Little Brother Forum

A company led by a former Bush administration official criticized for post-September 11th-related issues has won a multimillion-dollar contract to treat ground zero workers.

Wisconsin-based Logistics Health has been awarded the $11 million contract from the federal Centers for Disease Control to track the health of between 4,000 and 6,000 ground zero workers who live outside the New York City area.

The company is led by Tommy Thompson, the head of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department during President Bush’s first term.

After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Thompson was criticized for not doing enough to help workers exposed to toxic debris at ground zero.

The government has struggled to effectively track the health issues of ground zero workers who live outside New York.

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=8430353&nav=menu183_2

April 21st, 2008

Friends,

I don’t get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan. The party leaders (both here and in D.C.) couldn’t get their act together, and thus our votes will not be counted.

So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will you please cast my vote — and yours — on Tuesday for Senator Barack Obama?

I haven’t spoken publicly ’til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don’t give a rat’s ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there’s a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word “Democratic” next to the candidate’s name.

Seriously, I know so many people who don’t care if the name under the Big “D” is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.

Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I’ve watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name “Farrakhan” out of nowhere, well that’s when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the “F” word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama’s pastor does — AND the “church bulletin” once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

Yes, Senator Clinton, that’s how you sounded. Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity. How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you. You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And now to throw it all away for an office you can’t win unless you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry “Uncle (Tom)” and give it all to you.

But that can’t happen. You cast your die when you voted to start this bloody war. When you did that you were like Moses who lost it for a moment and, because of that, was prohibited from entering the Promised Land.

How sad for a country that wanted to see the first woman elected to the White House. That day will come — but it won’t be you. We’ll have to wait for the current Democratic governor of Kansas to run in 2016 (you read it here first!).

There are those who say Obama isn’t ready, or he’s voted wrong on this or that. But that’s looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what’s going on is bigger than him at this point, and that’s a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

I know some of you will say, ‘Mike, what have the Democrats done to deserve our vote?’ That’s a damn good question. In November of ‘06, the country loudly sent a message that we wanted the war to end. Yet the Democrats have done nothing. So why should we be so eager to line up happily behind them?

I’ll tell you why. Because I can’t stand one more friggin’ minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world. I’m almost at the point where I don’t care if the Democrats don’t have a backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little heads. Just as long as their name ain’t “Bush” and the word “Republican” is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that’s good enough for me.

I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled senseless for 8 long years. That’s why I will join millions of citizens and stagger into the voting booth come November, like a boxer in the 12th round, all bloodied and bruised with one eye swollen shut, looking for the only thing that matters — that big “D” on the ballot.

Don’t get me wrong. I lost my rose-colored glasses a long time ago.

It’s foolish to see the Democrats as anything but a nicer version of a party that exists to do the bidding of the corporate elite in this country. Any endorsement of a Democrat must be done with this acknowledgement and a hope that one day we will have a party that’ll represent the people first, and laws that allow that party an equal voice.

Finally, I want to say a word about the basic decency I have seen in Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev. Wright up in his face as part of her mission to keep stoking the fears of White America. Every time she does this I shout at the TV, “Say it, Obama! Say that when she and her husband were having marital difficulties regarding Monica Lewinsky, who did she and Bill bring to the White House for ’spiritual counseling?’ THE REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT!”

But no, Obama won’t throw that at her. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be decent. She’s been through enough hurt. And so he remains silent and takes the mud she throws in his face.

That’s why the crowds who come to see him are so large. That’s why he’ll take us down a more decent path. That’s why I would vote for him if Michigan were allowed to have an election.

But the question I keep hearing is… ‘can he win? Can he win in November?’ In the distance we hear the siren of the death train called the Straight Talk Express. We know it’s possible to hear the words “President McCain” on January 20th. We know there are still many Americans who will never vote for a black man. Hillary knows it, too. She’s counting on it.

Pennsylvania, the state that gave birth to this great country, has a chance to set things right. It has not had a moment to shine like this since 1787 when our Constitution was written there. In that Constitution, they wrote that a black man or woman was only “three fifths” human. On Tuesday, the good people of Pennsylvania have a chance for redemption.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MichaelMoore.com
MMFlint@aol.com

March 26, 2008
Hillary’s List of Lies
By Dick Morris

The USA Today/Gallup survey clearly explains why Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is losing. Asked whether the candidates were “honest and trustworthy,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won with 67 percent, with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) right behind him at 63. Hillary scored only 44 percent, the lowest rating for any candidate for any attribute in the poll.

Hillary simply cannot tell the truth. Here’s her scorecard:

Admitted Lies

• Chelsea was jogging around the Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. (She was in bed watching it on TV.)
• Hillary was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. (She admitted she was wrong. He climbed Mt. Everest five years after her birth.)
• She was under sniper fire in Bosnia. (A girl presented her with flowers at the foot of the ramp.)
• She learned in The Wall Street Journal how to make a killing in the futures market. (It didn’t cover the market back then.)

