This morning as I sat in the back of the basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul, in the midst of a grieving citizenry, waiting for the funeral mass of Officer Patrick McDonald to begin, I could not help but wonder why? I'm sure I wasn't alone in thinking that, there must have been thousands of men and women thinking the same thing at the very same moment, and yet I'm convinced that none of us came up with a suitable answer.
I'm a very pragmatic person. When I look to solve a problem I need the background, I need to know the root before I can begin to formulate an answer. In searching for the root of this problem it occurred to me that the very root of this problem is also at the root of this year's contentious presidential campaign and its a problem that stretches to the very root of our democratic system.
Richard Henry Lee, a Delegate to the Continental Congress from Virginia, the delegate who proposed the resolution leading to the vote on independence, wrote, "a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people."
In 1779, the father of the American Revolution, Samuel Adams, wrote, "A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued..."
In support of our Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers pledged, "to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor."
The works of our founders are filled with talk of honor and virtue. To our founders they were intangible values held above all others, yet they are values our current culture takes completely for granted.
Honor and virtue are not just words - they can and should mean something more. Whether in a community, tired of the violence taking place in its streets or on the campaign trail, stumping for votes - honor and virtue are values that can and should triumph over even the most insurmountable obstacles.
A person in possession of these characteristics would never lie to his fellow man, would never withhold information after witnessing a crime, would never ask the government to do for him what he is fully capable of doing himself. In fact, a person in possession of these characteristics has little need for government - he supplies his own; guided by his own moral compass, committed to justice and freed from an obligation to anything but the truth.
By the time Mayor Nutter took the podium this morning I had already formed most of these thoughts, but he helped to reinforce them. His tone was somber, resigned, defeated - he captured adequately what we were all feeling. He begged the forgiveness of a people he saw himself as failing but it seemed to me that his frustrations ran deeper. No single mayor can stem this tide, no one politician can save our nation. No amount of government spending will solve these crises. The despondence in his voice came not from his inability to act but from the knowledge that, until such honor and virtue takes hold in our communities no government program can bring them peace.
The foundations of conservatism are strong - until we start taking responsibility for our own actions, until we recapture our honor and virtue our nation will continue to suffer wanton acts of violence like the one that killed Officer McDonald, massive financial scandals like the one rocking our nation's economic system, and leaders who insist on lying to us in order to win control of our votes and pocketbooks.
There can be no bailout package for the soul of our nation.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
You Need to Know...
Trying a new segment here. I'll share a few articles, videos & pieces I think aren't getting enough play in the media. If they won't do their job then we need to do it for them.
How did your representative vote? ROLL CALL
The Dems & the media are sticking to the party line and saying that the Republicans, led by John McCain, couldn't muster the votes to pass the bailout package, few are asking why 96 Democrats voted against the bill.
An eloquent, concise explanation of the current crisis and its political nature.
Pelosi's unifying speech just before the vote...
Another damning allegation blaming Dems for the current crisis - this one from the Boston Globe...
Palin came to Philly & took a jog, in the rain, in a McNabb jersey... hot (about 3:10 in to the clip).
How did your representative vote? ROLL CALL
The Dems & the media are sticking to the party line and saying that the Republicans, led by John McCain, couldn't muster the votes to pass the bailout package, few are asking why 96 Democrats voted against the bill.
An eloquent, concise explanation of the current crisis and its political nature.
Pelosi's unifying speech just before the vote...
Another damning allegation blaming Dems for the current crisis - this one from the Boston Globe...
Palin came to Philly & took a jog, in the rain, in a McNabb jersey... hot (about 3:10 in to the clip).
The Economy
This is a long one and dry, very dry but it underlines in the best terms I can put-up with, what we're going through financial right now. I'm startled that no one in our main stream media is giving you this story, so I'll try...
Most Americans can barely make sense of the latest economic mess we're in. All most of us know is that, until this afternoon, it looked like the jerks in Washington were going to bail out the jerks in New York and they were going to use our money to do it. Turns out there's a lot more to it than that, and the longer this mess is drawn out, the more we learn about and the more it stinks.
In order to understand the problem we first need to identify the cause. For all the talk we've heard from politicans and pundits about how we need a deal and what that deal needs to entail and how we need to work quickly to acheive a deal, few are taking the time to explain what exactly went wrong.
