Showdown // Current TV

What If Obama Loses?

Commented: "I am voting for Obama because he is the best person for the job. I... more

sometimes_you_gotta
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3 years ago
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60 comments

Biden and Palin to debate in St. Louis

In what some are hailing as the biggest intellectual mismatch in US politics since the... more

rwylie
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3 years ago
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1 comment

Calls rise among Republicans for Sarah Palin to step down from GOP ticket

As the economy worsens, so does Palin in the eyes of fellow Republicans... Sarah... more

julesrs007
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3 years ago
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146 comments

Campaign Update 09/26/08

Congress tries to hammer out a plan, Ted Stevens heads to court, and John McCain waits... more

Brett_Erlich
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3 years ago
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10 comments

McCain will attend presidential debate tonight

McCain will be attending tonight's originally schedule debate, as he feels the... more

CHARMOSH
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3 years ago
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129 comments

Campaign Update 09/25/08

A Senate rundown, the Rick Davis mortgage connection, and a wacky day for John McCain... more

Brett_Erlich
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3 years ago
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15 comments

Obama will make debate a townhall if McCain doesn't show

Barack Obama is committed to hosting a public, televised event Friday night in... more

bmltv
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3 years ago
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48 comments

McCain, Obama headed to Washington for bailout talks

(CNN) -- Presidential candidates Sen. John McCain -- who said Wednesday that he was... more

ivxx
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3 years ago
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38 comments

McCain Calls For More Nuclear Power Jobs

**** Is this what voters want? Nuclear Power and John McCain?

MeganMcKenzie
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3 years ago
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7 comments

Campaign Update 09/24/08

Joe Biden continues to speak, Sarah Palin talks kids with Karzai, and Ron Paul throws... more

Brett_Erlich
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3 years ago
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14 comments

Is the media brainwashing the public to divert us from the real issues ?

Is the media brainwashing us to divert us from the real issues ? Think about the... more

dissimulator
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3 years ago
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47 comments

The biggest story of the campaign

Mark this day down. Today – last night, actually – the New York Times and Roll Call reported (it's hard to see who was first) what may be the biggest political story of the campaign. How big? John McCain might have to fire his campaign manager. Big enough?

The story is this. The lobbying firm of Rick Davis, the manager, was being paid $15,000 a month by Freddie Mac until last month. That fact is a direct contradiction of words McCain had spoken Sunday night. At that time, responding to a Times story being prepared for Monday's paper revealing that Davis had been the head of a lobbying consortium led by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae until 2005, McCain said Davis had done no further work for either mortgage giant.

Someone's lying – either Davis to McCain, or McCain to the public. I trust you see the problem here.

The stories are here, by David Kirkpatrick (whose reporting on this topic has been leading the way) and Jackie Calmes of the Times, and here, by Tory Newmeyer of Roll Call. You should definitely read every word of both. I think after you do you'll agree that, depending on how big the pick-up is today and how hard the Obama camp presses this, it's pretty difficult to see how Davis can stay on as campaign manager.

The revelations are devastating for two reasons. First, as I noted above, either Davis lied to McCain or McCain lied to the voters. From the Times story:

On Sunday, in an interview with CNBC and The Times, Mr. McCain responded to a question about that tie between Mr. Davis and the two mortgage companies by saying that he "has had nothing to do with it since, and I'll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it."

Who lied to whom? This is the kind of thing we might not know for a while, or maybe never. My hunch would be that Davis concealed it from McCain and that McCain, as is his wont, just winged it Sunday night, without really caring whether it was true, because that's what he does. But let me clearly label that a hunch. I don't know. But it doesn't really matter.

The second reason this is devastating is maybe even bigger than the question of the Sunday lie, which is limited in scope after all to a sort of narrow legal question. The second reason is that McCain has been going around putting lobbyists, specifically for F & F, at the heart of the whole problem. This is from the Roll Call piece:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac emerged as issues in the presidential race last week because of turmoil in the financial markets. In a radio address from Green Bay, Wis., on Saturday, McCain blamed the companies and their political clout for creating the housing mess now roiling Wall Street. "At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,'' he said. "Using money and influence, they prevented reforms that would have curbed their power and limited their ability to damage our economy. And now, as ever, the American taxpayers are left to pay the price for Washington's failure.''

I just can't picture any way of wiggling out of that. He is talking in those sentences about his own campaign manager! And he's going to be able to keep him on? Strange things happen all the time, but I have trouble seeing it.

Oh and by the way: No wonder Steve Schmidt, another top McCain strategist, said on a Monday conference call with reporters that "Whatever The New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization." He obviously knew that more was coming and was trying to lay some discrediting groundwork.

This is a terrible, terrible story for McCain, and yes, the biggest political story of the general-election campaign so far.

Mark this day down. Today – last night, actually – the New York Times and... more

bansheewail
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3 years ago
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31 comments

A new law of nature:Ecuador next week votes on giving legal rights to rivers, forests and air

Ecuador next week votes on giving legal rights to rivers, forests and air. Is this the end of damaging development? The world is watchingClare Kendall The

The South American republic of Ecuador will next week consider what many countries in the world would say is unthinkable. People will be asked to vote on Sunday on a new constitution that would give Ecuador's tropical forests, islands, rivers and air similar legal rights to those normally granted to humans. If they vote yes - and polls show that 56% are for and only 23% are against - then an already approved bill of rights for nature will be introduced, and new laws will change the legal status of nature from being simply property to being a right-bearing entity.

