Free Gaza Movement Seeks Help

Note: After a lifetime of fighting bigotry I have been called anti-Semite and Jew Hater (at Daily Kos yesterday). Such is the mindset of those dedicated to war and militarism. Stand up for innocent Palestinian families and you are a "Jew hater". [See The Politics of Anti-Semitism for a discussion of this repulsive tactic.]

An effective voice against Israeli militarism is the Free Gaza Movement, a "human rights group that in August 2008 sent the first international boats to land in the port of Gaza in 41 years ... (raising) international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip ... ."

Of course, militarists seeing Palestinians as less-than-human have said the effort to ship aid to starving families is inherently anti-Semitic or sympathetic to terrorists, yada, yada.

It's a lie. Support the Free Gaza Movement.

GIYUS Support Killing Palestinians

Update II: UN accuses Israel of Gaza 'negligence or recklessness' Inquiry finds Israel responsible for deaths, injuries and damage to UN buildings

Update: A few facts have come to light from the insightful comments in a crosspost. There is no occupation, and no walls. Palestinians [who do not exist] are free to move around in the West Bank and Gaza as they wish in accordance with their pursuit of happiness, with Israel cheering them on. There is no Israeli militarism and no PR apparatus in support of Israeli militarism - which does not in any event exist.

To deny these facts above is to subscribe to a "world Zionist conspiracy" theory and/or be nonconstructive and/or be drunk/on drugs/off drugs/high and/or hear voices/be insane and/or be a twit and/or be a whack job, and/or an anti-Semite and/or a "Jew hater" and/or a believer in the "decoder ring" [whatever that is; have to admit that last one does seem odd]. Please revise your worldview accordingly and know that when Israel bombs and shoots Palestinians it means well. But I'll say this, these pro-militarist-guys can always be counted on to demonstrate your point in the Comments section. :) See the comments section at: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/5/727993/-GIYUS-Support-Killing-Palestinians.

Readers may have noticed Robert Naiman's On Israeli Settlement Freeze, Public Has Obama's Back at MyDD.

Naiman’s piece is modest, asserting that the American public supports the settlement freeze.

In the face of decades of Israeli-American rejectionisism and continuing terror in the occupied territories, readers may find the settlement freeze diverting from the nature of the savage enterprise of illegally occupying Gaza and the West Bank. [See B'TSELEM at virtually any given moment.]

Yet Naiman comes under attack for his, I think, somewhat meek conclusion reflected in the title.
Ignoring Naiman's argument addressing American public opinion, the GIYUS.org (Give Israel Your United Support) talking points begin to flow.

At least Naiman was spared the ad hominem attacks, but if he were to crosspost around, it gets dirty fast. Check out Salon's lame piece on the film on Rachie Corrie, for example.

Who is GIYUS.org?

It's an online pressure group that has been around for a few years. They mean to insult and annoy, but not address facts or data.

GIYUS.org is, as Alan Johnston notes, a “little army of cyber soldiers” who will do anything but engage arguments. Their mission is to slime, divert, and repeat talking points ad nauseam.

See Israel backed by army of cyber-soldiers (Farago. UK Times, July 28, 2006).

Writes Yonit Farago:

Israel’s Government has thrown its weight behind efforts by supporters to counter what it believes to be negative bias and a tide of pro-Arab propaganda.

The Foreign Ministry has ordered trainee diplomats to track websites and chatrooms so that networks of US and European groups with hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive messages.

In the past week nearly 5,000 members of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) have downloaded special 'megaphone' software that alerts them to anti-Israeli chatrooms or internet polls to enable them to post contrary viewpoints. A student team in Jerusalem combs the web in a host of different languages to flag the sites so that those who have signed up can influence an opinion survey or the course of a debate.

Supporting militarism is not all that difficult for some. And supporting peace, recognizing the humanity of Palestinians is apparently impossible.

Exaggeration? Ask Rachel Corrie's family.

