McCain’s Bipartisanship Just What Doctors’ Ordered

New York Times Examines Record Of Cooperation On Health Care, Other Issues By Presumptive GOP Presidential Nominee McCain

In his 2000 presidential campaign, McCain experienced his “first face-to-face confrontation with domestic issues like global warming and health insurance costs,” according to his advisers, the Times reports. After the 2000 election, McCain — who previously had “kept his distance” from Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) because of his “record of pulling Republicans into grand compromises” — “pulled up a chair at Mr. Kennedy’s desk near the back of the Senate floor” and expressed interest in cooperation on a patients’ rights bill, which he previously had opposed, according to the Times. “Soon he was cooperating with Democrats on … many issues,” the Times reports (Kirkpatrick, New York Times, 7/21).

Praise for McCain from the New York Times is an amazing coup for the Republican.

Awakening brings literacy to Iraq

The rebuilding of Iraq began almost simultaneously with the invasion of coalition forces in 2003.  Behind the tanks and bombing raids came engineers to rebuild electrical grids, dig wells, and establish hospitals, sometimes to replace what was destroyed and sometimes to bring services where they had never existed before.  Another project has recently been implemented in an effort to bring literacy to the Iraqs to help them to better be able to pick up the reigns of democracy and integrate the country into a cohesive front.

In a decrepit classroom in the northern Iraqi city of Hawija, men in their 20s and 30s sit chanting the Arabic alphabet. Dressed in green military camouflage uniforms, they are part of the Awakening movement – Sunni tribesmen, some of them former insurgents, who now work alongside U.S. forces to secure their neighborhoods.

This literacy project is part of a pilot program set up by the U.S. military and designed to provide basic literacy skills to some 500 of these young men. It is run by local Iraqis, and classes began in mid-June.

For Mahmoud Salah Hasan, 25, who has been part of the Awakening movement for two months now, the classes have been helpful. “It’s very good. It’s basic reading like boy, girl, sun, moon,” he says.

Read entire article here.

The program will not only bring basic reading and writing skills to the soldiers but also help them to become qualified for advancement within the military.

Although the course seems to be educating these Iraqis at a very basic level, that’s just what the pilot project is aiming for, says 1st Lt. Steven Johnson from the 443rd Civil Affairs battalion, who helped set up the program. “This particular program,” Johnson says, “is geared toward getting them third- or fourth-grade educational level in reading, writing and math.”

The Awakening movement has been an integral part of the U.S. military’s strategy against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Integrating the militiamen into the Iraqi security forces would not only provide them permanent jobs, it would also help with the reconciliation process.

But, Johnson acknowledges, there are still doubts about the program and whether that will actually happen. “This initial pilot is geared to transitioning them into the Iraqi security forces,” he says. “At this time, that has not been guaranteed.”

The focus of the program is to enable Sunnis to be integrated into the mainly Shiite army.  In a country where the Sunni domination over the Shiites during Sadam’s reign is not forgotten, this is not an easy goal.

Dr. Ala Mekki, who heads the education committee in the Iraqi parliament, says the Iraqi government is serious about educating these men. “Yes,” says Mekki, “it is a serious desire, and we want to educate them and make them ready to be integrated into the Iraqi army and Iraqi security forces and Ministry of Interior.“

It is hoped that the Awakening program will also bring coaltion among the Shiites and Sunnis against the foreign insurgents.

Saddam Hussein held a tight reign over his country and one of the keys to his control was to foster division among the major factions.  After the coalition forces toppled the leader, the most daunting challenge has been the unification of the groups who have for years been at odds with each other.  This Shia-Sunni-Kurd feuding made it easy for Al Qaida and other insurgent groups to establish a foothold within Iraq and continue the violence and chaos.  Recently the Awakening training seems to be showing promise of creating bonds within Iraqis.