There is no argument among economic experts that the current financial crisis took shape due to the market's realization that banks were issuing billions of dollars in conventionally bad loans but why would the banks make the bad loans in the first place? Well for that we need to go back to the Allan Greenspan era - the Federal Reserve cut the interest rates that governed the issuance of credit to banks and the banks used those lower rates to bring in customers who were willing to take on a higher level of risk than traditionally had been the case. Customers were willing to take the increased risk in part due to the fact that many Americans were making a lot of money in real estate investment - buying low and selling high, treating property as one might treat a stock. In the background, the market continued to work against itself. The reason that prices in real estate continued to rise exponentially was due to the increase in available credit, so the very thing that was allowing those to get into the market on the ground floor, buying starter homes, etc., was helping others to move up. For the nation, it seemed like a great thing - more homeownership bread personal responsibility causing an indirect decrease in property crime, increased credit availability made for increased investment, etc.
The old adage seemed true - a rising tide floats all boats. It looked like this was the reverse of trickle-down economics, a flood of capial at the bottom was resulting in a bullish market at the top. But there were cracks in the foundation. In an effort to get this credit into the hands of consumers, banks had been making bad loans to unqualified investors. These loans weren't an issue so long as the real estate markets kept increasing in value as they had been for some time, investors would be able to restructure their mortgages at a better price for a better rate down the road. But that brings us back to why they made the investments in the first place - why would banks make loans that they didn't think they could make money on - this is where the Republicans and Democrats diverge in opinion.
The Dems blame it on pure greed. They say the bad loans were made with the assumption that even if the loans failed - who cares? The banks could still sell the homes at the higher rate so long as the market stayed good but that logic just doesn't hold. It would denote a complete divergence from the rules that have governed financial markets for centuries. One or two banks making bad loans and going under, that's just bad judement... but all of them?
The Republicans have been saying, quietly, since 2003, that these bad loans were being made because of failed or failing Democrat policies. In 1977, Jimmy Carter signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The Act dictated that banks must make loans to low-income borrowers, even if that meant ignoring many of the criteria they would use to make conventional loans, namely credit history. The CRA allowed the government to examine banking organizations to determine whether or not they were "meeting the needs of their communities."
George H.W. Bush tried to blunt the effects of the bad act by enacting sweeping oversight as part of the Financial Institutions Reform and Recovery Act of 1989 which was created in response to the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s. This oversight included a rating system, accesible to the public, that would measure a bank's compliance with the CRA regulations.
But any modest gains made by Bush administration were erased by Bill Clinton in 1993. In a sweeping economic dictate from the Executive Office, Clinton established a series of quotas to hamstring H.W.'s CRA rating system. Banks were forced to make a number of these risky investments in order to obtain a favorable CRA rating. The direct result was that banks went out of their way to make these risky loans to obtain favorable CRA ratings - they also hired community groups to "consult" on the issue. In 2000, the Senate Banking Committee estimated that, as a result of Clinton's "reforms" in 1993, these community groups had received in excess of $9.5 billion in government salaries and services. Among them, receiving $760 million, was ACORN a group with strong ties to the group Barack Obama worked for during his days as a community organizer.
In 2002, the Bush administration oversaw an interagency review of Clinton's early '90s reforms. In response to the striking findings the administration tried to enact reforms and regulations that were opposed vehemently by the Democrats but passed in the Republican-controlled Senate. But the reforms didn't go far enough and in 2003, billion dollar accounting errors reported by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae did little to slow the bad behavior promoted by the CRA.
What do Freddie & Fannie have to do with anything? Simple - Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are entities created by the government but run as publicly traded businesses. Their express purpose is to buy-up mortgages from banks and lending institutions, repackage them into mortgage-backed securities then resell them to investors. For a better explanation of what went wrong, read this. This crisis - billions in bad assets uncovered, poorly kept books, a staggering amount of potentially unstable credit loosed on the market - should have produced the appropriate response. In the coming months and years Republicans would call for increased regulation of the markets while they were blocked by Democrats, charging racism and threatening to use their opposition as a potentially damning campaign issue. Let's face it - the Republicans have never had a good response for the charge that they don't care about poor people, especially poor minorities, despite the fact that poor minorities have been voting Democrat for fifty years and the vast majority of them are still poor. A damning video of this reverse-racism in practice can be found here.
