(An oil deal for Hunt Oil of Dallas, run by long time political ally of President Bush. This is part of the deal with the Kurdistan government that took place over a year ago, without much fanfare, and is a separate “sweetheart deal” than the ones for the Big Boy Oil Companies with Iraq happening this week. Did we go to war for oil companies? You’re damn right we did. Just how many US soldiers are they willing to sacrifice for a 20% rise in their stock portfolios? The world may never know. The owner of the company is Ray Hunt. He was handed his fortune by his daddy, just like Bush. And as it just so happens, he is also a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He is also a board member of Halliburton and the Federal Reserve Board of Dallas. And just for good measure, he is on the Board of Trustess for the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation along with ties to the CIA.) SourceWatch.

By JAMES GLANZ and RICHARD A. OPPELJr. from NYT here.

Bush administration officials knew that a Texas oil company with close ties to President Bush was planning to sign an oil deal with the regional Kurdistan government that runs counter to American policy and undercut Iraq’s central government, a Congressional committee has concluded.

The conclusions were based on e-mail messages and other documents that the committee released Wednesday.

United States policy is to warn companies that they incur risks in signing contracts until Iraq passes an oil law and to strengthen Iraq’s central government. The Kurdistan deal, by ceding responsibility for writing contracts directly to a regional government, infuriated Iraqi officials. But State Department officials did nothing to discourage the deal and in some cases appeared to welcome it, the documents show.

The company, Hunt Oilof Dallas, signed the deal with Kurdistan’s semiautonomous government last September. Its chief executive officer, Ray L. Hunt, a close political ally of President Bush, briefed an advisory board to Mr. Bush on his contacts with Kurdish officials before the deal was signed.

In an e-mail message released by the Congressional committee, a State Department official in Washington, briefed by a colleague about the impending deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government, wrote: “Many thanks for the heads up; getting an American company to sign a deal with the K.R.G. will make big news back here. Please keep us posted.”

The document release comes as the administration is defending help that United States officials provided in drawing up a separate set of no-bid contracts, still pending, between Iraq’s Oil Ministry in Baghdad and five major Western oil companies to provide services at other Iraqi oil fields.

In the no-bid contracts, the administration ultimately conceded that it had provided what it called purely technical help writing the contracts. The United States played no role in choosing the companies, the administration has said.

Disclosure of those contracts has provided substantial fuel to critics of the Iraq war, both in the United States and abroad, who contend that the enormous Iraqi oil reserves were a motivation for the invasion - an assertion the administration has repeatedly denied.

Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, has condemned the Kurdistan deal as illegal because it was not approved by Iraq’s central government and was struck without an oil law, which has still not been passed.

After the deal was signed last year, a senior State Department official in Baghdad criticized it, saying, “We believe these contracts have needlessly elevated tensions between the K.R.G. and the national government of Iraq.”

The State Department said Wednesday that it had discouraged the deal. Hunt officials declined to comment, and Kurdish government officials said there was no impropriety.

In a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose chairman is Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, a State Department official wrote that the department had strongly discouraged Hunt from signing the deal until an oil law had been passed.

The State Department told Hunt that “we continue to advise all companies that they incur significant political and legal risk by signing contracts” before Iraq passes the law, wrote Jeffrey T. Bergner, an assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the department, in one of the documents made public on Wednesday.

But in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Waxman wrote that the documents his committee collected “tell a different story about the role of administration officials.” In letters obtained by the committee, Mr. Hunt informed the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, of which he was a member, last July and August that he was pursuing serious business interests in Kurdistan.

“We were approached a month ago by representatives of a private group in Kurdistan as to the possibility of our becoming interested in that region,” Mr. Hunt wrote to the board last July 12. “We had one team of geoscientists travel to Kurdistan several weeks ago and we were encouraged by what we saw.”

In August 2007, Mr. Hunt informed State Department officials directly of his intentions in Kurdistan, and on Sept. 5, three days before the deal was signed, a flurry of e-mail messages among Hunt and State Department officials make it clear that the department was aware of what was in the works.

In an e-mail message to a colleague with the subject line “Hunt Oil to Sign Contract With K.R.G.,” meaning the Kurdistan Regional Government, one State Department official gives a highly detailed summary of the deal. Mr. Hunt, the official wrote, “is expecting to sign an exploration contract with the K.R.G. for a field located in the Shakkan district, an area under K.R.G. control (inside the Green Line) but technically in Nineveh Governorate.”

“Hunt would be the first U.S. company to sign such a deal,” the official wrote, suggesting that the news should be rushed onto the State Department’s internal distribution network as quickly as possible.

Despite those exchanges, a State Department official said the company was in fact discouraged from completing its deal.

“All companies, including Hunt Oil, which have spoken with the United States government about investing in Iraq’s oil sector, have and will continue to be given the same advice,” John Fleming, an Iraq press officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, wrote Wednesday in an e-mailed response to questions. “We advise companies that they incur significant political and legal risk by signing any contracts with any party before a national law is passed by the Iraqi Parliament.”

