tagged w/ President Obama
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President Obama signed a law that gutted the reporting requirements originally included in the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act. Before these changes were made the STOCK Act required congressional staffers to disclose their finances to the public to help ensure they were not engaging in corrupt practices.
But on second thought, President Obama and Congress decided that congressional staffers should be able to escape transparency.
President Obama quietly signed legislation Monday that rolled back a provision of the STOCK Act that required high-ranking federal employees to disclose their financial information online.
The White House announced Monday that the president had signed S. 716, which repealed a requirement of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act requiring the disclosure, which had previously been delayed several times by Congress.
You never heard of this political project to reinstate corruption incentives? Don’t be surprised.
Both chambers of Congress quickly — and near silently — approved the repeal legislation at the end of last week by unanimous consent, just before heading home to their districts.
That’s right. Unanimous consent, no one wanted to put their name down as openly supporting corruption while supporting corruption. And now President Obama has signed the bill guaranteeing a more corrupt Washington...
Continued at:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/04/15/insider-dealing-for-insider-trading-congress-guts-stock-act-reporting-requirements/President Obama signed a law that gutted the reporting requirements originally... more
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Dagum
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added this
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1 month ago
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Nek Muhammad knew he was being followed.
On a hot day in June 2004, the Pashtun tribesman was lounging inside a mud compound in South Waziristan, speaking by satellite phone to one of the many reporters who regularly interviewed him on how he had fought and humbled Pakistan’s army in the country’s western mountains. He asked one of his followers about the strange, metallic bird hovering above him.
Less than 24 hours later, a missile tore through the compound, severing Mr. Muhammad’s left leg and killing him and several others, including two boys, ages 10 and 16. A Pakistani military spokesman was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, saying that Pakistani forces had fired at the compound.
That was a lie.
Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.
That back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the C.I.A. to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization.
The C.I.A. has since conducted hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed thousands of people, Pakistanis and Arabs, militants and civilians alike. While it was not the first country where the United States used drones, it became the laboratory for the targeted killing operations that have come to define a new American way of fighting, blurring the line between soldiers and spies and short-circuiting the normal mechanisms by which the United States as a nation goes to war.
Neither American nor Pakistani officials have ever publicly acknowledged what really happened to Mr. Muhammad — details of the strike that killed him, along with those of other secret strikes, are still hidden in classified government databases. But in recent months, calls for transparency from members of Congress and critics on both the right and left have put pressure on Mr. Obama and his new C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, to offer a fuller explanation of the goals and operation of the drone program, and of the agency’s role.
Mr. Brennan, who began his career at the C.I.A. and over the past four years oversaw an escalation of drone strikes from his office at the White House, has signaled that he hopes to return the agency to its traditional role of intelligence collection and analysis. But with a generation of C.I.A. officers now fully engaged in a new mission, it is an effort that could take years.
Today, even some of the people who were present at the creation of the drone program think the agency should have long given up targeted killings.
Ross Newland, who was a senior official at the C.I.A.’s headquarters in Langley, Va., when the agency was given the authority to kill Qaeda operatives, says he thinks that the agency had grown too comfortable with remote-control killing, and that drones have turned the C.I.A. into the villain in countries like Pakistan, where it should be nurturing relationships in order to gather intelligence.
As he puts it, “This is just not an intelligence mission.”
From Car Thief to Militant
By 2004, Mr. Muhammad had become the undisputed star of the tribal areas, the fierce mountain lands populated by the Wazirs, Mehsuds and other Pashtun tribes who for decades had lived independent of the writ of the central government in Islamabad. A brash member of the Wazir tribe, Mr. Muhammad had raised an army to fight government troops and had forced the government into negotiations. He saw no cause for loyalty to the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani military spy service that had given an earlier generation of Pashtuns support during the war against the Soviets.
Many Pakistanis in the tribal areas viewed with disdain the alliance that President Pervez Musharraf had forged with the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They regarded the Pakistani military that had entered the tribal areas as no different from the Americans — who they believed had begun a war of aggression in Afghanistan, just as the Soviets had years earlier.
