Politics on HuffingtonPost.com

Arianna Huffington: Sunday Roundup

2009-11-29T05:45:10Z

With the Senate ready to begin debating its health care bill next week, it's time for President Obama to make an unambiguous case for its passage. Finally. He needs to deliver on health care reform, including a public option, and then quickly move on to jobs, jobs, jobs -- the latest Fed forecast predicts that unemployment will still be over 9 percent when the 2010 midterms roll around. Yet, on Tuesday, when the president addresses the nation, he won't be making the case for health care or a jobs bill. Instead, he'll be explaining why we need to "finish the job" in Afghanistan by escalating the war. Can someone in the White House Priorities Department please hit reboot?

MIT Analysis: Americans Would Pay LESS Under Senate Health Care Plan

2009-11-29T04:39:09Z

A new analysis by a leading MIT economist provides new ammunition for Democrats as the Senate begins formally debating the historic health-reform bill being pushed by President Barack Obama.

The report concludes that under the Senate's health-reform bill, Americans buying individual coverage will pay less than they do for today's typical individual market coverage, and would be protected from high out-of-pocket costs.

Washington Post: 9,000 Troops Will Deploy To Afghanistan Soon After Obama's Speech

2009-11-29T00:50:53Z

KABUL -- Days after President Obama outlines his new war strategy in a speech Tuesday, as many as 9,000 Marines will begin deploying to southern Afghanistan to renew an assault on a Taliban stronghold that stalled earlier this year amid a troop shortage and political pressure from the Afghan government, senior U.S. officials said.

Richard Z. Chesnoff: WHITE HOUSE GATECRASHER & THE PALESTINIANS

2009-11-29T00:09:15Z

Guess which of President Obama's uninvited gala guests is a big wig on the board of the American Task Force on Palestine - the Palestinian lobby? None other than the male half of the social climbing phonies who crashed the White House state dinner the other night: Tareq Salahi.
His Bio was on the ATSFP list of board members - but in the past day or so, it's suddenly been almost impossible to find it.
I did the other day - but to my knowledge, not one newspaper - including The New York Times - or TV station has ever mentioned it.
Here's a website where you can find it
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/documents/2009/11/american-task-force-on-palestine-tareq-salahis-bio-page.php?page=1http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/documents/2009/11/american-task-force-on-palestine-tareq-salahis-bio-page.php?page=1

Interesting, no?

Sarah Palin Quits Turkey Trot 5K Race In Kennewick, Washington

2009-11-28T22:59:50Z

Sarah Palin dropped out of a 5k race on Thanksgiving Day in Kennewick, Wash. The former vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor quit the race because she wanted to avoid the crowds that were waiting for her at the end, according to The Tri-Cities Herald.

Palin was 1 of about 3,000 participants. The paper reported that her presence drew a "mass of onlookers." Palin announced that she would be running the race on Twitter.

The former Republican vice-presidential candidate visited nearby Richland, Wash., to spend the holiday with relatives. She said it's good to be back in the Tri-Cities to reconnect with "the roots." Her grandparents, Clem and Helen Sheeran, came to Richland in 1943.

Michael Kieschnick: Second Thoughts on the Obama Peace Prize

2009-11-28T22:25:32Z

If I were on the selection committee for the Peace Prize, I would be having buyer's remorse about the selection of Barack Obama. Far from emboldening the president, the prize seems to have given him comfort to move the country away from taking stands that meet our international obligations.

In the last few days, Mr. Obama has decided to dramatically escalate our presence in Afghanistan, and announced weak and inadequate global warming goals to bring to Copenhagen.

Faced with the unholy trinity of a stolen election by a corrupt Afghani president, domestic concern over rapidly rising fiscal deficits, and a public challenge by his handpicked general to send tens of thousands of additional troops or lose the war, Mr. Obama has gone with tens of thousands of additional troops. Without doubt, the new strategy will include tough new anti-corruption standards that are not worth the paper they are printed on. And the Administration is far more likely to pressure progressive members of Congress to vote to expand the war than it might threaten Blue Dogs who vote against deficit-reducing health care reform. At $1 million per soldier per year (ever wonder how much of that goes to the soldier and how much goes to corporate contractors?), the Afghanistan misadventure heralds an Obama era without money for many campaign promises.