Another State Department official, who asked to remain anonymous, expressed frustration, saying that a local State Department official in Erbil, the Kurdish provincial capital, who was the head of a so-called Regional Reconstruction Team, tried to dissuade Hunt officials from making the deal.

But no notes were taken at that meeting, the official said, and Hunt representatives later gave a conflicting account of what had been said.

“I have talked to the R.R.T. team leader personally, and he sticks by his story and they stick by theirs,” the State Department official said.

Jeanne L. Phillips, a senior vice president for corporate affairs and international relations at Hunt whose correspondence appears at certain points in the documents released Wednesday, said that because Mr. Waxman’s letter was not addressed directly to the company, she could not comment on it.

“As a matter of company policy, Hunt Oil Company does not comment on correspondence between third parties,” Ms. Phillips wrote in an e-mail message.

An official in the Kurdistan Regional Government reached late Wednesday who asked not to be named said that the government had written some 22 contracts to date.

“Anyone can have a contract with the K.R.G., but it must be accepted and suitable according to assessment by our experts,” the official said. “Hunt is a good company and never had its contracts with us illegally or improperly.”

The documents released by Mr. Waxman also lay bare what has become a serious dispute between the company and the State Department over what was said between them before the deal last year.

For example, a senior Hunt official said he was told by State Department officials during a meeting June 15, 2007, that the United States government did not object to deals with the Kurdish regional government.

“I specifically asked if the U.S.G. had a policy toward companies entering contracts with the K.R.G.,” the Hunt official, David McDonald, wrote in an e-mail message to a colleague last Sept. 28. The State Department officials, Mr. McDonald wrote, replied that there was no policy, neither for nor against.

His message concluded: “There was no communication to me or in my presence made by the nine State Department officials with whom I met prior to 8 September that Hunt should not pursue our course of action leading to a contract. In fact, there was ample opportunity to do so, but it did not happen.”

The encouragement by State Department officials did not end with the signing of the contract on Sept. 8, the documents suggest. Five days later, a State Department official in the southern city of Basra wrote to Ms. Phillips, “I read and heard about with interest your deal with the regional Kurdish government.”

“I don’t know if you are aware of another opportunity,” the official wrote, mentioning an enormous port project and a natural gas project in the south. After a few more lines, the official concluded, “This seems like it would be a good opportunity for Hunt.”

(I had a long chat at another site, in which every single issue Glenn deals with in this article was brought up. I mean every single one. Hell, even OpEd News has apparently refused to publish my response to Olbermann’s Special Comment (Opps, strike that. They put it up this morning, heehee). Glenn’s article is dead on in it’s assessment of what is happening here. His conclusion that this drift away from the core liberal values of our Party will hurt Obama’s chances are correct. There is a movement on the Obama site, from 9,000 of his supporters, to hold Obama to his original objection to this horrible FISA Bill. Let’s hope those grassroots organizers carry more weight with Sen. Obama than the weak kneed Olbermann/Dean approach. Let’s hope Greenwald gets to his ear somehow as well.)

by Glenn Greenwald here.

Keith Olbermann delivered a “Special Comment”last night on Obama’s support for the FISA bill and, to his credit, attempted to address many of the criticisms that had been voiced regarding his prior comments. He seemed to abandon the idea that Obama harbors a Secret Plan to prosecute telecoms and instead urged him to adopt and then announce such a plan. Olbermann also assailed “the idea of handing a get-out-of-jail-free card to corporations who had approached definitional fascism by breaking the law in concert with the Bush Administration,” and pointed out — correctly — that Obama will be attacked by the GOP as Soft on Terrorism no matter what he does. In general, Olbermann’s commentary about Obama’s FISA position was much more critical, in both senses of the word.

Still, there are numerous, glaring flaws with the fantasy that Obama will criminally prosecute telecoms, which I’ve already described in detail and will only summarize here. That the FISA bill only immunizes telecoms from civil but not criminal liability isn’t some mystical discovery generated by John Dean’s Talmudic examination of the fine print, but rather, is something that was crystal clear and known to everyone for a long time. Indeed, from the start, the Bush administration only proposed, and telecoms only sought, immunity from civil — not criminal — liability. That’s because criminal prosecution would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, and beyond that, Bush could and likely will simply pardon telecoms from prosecution before he leaves office (nobody who has watched the last seven years would believe that Bush would be deterred because pardons are deemed by courts to be technical admissions of some level of guilt, and those asserting that pardons can’t be issued until there are charges brought simply don’t know what they’re talking about).

More importantly, the FISA bill is dangerous and destructive for reasons having nothing to do with the telecom immunity provisions (i.e., the warrantless eavesdropping powers it vests in the President). Even if Obama did follow Olbermann’s plan — and is there anyone, anywhere, who believes there’s any chance he will? — it still wouldn’t remotely justify Obama’s support for this heinous bill.