Born near Wana, the bustling market hub of South Waziristan, Mr. Muhammad spent his adolescent years as a petty car thief and shopkeeper in the city’s bazaar. He found his calling in 1993, around the age of 18, when he was recruited to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and rose quickly through the group’s military hierarchy. He cut a striking figure on the battlefield with his long face and flowing jet black hair.
When the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001, he seized an opportunity to host the Arab and Chechen fighters from Al Qaeda who crossed into Pakistan to escape the American bombing.
For Mr. Muhammad, it was partly a way to make money, but he also saw another use for the arriving fighters. With their help, over the next two years he launched a string of attacks on Pakistani military installations and on American firebases in Afghanistan.
C.I.A. officers in Islamabad urged Pakistani spies to lean on the Waziri tribesman to hand over the foreign fighters, but under Pashtun tribal customs that would be treachery. Reluctantly, Mr. Musharraf ordered his troops into the forbidding mountains to deliver rough justice to Mr. Muhammad and his fighters, hoping the operation might put a stop to the attacks on Pakistani soil, including two attempts on his life in December 2003.
But it was only the beginning. In March 2004, Pakistani helicopter gunships and artillery pounded Wana and its surrounding villages. Government troops shelled pickup trucks that were carrying civilians away from the fighting and destroyed the compounds of tribesmen suspected of harboring foreign fighters. The Pakistani commander declared the operation an unqualified success, but for Islamabad, it had not been worth the cost in casualties.
A cease-fire was negotiated in April during a hastily arranged meeting in South Waziristan, during which a senior Pakistani commander hung a garland of bright flowers around Mr. Muhammad’s neck. The two men sat together and sipped tea as photographers and television cameras recorded the event.
Both sides spoke of peace, but there was little doubt who was negotiating from strength. Mr. Muhammad would later brag that the government had agreed to meet inside a religious madrasa rather than in a public location where tribal meetings are traditionally held. “I did not go to them; they came to my place,” he said. “That should make it clear who surrendered to whom.”
Read more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/world/asia/origins-of-cias-not-so-secret-drone-war-in-pakistan.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0Nek Muhammad knew he was being followed.
On a hot day in June 2004, the Pashtun... more
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The GOP Tea Party cretins are just too damn busy these days playing GOTCHA with President Obama...
It is the most disgusting display of jealousy and hatred, I have ever encountered. ... If I didn't believe in What Goes Around Comes Around, I would be over the top, filled with consternation, watching their creepy ploys... thinkingblue
(WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND, means that whatever you do in this life to other people, the same will return to you. Maybe not in the exact same way, but trust me, payback is a mess! http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060901035043AAqXnw7 )
Jump the couch - A defining moment when you know someone has gone off the deep end; inspired by Tom Cruise's behavior on Oprah.
Jump the shark - The precise moment when you know a program, band, actor, politician, or other public figure has taken a turn for the worse, gone downhill, become irreversibly bad, is unredeemable, etc.; the moment you realize decay has set in. http://www.urbandictionary.com/The GOP Tea Party cretins are just too damn busy these days playing GOTCHA with... more
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Corporate America sees no reason to educate working class students beyond the most basic level. They are seen as nothing more than future low paid drones in a brutal dog-eat-dog-cat-eat-mouse economy. The war against public education is a class war being waged by the wealthy against a growing working class resistance.
It is a New Civil War.Corporate America sees no reason to educate working class students beyond the most... more
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“It is no small irony that Obama, who declared that he would halt the George W. Bush administration’s violations of personal freedoms, has exceeded the mendacity of his predecessors in creating a new star chamber to hunt down his detractors and enemies,“It is no small irony that Obama, who declared that he would halt the George W.... more
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Larry Wilkerson, who worked in the Bush/Cheney administration, states emphatically in this interview he feels President Obama allowed both President Bush and Vice President Cheney get away with war crimes and crimes against humanity by not prosecuting them in regard to the Iraq War.
Over 4,500 Americans were killed in the Iraq war and another 60,000 were seriously wounded and there are estimates that close to 600,000 Muslims lost their lives in the Iraq war which was started with false information of WMDs and nukes.