So nothing gets done and here we are - saddled with the sins of 30 years of bad financial practices. And somehow, the guys among those who caused this crisis have the nerve to blame it on the other guys? The ones who, for at least six years have been calling for stricter regulation? Grated, the Republicans are, as usual, doing a terrible job on the PR end of this one, but you'd think the media would at least attempt to follow-up on this one - instead they cling to the line that eight years of Bush economic policy caused this problem... ridiculous line made moreso by the fact that in their TWO YEARS of control of the House & Senate they have yet to pass a single line addressing this financial issue. And yet, it's all the Republican's fault...
Most Americans can barely make sense of the latest economic mess we're in. All most of us know is that, until this afternoon, it looked like the jerks in Washington were going to bail out the jerks in New York and they were going to use our money to do it. Turns out there's a lot more to it than that, and the longer this mess is drawn out, the more we learn about and the more it stinks.
In order to understand the problem we first need to identify the cause. For all the talk we've heard from politicans and pundits about how we need a deal and what that deal needs to entail and how we need to work quickly to acheive a deal, few are taking the time to explain what exactly went wrong.
There is no argument among economic experts that the current financial crisis took shape due to the market's realization that banks were issuing billions of dollars in conventionally bad loans but why would the banks make the bad loans in the first place? Well for that we need to go back to the Allan Greenspan era - the Federal Reserve cut the interest rates that governed the issuance of credit to banks and the banks used those lower rates to bring in customers who were willing to take on a higher level of risk than traditionally had been the case. Customers were willing to take the increased risk in part due to the fact that many Americans were making a lot of money in real estate investment - buying low and selling high, treating property as one might treat a stock. In the background, the market continued to work against itself. The reason that prices in real estate continued to rise exponentially was due to the increase in available credit, so the very thing that was allowing those to get into the market on the ground floor, buying starter homes, etc., was helping others to move up. For the nation, it seemed like a great thing - more homeownership bread personal responsibility causing an indirect decrease in property crime, increased credit availability made for increased investment, etc.
The old adage seemed true - a rising tide floats all boats. It looked like this was the reverse of trickle-down economics, a flood of capial at the bottom was resulting in a bullish market at the top. But there were cracks in the foundation. In an effort to get this credit into the hands of consumers, banks had been making bad loans to unqualified investors. These loans weren't an issue so long as the real estate markets kept increasing in value as they had been for some time, investors would be able to restructure their mortgages at a better price for a better rate down the road. But that brings us back to why they made the investments in the first place - why would banks make loans that they didn't think they could make money on - this is where the Republicans and Democrats diverge in opinion.
The Dems blame it on pure greed. They say the bad loans were made with the assumption that even if the loans failed - who cares? The banks could still sell the homes at the higher rate so long as the market stayed good but that logic just doesn't hold. It would denote a complete divergence from the rules that have governed financial markets for centuries. One or two banks making bad loans and going under, that's just bad judement... but all of them?
The Republicans have been saying, quietly, since 2003, that these bad loans were being made because of failed or failing Democrat policies. In 1977, Jimmy Carter signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The Act dictated that banks must make loans to low-income borrowers, even if that meant ignoring many of the criteria they would use to make conventional loans, namely credit history. The CRA allowed the government to examine banking organizations to determine whether or not they were "meeting the needs of their communities."
George H.W. Bush tried to blunt the effects of the bad act by enacting sweeping oversight as part of the Financial Institutions Reform and Recovery Act of 1989 which was created in response to the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s. This oversight included a rating system, accesible to the public, that would measure a bank's compliance with the CRA regulations.
But any modest gains made by Bush administration were erased by Bill Clinton in 1993. In a sweeping economic dictate from the Executive Office, Clinton established a series of quotas to hamstring H.W.'s CRA rating system. Banks were forced to make a number of these risky investments in order to obtain a favorable CRA rating. The direct result was that banks went out of their way to make these risky loans to obtain favorable CRA ratings - they also hired community groups to "consult" on the issue. In 2000, the Senate Banking Committee estimated that, as a result of Clinton's "reforms" in 1993, these community groups had received in excess of $9.5 billion in government salaries and services. Among them, receiving $760 million, was ACORN a group with strong ties to the group Barack Obama worked for during his days as a community organizer.