Residents of western Baghdad, tired of al-Qaida in Iraq’s attempts to control their area, rose up against the terrorist group Thursday and called in U.S. troops to help them. The Associated Press reports that a member of the district council said people were tired of the random gunfire that kept them indoors and threats that prevented students from taking final exams.

The incident in Baghdad is not an isolated one, Bill Roggio notes in his The Fourth Rail blog at Military.com. Sunni anti-al-Qaida tribes, community leaders and even insurgent groups are increasingly coming together to battle al-Qaida in what is called the “Iraq Awakening” movement. Sheik Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi in the Ramadi region of Anbar province created the model for the Awakening movement. AP reported in April that 200 Sunni sheiks in Anbar joined together in Iraq Awakening to oppose al-Qaida.

Source

It is for certain that Al Qaida will not stand by and allow this force to gain strength unabated.

Al-Qaida has reportedly not taken the threat lightly. The Kuwait News Agency reports that al-Qaida gunmen attacked and seriously wounded a tribal chief who had been working with the Awakening movement and his wife.

The Marine Corps Times reports that coalition officials, while pleased to see the trend, said they have seen “too many false dawns” to publicly declare the movement a “turning point.” “We’re naturally cautious people,” said a senior British coalition officer. “We don’t do excitement.”

While this movement might be limite in size, it is a sign that Iraqis are beginning to feel the responsibility of leading their own country.  It is still a fine balance to keep all sides in mutual cooperation, but the hope is that eventually the benefits of such coooperation will become more important to the parties than past grievances.

Oil Crisis Brings Congressional Stare Down

To even casual political observers, the acrimonious atmosphere that has halted any and all movement within the halls of Congress has been perfectly clear.  Old animosities and new political posturing has caused any hope of bipartisanship to be as cold as the tundra of ANWR. The “just say no” attitude of the Democrats may become a boon to the Republicans as the price of oil continues to hit American pocketbooks.  Ed Frank examines the potential affect of the obfuscation by the Dems in a recent National Review.

The Congressional Drilling Showdown

President Bush’s lifting of the executive ban on offshore drilling this week is more than a symbolic gesture. It means the only thing preventing expanded offshore oil-and-gas development is a temporary, one-year congressional ban set to expire on September 30. While Congress has a habit of re-imposing this ban each year, it has never gotten around to writing it into permanent law. This creates a key opportunity for supporters of domestic energy production, including the president, to force a showdown.

It will take an act of Congress and the president’s signature (or a veto override in both the House and Senate) to extend the current ban on new offshore drilling. And since congressional Democrats have essentially shut down the appropriations process — because they know they would lose an amendment vote that would lift the ban — they don’t want to schedule a stand-alone vote that would extend the ban.

A vote for the ban would prove disastrous in the upcoming election with polls showing that 76% of Americans support increased domestic drilling.  So what is a Democratically controlled Congress to do?

Frank predicts that they will use a tactic very often seen utilized in the last few minutes of a very basketball game:  stall.

The word around Washington is that the Democrats plan to pass a long-term continuing resolution or omnibus spending bill that would fund government operations between October 1 and the inauguration of a new president in January. (Obviously, they’re hoping for a President Obama.) You can bet any final spending package will come with an extension of the offshore drilling ban. Democrats will assume that Republicans will go along with a deal to wrap up business and get home to campaign — daring them to oppose it.

And that is just what Republicans should do.  With public sentiment behind the Republicans on the drilling issue and the continuation of bad economic news caused by the high price of oil, the Democrats will be forced to try to defend a very unpopular issue.

This is a political fight the free-market guys actually can win. Americans will hear the message loud and clear: “Congressional Democrats are shutting down government because they stubbornly refuse to increase domestic energy production, keeping us dependent on foreign oil from Hugo Chavez and the Middle East and forcing the price of gasoline unnecessarily high.”

The Democrats have been speaking in contradictions about the cause and solution for the oil crisis.  Nancy Pelosi has called for President Bush to open up the Strategic Oil Reseves while at the same time claim that additional supply is not the answer to the oil crisis.

