It had appeared to me that Joe Biden was beginning to make progress toward restarting negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Then Israel slammed the door.
Hours after the arrival Tuesday of Vice President Joe Biden to help launch indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Israel announced the construction of 1,600 homes in a settlement block in mostly Arab East Jerusalem, an open rebuff that led Biden to issue a sharply worded condemnation.
"I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in east Jerusalem," Biden said in a statement issued by the White House.
"The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel."
The announcement by the Israeli Interior Ministry came during Biden’s first day in the region, the highest profile visit by an Obama administration official. It appeared to catch the administration off guard.
President Barack Obama repeatedly had demanded a halt in settlement construction in order to revive the moribund peace negotiations.
Just hours before the announcement, Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. was "optimistic" that indirect talks would begin a process by which a final peace deal could be reached.
"I am very pleased that you and the Palestinian leadership have agreed to launch indirect talks. We hope that these talks will lead, and they must lead eventually, to negotiations and direct discussions between the parties," Biden said.
He said his visit was meant to highlight the "unbreakable" bond between Israel and the U.S., especially on issues of security.
"Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel. There is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security," he said
The Israeli decision to approve 1,600 new settler homes could torpedo the talks before they have even begun, officials from the Palestinian Authority said… [emphasis added]
Even though the embedded map is over 18 months out of date, it clearly shows the extent of the Israeli incursion into Palestinian territory. This indicates that Israel’s intent is to eliminate the Palestinian state, guaranteed by treaty, through attrition. The timing of Israel’s announcement is a slap in the US face for having the audacity to try to achieve peace. It shows that Israel does not want peace. While I have no objection to the US guaranteeing Israel’s sovereignty (in their OWN territory only), I think it’s tome to withdraw the military aid being used for Israel’s predatory behavior toward the Palestinians.
Yesterday I had a bad air day. When I returned from my appointment, I felt so winded, wheezy and drained that I could not focus. I spent most of the afternoon in bed. I’m not feeling much better today, so I think I’ll have to forego my volunteer day with the therapy group. I hope to at least catch up on comments.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:30. To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
Here’s the ultimate reason to pass HCR. Rush Limbaugh says that, if it passes, he will leave the country!
SCOTUS, aka the Extreme Court, has agreed to hear Fred Phelps’ case. Phelps is pastor Fuehrer at Westboro Baptist Church, infamous for protesting at military funerals and claiming that the death of our troops is God’s judgment for of homosexuality, because “God Hates Fags”. Phelps was teabuggering before there were Teabaggers.
As health care reform comes down to the wire, Dennis Kucinich is the lone progressive holdout. His could be the one vote that derails over a year’s of hard work and hands a huge victory to the Republicans. He appeared last night on Countdown.
It’s hard to disagree with Dennis. Most of what he says is right on. His description is more applicable to the Senate Bill as passed, and does not take into account the changes proposed for the reconciliation bill. Nevertheless, on this issue, I want everything he wants.
But here’s the rub. We’re not going to get everything we want. We either take what we can get, or we get nothing at all. This is where Kucinich takes leave of his senses. In his absolute, concrete view, he is willing to give up everything we can get, because he cant have it 100% his way. I expect that kind of pig-headedness from Republicans, not progressives.
Robert Creamer explains why we have to move forward.
Over the last several weeks various pundits — and Republican talkers — have fanned out across the airwaves to proclaim that Democrats face grave political danger this fall if they are so bold as to pass health care reform in the face of united Republican opposition.
For Congressional Democrats, the source of this advice should be enough to make it completely suspect. And in fact, history shows that just the opposite is true — and many Republicans know it.
Republicans do not win when Democrats are successful at making fundamental progressive change. They win when they stop Democrats from making fundamental progressive change.
As a progressive Democrat, I would be thrilled if every Republican votes against a health care reform bill that passes Congress and is signed into law by the President, since history shows they will pay a steep price for their united opposition to progressive change.
All you need to do is look at the last century of American politics. When has the modern Democratic Party been most successful? When it delivered on fundamental progressive change.
