he compared the “redefiniton of a marrige” to include gay marriage to legitimizing incest, child abuse, and polygamy.

Obama’s move may deepen some apparent distance between him among gays and lesbians, one of the very few core Democratic groups among whom his performance was worse than John Kerry’s in 2004. Exit polls suggested that John McCain won 27% of the gay vote in November, up four points from Bush’s 2004 tally – even as almost all other voters slid toward Obama.

But despite the symbolism of picking Warren, Obama is likely to shift several substantive policy areas in directions that will please gay voters and their political leaders, including a pledge to end “don’t ask, don’t tell” in military service.

And some gay activists were holding out hope that they would either persuade Obama to dump Warren or Warren to change his mind.

“Rick Warren did a real disservice to gay families in California and across the country by casually supporting our continued exclusion from marriage,” said the founder of the pro-same sex marriage Freedom to Marry, Evan Wolfson. “I hope in the spirit of the new era that’s dawning, he will open his heart and speak to all Americans about inclusion and our country’s commitment to equality.”