Those points aren’t worth re-hashing but an underlying point is worth emphasizing. Debates and disagreements among Obama supporters over the direction of his campaign — even vehement disagreements — aren’t “slapdowns” or “feuds” or “pissing matches” or “circular firing squads” or counter-productive “distractions.” As Olbermann’s mildly responsive reaction to the criticisms that were made demonstrates, such disagreements are actually quite vital.

The choices Obama makes about how he campaigns and the positions he takes are extremely consequential in how political issues in this country are perceived. In the last two weeks alone, Obama has done the following:

*intervened in a Democratic Congressional primary to support one of the worst Bush-enabling Blue Dogs over a credible, progressive challenger;

* announced his support for Bush’s FISA bill, reversing himself completely on this issue;

* sided with the Scalia/Thomas faction in two highly charged Supreme Court decisions;

* repudiated Wesley Clark and embraced the patently false media narrative that Clark had “dishonored McCain’s service” (and for the best commentary I’ve seen, by far, on the Clark matter, see this appropriately indignant piece by Iraq veteran Brandon Friedman);

* condemned MoveOn.orgfor its newspaper advertisement criticizing Gen. Petraeus;

* defended his own patriotism by impugning the patriotism of others, specifically those in what he described as the “the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties” for “attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself” and — echoing Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s 1984 RNC speech — “blaming America for all that was wrong with the world”;

* unveiled plans “to expand President Bush’s program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy . . . letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions,” a move that could “invite a storm of protest from those who view such faith requirements as discrimination” — something not even the Bush faith programs allowed.

That’s quite a two weeks. One of the primary reasons that blogs emerged over the last seven years was as a reaction to, an attempt to battle against, exactly this narrative which the media propagated and Democratic institutions embraced — that it is the duty of every Democrat to repudiate and attack their own base; that the truly pernicious elements are on the “Far Left”, whose values must be rejected, while the Far Right is entitled to profound respect and accommodation; that “Strength” in National Security is determined by agreement with GOP policies, which is where “the Center” is found; that Seriousness is demonstrated by contempt for the liberal masses; that every Democrat must apologize for any statement over which Republicans feign offense.

Plenty of Beltway institutions already existed for the purpose of cheering on any and all Democrats no matter what they do. If that’s all that blogs are supposed to do, then there is no need for them. From the beginning, blogs have been devoted to opposing Democratic complicity and capitulation — to protesting the lack of Democratic responsiveness to their supporters — every bit as much as opposing GOP corruption and media malfeasance. That role is at least as important as the others.

A presidential election is a unique time when Americans are engaged in a discussion over our collective political values (at least more engaged than any other time). Why would anyone watch the Obama campaign use this opportunity to perpetuate and reinforce this narrative, and watch Obama embrace polices that are the precise antithesis of the values he espoused in the past, and not criticize or object to that? Criticisms of that sort aren’t unhealthy or counter-productive. They’re the opposite. Of course one ought to object if a political candidate — even Barack Obama — is advocating policies that trample on one’s core political values or promulgating toxic narratives. That’s particularly true since his doing so isn’t necessary to win; it’s actually more likely to have the opposite effect.

There is no question, at least to me, that having Obama beat McCain is vitally important. But so, too, is the way that victory is achieved and what Obama advocates and espouses along the way. Feeding distortions against someone like Wesley Clark in order to please Joe Klein and his fact-free media friends, or legalizing warrantless eavesdropping and protecting joint Bush/telecom lawbreaking, or basing his campaign on demonizing MoveOn.org and 1960s anti-war hippies, is quite harmful in many long-lasting ways. Electing Barack Obama is a very important political priority but it isn’t the only one there is, and his election is less likely, not more likely, the more homage he pays to these these tired, status-quo-perpetuating Beltway pieties.

from CNN here.

A 49-year-old woman collapsed and died on the floor of a waiting room at a Brooklyn psychiatric hospital and lay there for more than an hour as employees ignored her, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, which on Tuesday released surveillance camera video of the incident.

Esmin Green was involuntarily admitted to the psychiatric emergency department of Kings County Hospital Center on June 18 for what the hospital describes as “agitation and psychosis.”

Upon her admission, Green waited nearly 24 hours for treatment, said the civil liberties union, which was among the groups filing suit against the facility last year seeking improved conditions for patients.

The surveillance camera video shows the woman rolling off a waiting room chair, landing face-down on the floor and convulsing. Her collapse came at 5:32 a.m. June 19, the NYCLU said, and she stopped moving at 6:07 a.m. During that time, the organization said, workers at the hospital ignored her.

At 6:35 a.m., the tape shows a hospital employee approaching and nudging Green with her foot, the group said. Help was summoned three minutes later. Watch the surveillance video »

In addition, the organization said, hospital staff falsified Green’s records to cover up the time she had lain there without assistance.