After Roosevelt delivered Social Security, the right of unions to organize, the regulation of Wall Street through the SEC, the reorganization of the banking system and FDIC, public works programs, and by massively increasing the share of taxes paid by the very rich, Democrats maintained huge margins in Congress and the Presidency for two decades. They also lay the foundation for the most robust period of economic growth in the history of humanity.
When President Johnson and the Democratic Congress passed Medicare and Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act and the War on Poverty – and later the Democratic Congress created the EPA — Democrats had majorities in the House for three and a half decades that outlasted the conservative Reagan revolution of the 1980s by 14 years.
It wasn’t until 1994 – largely because of the failure of Congress to pass the Clinton health care reform plan – that Republicans gained control of the House.
Why do Democrats do so well when they make fundamental progressive change? Because those policies benefit the vast majority of the voters rather than the tiny super-wealthy minority – the top 2% of the population – that are the chief beneficiaries of Republican status quo economic policies.
Ask any senior, or person with a disability, how they feel about Medicare and Social Security – policies that were passed by Democrats and opposed tooth and nail by Republicans. Even some Tea Party activists carry around signs that read: "Hands Off My Medicare." Ask most everyday Americans how they feel about child labor laws, or the minimum wage, or the Food and Drug Administration that protects consumers from unsafe food and medicines. Ask any consumer how she feels about the Federal Trade Commission, or federal laws that protect us from unsafe products. Ask anyone who breathes how they feel about laws that cleaned up our air and water.
Ask virtually anyone in America how they feel about public education – or a woman’s right to vote.
All of these fundamental changes in American society were fought by the conservatives of the time, and once passed they all came to define the high political ground.
Americans are not disgusted with Washington today because of the bold initiatives it is considering. They are disgusted, in considerable measure, because it appears gridlocked and unable to deal with the problems confronting the nation, and their stagnant standard of living. They are tired of politicians who see politics as a "gotcha" game instead of a way to deal with the problems and opportunities that confront their families. They hate the idea that their political leaders are in bed with Wall Street, the oil companies and the insurance giants – that campaign contributors have more sway than the voters.
They want decisive action to make fundamental change every bit as much as they did when they elected Barack Obama a little over a year ago.
When Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) said last year that Republicans could make the defeat of health care reform "Obama’s Waterloo," he understood that it was great politics for Republicans to prevent fundamental reform, not the opposite.
If, once it is passed and signed into law, the Republicans want to campaign to repeal health care reform I say, go ahead, make my day.
As a Democrat, I love our odds if we can campaign against Republicans who voted against allowing ordinary Americans to have the right to buy the same kind of health care that is available to Members of Congress.
Something like: "Republican Congressman Mark Kirk is happy to let the government pay for his health care, but Congressman Kirk voted against requiring that ordinary Americans be eligible to buy the same health insurance as Members of Congress.
Congressman Kirk may enjoy being an important Member of Congress, but when it comes to his health care, he should be no better than the rest of us."
When Congressman Roy Blunt runs for the Senate in Missouri this fall, I can’t wait to see ads like:
"When it came to health insurance reform, Congressman Roy Blunt knew which side he was on.
Blunt voted against reining in the power of health insurance companies to raise rates – by thirty nine … fifty… even sixty percent.
He voted to oppose preventing insurance companies from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
He opposed requiring that insurance companies spend at least 80% of our premiums on medical care instead of CEO salaries, lobbyists, exploding profits, and armies of bureaucrats that do nothing but deny claims.
In fact, Congressman Blunt stood up for the insurance companies every time he had a chance. Isn’t it time we had someone who stands up for us?"
The pundits who are blathering on that passing the health care bill is bad politics for Democrats either don’t know what they’re talking about, or are running a deliberate misinformation campaign to persuade swing Democrats to vote no… [emphasis original]
I would like nothing better than to see this bill, flawed as it is, pass. It will serve as a foundation for future reform. It will hand the GOP a huge defeat. And, id the Republicans are stupid enough to run on repealing it, it will help lead to their extinction as a viable political party. I only hope that a few extreme ideologues, like Stupak on the right and Kucinich on the left, who refuse to compromise, do not deprive 30 million Americans of health care, leave Big Insurance free to deny coverage to and cancel coverage of sick people, allow the needless deaths of 47,000 Americans a year, and hand the GOP a huge victory in November.