So for those who speak out for justice and peace, for those who speak out for victims of militarism: GIYUS.org is at the ready, but not to engage in discourse or dialogue.
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Note on GIYUS.org: GIYUS.org is a worldwide online network supporting Israeli militarism [and dedicated to sullying the memory of Rachel Corrie, among other distasteful pursuits]. It is intended to intimidate bloggers and other writers and create an impression that a strong grassroots community exists in support of Israeli atrocities and state terror.

If you ever seen a piece in MyDD and Daily Kos, for example, that cites human rights data in criticizing Israeli foreign policy—a real no-no for this group—you will see an immediate response from GIYUS.org.

GIYUS.org members’ comments are welcome here to promote their point of view, but actually responding to the points made in the piece would be a welcome change.

Republicans on the Run

In case anybody missed it, Republicans fear November.

From DemFromCT at Kos:

Slate: Panic at the House (news round-up)
NY Times: Republican Election Losses Stir Fall Fears
Canada.com: GOP officials despair as 'safe' seats choose the other team
globeandmail.com: Wake up and smell the disenchantment
CQpolitics: GOP Seeks to Rebrand After (Dem.)Childers Victory (good luck with that, boys)
AFP: Shaken Republicans look to McCain as savior (good luck with that, too)
WaPo: After String of Losses, Republicans Face Crisis
Reuters: US Republicans scramble in wake of defeats
USA Today: Republicans fear public has lost confidence (pssst... they have)
AP: Third House loss shakes GOP, raises fears for fall
MSNBC: GOPer compares brand to bad 'dog food'(points for originality and honesty)

Hillary Cannot Win Democratic Nomination

Just some good news to start the week, that in a sense, is not news: Hillary Clinton cannot win the Democratic nomination.

See Timothy Noah at: Hillary Clinton, Fairy Princess. Stop pretending she has a plausible chance to win the nomination? Obama will win the nomination.

So all those friends and progressives who have refrained from tossing 10-point weights into their TV sets and plasma screens have no reason to fear.

Have a good week, (it's going to hit 70 in Wisconsin), and let's celebrate her demise and Obama's coming nomination.

As noted at the top of Daily Kos, of the remaining 682 delegates left, Obama needs just 286 delegates to win the nomination. That's some 42 percent.

By the way, isn't the Rev. John Hagee whose endorsement John McCain sought and obtained a whack?

Vote-suppressing, Pro-Hillary Group StoneWalls

More Clinton connections come to light as the voter suppression story breaks, and the voter suppression group apologizes for the "confusion". From Facing South:

In our earlier investigation revealing the outfit behind the misleading and illegal robo-calls made to North Carolina voters just days before a critical primary election, we reported that questions have been raised about the connections between that group -- the D.C.-based nonprofit Women's Voices Women Vote -- and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

We noted, for example, that WVWV Founder and President Page Gardner has donated generously to Clinton and to HILLPAC, but has given nothing to the Obama campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org. We also noted that WVWV Executive Director Joe Goode previously worked as a pollster for Bill Clinton, and that WVWV board member John Podesta is the former chief of staff for President Clinton as well as a Hillary Clinton donor.

There are other connections that we did not mention, but that have been pointed out in comments here and at other sites. For example, Maggie Williams is a former member of WVWV's leadership team, according to Sourcewatch.org; she also served as chief of staff to First Lady Hillary Clinton and to the Clinton Foundation in New York, and she was named the manager of Clinton's campaign in February. And Holly Schadler, WVWV's attorney, helped set up the Back to Business Committee in 1994 to defend Bill and Hillary Clinton from attacks by political enemies.

But one of the most striking connections between WVWV and the Clinton campaign -- and one particularly relevant to a story involving what appear to be voter suppression efforts right before an election -- was pointed out to us by a reader. He notes that the firm in charge of voter outreach for WVWV is MSHC Partners, whose president is Hal Malchow.

Sourcewatch.org reports that Malchow was a member of WVWV's leadership team.At the same time, MSHC also does direct mail and outreach for the Hillary Clinton campaign. In fact, the campaign owes MSHC $807,000, according to Politico.com.