Regardless of the escalation and the anti-corruption rhetoric, we will almost certainly still lose by any reasonable definition of loss. Yes, a surge might temporarily appear to create a victory, but the rural and patriarchal forces of reaction among Afghanis, like the Iraqi Shiites, are patient and measure progress in decades. We may call it a victory, having spent a trillion dollars and thousands of lives, but it will be a loss nonetheless. Not since Genghis Kahn has anyone successfully occupied Afghanistan. No sane analyst would call what we have accomplished in Iraq a victory.

The White House also recently announced that the president would visit the global warming summit at Copenhagen and deliver a message that the U.S. will commit to lowering our greenhouse emissions by 17%. For those in the know - which will include most people in Copenhagen, this will be deeply disturbing.

The International Panel on Climate Change has argued that the science indicates that the developed countries (of which the U.S. is by far the largest polluter) must reduce their 2020 greenhouse emissions by 25% to 40% from 1990 levels. The White House, and the House legislation that they are referring to, do the equivalent of lowering the basketball rim from ten to eight feet and say they are dunking. The White House says it can commit to lowering emissions 17% from the levels of 2005 - fifteen years and a great deal of added pollution from 1990. The U.S. press may not notice, but the rest of the world surely will.

And it was not a good day to be Sen. Barbara Boxer, whose global warming legislation passed out of committee with a 20% reduction. With her own president stating a 17% goal, her position is now toast.

One of the pernicious effects of the international gathering at Copenhagen has been that it has been used to generate immense pressure to compromise the science with the battle cry - legislation must be passed so that Copenhagen will not fail. The lobbyists for the coal and oil industries were successful in leveraging the desire to pass ANY legislation with weakening the already weakened targets.

And having praised legislation that does not remotely meet the targets the best scientists believe are necessary, the Administration was willing to bargain away their only trump card - the ability of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases beyond that legislated by Congress. The House legislation eliminated that power in a backroom deal with Rep. Boucher, D (coal industry) without public notice or debate.

As a sad result, the 17% House/Obama goal, rather than being a floor for reduction became an upper limit. An upper limit which literally ensures that global warming will get worse - most likely terribly worse. And most perversely, of course, the worst damage from global warming will not fall on those of us in the United States which has caused most of the problem, but on those in the developing world who have done the least.

I continue to hope for the best for President Obama. The Nobel committee rolled the dice betting that several good speeches were the down payment on fighting for tough changes. They got an expanded war and a guaranteed to fail approach to global warming.

Secret Service Embarrassed By State Dinner Party Crashers Michaele Salahi And Tareq Salahi

2009-11-28T22:12:43Z

NEW YORK — A television executive says the couple who crashed President Barack Obama's first state dinner is offering to talk to broadcast networks about it for a payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the network does not publicly discuss bookings, told The Associated Press that representatives for Michaele and Tareq Salahi contacted networks to urge them to "get their bids in" for an interview. The executive says the Virginia couple was looking for a payment in the mid-six figures range.

The couple's success in getting into the state dinner Tuesday without an invitation embarrassed the White House and Secret Service.

The woman, who was pictured at the dinner greeting both the president and Vice President Joe Biden, is a reality TV hopeful trying to get on Bravo's "The Real Housewives of D.C." Representatives for the Salahis did not immediately return telephone and e-mail requests for comment.

Network news divisions say they don't pay for interviews. They have, for eagerly-sought interviews in the past, offered to pay for access to exclusive material like pictures or videos from their subjects.

Meanwhile, CNN confirmed that the Salahis had canceled an appearance they had scheduled for "Larry King Live" on Monday.

South Carolina Rift Highlights Debate Over G.O.P.

2009-11-28T20:41:05Z

When Senator Lindsey Graham joined forces last month with Senator John Kerry on a compromise to the climate change legislation known as cap and trade, it was the last straw for the Charleston County Republican Party.

Whitman Tries Courting Women In California Governor Race

2009-11-28T19:58:07Z

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As Meg Whitman has been introducing herself to California voters, she retells a line that usually generates a chuckle: "The next governor of California needs to know exactly what SHE believes."

The statement conveys the kind of confidence the former eBay executive displayed in her trailblazing role as the female head of a Fortune 500 company. It also is a reminder of the pioneering role she would play if she is elected as the first woman to California's highest office.