“Contrary to what was recorded from four different angles by the hospital’s video cameras, the patient’s medical records say that at 6 a.m., she got up and went to the bathroom, and at 6:20 a.m. she was ’sitting quietly in waiting room’ — more than 10 minutes since she last moved and 48 minutes after she fell to the floor.”

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which oversees the hospital, released a statement Tuesday saying it was “shocked and distressed by this situation. It is clear that some of our employees failed to act based on our compassionate standards of care.”

After a preliminary investigation, the corporation said it suspended or terminated six employees, “including staff involved with the direct care of the patient as well as managers of security and clinical services,” the statement said.

A Health and Hospitals Corporation spokeswoman said it was aware of the discrepancies in Green’s record when it began the preliminary investigation on June 20. That information is now in the hands of various investigatory agencies, she said.

The corporation pledged to put “additional and significant” reforms in place in the wake of the incident.

The civil liberties group and the Mental Hygiene Legal Service filed suit against Kings County in May 2007 in federal court, alleging that conditions at the facility are filthy. Patients are often forced to sleep in plastic chairs or floors covered in urine, feces and blood while waiting for beds, the groups allege, and often go without basic hygiene such as showers, clean linens and clean clothes. The lawsuit claims that patients who complain face physical abuse and are injected with drugs to keep them docile.

The hospital, the suit alleges, lacks “the minimal requirements of basic cleanliness, space, privacy, and personal hygiene that are constitutionally guaranteed even to convicted felons.”

The video sent the organizations back into court Tuesday, demanding immediate reform.

“What’s happening in Kings County Hospital is an affront to human dignity,” New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a written statement. “In 2008 in New York City, nobody should be subjected to this kind of treatment. It should not take the death of a patient to get the city to make changes that everyone knows are long overdue.”

The Department of Justice recently initiated an investigation into conditions at the hospital, the organization said, prompting the facility to improve some of its problems. “But the culture of abuse and neglect remains and, as evidenced by the June death, the situation is too dire to wait for the Justice Department to act,” the group said.

Among the reforms agreed to in court Tuesday by the hospital are additional staffing; checking of patients every 15 minutes; and limiting to 25 the number of patients in the psychiatric emergency ward, officials said. In addition, the hospital said it is expanding crisis-prevention training for staff; expanding space to prevent overcrowding; and reducing patients’ wait time for release, treatment or placement in an inpatient bed.

On Monday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was appalled by the surveillance video.

“Look, I saw the film like everybody else did and I was — horrified is much too nice a word. Disgusted I think is a better word. I can’t explain what happened there.”

Green, a native of the island of Jamaica, lived alone in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood. She had no close family in the United States, and her neighbor Beatrice Wallace described her as a quiet woman who had few visitors and spent most of her free time at church.

The medical examiner is withholding autopsy results pending further study and investigation into the precise cause of death.

Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
On Preventing the FISA Amendments Act from Being Jammed Through the Senate

June 26, 2008

“I’m pleased we were able to delay a vote on FISA until after the July 4th holiday instead of having it jammed through. I hope that over the July 4th holiday, Senators will take a closer look at this deeply flawed legislation and understand how it threatens the civil liberties of the American people. It is possible to defend this country from terrorists while also protecting the rights and freedoms that define our nation.”

if you want to go to his site to leave him a thank you note, please do so here.

Or, you can stick your head further in the sand and hope Obama quits helping McCain prop up Bush’s illegal policies. You decide.

by Scott Creighton

Last night, Keith Olbermann delivered another of his “Special Comments“, this time, to do damage control on a position he took last week justifying Barack Obama’s support of the FISA Bill that promises to not only give immunity from civil prosecution to the telecom companies but it also greatly enhances the powers of the White House allowing them to secretly listen in to ALL communications without real oversight from a FISA court.

To sum up Olbermann’s position, he claims that the timing of the Housing legislation that ran over and forced the actual vote of the FISA Bill to be pushed back till June 8th is a great opportunity for Obama; to vote FOR THE BILL.

That’s right, Olbermann’s position is that Obama should vote FOR THE BILL.

There’s allot of convoluted thinking that takes place in Keith O’s comment, so we will take it one step at a time, shall we?

First of all, the really “big picture” here that everyone is going to claim justifies this kind of complicity with the criminals in the White House, is that, in the end, Obama MUST win the White House at all costs. So, of course, this is the root of Oblermann’s argument, that voting for this now will somehow help Obama win the election.

“Because, flatly, of all the measures that can be taken to aid our damaged nation, and our de-valued constitution, the first, if not the foremost, is not blocking telecom immunity, but making sure no Republican is in the White House past noon next January 20th.”