Chris Kromm, author of the original piece has published a "Statement on Women's Voices Women Vote's failure to address facts of Facing South investigation" (run at Kos as well), and reproduced below.

Chris Kromm
Facing South

Women's Voices Women Vote has responded in several forums to the issues we raised in yesterday's investigation about their illegal and deceptive voter outreach activities. The main response came from group founder and president Page Gardner, in a statement titled: "Confusion Surrounding Robo-Calls in North Carolina."

First, it's important to note that Gardner's statement in no ways refutes, or even addresses, any of the basic facts put forward by our investigation:

* In North Carolina, Women's Voices has been conducting a robo-call and mailing campaign that the state Attorney General yesterday confirmed is illegal, that has been secretive and deceptive, and will likely have the effect of confusing and discouraging North Carolina voters.

* Our report documents that, in at least 10 other states -- Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin -- Women's Voices has drawn condemnation from election officials and voters. The group has been accused of misrepresenting election law, using secretive and dishonest tactics and generating widespread confusion among voters -- again, threatening to dampen voter participation.

* The role Women's Voices has played in the Virginia and North Carolina primaries has been especially disruptive. In both cases, they launched deceptive robo-calls -- some apparently targeting African-American zip codes -- just before major primaries, leading residents to think they weren't registered to vote.

* Women's Voices has a number of ties to Sen. Hillary Clinton; we provide additional examples here. We don't suggest, and have no evidence to suggest, that Women's Voices is formally connected to the Clinton campaign. However, we do believe such close ties deserve scrutiny.

Ms. Gardner's statement addresses none of these documented issues. Confronted with evidence of repeated deceptive and even illegal actions, Gardner says only, "We apologize for any confusion our calls may have caused."

Unfortunately, this is typical: As we found in our investigation spanning 10 states, every time problems have emerged, Women's Voices responds by "apologizing for confusion." A Google search of "Women's Voices Women Vote" and "confusion" brings up 412 hits. A newspaper in Michigan quipped that Women's Voices media staffer Sarah Johnson seemed "confused by the confusion."

But chalking serious election law violations and misleading practices to "mistakes" and "confusion" doesn't answer the questions; it just raises more of them. Women's Voices is doing itself no favors by refusing to directly address the facts and issues at hand.

For example, does "confusion" explain Women's Voices' illegal and deceptive robo-calls in multiple states? Does it pardon the group's misleading and legally inaccurate mailings to hundreds of thousands of voters?

Does "confusion" account for their disruption of the primaries in North Carolina and Virginia? I asked Johnson why the group launched its confusing voter registration campaign in Virginia when they did -- two weeks before the big primary, but two weeks too late for anyone to actually register. She stumbled through several explanations before landing on, "We wanted to make sure they were registered for the general [election] in November." Really? The first week in February, probably the worst time to be dropping a misleading robo-call and mailing campaign in Virginia, was the only week available?

Also: Is it really a "mistake" or "confusion" when you get the same complaints in 10 or more states across the country over the course of at least five months? After a while, the "confusion" defense runs out of steam.

But in this case, it's never been a strong defense. Women's Voices is made up of some of the most seasoned and sophisticated political operatives in Washington. Their staff bios show decades of experience at the highest levels, all the way up to presidential campaigns for Bill Clinton.

Does such a well-connected, deeply-funded and All-Star cast of high-level operatives really make "mistakes" like carrying out illegal robo-calls and forgetting the presidential primary calendar?

At some point, that explanation is no longer plausible, and Women's Voices Women Vote owes voters a real explanation.

Sites for Political Reality and Refuge

I occasionally get phone calls bemoaning the political culture as exhibited by, for example, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.

The fact is Joe Scarborough is a blow-hard; and his ilk are blow-hards and they do not define political reality, so one need not be too depressed.