Few Companies have such a dismal record for human rights abuses as this corporate monster. They have done it again, this time in Ecuador.
What is a lost culture? Is it just some intangible time before? Is it an economy? Can you inventory a lost culture in the number of lives lost or rivers polluted?
Those questions haunt the lawsuit brought by Ecuadorian indigenous groups against the U.S. oil giant, Chevron, for environmental destruction it allegedly wrought as Texaco in the Amazon rainforest of eastern Ecuador. On paper, the suit asks Chevron (which acquired Texaco in 2001) to pay for the environmental cleanup of an area three times the size of Manhattan, pocked with open oil pits and steeped in 18 billion gallons of dumped industrial wastewater. The damages in the case — calculated by a court-appointed expert at a record $27 billion — would also establish a health fund to pay for the estimated 1,400 cases of cancer caused by the pollution — a number that will likely continue to grow until the site is cleaned up. The rest of the damages fall into the catchall category, "compensation."
Emergildo Criollo is president of the Cofan people, who have been among the hardest hit and are one of the plaintiffs in the case. For Criollo, 52, the case isn’t just about what Texaco workers did or didn’t do starting in the 1960s. It’s about the dissolution of his traditional culture into the modern world as a result of oil workers simply being there and building roads to get there. And no one company can be held accountable for that. But Chevron has used the same prevailing wind of cultural dominance to confuse the facts of the case enough potentially to avoid being stuck with the monstrous bill. The company points to an agreement under which Texaco shared its operations in Ecuador with the state-owned oil company, Petroecuador. It also claims that Texaco cleaned up its work sites before leaving Ecuador in 1992. But the company’s legal hedges don’t line up with residents’ first-hand accounts… [emphasis added]
Chevron has certainly cut a swath of human rights abuses. They now own Unocal, the company behind the plan to build a gas pipeline through Afghanistan. Bush and the GOP appointed a Unocal employee as our Ambassador at the same time that they installed another Unocal employee as that nation’s puppet President. Furthermore, Chevron is the chief source of revenue for the brutal Myanmar regime. Bush and the GOP gave Chevron an exemption from the sanctions imposed against Myanmar. Chevron was also involved in killing nonviolent protestors in Nigeria. They received such favorable treatment from the GOP because the Bush family is heavily invested in Unocal. Condoleezza Rice was on their corporate board, before going to work for the Bush regime.
I call on the Obama administration to end all exemptions and subsidies for that company. US taxpayers should not be paying for this criminal enterprise.
I know these topics are unrelated, but both are short.
Last night’s Rachel Maddow show was one of the best exposés of GOP obstruction, lies and sellout to Big Healthcare that I have seen. I considered posting all the videos here, but that’s too much. instead, here is the link to her show. I strongly recommend it. Click Here.
The avatar you see in my comments here is a Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar). They work not only here, but also in all WordPress blogs. They are easy to set up and use. Click the link above to visit the site. Register (no SPAM), using the email address you enter hear and on other blogs. They will send you a confirmation email immediately. Once your registration is confirmed, upload as many images as you want. Chose one. From then on, whenever you enter that email address in the comment form at a website that supports Gravatar, including all WordPress blogs, the blog will use the image you selected.
Yesterday I caught up with comments and with returning visits. I have an appointment today. Afterward I have to prepare some work for tomorrow’s volunteer work, so I’ll see what’s left when I’m done.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:46. To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
It’s Mooseolini Day. The Tundra Twit took a metaphor from Isaiah out of contest to justify scribbling on her palm. In the process, she compared herself to God. Then she admitted that she used to slip across the Canadian border for health care. What a hypocrite!
This has been an injustice that has continued far too long.
When all is said and done, and the record of the Obama administration is written, one big accomplishment is likely to be attributed to the president’s race.
The first black president seems determined to make the U.S. government finally settle the claims of an estimated 70,000 black farmers, people whose hopes were crushed by government racism. Obama has championed a $1.25 billion settlement that would put these claims to rest.