Glenn Greenwald (suspiciously not even mentioned in Olbermann’s comment after it was Greenwald’s reminding Olbermann of his original Special Comment on the subject where Keith called Bush a “Fascist” for supporting this legislation, that prompted this whole thing) pointed out earlier this week an election that just took place where a 12 time republican incumbent lost her seat to a 32 year old new-comer, based on, among other things, his position on the FISA Bill.  The republican incumbent even ran an attack ad with the flag and the children and the terrorists and the democrat’s refusal of the FISA Bill and the dem still won by a 12 point margin. It wasn’t even close.

Right now, with the economy what it is and the “war on terror” failing miserably, and republicans left and right practically begging for a new “terrorist” to save their campaigns, democrats across the board are in a very strong position.

And in fact, it’s not hard to explain to fiscally conservative, smaller government voters that this FISA Bill, as it is written, is wrong for this country.

But aside from all of that, Olbermann himself weakens his argument when he says that no matter what Obama does, he is going to be portrayed as being “weak on terror” no matter what. He says that Cheney will still call him “Osama with a tan” no matter what he does. Which is true; not that anyone but the 23%ersare buying that crap anymore anyway, but that much I give Keith.

But then, Keith leaps to the unbelievable conclusion after saying that, that Obama should vote FOR THE BILL anyway. WHAT?

He also then makes a terribly misguided argument that what’s more important than this FISA Bill now, is the election later. Now, I don’t want McCain in the White House anymore than most of you don’t, but, let’s face real facts; the vote has been rigged since 2000 and the only things that have happened since are that more of the paper-trail-less DieBold machines have been delivered and the democratic party has been telling us not to talk about “rigged elections”. That doesn’t bode well folks, for a free and clear election process.

But enough about that; let’s assume Olbermann is correct and the most important thing here, even more important than our 4th amendment rights, is the election in Nov. What does that mean one way or the other.

1. McCain wins and the FISA Bill gives Lieberman (his VP in my guess) more power to snoop on American citizens; the telecoms are given retroactive immunity for criminal behavior and now that that is established, McCain and others see the real opportunity (they can conduct illegal activities carte-blanche and fully expect, if caught, that they will get something passed in the legislative branch that makes it legal latter); Bush gives a Full Pardon to the telecoms from criminal prosecution before he leaves office (like he won’t do that no matter what); and we never know exactly who the US government was spying on BEFORE 9/11.

2. Obama wins and the FISA Bill gives his Clinton campaign staff the exact same powers of illegal wiretapping; Bush still gives blanket pardons to the telecoms from criminal prosecution; and we still never know WHO WAS THE US GOVERNMENT SPYING ON ILLEGALLY BEFORE 9/11.

That’s the winkle in the “criminal prosecution” argument of Keith’s; that the pardon Bush will give these companies will protect them from investigation and prosecution.

Now, Keith O does mention that little flap, but he blows it off by saying that would imply a corruption on the part of the president and point to his complicity in the crimes. Well, that hasn’t stopped them before and it won’t stop them in the future, plus, there is nothing that can be done after that anyway, so Keith’s argument is completely symbolic at that point.

He suggests that Bush wouldn’t do it because it would implicate him when he did and cites Nixon’s refusal to pardon his aides as proof. But Olbermann AMAZINGLY forgets to mention that Bush has ALREADY pardoned one person, Scooter Libby, so that he wouldn’t turn state’s evidence and sign about the Plame case. So, the Nixon argument is mute. We already know what Bush will do.

Then Olbermann sums it up this way…

“Explain that you are standing aside on civil immunity, not just for political expediency, but for a greater and more tangible good, the holding to account, of the most-corrupt, the most dangerous, and the most anti-democracy presidential administration in our long history.”

The civil cases are being fought tooth and nail in court, not because of money, but because the system is demanding to see the evidence; they have to know exactly who was spied on, when they were spied on, and what information was gathered in the process in order to move forward with the trials.

That is why this is out in the public costing the telecoms millions of dollars in PR and legal fees and greasing the palms of politicians. If they could have settled for money, don’t you think they would have done it long ago? It’s about knowing what this illegal program was all about. That is why it is so important.

And Olbermann knows that.

After this legislation passes, there is no way to “hold this administration accountable” on this issue. And Olbermann is not so stupid that he doesn’t know that as well.

In the end, this is what happens when you defend an indefensible position; you lose credibility. You start to sound like Bill O on Fox News.

I can’t wait to read Glenn Greenwald’s response to this.

In the end, what is most important here, is not giving away pieces of the constitution for the “promise” of change. That is a gamble, and one I might add, that I feel I have shown, is not worth the risk because there is no way to win it. But even if there was a way, retroactive immunity for illegally spying on American citizens is too high a price to pay for any elected office. Rigged elections or not.

No Keith, you are dead wrong on this and you should have just left it alone. Greenwald was absolutely right in his first article about your revised position on the FISABill and you have shown a desperation here today with this “special comment” that looks more like Rovian Spin than it does channeling Edward R. Murrow.

Your stock just fell again, Keith. Bad call.