Back when the Clintons were the victims of rightwing media (instead of the perpetrators like now), Ken Starr and his media cohorts went on and on right up to impeachment, when the public, sickened by Starr and the media's performance, gave Clinton his near-highest approval ratings at 69 percent.

It's worth noting that political reality is best defined by the American people and not Hillary Clinton and the media blowhards who want to take down Barack Obama.

Here are five sites to visit and read when even an occasional visit to cable TV becomes too disgusting to bear.

- Daily Kos
- AmericaBlog
- BuzzFlash
- Huffington Post
- Common Dreams
- And give Jon Stewart a look; Stewart always seems to capture well the absurdity of the media idiocy.

Bush Pocket Veto Outrages Veterans

Update II: Veterans for Common Sense is trying to get Speaker Pelosi to open up the House so that President Bush must formally veto the bill to the House. If the House opens and Bush fails to send a formal veto, then the bill becomes law, according to Paul Sullivan, Executive Director of Veterans for Common Sense.

Update: 60 Minutes Story on Bush Blocking Tortured U.S. POWs from Pursuing Money from Iraqi Regime (from Nov. 20, 2003) Bush never tires of shafting our veterans. From 60 Minutes:

“They wanna extinguish the case. I don't know why they would want to just wipe this off the books and say it never happened,” says (Dale) Storr, who was shot down by Iraqi ground fire. ...“Let's just sweep it under the carpet and pretend it never happened.”

“I hope George Bush, the President of the United States, doesn't know about this,” says (Sen. Harry) Reid. “Because if he knows about it, if he knows about it, it's a pox on his house, his White House. This is wrong.”

60 Minutes wanted to ask the administration about all this, but Vice President Dick Cheney declined. His press aide told us he was "too busy" to talk to us. We also asked to speak with Attorney General John Ashcroft, who also declined as did Secretary of State Colin Powell. As for President Bush, in a recent press briefing, his spokesman said that while no amount of money can compensate the POWs, “it was determined earlier this year by Congress and the Administration that those assets were no longer assets of Iraq, but they were resources required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq."

Rebuilding Iraq. Not funny, Bush. You don't have the authority to stand in the same room with these POWs you are shafting.

As if any more evidence were needed that George W. Bush has the knife out for our veterans, a couple of e-mails circulating offers the flavor of veterans' increasingly negative attitude towards the idiot occupying the oval office.

As reported in the LA Times:

President Bush surprised Congress by refusing to sign a Defense Department authorization bill, in part because the legislation could revive a lawsuit brought by American prisoners of war during the 1991 Persian Gulf War who say they were tortured by the Iraqis.

Saddam's regime tortures our troops and Bush blocks the troops' getting deserved money for treatment and suffering.

Said one veteran expressing outrage on the veto and Bush's performance in office generally in protecting veterans: "Wrong on the facts, wrong on the law, and wrong on the policy. Bush Uber Alles."

Writes Paul Sullivan, Executive Director of Veterans for Common Sense in a letter to the LA Times reporters who wrote the piece on Bush's outrageous veto.

Dear David and James,

Thank you for your detailed reporting in the Los Angeles Times about President George W. Bush’s rejection of the Defense Bill ...

As a Gulf War veteran I am deeply disappointed by President Bush’s violation of common decency and the law with his dubious ‘pocket veto’ of the Defense bill. America should be outraged that President Bush rejected legislation that would allow our wounded Gulf War veterans to sue Iraq for the torture they suffered while prisoners of war during Desert Shield / Desert Storm in 1990 – 1991.

Here is a detailed review of the Defense Bill disaster created by President Bush posted at Daily Kos:

There is no ‘pocket veto’ because Congress is in session, as Senator Jim Webb and others were shown on TV keeping Congress open:

A spokesman for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told reporters over the weekend that the ‘pocket veto’ is not viable:

This episode brings back memories from 1999, when Gulf War veterans and Congress made it very clear that veterans should have the right to sue Iraq:

Not only does President Bush’s dubious ‘pocket veto’ deny our veterans the right to sue Iraq, it also blocks key reforms passed overwhelmingly by Congress to clean up the Walter Reed scandal caused by President Bush’s failure to plan for the 264,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans already treated at VA hospitals.