Whoppers She Won’t Confess To

• She didn’t know about the FALN pardons.
• She didn’t know that her brothers were being paid to get pardons that Clinton granted.
• Taking the White House gifts was a clerical error.
• She didn’t know that her staff would fire the travel office staff after she told them to do so.
• She didn’t know that the Peter Paul fundraiser in Hollywood in 2000 cost $700,000 more than she reported it had.
• She opposed NAFTA at the time.
• She was instrumental in the Irish peace process.
• She urged Bill to intervene in Rwanda.
• She played a role in the ’90s economic recovery.
• The billing records showed up on their own.
• She thought Bill was innocent when the Monica scandal broke.
• She was always a Yankees fan.
• She had nothing to do with the New Square Hasidic pardons (after they voted for her 1,400-12 and she attended a meeting at the White House about the pardons).
• She negotiated for the release of refugees in Macedonia (who were released the day before she got there).

With a record like that, is it any wonder that we suspect her of being less than honest and straightforward?

Why has McCain jumped out to a nine-point lead over Obama and a seven-point lead over Hillary in the latest Rasmussen poll? OK, Obama has had the Rev. Wright mess on his hands. And Hillary has come in for her share of negatives, like the Richardson endorsement of Obama and the denouement of her latest lie — that she endured sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia. But why has McCain gained so much in so short a period of time? Most polls had the general election tied two weeks ago.

McCain’s virtues require a contrast in order to stand out. His strength, integrity, solidity and dependability all are essentially passive virtues, which shine only by contrast with others. Now that Obama and Hillary are offering images that are much weaker, less honest, and less solid and dependable, good old John McCain looks that much better as he tours Iraq and Israel while the Democrats rip one another apart.

It took Nixon for us to appreciate Jimmy Carter’s simple honesty. It took Clinton and Monica for us to value George W. Bush’s personal character. And it takes the unseemly battle among the Democrats for us to give John McCain his due.

When Obama faces McCain in the general election (not if but when) the legacy of the Wright scandal will not be to question Obama’s patriotism or love of America. It will be to ask if he has the right stuff (pardon the pun).

The largest gap between McCain and Obama in the most recent USA Today/Gallup Poll was on the trait of leadership. Asked if each man was a “strong, decisive leader,” 69 percent felt that the description fit McCain while only 56 percent thought it would apply to Obama. (61 percent said it of Hillary.) Obama has looked weak handling the Rev. Wright controversy. His labored explanation of why he attacks the sin but loves the sinner comes across as elegant but, at the same time, feeble. Obama’s reluctance to trade punches with his opponents makes us wonder if he could trade them with bin Laden or Ahmadinejad. We have no doubt that McCain would gladly come to blows and would represent us well, but about Obama we are not so sure.

Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of “Outrage.” To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com.

So? … A Note from Michael Moore

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Friends,

It would have to happen on Easter Sunday, wouldn’t it, that the 4,000th American soldier would die in Iraq. Play me that crazy preacher again, will you, about how maybe God, in all his infinite wisdom, may not exactly be blessing America these days. Is anyone surprised?

4,000 dead. Unofficial estimates are that there may be up to 100,000 wounded, injured, or mentally ruined by this war. And there could be up to a million Iraqi dead. We will pay the consequences of this for a long, long time. God will keep blessing America.

And where is Darth Vader in all this? A reporter from ABC News this week told Dick Cheney, in regards to Iraq, “two-thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.” Cheney cut her off with a one word answer: “So?”

“So?” As in, “So what?” As in, “F*** you. I could care less.”

I would like every American to see Cheney flip the virtual bird at the them, the American people. Then ask yourself why we haven’t risen up and thrown him and his puppet out of the White House.

The Democrats have had the power to literally pull the plug on this war for the past 15 months — and they have refused to do so. What are we to do about that? Continue to sink into our despair? Or get creative? Real creative. I know there are many of you reading this who have the chutzpah and ingenuity to confront your local congressperson. Will you? For me?

Cheney spent Wednesday, the 5th anniversary of the war, not mourning the dead he killed, but fishing off the Sultan of Oman’s royal yacht. So? Ask your favorite Republican what they think of that.

The Founding Fathers would never have uttered the presumptuous words, “God Bless America.” That, to them, sounded like a command instead of a request, and one doesn’t command God, even if they are America. In fact, they were worried God would punish America. During the Revolutionary War, George Washington feared that God would react unfavorably against his soldiers for the way they were behaving. John Adams wondered if God might punish America and cause it to lose the war, just to prove His point that America was not worthy. They and the others believed it would be arrogant on their part to assume that God would single out America for a blessing. What a long road we have traveled since then.