Termed by some "the last plantation," the Department of Agriculture for decades systematically denied loans, crop subsidies and other aid to black farmers, at one point bringing them to near extinction.
In the 1920, blacks operated one of every seven U.S. farms. By 1992, the number had sunk to one in 100.
Meanwhile, many of their white neighbors’ farms prospered. But it wasn’t always because white farmers were harder workers, smarter with agriculture or luckier with the weather. They got help that was denied to blacks. That’s racism.
I rarely use that term, but none other fits so well. Racism is spinning hatred into economic harm. It’s using racial spite to take away people’s ability to provide for their families, to accumulate wealth, to prosper. Everything else is just prejudice. And that, people can get over.
The Department of Agriculture is guilty of setting up a system to let racism flourish. Farmer applications for government loans and other programs were approved, denied or stifled through committees of elected county commissioners. The commissions became a bastion for white male power, with little federal oversight.
A favored tactic was to grant the black farmer’s loan — after planting season. Or to approve part of it, say for seeds, but then deny the money for the equipment to harvest it. Or encourage foreclosures, or press the black farmers to plant less-profitable crops.
This isn’t just ancient history. In 1996, only 37 county commissioners in the nation were African-American. That’s out of 8,147.
Yes, people complained. For years they complained. They filed grievances and lawsuits. Federal officials fessed up to the system’s being racist as early as 1965.
By 1982 things got so dire that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights decreed that by 2000, black farmers simply wouldn’t exist anymore.
And a year later, in 1983, the civil rights division of the Agriculture Department was dismantled. Complaints in some cases were literally tossed into the trash.
Through the Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations hearings were held and government assessments written. Promises to fix the system were given and then broken.
A class action lawsuit filed in 1997 filtered its way through the courts and allowed settlements to about 16,000 black farmers. But the government bungled even that settlement. Farmers with complaints weren’t notified in time; claims were filed late; others were unfairly dismissed on technicalities.
Obama’s settlement will need congressional approval, something that hasn’t been easy to come by in his first year in office… [emphasis added]
Jimmy Carter started needed reform in the late 1970s. To defeat that reform that Reagan dismantled the USDA Civil Rights Division. There was no progress under GHW Bush. If memory serves, Clinton tried to reform the system, but it died in committee in the GOP dominated House. Crawford Caligula moved in the direction of racial equity, but his plan was to throw all poor farmers under the bus to provide welfare for huge corporate conglomerates. So it falls to Obama and the Democrats to clean up another GOP injustice.
We need to watch this as it moves forward. Watch for GOP Senators to mask their racism in concern for the deficit and filibuster. Watch for the GOP top-down ‘grass roots’ to teabugger this as reverse racism.
Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay — who’s clearly earned the right to pass moral judgement — has an explanation for the high rates of unemployment that continue to plague the economy despite rosy predictions of recovery: the problem rests with the unemployed, of course — and the Democratic lawmakers who insist on sapping the moral fiber of the populace with extravagant giveaways to all the jobless layabouts living large on the government’s dime (the ones who lost their jobs when piggish corporate greed unleashed by deregulation took out the economy for no obvious reason we slipped into a slight recession). DeLay expounded his economic theory on Candy Crowley’s CNN show Sunday, also calling Jim Bunning “brave” for holding up the extension of unemployment benefits last week. From Raw Story:
“There is an argument to be made that these extensions, the unemployment benefits, keep people from going and finding jobs,” he told CNN’s Candy Crowley Sunday.
“In fact there are some studies that have been done that show people stay on unemployment compensation and they don’t look for a job until two or three weeks before they know the benefits are going to run out,” he argued.
“People are unemployed because they want to be? ” asked Crowley.
“Well, it is the truth. And people in the real world know it,” said DeLay… [emphasis added]
Only a true GOP Sweetheart could tell such a callous, heartless lie, when I have personally seen a line over three blocks long to try to get one of three menial jobs offered by a Portland company.
Hours after the arrival Tuesday of Vice President Joe Biden to help launch indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Israel announced the construction of 1,600 homes in a settlement block in mostly Arab East Jerusalem, an open rebuff that led Biden to issue a sharply worded condemnation.