These conflicting positions underscore just how vulnerable Speaker Pelosi and her allies are on this simple issue of supply and demand. This may be the only potent political issue to favor free-market conservatives this year, and they should take every opportunity to use it to their advantage. President Bush and Republican leaders in Congress should draw a line in the sand and refuse to pass any appropriations bill or final spending package that re-imposes the ban on offshore drilling.

This issue and the Democratic response to it could be one of the few winning points that the Republicans will have this fall going into a national election.  This is an opportunity that the GOP can not afford to squander.

Manson Family Member’s Parole Denied

Susan Atkins’ petition for a “compassionate release” was turned down by the California Board of Parole.  Atkins, the longest serving woman in the California penal system, is reportedly in the end stage of brain cancer.

She was sentenced in 1969 for the two night murder spree which included of Sharon Tate and her house guests and in a separate incident, Rosemary and Leno LaBianco.  Although she maintained her innocence during the the trials, after sentencing she bragged about her involvement including providing graphic details about killing the eight month pregnant movie star.

It is those specific details along with her unrepentant attitude that has led the families of her victims to urge to the parole board to reject any clemency for Atkins.

In a letter Friday to the chairman of the parole board, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Atkins’ “horrific crimes alone warrant a denial of her request.”

Cooley said Atkins, 60, was not a good candidate for compassionate release because she had “failed to demonstrate genuine remorse and lacks insight and understanding of the gravity of her crimes.”

Atkins’ supporters, including her husband James Whitehouse, have asked that she be released in order to die among her loved ones.

“She can’t care for herself, she can’t feed herself or even sit up in bed by herself,” said her attorney, Eric P. Lampel. In addition to the cancer, Atkins had her leg amputated. “The reality is, even if she gets this compassionate release, she won’t leave her hospital room.”

Atkins’ case is one that might pull at the heartstrings had not her own behavior in the seven murders have been so horrific.  During her imprisonment she has been allowed visits with her friends and families, to marry twice and even have conjugal visits.  Her victims’ families have been stripped of the presence of their loved ones by her brutality.  While she may not now be a risk to the community, she has been sentenced to a lifetime of confinement, and her need to be near her family is outweighed by the grief that her actions caused.

Happy Cost of Government Day 2008

Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. America!  You have now worked enough days to pay your taxes and beginning today you work for yourself or at least your personal bills.

Grover Norquists’ Americans for Tax Reform site breaks down where YOUR money goes.  There is also analysis to show how much longer or less the taxpayers will pay if depending on which candidate wins the presidency in November.

JibJab: Time for some campaignin’

Equal opportunity satire from the great JibJab people.

The Graying and Fraying of Jihad

The during the war against the Russian army in Afghanistan, the young militants that were the backbone of the Taliban fought successfully resulting in the much larger, better armed force to finally withdraw in defeat.  In the years that have followed, the Jihadist cause has been globalized, and the leaders have grown into middle age.  Have those who fought so fiercely in the face of insurmountable odds began to question their own cause and the leaders that spread the dogma of Islamic hate?

Der Spiegel examines this question beginning its focus with one such Islamic fighter, Noman Benotman a 41 year-old Libyan, in

Turning their Backs on Jihad

Benotman has just returned [to London] from Libya, where he is working on behalf of the Gadhafi regime, the same regime he hoped to oust only a decade ago. He has been assigned a very delicate task. His job is to convince imprisoned members of his former terrorist group to sign a peace treaty of sorts. He has traveled to Libya 25 times in the last 16 months, and his efforts are paying off. Now, he says, the document that will allow his former comrades to be reintegrated into society is as good as written — and on the verge of being signed.

Under the agreement the terrorists, most of them in prison for many years, will renounce violence and the murder of civilians. It will also include a denial of recent al-Qaida claims that the LIFG has joined forces with the international terrorist organization. This is untrue, says Benotman, explaining that the Libyans distanced themselves from al-Qaida long ago. His new mission is anything but secretive. Arab television broadcaster Al-Jazeera recently reported on his trips to Libya — a story about a former jihadist’s attempt to bring about peace, after all, is nothing short of spectacular.