Watch video here:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10176Larry Wilkerson, who worked in the Bush/Cheney administration, states emphatically in... more
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If I was President Obama, Republicans would add one more adjective to the lexicon of insults they already embrace.....BITCH! They might even call me Veto Vera, because I’d reject every single bill that crossed my desk that helped the rich at the expense of the everyday working American people. Oh, I know the Republicans do clever things like attach their earmarks to the Defense bill, putting the President in a position of making a choice between stranding soldiers without funding or signing on to their bullshit, but they wouldn’t do that to me.
I’d call a press conference and tell the country....”the Republicans are willing to leave our brave soldiers, who are fighting to preserve our freedom, stranded on the battlefield so they can give another tax break to the wealthy and finance another boondoggle in their districts. They have a decision to make. They will either stand up for the people who sent them here to fight for the good of the country and honor our brave soldiers who pledge allegiance to us all or they can continue to serve the rich and powerful. I’m going to give them a chance to reconsider because I’m going to veto this bullshit and send it back to them.”
And then I’d stamp a veto on the bill in front of the entire country.
Read more.....If I was President Obama, Republicans would add one more adjective to the lexicon of... more
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FayPax
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added this
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17 days ago
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I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors. The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I would have anticipated, and they don’t seem easy to explain. In many ways the worst is what you mention, Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project.I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008... more
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According to PEER, the new guidelines, if enacted, would “allow cleanup many times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted.”
Furthermore, PEER, which is in opposition to the changes, has stated that the proposition is a “win for the nuclear industry which seeks what its proponents call a ‘new normal’ for radiation exposure among the U.S population.”According to PEER, the new guidelines, if enacted, would “allow cleanup many... more
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While liberal pundits in the US assert their devotion to democratic principles by revelling in decrying the abuses of any tyrannical government other than their own (especially if that government is out of favour with the US) the Obama administration continues to distinguish itself as one dedicated to maintaining fear-mongering and secrecy in all matters – from the profound (its drone policy, for instance) to the trivial.While liberal pundits in the US assert their devotion to democratic principles by... more
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Following a full court press by the Obama administration, and specifically gun tzar Joe Biden, to legislate "stronger" gun law in the last several months ever since the Sandy Hook massacre, the initiative may have just suffered a terminal defeat following a failure to even pass a bipartisan background check amendment in the democrat-controlled Senate.
CBS reports that "In a major setback for gun control advocates, the Senate Wednesday voted down a key amendment to the embattled Democratic gun bill, signaling the increasingly dim prospects of any meaningful legislative action aimed at strengthening America's gun laws. The bipartisan Manchin-Toomey amendment, a background check expansion devised by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and a handful of other lawmakers, earned only 54 votes, falling six votes short of the 60-vote threshold. Vice President Joe Biden, who led the Obama administration's months-long lobbying effort on behalf of stronger gun laws, presided over the vote...
Continued at:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-17/background-check-amendment-fails-pass-senate-gun-control-tatters-obama-make-statemenFollowing a full court press by the Obama administration, and specifically gun tzar... more
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Dagum
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added this
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1 month ago
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-Truth often shows up at the most inopportune times, especially for politicians.
“You have to hand it to Barack Obama when it comes to having it both ways” writes the publisher of Harpers Magazine, John MacArthur, in a recent article, entitled “Obama’s Real Political Program.” For “[n]ever has a leading American Democrat” done so little, MacArthur says, “in support of less-privileged people while getting so much undeserved credit for ‘trying’ to help them.”
Truly, what a strange and bitter pill to swallow.-Truth often shows up at the most inopportune times, especially for politicians.... more
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The American Civil Liberties Union joined Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and 22 other rights organizations that signed an open letter calling on Obama to close the prison. “The situation is the predictable result of continuing to hold prisoners indefinitely without charge for more than 11 years,” the letter read. “We urge you to begin working to transfer the remaining detained men to their home countries or other countries for resettlement, or to charge them in a court that comports with fair trial standards.”The American Civil Liberties Union joined Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch... more
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discourses on the implicit dissonances embedded in some people’s pleas that we all “just get along” with the Conservoturds. It comes down to this: What will you give up for comity, knowing it will be YOU who DOES the conceding?discourses on the implicit dissonances embedded in some people’s pleas that we... more
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What the president is proposing is going to hurt a lot of people,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said Friday after the White House confirmed that President Obama’s budget will include cuts in Social Security.What the president is proposing is going to hurt a lot of people,” Sen. Bernie... more
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The United States’ ongoing drone campaign in Pakistan is a violation of the South Asian nation’s sovereignty, as it is being conducted without the consent of its elected representatives or that of the legitimate Government, a United Nations independent expert has warned.The United States’ ongoing drone campaign in Pakistan is a violation of the... more
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Chalmers Johnson called the CIA the president’s private army. Imperial Rome had its praetorian guard. It served and protected emperors.