The proposed bill states: "Natural communities and ecosystems possess the unalienable right to exist, flourish and evolve within Ecuador. Those rights shall be self-executing, and it shall be the duty and right of all Ecuadorian governments, communities, and individuals to enforce those rights."

Thomas Linzey, a US lawyer who has helped to develop the new legal framework for nature, says: "The dominant form of environmental protection in industrialised countries is based on the regulatory system. Governments permit and legalise the discharge of certain amounts of toxics into the environment. As a form of environmental protection, it's not working.

"In the same way, compensation is measured in terms of that injury to a person or people. Under the new system, it will be measured according to damage to the ecosystem. The new system is, in essence, an attempt to codify sustainable development. The new laws would grant people the right to sue on behalf of an ecosystem, even if not actually injured themselves."

Until now, all legal frameworks have been anthropocentric, or people-based. To file an environmental lawsuit requires a person to provide evidence of personal injury. This can be extremely difficult. To provide a conclusive link, say, between a cancer and polluted drinking water is, legally speaking, virtually impossible.

The origins of this apparent legal tidal shift lie in Ecuador's growing disillusionment with foreign multinationals. The country, which contains every South American ecosystem within its borders, which include the Galapagos Islands, has had disastrous collisions with multi-national companies. Many, from banana companies to natural gas extractors, have exploited its natural resources and left little but pollution and poverty in their wake.

Now it is in the grip of a bitter lawsuit against US oil giant Chevron, formerly Texaco, over its alleged dumping of billions of gallons of crude oil and toxic waste waters into the Amazonian jungle over two decades.

It is described as the Amazonian Chernobyl, and 30,000 local people claim that up to 18m tonnes of oil was dumped into unlined pits over two decades, in defiance of international guidelines, and contaminating groundwater over an area of some 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) and leading to a plethora of serious health problems for anyone living in the area. Chevron has denied the allegations. In April, a court-appointed expert announced in a report that, should Chevron lose, it would have to pay up to $16bn (£8.9bn) in damages.

Ecuador next week votes on giving legal rights to rivers, forests and air. Is this the... more

bansheewail
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3 years ago
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34 comments

N.Korea expels IAEA monitors from atom bomb plant

North Korea has expelled U.N. monitors from its plutonium-making nuclear plant,... more

WorldPeaceTV
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3 years ago
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23 comments

Obama says debates should go forward

Responding to John McCain's calls to suspend campaigning and postpone the... more

Tori
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3 years ago
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131 comments

McCain: focus should be on economy not debates

John McCain has asked to postpone the first presidential debate on Friday and is... more

Tori
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3 years ago
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131 comments

Campaign Update 09/23/08

The dirty joke edition of Campaign Update looks at John McCain and his Brazilian... more

Brett_Erlich
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3 years ago
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9 comments

Why Obama will lose the election

If the dominant culture refuses to fight the inherent racism in America, Mccain will... more

skribla66
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3 years ago
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6 comments

Paulson is Stealing ALL THE CASH IN AMERICA

Please check my math on the "bailout" $700,000,000,000 divided by... more

aliasone
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3 years ago
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30 comments

$13 Billion in Iraq aid wasted or stolen, Ex-Investigator says

A former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion meant for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through elaborate fraud schemes.

Salam Adhoob, a former chief investigator for Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm of the Democratic caucus, that an Iraqi auditing bureau "could not properly account for" the money.

While many of the projects audited "were not needed -- and many were never built," he said, "this very real fact remains: Billions of American dollars that paid for these projects are now gone."

He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi officials was never published because "nobody cares" about investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared for their safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered.

Adhoob said he reported the abuses to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an agency charged by Congress with helping to root out cases of waste, fraud and abuse in the nearly $50 billion U.S. reconstruction effort. SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said her agency continues to "actively follow up" on Adhoob's information, but she would not discuss ongoing investigations.

Adhoob was one of three Iraqi men who testified before the Democratic panel yesterday. Abbas S. Mehdi, a former Iraqi official who held a cabinet-level post, told of widespread corruption. And an Iraqi American who for five years has been a senior adviser to Defense and State department officials in Iraq testified in silhouette by video from an undisclosed location because, he said, he feared for his safety. In a modified voice, he said Iraqi government officials worked with al-Qaeda terrorists at the Baiji refinery to steal oil to sell on the black market.

Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who chairs the committee, said that "taxpayers have been bled dry with massive misuse of public dollars."

"It is all pretty sobering," he added later. "Our country cannot continue to be blind or oblivious to what is happening."

Adhoob, who worked for three years at the Iraqi agency and oversaw 200 investigators and other employees, said he had a "firsthand, up-close look at corruption" and eventually had to flee the country because of death threats. He said his agency -- the Commission on Public Integrity, which U.S. government officials say is the equivalent of the FBI -- estimates that an additional $9 billion in U.S. funds was lost because of corruption and waste. Because the $13 billion figure came from the Iraqi auditing bureau and the $9 billion figure came from Adhoob's agency, Dorgan's staff members said there could be some overlap.

.......there's more......A former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion meant for... more

bansheewail
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3 years ago
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