Whitman rarely dwells on her gender as she seeks to woo the female voters who now make up a majority of California's electorate. But when she does make that pitch, her language at times comes across as tone-deaf. A recent poll shows she is having mixed results in winning over women.

Some of the statements on Whitman's Web site and at campaign events sound as if they come from a previous era, when women could only dream of leading a major company.

For example, in talking about the devastating effects of California's high unemployment rate and faltering economy, Whitman says it has provoked tough conversations in families. Among them, she regularly says, are "husbands telling wives that they can't afford their homes any longer."

After facing criticism for her apparent failure to vote in numerous elections, Whitman, 53, said, "I was focused on raising a family, on my husband's career. We moved many, many times. And it is no excuse." During that time, Whitman was an executive at major companies that included Procter & Gamble, Hasbro, Disney and eBay.

Her response drew criticism from women who said they still found time to vote despite juggling busy work and family schedules, although others have said they welcomed her acknowledgment.

In another example, an article on her Web site titled "Whitman gets mothers, daughters, talking about politics" says "Mothers, many of them for the first time, are talking with their daughters about politics, about achieving their goals and about being unafraid to dream. And their daughters are listening."

It's a statement that seems naive in a state with a long history of women's political activism. Both of California's U.S. senators are women and Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco is the first female speaker of the House of Representatives.

"Ahhh, no. That is so untrue," said Mirna Reyes-Bible, a Republican who said she has discussed politics with her son and daughter, both of whom are now grown, since they were in grade school.

"We have really lively debates about issues, and I love it," she said. "That to me is almost arrogant, to think that just because you came on the scene, we're finally discussing politics."

Reyes-Bible, an officer of the Yolo Republican Women Federated group, gave Whitman a glowing introduction at the group's luncheon in Davis in September, but said she is still undecided about which candidate she will support in next June's primary election.

Despite lengthy political engagement by women in California, the Republican Party has been slow to embrace women candidates.

Two women – U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 1990 and former state treasurer Kathleen Brown four years later – have been the Democratic Party's gubernatorial nominee, but the California GOP has never chosen a female gubernatorial or U.S. Senate nominee. Just five of the 43 Republican lawmakers in the state Legislature are women.

In trying to bridge that gap, Whitman's language could be a winning strategy to attract the older conservatives who dominate GOP primaries and who tend to hold social views that are far more conservative than the overall electorate.

Among them are Republican women who typically lead the party's get-out-the-vote efforts in California, said Sharon Runner, a former Republican assemblywoman from Lancaster who is co-chairwoman of Whitman's campaign.

"You'll have a woman candidate who's running for Assembly or Senate who still has children at home, I think a lot of Republican women would not vote for that candidate because they think she should be at home," Runner said. "Democrats don't have that hurdle."

An October Field Poll found Whitman was doing best among the older voters, although half of Republican voters were still undecided. More than a third of those age 50 to 64 backed her, and she was virtually tied with former congressman Tom Campbell for support among Republicans 65 and older. Campbell led with voters 18 to 49.

A Los Angeles Times-USC poll this month found that Whitman still has work to do to win support from Republican women, a third of whom had not yet made up their minds. While 40 percent of men who registered Republican said they supported her, only 30 percent of women did. The other candidates surveyed had about equal support from both genders.

"The rhetoric that she's using is somewhat out of date. Both of those things (her comments about women's engagement in politics and her response to the voting controversy) indicate that she either is insensitive to what has happened or is appealing to a certain segment of the Republican base that still believes in this," said Sherry Bebitch-Jeffe, a political science professor at the University of Southern California. "My guess is it's a little of both."

Voter patterns nationwide indicate that female voters typically lean Democratic, even when a pro-choice Republican such as Whitman is in the race, said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. They mostly have helped male Democrats get elected.

Attracting those voters is important in California, where women make up 53 percent of the state's electorate. That's why Whitman's campaign launched MEGaWomen, an attempt to engage women of all political persuasions early in the campaign.

In a video on her Web site, she asks women to submit their ideas about how to make California better. The attempt at a two-way dialogue tries to capitalize on women's skill at networking, said Jillian Manus, a Palo Alto literary agent and GOP donor who offers motivational seminars for women.