In 2002, the Bush administration oversaw an interagency review of Clinton's early '90s reforms. In response to the striking findings the administration tried to enact reforms and regulations that were opposed vehemently by the Democrats but passed in the Republican-controlled Senate. But the reforms didn't go far enough and in 2003, billion dollar accounting errors reported by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae did little to slow the bad behavior promoted by the CRA.
What do Freddie & Fannie have to do with anything? Simple - Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are entities created by the government but run as publicly traded businesses. Their express purpose is to buy-up mortgages from banks and lending institutions, repackage them into mortgage-backed securities then resell them to investors. For a better explanation of what went wrong, read this. This crisis - billions in bad assets uncovered, poorly kept books, a staggering amount of potentially unstable credit loosed on the market - should have produced the appropriate response. In the coming months and years Republicans would call for increased regulation of the markets while they were blocked by Democrats, charging racism and threatening to use their opposition as a potentially damning campaign issue. Let's face it - the Republicans have never had a good response for the charge that they don't care about poor people, especially poor minorities, despite the fact that poor minorities have been voting Democrat for fifty years and the vast majority of them are still poor. A damning video of this reverse-racism in practice can be found here.
So nothing gets done and here we are - saddled with the sins of 30 years of bad financial practices. And somehow, the guys among those who caused this crisis have the nerve to blame it on the other guys? The ones who, for at least six years have been calling for stricter regulation? Grated, the Republicans are, as usual, doing a terrible job on the PR end of this one, but you'd think the media would at least attempt to follow-up on this one - instead they cling to the line that eight years of Bush economic policy caused this problem... ridiculous line made moreso by the fact that in their TWO YEARS of control of the House & Senate they have yet to pass a single line addressing this financial issue. And yet, it's all the Republican's fault...
Monday, September 22, 2008
Freedom
Lindsay and I went over to the McCain/Palin rally in Media tonight. We weren't able to make it until later in the event and so we stood in the back and 'attempted' to hear as much of Senator McCain's speech as possible. In between us and Senator McCain were thousands of McCain/Palin supporters and a few dozen, very vocal Obama supporters.
The Obama supporters were there, of course, in protest of Senator McCain and Governor Palin. It was not lost on me that these men and women had the right to protest thanks to the sacrifice of brave American veterans like Senator McCain and current volunteers like Track Palin. I watched and listened as they shouted down McCain's words with angry slogans and hoisted signs like one featuring Governor Palin's face superimposed on a bikini model's body.
I am sure there are those out there who want to side with these angry individuals but the close-mindedness and apparent belief that freedom of speech seems only to apply to them is truly pathetic and only steels the reserve of McCain/Palin supporters.
The Obama supporters were there, of course, in protest of Senator McCain and Governor Palin. It was not lost on me that these men and women had the right to protest thanks to the sacrifice of brave American veterans like Senator McCain and current volunteers like Track Palin. I watched and listened as they shouted down McCain's words with angry slogans and hoisted signs like one featuring Governor Palin's face superimposed on a bikini model's body.
I am sure there are those out there who want to side with these angry individuals but the close-mindedness and apparent belief that freedom of speech seems only to apply to them is truly pathetic and only steels the reserve of McCain/Palin supporters.
90%
Many once-Republican-now-Obama supporters have told me that the reason they refuse to vote McCain is that he voted with George W. Bush 90% of the time. This is something they have seen in one of Senator Obama's very effective TV ads and latched on to as their strongest (sometimes only) reason to vote Obama.
Michael Smerconish, the morning talkshow host on 1210 is one of the most fair commentators on the air. The guy looks right at home sitting in for Glenn Beck or sitting next to Keith Olbermann. He took an interesting look at that 90% claim in his Daily News column today. It's worth a read.
Michael Smerconish, the morning talkshow host on 1210 is one of the most fair commentators on the air. The guy looks right at home sitting in for Glenn Beck or sitting next to Keith Olbermann. He took an interesting look at that 90% claim in his Daily News column today. It's worth a read.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Two Steps Forward!
"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election."