(Let’s face it; when you are left of center, “moving to the center” is a nice way of saying adapting conservative positions as your own. Also, when you move to the center, in such a climate as this one, where 85% of the American people feel this country is on the WRONG HEADING, what you are really doing is validating the failed policies of the current administration. And of course, Obama waited till after the primaries and he had “drifted” to the progressive left to pick up Edward’s supporters and endorsement. As a side note, this is exactly why Kucinich has yet to give his nod to the Obama campaign. I’m glad there is at least one democrat left in the congress. Maybe they will put him in a museum or something.)

by Arianna Huffington from Huffpo, here.

Last Friday afternoon, the guests taking part in Sunday’s roundtable discussion on This Week had a pre-show call with George Stephanopoulos. One of the topics he raised was Obama’s perceived move to the center, and what it means. Thus began my weekend obsession. If you were within shouting distance of me, odds are we talked about it. I talked about it over lunch with HuffPost’s DC team, over dinner with friends, with the doorman at the hotel, and the driver on the way to the airport.

As part of this process, I looked at the Obama campaign not through the prism of my own progressive views and beliefs but through the prism of a cold-eyed campaign strategist who has no principles except winning. From that point of view, and taking nothing else into consideration, I can unequivocally say: the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. Tacking to the center is a losing strategy. And don’t let the latest head-to-head poll numbers lull you the way they lulled Hillary Clinton in December.

Running to the middle in an attempt to attract undecided swing voters didn’t work for Al Gore in 2000. It didn’t work for John Kerry in 2004. And it didn’t work when Mark Penn (obsessed with his “microtrends” and missing the megatrend) convinced Hillary Clinton to do it in 2008.

Fixating on — and pandering to — this fickle crowd is all about messaging tailored to avoid offending rather than to inspire and galvanize. And isn’t galvanizing the electorate to demand fundamental change the raison d’etre of the Obama campaign in the first place? This is how David Axelrod put it at the end of February, contrasting the tired Washington model of “I’ll do these things for you” with Obama’s “Let’s do these things together”:

“This has been the premise of Barack’s politics all his life, going back to his days as a community organizer,” Axelrod told me. “He has really lived and breathed it, which is why it comes across so authentically. Of course, the time also has to be right for the man and the moment to come together. And, after all the country has been through over the last seven years, the times are definitely right for the message that the only way to get real change is to activate the American people to demand it.”

Watering down that brand is the political equivalent of New Coke. Call it Obama Zero.

In 2004, the Kerry campaign’s obsession with undecided voters — voters so easily swayed that 46 percent of them found credible the Swift Boaters’ charges that Kerry might have faked his war wounds to earn a Purple Heart — allowed the race to devolve from a referendum on the future of the country into a petty squabble over whether Kerry had bled enough to warrant his medals.

Throughout the primary, Obama referred to himself as an “unlikely candidate.” Which he certainly was — and still is. And one of the things that turned him from “unlikely” upstart to presidential frontrunner is his ability to expand the electorate by convincing unlikely voters — some of the 83 million eligible voters who didn’t turn out in 2004 — to engage in the system.

So why start playing to the political fence sitters — staking out newly nuanced positions on FISA, gun control laws, expansion of the death penalty, and NAFTA?

In an interview with Nina Easton in Fortune Magazine, Obama was asked about having called NAFTA “a big mistake” and “devastating.” Obama’s reply: “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified.”

Overheated? So when he was campaigning in the Midwest, many parts of which have been, yes, devastated by economic changes since the passage of NAFTA, and he pledged to make use of a six-month opt-out clause in the trade agreement, that was “overheated?” Or was that one “amplified?”

Because if that’s the case, it would be helpful going forward if Obama would let us know which of his powerful rhetoric is “overheated” and/or “amplified,” so voters will know not to get their hopes too high.

When Obama kneecaps his own rhetoric and dilutes his positioning as a different kind of politician, he is also giving his opponent a huge opening to reassert the McCain as Maverick brand. We know that McCain has completely abandoned any legitimate claim on his maverick image, but the echoes of that reputation are still very much with us — especially among many in the media who would love nothing more than to be able to once again portray McCain as the real leader they fell in love with in 2000. And the new Straight Talk Express plane has been modeled on its namesake bus, decked out to better recreate the seduction.

The transition between the primaries and the general election — and from insurgent to frontrunner — is tricky. Even a confident campaign can be knocked off course. So this is when Obama most needs to remember what got him to this point — and stick with it.

In a Los Angeles Times article detailing Obama’s attempts at “shifting toward the center,” Matt Bennett of the centrist think tank Third Way says that Obama is a “good politician. He’s doing all he can to make sure people know he would govern as a post-partisan moderate.”

But isn’t being a “good politician” as it’s meant here exactly what Obama defined himself as being against? Instead of Third Way think tankers, Obama should listen to this guy:

“What’s stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics — the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems…. The time for that politics is over. It’s time to turn the page.”