An Islamic fundamentalist working to integrate terrorists into the government they once vowed to topple is a stunning turn around but not limited specifically to Libya or Benotman.

In late May, India’s influential Deoband religious movement issued a fatwa against terrorism. In a joint proclamation at a meeting in New Delhi attended by representatives of the country’s leading Islamic organizations, the groups stated: “It is the goal and purpose of Islam to extinguish all forms of terrorism and to disseminate the message of global peace. Those who use the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad to justify terror are merely upholding a lie.”

Former militants who have renounced jihad often begin to proselytize among their former comrades-in-arms. In late April, a handful of former members of the militant Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which was founded in Jordan in 1953 and eventually spread to about 40 countries, established a foundation to combat fundamentalism among Muslims in Europe.

Like Benotman, Maajid Nawaz, 31, has left the radical faction of Islam to form the Quilliam Foundation.  Choosing western clothing over tradition Muslim attire, Nawaz speaks frankly about his reason for rejecting the cause which caused him to spend 5 years in an Egyptian prison.

“I turned away from Islamism,” he said, “because I recognized it as the curse of Islam.”

In the ten years after bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri  founded the “International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders,” and seven years after the attacks of Sept. 11, terrorism experts are beginning to see divisiveness within the ranks.  The first major defector was Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, an Egyptian doctor, and who competed with Zawahiri for bin Laden’s favor. Sharif is better known under his nom de guerre, Dr. Fadl and is also known as the “al-Qaida’s chief ideologue,”

He wrote that jihadism is reprehensible and that it violates the precepts of Islam and Shariah law. Killing people solely on the basis of their nationality is not in keeping with the Koran, he wrote, especially since the victims of such acts are often “innocent Muslims and non-Muslims.” “Fight, on God’s behalf, against those who fight you, but do not exceed the limits,” the converted Dr. Fadl wrote.

The defection of Fadl set the course for others to follow.

Paul Cruickshank of New York University and terrorism expert Peter Bergen spent six months investigating the turmoil within al-Qaida. The two were the first to interview Noman Benotman, and they also spoke with other critics of the terror organization — including Sheikh Salman al-Oudah.

Cruickshank believes that the Iraq War actually caused the fractures of Al-Qaida to be delayed because the presence of American soldiers on Islamic soil was a solidifying factor in the continuation of the hostilities against the West.  But the movement away from the radicalization of Islam continues to be seen.

This shift in the general mood that experts like Bergen believe is happening in Europe is clearly in evidence at London’s Al-Tawhid Mosque. Two of the presumed attackers who planned, and failed, to commit attacks in London and Glasgow in late June 2007 were frequent visitors to the mosque. “But now people have had enough of Islam constantly being equated with terrorism,” says Usama Hasan, the mosque’s 36-year-old imam.

These days Hasan wears a suit when leading Friday prayers. “I am a Muslim living in the West, and I want everyone to see it.” Hasan, himself a former fighter in Afghanistan and member of a fundamentalist group, now preaches the renunciation of violence and condemns terrorism.

Perhaps the greatest enemy of Al-Qaida is not the military of the west, but that force that shapes the souls of many men:  time and experience.

Politicians Play Petroleum Production Poker–who holds the winning hand?

Earlier in the summer and facing ever increasing gasoline prices, President George W. Bush called for Congress to lift the ban on offshore drilling and open up portions of ANWAR for oil exploration.  With no movement by Congress, today he turned up the heat by lifting an executive order which was originally implemented by his father in 1990 prohibiting drilling on the outer-continental shelf.

“It’s been almost a month since I urged Congress to act, and they’ve done nothing,” Bush said. “As the Democratically controlled Congress has sat idle, gas prices have continued to increase.”