CIA rogues work the same way. They do lots more than that. Extrajudicial killing is prioritized. Much that goes on is secret. Unaccountability keeps Congress and ordinary people uninformed.Chalmers Johnson called the CIA the president’s private army. Imperial Rome had... more
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BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - In the gun-friendly state of Louisiana, the backlash against President Barack Obama's proposed restrictions on firearms seems to be everywhere.
It can be seen in the frenzied sales and empty racks at Jim's Firearms store in the state capital, Baton Rouge, where customers have rushed to make purchases as Congress weighs several gun-control bills.
It is evident in the state Legislature, where a series of bills aimed at protecting gun owners' rights have been introduced as a counter-punch to Obama's push in Washington.
It is abundantly clear in the sea of hands that pop up when a congressman asks an overflow crowd in Baton Rouge how many are worried about their constitutional right to bear arms being threatened.
Obama's call for Americans to stand up against gun violence after the December massacre of 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school reignited a national debate over gun control, and drew calls for expanded background checks on gun buyers and a ban on military-style "assault" weapons.
A Senate committee will take up at least four gun-control proposals on Thursday.
But in Louisiana and other states where traditions of gun ownership and hunting run deep, the Democratic president's efforts have not just failed to register: they have galvanized opposition to any attempts to restrict firearms - and complicated the prospects for gun-control measures in Congress.
"This has been a rallying cry for people to draw a line in the sand and say, 'We are not going to allow this to happen to our guns,'" said state Representative Jeff Thompson, a Republican who has launched a campaign called "Defend Louisiana" to fight federal and state gun-control proposals.
The revolt against gun restrictions in states like Louisiana poses a dilemma for some Democrats from conservative, pro-gun states who in recent years have largely managed to avoid dwelling on the issue.
Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana is among a half-dozen Democratic senators from such states who are up for re-election next year and are likely to be crucial in determining what gun-control proposals emerge from the Democratic-led Senate.
In Louisiana, Republicans and gun-rights groups are vowing to make Landrieu pay next year if she supports any of the measures. When asked about the pending gun legislation, Landrieu treads carefully.
http://news.yahoo.com/louisiana-conservative-backlash-against-gun-control-230743327.htmlBATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - In the gun-friendly state of Louisiana, the... more
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A popular hunting shotgun could be banned under one of the bills moving through the state Capitol.
A pump or semi-automatic shotgun is the gun most hunters in Colorado use. It’s a gun state Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, says could be banned under a bill that’s already passed the House and Gov. John Hickenlooper says he’ll sign.
“They’re coming after the standard shotgun,” Brophy told CBS4 Political Specialist Shaun Boyd.
Brophy says if Democrats succeed in passing a bill limiting large capacity magazines in Colorado, they’ll outlaw the most popular selling firearm for hunting.
“Hundreds of thousands of pheasant hunters are probably going to be carrying around a gun they won’t be able to replace after July 1 this year,” he said.
Brophy points to a section of the bill that defines a high-capacity magazine as one capable of accepting or — that can be readily converted — to accept more than 15 rounds or eight shotgun shells.
“This is where shotgun shells go inside this tube here,” Brophy showed Boyd, “You can screw this part off the top and screw on an extender to this tube to allow it to hold more than eight rounds. It is readily convertible, which by definition in the bill, makes the whole thing a high-capacity magazine.”
http://denver.cbslocal.com/2013/03/01/popular-standard-shotgun-could-be-banned-under-proposed-bill/A popular hunting shotgun could be banned under one of the bills moving through the... more
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