That was Barack Obama in February of 2007, announcing his run for the White House. “I know I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington,” he said that day, “but I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”

Was that just “overheated and amplified” rhetoric?

The Obama brand has always been about inspiration, a new kind of politics, the audacity of hope, and “change we can believe in.” I like that brand. More importantly, voters — especially unlikely voters — like that brand.

Pulling it off the shelf and replacing it with a political product geared to pleasing America’s vacillating swing voters — the ones who will be most susceptible to the fear-mongering avalanche that has already begun — would be a fatal blunder.

Realpolitik is one thing. Realstupidpolitik is quite another.

by Glenn Greenwald from Commondreams here.

Republican Nancy Johnson of Connecticut was first elected to Congress in 1982, and proceeded to win re-election 11 consecutive times, often quite easily. In 2004, she defeated her Democratic challenger by 22 points. The district is historically Republican, and split its vote 49-49 for Bush and Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

In 2006, Rep. Johnson was challenged by a 31-year-old Democrat, Chris Murphy, who ran on a platform of, among other things, ending the Iraq War, opposing Bush policies on eavesdropping and torture, and rejecting what he called the “false choice between war and civil liberties.” Johnson outspent her Democratic challenger by a couple million dollars, and based her campaign on fear-mongering ads focusing on Murphy’s opposition to warrantless eavesdropping:

Rep. Nancy Johnson, a 12-term Republican who ran a tough-on-terror campaign and touted her co-authorship of the Medicare prescription drug legislation, lost her re-election bid Tuesday to anti-war Democrat Chris Murphy.

Murphy had 56 percent to Johnson’s 44 percent with 12 percent of the precincts voting. Johnson was the longest serving representative in Congress in state history.

Johnson’s final margin of defeat was 12 points. Despite continuing to represent a tough, split district, Rep. Murphy - as he runs for re-election for the first time - recently voted against passage of the FISA/telecom amnesty bill, obviously unafraid that such Terrorism fear-mongering works any longer.

That pattern has repeated itself over and over. In the 2006 midterm election, Karl Rove repeatedly made clear that the GOP strategy rested on making two National Security issues front and center in the midterm campaign: Democrats’ opposition to warrantless eavesdropping and their opposition to “enhanced interrogation techniques” against Terrorists. Not only did the Democrats swat away those tactics, taking away control of both houses of Congress in 2006, but more unusually, not a single Democratic incumbent in either the House or Senate - not one - lost an election.

With Rove’s National Security, Terrorist-fear-mongering campaign, huge numbers of GOP incumbents were removed from office and replaced with Democratic newcomers. Voters were simply impervious to claims that Democrats should be denied power because their opposition to eavesdropping and torture made them Soft on Terror. Earlier this year, Bill Foster made opposition to the Iraq War a centerpiece of his campaign - and emphatically opposed both warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity - and then won a special election to replace Denny Hastert in his bright red Illinois district.

As the 2008 election approaches, the Democrats’ position has strengthened further still. In fact, in attempting to determine the best targets for the $325,000 we have raised so far to target Bush-enabling Democrats in Congress, the most difficult obstacle by far has been to find even a single Democratic incumbent who is vulnerable. Not only does it appear that they all are likely to be re-elected, it’s actually difficult to identify ones who have any real chance of losing. That’s how weakened the GOP brand is and how vehemently the country has rejected their ideology and politics - in every realm, including national security.

* * * * *

So what, then, is the basis for the almost-unanimously held Beltway conventional view that Democrats generally, and Barack Obama particularly, will be politically endangered unless they adopt the Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism and National Security, which - for some reason - is called “moving to the Center”? There doesn’t appear to be any basis for that view. It’s just an unexamined relic from past times, the immovable, uncritical assumption of Beltway strategists and pundits who can’t accept that it isn’t 1972 anymore - or even 2002.

Beyond its obsolescence, this “move-to-the-center” cliché ignores the extraordinary political climate prevailing in this country, in which more than 8 out of 10 Americans believe the Government is fundamentally on the wrong track and the current President is one of the most unpopular in American history, if not the most unpopular. The very idea that Bush/Cheney policies are the “center,” or that one must move towards their approach in order to succeed, ignores the extreme shifts in public opinion generally regarding how our country has been governed over the last seven years.

One could argue that national security plays a larger role in presidential elections than in Congressional races, and that very well may be. But was John Kerry’s narrow 2004 loss to George Bush due to the perception that Kerry - who ran as fast as he could towards the mythical Center - was Soft on Terrorism? Or was it due to the understandable belief that his rush to the Center meant that he stood for nothing, that he was afraid of his own views - the real hallmark, the very definition, of weakness?