In a Rose Garden statement at the White House, Bush argued that allowing drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines would ease pressure on oil prices by increasing domestic production.

Bush also advocated taking other steps, such as allowing drilling in the Alaskan wilderness and access to oil shale in a basin that stretches across parts of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. He blamed congressional opposition to drilling for the current run-up in gas prices.

Read entire article here.

The Democrats responded to the announcement by trying calling the plan nothing more than political window dressing and cronyism.

“President Bush and John McCain are not serious about addressing gas prices,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.). “If they were, they would stop offering the same old ideas meant to pad the pockets of Big Oil and work with Democrats to reduce our dependence on oil.”

Drawing on the theory of too little, too late, Nancy Pelosi said that any new drilling would not produce any appreciable increase for the consumer for ten years.  Instead, Pelosi called again on Bush to open up the Strategic Reserve Supplies to ease the pressure at the pump.

Most Americans, however, are seeing more advantages to domestic drilling to cut the US dependence on oil.

Republicans are taking heart in recent polling that suggests the public may be more receptive to drilling, especially if it is coupled with other initiatives to address gas prices. A recent Gallup poll showed that 57 percent of respondents were willing to support drilling in the nation’s coastal and wilderness areas currently closed to exploration.

As the president said this morning, the ball is in the Democrats court.  They can continue the policy of “just say no” or they can face the judgement of the American public for not finding solutions to a serious blow to the economy both on a national and personal level.

All in a day’s work and more

Almost everyone in the United States is feeling the crunch brought on by the spike in oil prices over the last 12 months.  Economists try to explain the increase and predict the peak, but the average person is not aware of all the technical factors that drive commodities higher or lower.  What they do understand is the price per gallon and their level of personal income.

Based on those two figures, exactly how unaffordable has gasoline become?  To analyze this, it necessary to look at two sets of historical data:  the average price per gallon of gas and the minimum wage.  While the minimum wage is not what the majority of people make, it is the baseline of the economy.  Those whose wages exceed the minimum can still gain some enlightenment from the comparison of these two figures.

In 1950 when minimum wage was 75 cents an hour and gasoline was 27 cents a gallon, it took $3.24 to fill up a twelve gallon tank.  That amounted to a little less than 4 1/2 working hours.  That number decreased until 1970, when the tank of gas would have amount to about 2 3/4 hours of work.  Then came the first oil crisis, and an individual put over 4 1/2 hours to satisfy the same tank of gas.  The 1990’s again found the US flush with cheap oil and the time expenditure dropped down to 3 1/4 hours.  And for the final number, today’s figure is is over 7 1/2 hours to fill that same twelve gallon tank.

In the course of almost sixty years, the amount of labor needed for a tank of gasoline has doubled and tripled in some instances.  For some people, one day of their work week goes strictly to the almighty pump.

So how has this scenario come to fruition?  Several factor come into play including the lack of planning for this crisis, the blocking of drilling in US oil fields and the prohibition of oil companies to build refineries.  Who is being hurt?  Everyone.  Who is being hurt most?  Those who can least afford it.  Those in the lower and middle classes, those on fixed income, those who already live from paycheck to paycheck.

The Democratic Party proclaims to be the champion of those people, those whose financial stability is just one crisis away from total disaster.  If the Democrats really feel compassion for those who are suffering the most through this crisis, they would drop their objections to America drilling for Americans.

The gasoline may not be in the pump tomorrow or even next year, but it would send a clear message to those who would hold our country hostage via our dependence on foreign oil  Economics is all about future anticipation.  The potential of more drilling in this country would send the signal that America will no longer be subjugated to the fear that somewhere someone will turn off the spigot, and the commodities market would return to its historical norms.

Declare this second American war of independence; the independence of America from foreign oil.

Sources:  Bureau of Labor, Energy Information Agency

Tony Snow 1955-2008

An amazing journalist, writer, and political commentator.