"Meg doesn't want women to vote for her because she's a woman," said Manus, who is co-chairwoman of MEGaWomen. "Women don't vote for other women because they're women. They vote for them because they're the good candidate."

Jeff Danziger: Pope and Kennedy

2009-11-28T19:31:59Z

Jeff Danziger http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-danziger/

U.S. Still Running Secret Prison In Afghanistan

2009-11-28T18:04:45Z

KABUL, Afghanistan -- An American military detention camp in Afghanistan is still holding inmates for sometimes weeks at a time and without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to human rights researchers and former detainees held at the site on the Bagram Air Base.

Jenny Sanford To Be Named One Of "10 Most Fascinating People Of 2009"

2009-11-28T16:37:36Z

She is writing a memoir, "Staying True," to be released in April by Ballantine Books, about grappling with her husband's marital infidelity. She has applied to trademark her own name in order to sell clothing, mugs and other items. She will appear next month on a Barbara Walters special on ABC as one of the "10 Most Fascinating People of 2009."

Jane Smiley: Stop The Injustice: Free Gary McKinnon

2009-11-28T13:41:29Z

If you read the Guardian, then you know already that the screaming injustice that is about to be perpetrated on Scottish computer hacker Gary McKinnon has taken another step toward the cruel and unusual. McKinnon is a 43-year-old man from North London who, in 2001 and 2002, hacked into US military computers, looking for evidence of visitors from other planets. He was extremely successful, not only because he was a smart guy, but also because, as he said in messages left on the victim computers, "Your security is crap." McKinnon, as one might assume of a guy who spends his time in his room looking for evidence of space aliens, has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. He is terrified of coming to the US and being thrown into a high security American prison for sixty years. As well he should be. American officials have reassured his mother that he will be taken care of -- but hey, you know how reliable American officials are about taking care of the vulnerable, don't you? No wonder McKinnon is said to be suicidal.

But the mental illness does not belong to Gary McKinnon, it belongs to the US military, which has pursued McKinnon ruthlessly in order to punish and destroy him. They should have pursued him in order to hire him because, guess what? Their security was crap. He cost them $700,000! About one fifth the price of a nice apartment in Manhattan. Nothing! A day's pay for Blackwater! If they had hired McKinnon as a consultant, they might have learned something, and improved both their security and their international relations.

In Britain, the media dogs are barking because the English government has gone along with extraditing McKinnon like the sick puppies they are -- Iraq? Sure! You have no reason to invade? Well, make one up, we'll help ya! So even while the Iraq inquiry is going on, they are allowing the US to drag this guy kicking and screaming to the exact place where he most fears going.

You've got to ask yourself why the US thinks this is a big deal. It's because they don't care as much about security as they do about humiliation and embarrassment. Now that's what I call mental illness! We'll show this helpless little guy what the might of the US feels like! We can't win a war to save out lives, no matter how we try, but we sure can drive a guy with Asperger's to suicide. The US government from Obama on down should being falling over themselves to show this guy some mercy and put him on the payroll (he can work from home). But no. Why do people hate us? Well, take a look.

And do please sign the petition.

Huff Radio: Left, Right & Center: Is America Ungovernable? Plus: Men, Women and History

2009-11-28T03:16:36Z

Two big-think, deep evergreen topics are up for discussion: Is America ungovernable? Are moneyed and special interests so entrenched that we cannot govern of, for and by the people? Marx, Carlyle and Hegel are all raised in this discussion.

And the second deep question: Is history made by great men and women? Or is it the reverse: Does the moment make the man/woman? This show is a winner.

Roger Morris: Matthew Hoh Speaks Grim Truth To Power

2009-11-28T02:44:44Z

The rare resignation on principle is always telling in American government. When Matthew Hoh recently left the State Department -- a Marine Captain in Iraq who became a diplomat in Afghanistan -- his act was significant far beyond the first reports.

Hoh speaks grim truth to power. His message is that to pursue the Afghan war policy in any guise -- regardless of the troop level President Obama now chooses -- will be utter folly, trapping America in an unwinnable civil war in the Hindu Kush, and only fueling terrorism.