I see that Frontline on PBS this week has a documentary called “Bush’s War.” That’s what I’ve been calling it for a long time. It’s not the “Iraq War.” Iraq did nothing. Iraq didn’t plan 9/11. It didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. It DID have movie theaters and bars and women wearing what they wanted and a significant Christian population and one of the few Arab capitals with an open synagogue.

But that’s all gone now. Show a movie and you’ll be shot in the head. Over a hundred women have been randomly executed for not wearing a scarf. I’m happy, as a blessed American, that I had a hand in all this. I just paid my taxes, so that means I helped to pay for this freedom we’ve brought to Baghdad. So? Will God bless me?

God bless all of you in this Easter Week as we begin the 6th year of Bush’s War.

God help America. Please.

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Hillary Lends Her Campaign $5 Million – Where Did the Money Come From?

Last week, in this space I wrote that Bill Clinton’s business dealings around the world could create a conflict of interest with respect to Hillary’s position in the U.S. Senate and her candidacy for President of the United States. This week, Hillary showed us all why we should be very concerned.

According to the New York Post: “Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million from her personal bank account late last month, officials acknowledged today — a surprising twist in the deadlocked race for the Democratic nomination…The move came after Clinton’s fundraising for January paled in comparison to rival Sen. Barack Obama’s – he raised a staggering $32 million to her $13.5 million, officials said.”

Now, candidates have from time to time drawn significant funds from their personal accounts to cover campaign expenses. But Hillary Clinton is no ordinary candidate and this is no ordinary campaign. Her husband is a former president who uses his history in the White House to leverage business deals in an unprecedented fashion. Since he left office in 2001, the former president has traveled the world accumulating tens of millions of dollars in speaking fees from foreign interests (such as Dubai and Chinese communist interests). He also seems to have struck business deals with companies that don’t require him to work or to assume any financial risk.

For example, The Wall Street Journal reported just a couple of weeks ago that Bill Clinton is due to receive a $20 million buyout from billionaire businessman Ron Burkle as he severs a relationship with Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies. By Burkle’s own estimate, Clinton averaged about 500 hours per year, or 10 hours per week, on the Yucaipa business without making any financial investment. To say that’s a sweetheart deal is a gross understatement.

Question: What does Burkle expect in return for his generosity? And what about Bill Clinton’s other financial angels, many of whom reside overseas?

As we and other critics have noted, given that Hillary shares a bank account with her husband, payments to Bill Clinton are, in effect, payments to her. It was bad enough that she was a senator on the indirect take, but this is especially troubling now that Hillary has decided to use these assets to get elected president. Is there any real doubt that Bill’s business and speaking fee payments were de facto campaign contributions? Back in the 90’s, the Chinese communists gave the money to the campaigns and DNC to help the Clinton gang win and retain office. Now these and other similarly dubious foreign interests just give it to the Clintons directly. And now that money is being laundered, clean as a whistle, into Hillary’s campaign coffers.

We were second to none in going after Cheney on Halliburton and former President Bush for his Carlyle/Saudi ties. The Clintons also need to be held to account.

Corruption Matters

Speaking of unasked questions…Have you noticed that there has been a startling lack of attention paid to the issue of corruption in these presidential debates? We’ve had over two dozen of them. Other than one question from Tim Russert in an early Democratic debate related to Hillary’s White House papers the issue of government ethics has been abandoned. This is despite the fact that corruption was the number one issue on the minds of voters during the last election cycle, ahead of Iraq and ahead of the economy. It was the main reason why the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress.

So why the deafening silence on what is clearly a hot-button issue for voters? Certainly, it’s not for lack of material. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s moral and ethical bankruptcy has been a focus of Judicial Watch’s work for the last 13 years. (See more here.)

Then there’s Barack Obama and his Rezko problem. First, there was that “boneheaded mistake” Obama made by getting involved in a property deal with Rezko, who as under investigation at the time for taking kickbacks from companies that sought to do business with the state of Illinois. Then there were the news reports of the $150,000 in Rezko-tainted donations that Obama was forced to donate to charity.

And now this, according to The London Times: “An undeclared $3.5 million…payment from a corrupt Iraqi-British businessman has landed Barack Obama’s former fundraiser behind bars.

“The payment, disclosed in court papers, is the first time that Mr Obama’s long-serving bagman Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko, a Syrian immigrant to the United States, has been linked to Nadhmi Auchi, the Iraqi-born billionaire who is one of Britain’s richest men. The relationship is a potential embarrassment for Mr. Obama, who has made his opposition to the Iraq war a central plank of his campaign.

“Court papers describe Mr Rezko as a close friend of Mr. Auchi. The two are involved in a large Chicago land development together…”

Incidentally, Obama is referenced indirectly in those court documents. After which, Obama donated some Rezko-related dollars to charity. The more we learn, the worse it looks for Senator Obama and his Rezko connection.