Congress must step up to the plate now and declare they are in session and fight for our service members, our veterans, and our ex-prisoners of war abandoned by President Bush.

Please call if you have questions.

Thanks,

Paul Sullivan

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O'Reilly Says Daily Kos Run by Satan, Read by Devil Worshipers

Bill O'Reilly blasted the media in "Madison, Wisconsin, where you expect those people to be communing with Satan."

That was December 2005.

O'Reilly just cannot get enough of opining how the left worships the big S-man, Satan.

From ThinkProgress:

O’Reilly: Progressive blog readers = ‘devil worshippers.’

On Fox News yesterday, Bill O’Reilly let loose on “far-left websites” like DailyKos, stating, “If you read these far-left websites, you’re a devil worshipper. You are.”

O’Reilly’s ombudsman responded, “As a journalist, you know better than that.” O’Reilly shot back: “Satan is running the DailyKos. Yes, he is!”

At the end of the segment, O’Reilly said, “That was a little satire there…don’t get too upset about it.” But he then added, “I still think they are satanists.”
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The Republicans Are Going to Lose in 2008

[A recurring feature pointing to evidence and analyses of the GOP’s pending defeat in 2008.]

Daily Kos has a pice from DemFromCT summing up some major problems for the GOP in 2008.

The point being the GOP will lose, big.

From DemFromCT:
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As First Read notes today, "'Future of the GOP stories' are starting to hit critical mass". And why not? We have the WSJ reporting on disaffected business types and the Bush borrow and spend policies have alienated fiscal conservatives like Alan Greenspan.

The Republican Party, known since the late 19th century as the party of business, is losing its lock on that title. New evidence suggests a potentially historic shift in the Republican Party's identity -- what strategists call its "brand." The votes of many disgruntled fiscal conservatives and other lapsed Republicans are now up for grabs, which could alter U.S. politics in the 2008 elections and beyond.

Miss Laura covered the NY Times writing about the religious right and their issues (we are all values voters; they are the religious right).

After the 2004 elections, religious conservatives were riding high. Newly anointed by pundits as "values voters" — a more flattering label than "religious right" — they claimed credit for propelling George W. Bush to two terms in the White House. Even in wartime, they had managed to fixate the nation on their pet issues: opposition to abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research ...What unites them right now is their dismay — even panic — at the idea of Rudolph W. Giuliani as the Republican nominee, because of his support for abortion rights and gay rights, as well as what they regard as a troubling history of marital infidelity. But what to do about it is where they again diverge, with some religious conservatives last week threatening to bolt to a third party if Mr. Giuliani gets the nomination, and others arguing that this is the sure road to defeat.

The SCHIP veto doesn't play well with anyone, but especially moms and Latinos.

Of children who would have been newly eligible for SCHIP under the bill, at least one-third likely would have been Hispanic, Edwin Park, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said. About 40% of Hispanic children already receive health coverage through SCHIP or Medicaid, though many eligible Hispanic children are not enrolled, according to Park. He added, "Every day, there's going to be more uninsured kids in this country, and because Latino children in particular are much more likely to be uninsured, they will be disproportionately affected."

Add the no-shows at a recent debate focused on minority issues:

"I think the best that comes out of stupid decisions like this," said former Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts, is "that African-Americans might say, ‘Was it because of my skin color?’ Now, maybe it wasn’t, but African-Americans do say, ‘It crossed my mind.’"

Add in the well-known and well-demonstrated homophobia of the modern GOP and actually, it looks like we are seeing the creation of a biphasic GOP core: rich old [outwardly] straight white guys and young childless Ayn Rand-style Objectivists.

"No one else is left," concludes DemFromCT.
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And one could add decreased turnout for Republicans from three other demographics: Arab-Americans, rural Americans and western-state libertarians.
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