- Otto von Bismarck
In my opinion, The Washington Post is a pinko-commie rag. If you don't beleive me, check out eyeonthepost.org. It's a huge website devoted entirely to misreporting, exageration and bias in the Washington Post. I don't always agree with their spin, a lot of it is subjective and it's obvious that in some cases they just have an ax to grind, but it's hard to disagree with pieces like '110 examples of Post Misreporting' which addresses some of the more damning allegations made by a former publisher and foreign editor of the Post.
I'm not alone in thinking that the Post leans dramatically to the left, just search for the term 'Washington Post Bias' in Google and you'll get over 2 million hits.
With that said I was surprised to find a number of pieces in their Op-Ed section this week criticizing Barack Obama for his lack of, as Stephen Colbert might say, "truthiness."
Take this piece: 'Always for Less Regulation'? John McCain's record on Wall Street oversight gets some misleading spin from Barack Obama. In it, the Post calls out Senator Obama for the following quote:
McCain's record in relation to fiscal market regulation and corporate oversight McCain is a proven champion of the cause, sometimes to the frustration of his republican allies.
During the 2002 aftermath of Enron, McCain crossed party lines and joined with Carl Levin (D-Michigan) a longtime thorn in the republican party's side, to press for tighter regulation of stock-option accounting against the longstanding wishes of corporate lobbyists.
He pissed a lot of people on either side of the aisle off for that one, especially members of his own party. The folks at National Review called him an outright hypocrite for trying to intervene - they even pointed out that his reelection campaign had received $9,500 from Enron executives - contributions that, in the end, earned McCain's donors no clemency.
In addition to regulation of the private sector, McCain called for greater regulation of government 'businesses' Fannie-Mae and Freddie-Mac... in 2006! He addressed the Senate on May 25, 2006 in support of a bill authored by Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and cosponsored by McCain, Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), and John Sununu (R-NH), the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190. If you want to read the whole speech, check it out. I'll just give you the highlights...
So a hearty congratulations to the Washington Post for beginning to make ammends for your partisan wa... Wait. What? The Washington Post is criticizing John McCain for airing an ad that uses, as its source, the Washington Post? They're saying that he shouldn't have relied on the reporting of their own paper...
Well, you know what they say... two steps forward...
- Otto von Bismarck
In my opinion, The Washington Post is a pinko-commie rag. If you don't beleive me, check out eyeonthepost.org. It's a huge website devoted entirely to misreporting, exageration and bias in the Washington Post. I don't always agree with their spin, a lot of it is subjective and it's obvious that in some cases they just have an ax to grind, but it's hard to disagree with pieces like '110 examples of Post Misreporting' which addresses some of the more damning allegations made by a former publisher and foreign editor of the Post.
I'm not alone in thinking that the Post leans dramatically to the left, just search for the term 'Washington Post Bias' in Google and you'll get over 2 million hits.
With that said I was surprised to find a number of pieces in their Op-Ed section this week criticizing Barack Obama for his lack of, as Stephen Colbert might say, "truthiness."
Take this piece: 'Always for Less Regulation'? John McCain's record on Wall Street oversight gets some misleading spin from Barack Obama. In it, the Post calls out Senator Obama for the following quote:
When I was warning about the danger ahead on Wall Street months ago because of the lack of oversight, Senator McCain was telling the Wall Street Journal -- and I quote -- 'I'm always for less regulation.'But instead of the period at the end of Obama's sentance there should have been an ellipsis (...) because Senator McCain went on to say,
...But I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight. I think we found this in the subprime lending crisis -- that there are people that game the system and if not outright broke the law, they certainly engaged in unethical conduct which made this problem worse. So I do believe that there is role for oversight."So either Obama's speechwriters didn't read the whole article or they purposefully chose to ignore the truth for the sake of a juicy soundbyte. But the inaccuracies in his statement don't end there.
McCain's record in relation to fiscal market regulation and corporate oversight McCain is a proven champion of the cause, sometimes to the frustration of his republican allies.
During the 2002 aftermath of Enron, McCain crossed party lines and joined with Carl Levin (D-Michigan) a longtime thorn in the republican party's side, to press for tighter regulation of stock-option accounting against the longstanding wishes of corporate lobbyists.