By the time of the 2004 election, huge numbers of Americans already turned against Bush’s position on the War and ceased trusting him even in the realm of National Security. Thus, the defining claim of Bush’s 2004 acceptance speech at the GOP Convention - the central distinction he drew between himself and Kerry - was not that his National Security views were right, but rather, was this:

This election will also determine how America responds to the continuing danger of terrorism - and you know where I stand. . . . In the last four years, you and I have come to know each other. Even when we don’t agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand.

Bush’s ability to project “Strength” came not from advocacy of specific policies, but from his claim to stand by his beliefs even when they were politically unpopular.

For that reason, isn’t the perception that Obama is abandoning his own core beliefs - or, worse, that he has none - a much greater political danger than a failure to move to the so-called “Center” by suddenly adopting Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies? As a result of Obama’s reversal on FISA, his very noticeable change in approach regarding Israel, his conspicuous embrace of the Scalia/Thomas view in recent Supreme Court cases, and a general shift in tone, a very strong media narrative is arising that Obama is abandoning his core beliefs for political gain. That narrative - that he’s afraid to stand by his own beliefs - appears far more likely to result in a perception that Obama is “Weak” than a refusal to embrace Bush/Cheney national security positions.

What’s most amazing about the unexamined premise that Democrats must “move to the Center” (i.e., adopt GOP views) is that this is the same advice Democrats have been following over and over and which keeps leading to their abject failure. It’s the advice Kerry followed in 2004. It’s why Democrats rejected Howard Dean and chose John Kerry instead.

And in 2002, huge numbers of Congressional Democrats voted to authorize the attack on Iraq based on this same premise that doing so would enable them to avoid looking Weak on National Security. The GOP then based its whole 2002 campaign on attacking Democrats as Weak on National Security and the Democrats were crushed - because, having accepted rather than debated the GOP premises, there was no way to challenge GOP National Security arguments. What makes Democrats look weak is their patent fear of standing by their own views. A Washington Post article last week on Obama’s move to the center included this insight:

“American voters tend to reward politicians who take clear stands,” said David Sirota, a former Democratic aide on Capitol Hill and author of the new populist-themed book “The Uprising.” “When Obama takes these mushy positions, it could speak to a character issue. Voters that don’t pay a lot of attention look at one thing: ‘Does the guy believe in something?’ They may be saying the guy is afraid of his own shadow.”

The central problem is that if Democrats embrace the GOP framework of National Security - that “Strength” means what the GOP says it means - then that framework gets enforced and perpetuated, and it’s a framework within which Democrats can’t possibly win, because Republicans will always “out-Strength” Democrats within that framework. It’s only by challenging and disputing the underlying premises can Democrats change the way that “strength” and “weakness” are understood.

The Democrats had such a smashing victory in 2006 because - for the first time in a long time, and really despite themselves - there was a perception (rightly or wrongly) that they actually stood for something different than the GOP in National Security (an end to the War in Iraq). Drawing a clear distinction with the deeply unpopular GOP is how Democrats look strong. The advice that they should “move to the center” and copy Republicans is guaranteed to make them look weak - because it is weak. It’s the definition of weakness.

The most distinctive and potent - one could even say exciting - aspect of Obama’s campaign had been his aggressive refusal to accept GOP pieties on National Security, his insistence that the GOP would lose - and should lose - debates over who is “stronger” and more “patriotic” and who will keep us more safe. The widely-celebrated foreign policy memo written by Obama’s adviser, Samantha Power, heaped scorn on Washington’s national security “conventional wisdom,” emphasizing how weak and vulnerable it has made the U.S. When Obama took that approach, he appeared to be, and in fact was, resolute and unapologetic in defending his own views - the very attributes that define “strength.”

The advice he’s getting, and apparently beginning to follow, is now the opposite: that he should shed his prior beliefs in favor of the amorphous, fuzzy, conventional GOP-leaning Center, that he should cease to insist on a re-examination of National Security premises and instead live within the GOP framework. That’s likely to lead to many things, but a perception of strength isn’t one of them. One of the very few things in the universe with a worse track record than America’s dominant Foreign Policy Community is the central religious belief of the Democratic consultant class and Beltway punditry that Democrats, to be successful, must shed their own beliefs and “move to the Center.”

* * * * *
As a brief follow-up to the Keith-Olbermann-promoted claim that Obama’s support for the FISA bill is justifiable not only because it lets him avoid being depicted as “soft on terror,” but also because it leaves open the possibility that Obama can criminally prosecute telecoms once he’s President, NPR correspondent Daniel Schorr said last January that he “can imagine Mr. Bush, if nothing else avails, issuing a blanket pardon for phone companies that may have broken the law.” As I pointed out on Friday, a Bush pardon would completely foreclose any Secret Plan to prosecute the telecoms criminally, even if Obama really did harbor such a plan and intended to execute it (despite never having even hinted at any such thing). On Friday, Olbermann announced that he intends to deliver a “Special Comment” on Monday’s show to elaborate on his “Obama/FISA” defense. When doing so, he should address this rather towering defect in his Obama-defending theory.