An advisor in southern Afghanistan, Hoh knew the malignancy of want behind the war. Eight years after the U.S. invasion and a third of a trillion dollars spent, half the nation faces starvation on 45 cents a day, half the children die before five, and half the surviving young have no schools, part of a torment Afghans plead in poll after poll to be understood as the core of their conflict. He knew well the source of that scourge in the U.S.-installed Kabul regime, a kleptocracy of war- and drug-lords holed up amid American bodyguards in "poppy palaces," while clan-based "security forces" loot the countryside, sodomize its sons, and swell insurgent ranks. "We're propping up a government," Hoh said last week, "that isn't worth dying for." So pervasive and profound is that corruption, so entwined with the private exploitation and official graft of the U.S. occupation regime -- including kickbacks or extortion payments from both the American military and civilian aid programs to both the new Kabul plutocracy and the multi-layered Taliban -- that the morass makes every other issue of policy moot.

The 36-year-old diplomat brings unique authority to public debate. An insider confirming outside critics dispels the myth that classified information redeems a failed policy. He also speaks to and for many in government, infusing honesty where folly feeds on wary quiet and fraudulent unanimity. "There are a lot of guys, not just in the Foreign Service but in the military, who are looking at this thing and they don't understand what we are doing there," he told one audience. "I get mails all the time from junior and mid-level officers telling me, 'Keep it up. This makes no sense to us.'"

Whatever this protest says outwardly, its deeper meaning is devastating. The sheer contrast between Hoh and senior officials -- seeing the same reality, the same reports -- exposes some dirty little secrets of policy haunting the Obama presidency.

With the 8-year enormity of waste, venality and oppression since the invasion of 2001, ravages Hoh saw climaxed around him, went the knowing silence if not collusion of a succession of U.S. diplomats and officers responsible in the defiled occupation of Afghanistan. There is a troubling legacy, too, in the policy process. In the grip of experience irrelevant in Afghanistan, a generation of military commanders comes with a crudely recycled but promotion-rich creed of counter-insurgency, avenging what some as young officers in the 1970s saw as a false defeat if not home-front betrayal in Vietnam. They are allied with the lucrative in-and-out careerism of powerful if publicly faceless civilian Pentagon officials, what State Department rivals call the "COIN-heads" of counter-insurgency dogma. Those currents run like a murky subterranean river beneath the doomed policy Hoh silhouettes.

Most telling may be the disparity between Hoh -- the serious student of Afghan culture -- and Washington's decision-makers. To deal with one of the most complex settings on earth, the Obama administration relies on key figures -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Af-Pak Special envoy Richard Holbrooke and NSC Advisor James Jones -- whose careers in politics or the bureaucracy (like those commanding generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal) are bereft of any substantive knowledge of a people they are supposed to master. It leaves them all dangerously dependent on staff, and prey to the absence of dissenters like Hoh among aides whose credentials are hardly more impressive than their own.

That intellectual vacuum, a mirror of Vietnam decision-making, explains the shock and hostility that greeted recent cables of US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry opposing added U.S. troops backing an irredeemable regime. As Hoh exemplifies, actual knowledge of Afghanistan is rare -- and the lack scarcely recognized -- in a war council prone to flippant lines like Clinton's recent "There are warlords and there are warlords," or Holbrooke's definition of success, "We'll know it when we see it."

At the heart of Washington's decision-making dysfunction, of course, is always a president in thrall to the hoary fears and myths of national security, the most important realm he governs and in which most take power least prepared. For Barack Obama, only historic courage and insight can surmount the multiple corruptions of policy he is heir to.

Hoh embodies that bravery. Implored by Eikenberry to stay, he chose to forgo a prized career to speak out. We know that agony. There is no easy course ahead in Afghanistan. US policies a half century before 2001 account for much of the politics now so deplored in Kabul, a breakdown inflicted as well as inherent, and a blood debt added to the toll of occupation and war.

The gruesome truth of that history is that our sacrifices so far have been largely in vain. It is Matthew Hoh's heroism to try to stop the inseparable casualties of lives and truth.

Roger Morris and George Kenney are both Foreign Service Officers who resigned on principle -- Morris at the 1970 invasion of Cambodia, Kenney in 1991 over policy in the Balkans -- both writers are award-winning authors. Morris's Between the Graves: America, Afghanistan and the Politics of Intervention, will be published by Knopf in 2010. Kenney produces and hosts a podcast at electricpolitics.com while on the Board of Editors at In These Times.