He pissed a lot of people on either side of the aisle off for that one, especially members of his own party. The folks at National Review called him an outright hypocrite for trying to intervene - they even pointed out that his reelection campaign had received $9,500 from Enron executives - contributions that, in the end, earned McCain's donors no clemency.
In addition to regulation of the private sector, McCain called for greater regulation of government 'businesses' Fannie-Mae and Freddie-Mac... in 2006! He addressed the Senate on May 25, 2006 in support of a bill authored by Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and cosponsored by McCain, Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), and John Sununu (R-NH), the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190. If you want to read the whole speech, check it out. I'll just give you the highlights...
...this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal... For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac... I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.As if Obama's exposure on that point weren't damning enough, the Post came back at him the very next day to call him to task on the second part of his quote. Obama kept-up with saying that he'd been warning about the market colapse for months now and then took it a step further, stating,
In January, I outlined a plan to help revive our faltering economy, which formed the basis for a bipartisan stimulus package that passed the Congress.Wow. That's impressive. Taking credit for the economic stimulus package... when he didn't even bother to vote on the final product... This one turned out to be more a gross exageration than an outright lie, but kudos to the Post for pointing it out.
So a hearty congratulations to the Washington Post for beginning to make ammends for your partisan wa... Wait. What? The Washington Post is criticizing John McCain for airing an ad that uses, as its source, the Washington Post? They're saying that he shouldn't have relied on the reporting of their own paper...
Well, you know what they say... two steps forward...
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Treason?
It's one of the most taboo words in modern democracy. It is a crime so heinous that it bears the dubious distinction of being the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution, which states that:
::The Inside Baseball::
You don't have to read this unless you really want the guts of just how bad this really is.
The troop presence in Iraq is legally justified by two statutes -- the Status of Forces Agreement (SoFA), an agreement reached between the Iraqi and American administrations regarding the governance of US troops on Iraqi soil and the Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA) which provides the legal precedent for the US presence in Iraq. These agreements are founded on the UN mandate agreeing upon the legality of the continued presence of US troops in Iraq.
Though the two agreements are negotiated separately they are inextricably linked to one another. The troops have no legal precedent to be in Iraq without the Iraqi approved SFA and with the SFA intact, though they have the legal precedent to be in the country without the SoFA they have no legal precedent to do anything.
The Obama camp has claimed, in response to the article, that he was asking for a delay in renewing the SFA - thus erasing the Iraqi-American accord that defines the very legality of our troops' presence in a sovereign nation.
Why would he want this? Simple.
The SFA governs, in part, the number of troops we have on the ground. Any troop draw down would have to be mutually agreed upon by the Iraqi and American governments and reflected in the SFA. If President Bush wishes to decrease the number of troops in Iraq, as he stated he plans to just last week, such a draw-down would require a negotiated alteration of the SFA.
Now Obama's stated position is that he wants US troops out of Iraq. The Bush Administration agrees that its time to start doing just that.
I won't comment politically on this one, you folks are smart enough to draw your own conclusions... Please feel free to share them in the comments section if you'd like.
Selected Sources:
OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL - Taheri, NY Post 9/16/08
OBAMA OBJECTS - Taheri, NY Post 9/17/08
OBAMA'S TALK WITH IRAQI FOREIGN MINISTER - Jones, MSNBC 6/16/08
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
It's rarely charged -- there have been less than forty federal prosecutions of the crime since the founding of our nation; only one such charge seven years into the War on Terror. It's a word not easily spoken in the collegial halls Washington but it's been whispered lately in conjunction with the name of the Democratic presidential nominee.
On September 16, 2008, The New York Post published an opinion piece by Amir Taheri, a conservative, Iranian-born journalist and author. He has been one of the few Middle Eastern voices who has spoken out vociferously against Islamic-extremist terrorism and the oppressive regimes that exist in nations like his native Iran. As you can imagine, he's a very popular guy...
Taheri's September 16 article was titled simply, "Senator Barack Obama Tried to Stall GI's Iraq Withdrawl." Though his piece is largely opinion and features a number of loose quotations by unspecified sources, it does feature a previously unheard, directly quoted statement from Iraq Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
In reference to the agreement surrounding the United States presence in Iraq Zebari stated that, "[Obama] asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington."