Of course, Republicans have problems of their own. I’ve written before about the 14 ethics complaints filed against Mike Huckabee, who actually sued to shut the ethics process down.

While clearly some of John McCain’s appeal relates to his anti-corruption message, or “straight talk,” as he calls it, check out this gem from The Washington Post last week: “A top political adviser in Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign helped arrange an introduction in 2006 between McCain and a Russian billionaire whose suspected links to anti-democratic and organized-crime figures are so controversial that the U.S. government revoked his visa.”

Judicial Watch is initiating investigations into all of this – but Americans need to hold these politicians’ feet to the fire. Otherwise, things may never change.

www.judicialwatch.org

Bill Poovey/Associated Press Writer/October 3, 2007

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions — New England and the South — are sitting down to talk.

Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully.

That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a conservative group that refuses to give up on Southern independence.

“We believe that an independent South, or Hawaii, Alaska, or Vermont would be better able to serve the interest of everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity,” said Michael Hill of Killen, Ala., president of the League of the South. (more…)

Source: theoildrum.org

—

Peak Oil: As first expressed in Hubbert peak theory, peak oil is the point or timeframe at which the maximum global petroleum production rate is reached. After this timeframe, the rate of production will enter terminal decline. According to the Hubbert model, the production rate will follow a roughly symmetrical bell-shaped curve. This does not mean oil will suddenly “run out”, but the supply of cheap conventional oil will drop and prices will rise, perhaps dramatically.

—

Tom Whipple/aspo-usa.com/Peak Oil Review/October 8, 2007
Excerpt:

In peak oil circles, the likelihood that world oil exports will peak and then decline faster than world oil production has been discussed, tracked, and generally accepted for some time now. Last week the notion that peak exports may well be near at hand hit the mainstream when Jeffrey Rubin, the chief economist of the Canadian investment bank CIBC, released a report on declining oil exports and began briefing Wall Street groups about his findings.

With the headline grabbing “$100 oil by the end of 2008”, Rubin reported that rising demand in oil exporting countries such as Mexico, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia will put pressure on global oil prices in the coming years. He expects exports from OPEC countries, Russia, and Mexico will likely decline by about 3 million barrels per day over the next five years with the biggest drop coming from Mexico, a key U.S. supplier. Rubin believes that of a potential drop in exports of 3 million b/d, 2 million will directly affect US imports. This coupled with very expensive new production such as deep-water and Alberta sands production will lead to $90 oil during 2008 and $100 oil by the end of the year. Thereafter, oil prices will remain in triple digits.

Rubin posits that as one of the few sources of oil still open to private investment, Alberta will gain an increasing share of US oil imports.

—

…A global Hubbert peak is inevitable, but its timing has been the subject of debate. Hubbert predicted the peak would occur between 1996 and 2006. Most current estimates place the peak before 2030 (many before 2010), and some authorities believe that it is occurring now. The varied estimates reflect scientific uncertainty in measuring petroleum reserves, lack of standard protocols for reporting, and incentives for governments and private firms not to report their reserves accurately. Advances in petroleum extraction technologies, such as high-pressure steam extraction, and techniques that allow production from unconventional sources such as tar sands and oil shale, have increased recoverable reserves, modestly delaying the peak. Nevertheless, the peak is not far off.

Note: Excerpts from a paper published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

By Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen/International Herald Tribune/October 3, 2007

WASHINGTON: When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. (more…)

Sinan Salaheddin, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Oct 04, 2007

BAGHDAD - Iraq’s self-governing Kurdish region has finalized a handful of new oil deals, further straining relations with Baghdad, which wants to centralize control of the country’s oil resources.

A spokesman for Iraq’s Oil Ministry, Assem Jihad, denounced the agreements, saying the government has “made it clear not to sign any contract until the new oil law is passed.”

In a statement issued Wednesday on its website, the Kurdistan Regional Government said it had approved four new production sharing contracts with international companies and had sanctioned the construction of two new refineries. (more…)

Texas’ Hunt Oil Co. and Kurdistan’s regional government said they have signed a production-sharing contract for petroleum exploration in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, the first such deal since the Kurds passed their own oil and gas law in August.

A Hunt subsidiary, Hunt Oil Co. of the Kurdistan Region, will begin geological survey and seismic work by the end of 2007 and hopes to drill an exploration well in 2008, the parties said in a news release Saturday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Hunt is a privately-held independent oil company based in Dallas, Texas. A third partner, Impulse Energy Corp., also has a stake in the project.

Ray L Hunt, who has been a member on the board of Halliburton since 1998, has been a key fundraiser for President George W. Bush, who named him to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

Open Secrets (opensecrets.org) shows Hunt Consolidated, Ray L and his wife, Nancy, at #33 of top 2004 election contributors, giving $277,984 solidly to Rebublicans.