In a follow-up to his article, Taheri quotes an interview Obama gave to NBC following his meeting with Zebari. NBC reported that, "Obama also told Zebari, he said, that Congress should be involved in any negotiations regarding a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq. He suggested it may be better to wait until the next administration to negotiate such an agreement."
The bottom line: the Iraqi equivalent of the United States Secretary of State and a United States media-outlet both confirm that Senator Barack Obama, without the support or consent of the current, elected administration, engaged in negotiations with a formal representative of a foreign government during a time of war regarding the strategic deployment of US military personnel. In his "negotiations," he sought to postpone the renewal of a key diplomatic agreement between the Iraqi and American governments and, in doing so, forestall a potential draw-down of American troops from combat.
Now the waters here get a bit muddy, if you've followed me this far, you've got the meat of the matter but if you're still not convinced or get geeked-out about this stuff like I do, try to follow me on this one.
On September 16, 2008, The New York Post published an opinion piece by Amir Taheri, a conservative, Iranian-born journalist and author. He has been one of the few Middle Eastern voices who has spoken out vociferously against Islamic-extremist terrorism and the oppressive regimes that exist in nations like his native Iran. As you can imagine, he's a very popular guy...
Taheri's September 16 article was titled simply, "Senator Barack Obama Tried to Stall GI's Iraq Withdrawl." Though his piece is largely opinion and features a number of loose quotations by unspecified sources, it does feature a previously unheard, directly quoted statement from Iraq Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
In reference to the agreement surrounding the United States presence in Iraq Zebari stated that, "[Obama] asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington."
In a follow-up to his article, Taheri quotes an interview Obama gave to NBC following his meeting with Zebari. NBC reported that, "Obama also told Zebari, he said, that Congress should be involved in any negotiations regarding a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq. He suggested it may be better to wait until the next administration to negotiate such an agreement."
The bottom line: the Iraqi equivalent of the United States Secretary of State and a United States media-outlet both confirm that Senator Barack Obama, without the support or consent of the current, elected administration, engaged in negotiations with a formal representative of a foreign government during a time of war regarding the strategic deployment of US military personnel. In his "negotiations," he sought to postpone the renewal of a key diplomatic agreement between the Iraqi and American governments and, in doing so, forestall a potential draw-down of American troops from combat.
Now the waters here get a bit muddy, if you've followed me this far, you've got the meat of the matter but if you're still not convinced or get geeked-out about this stuff like I do, try to follow me on this one.
You don't have to read this unless you really want the guts of just how bad this really is.
The troop presence in Iraq is legally justified by two statutes -- the Status of Forces Agreement (SoFA), an agreement reached between the Iraqi and American administrations regarding the governance of US troops on Iraqi soil and the Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA) which provides the legal precedent for the US presence in Iraq. These agreements are founded on the UN mandate agreeing upon the legality of the continued presence of US troops in Iraq.
Though the two agreements are negotiated separately they are inextricably linked to one another. The troops have no legal precedent to be in Iraq without the Iraqi approved SFA and with the SFA intact, though they have the legal precedent to be in the country without the SoFA they have no legal precedent to do anything.
The Obama camp has claimed, in response to the article, that he was asking for a delay in renewing the SFA - thus erasing the Iraqi-American accord that defines the very legality of our troops' presence in a sovereign nation.
Why would he want this? Simple.
The SFA governs, in part, the number of troops we have on the ground. Any troop draw down would have to be mutually agreed upon by the Iraqi and American governments and reflected in the SFA. If President Bush wishes to decrease the number of troops in Iraq, as he stated he plans to just last week, such a draw-down would require a negotiated alteration of the SFA.
Now Obama's stated position is that he wants US troops out of Iraq. The Bush Administration agrees that its time to start doing just that.
But just as they begin the process of negotiating the agreement that would let them do just that Obama tries to pull the rug out from underneath the whole process by meeting with the Iraqi Foreign Minister and suggesting that he not agree to a change in the SFA.
I won't comment politically on this one, you folks are smart enough to draw your own conclusions... Please feel free to share them in the comments section if you'd like.
Selected Sources:
OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL - Taheri, NY Post 9/16/08
OBAMA OBJECTS - Taheri, NY Post 9/17/08
OBAMA'S TALK WITH IRAQI FOREIGN MINISTER - Jones, MSNBC 6/16/08
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