The Digest


PECULIAR POSNER

At first glance, I thought my eyes were deceiving me. Here’s a complaint letter to the editor published in The New York Times, from a man representing the highly controversial brother of Afghanistan’s president Karzai — and the letter-writer’s name is Gerald Posner.
Gerald Posner? Isn’t that the same name as the investigative journalist who resigned from the  website Daily Beast after allegations… [Read the rest]

General McChrystal’s New Job: Dig a Bit, Please

Did you happen to see how fast General Stanley McChrystal landed on his feet after President Obama fired him for insubordination? In a now-famous Rolling Stone article, the then-commander of US troops in Afghanistan expressed contempt for Obama and Vice President Biden, and a generally profane manner regarding just about everyone.
But practically no time at all passed between his firing… [Read the rest]

THE OLD MEDIA, WIKILEAKS, OR A THIRD WAY?

Almost two weeks have passed since WikiLeaks’ cyber-dump of nearly 80,000 classified military documents on the Afghan war, making this a good time to step back and examine the phenomenon. Whatever one makes of the controversy, it is a striking fact that, notwithstanding their cautionary notes, the mainstream media tacitly endorsed the release by providing wall-to-wall, almost frenetic coverage, and… [Read the rest]

SENATORS’ CONFIDENTIAL WORRIES ABOUT DEMOCRACY ITSELF

Amid the constant fracas of daily political life, it is often hard to see the big picture of power in America (and, for that matter, the world.) In researching my book, Family of Secrets, I came to a fresh appreciation of this big picture, assembling a vast amount of new evidence of the extent to which the visible democratic process… [Read the rest]

KEEPING THE WAR FAR FROM HOME

The other day, I received a press release about an upcoming event. The release had been forwarded to me after the event, and, since I found it compelling,  I wondered how much media attention it got. The answer in a minute….
But first, the release:
DETROIT — On  June 26, at 2pm, a group of U.S. military veterans will hang a large banner on… [Read the rest]

Oil Execs On Safety: “I Am the Walrus..”

In a remarkable display of finger-pointing, oil company executives went after BP today, claiming that if they had been running the Deepwater Horizon rig, no accident would have been possible. But as several congressmen pointed out, all the companies’ safety procedures are absurdly inadequate. Which raises the question: how well do we, as a society, police risks? And, more to… [Read the rest]

EXAMINING SPLIT HAIRS IN A DISASTER

There’s some fancy footwork going on, but the New York Times doesn’t seem willing to deal with it head on. Let’s consider a short section of an article on the New York Times’ website, headlined U.S. Plans ‘for Worst’ in Gulf, Seeing Risk in Leak Strategy. The section deals with BP’s culpability:
Mr. Dudley denied that BP, the British oil company,… [Read the rest]

BUSH’S NEW BANKRUPTCY

Just read breaking news that the Texas Rangers baseball team — the entity that put George W. Bush on the path to the presidency – has filed for bankruptcy.
According to Bloomberg News:
The Texas Rangers, the Major League Baseball team controlled by billionaire Thomas Hicks, filed for bankruptcy after the planned sale of the team fell through. The Arlington, Texas-based company listed assets and debt of between… [Read the rest]

NO SUNSHINE ON SUNSTEIN’S DARK SPOTS

Recently a New York Times Magazine article profiled Cass Sunstein, the most powerful man in government you never heard of. And it absolutely buried the lead — the main reason to take an interest in this fellow.
Under the decidedly benign headline “Cass Sunstein Wants to Nudge Us,” we learn that Sunstein, a close friend of President Obama, runs the Office of Information… [Read the rest]

Taxidermy, or the Big Game of Freebies

I’m constantly struck by ways in which the privileged and the powerful manage to define the terms of discussion. Things like “welfare reform” and “compassionate conservatism.” Hard to be against those things, unless one knows something about what the nasty business they really involve.
Thus, I was intrigued by a recent essay from Martin Lobel, tax attorney extraordinaire and friend of… [Read the rest]

obama-new

THE GAME THAT GOES ON AND ON: A SWISS BANK, A PRESIDENT, AND THE PERMANENT GOVERNMENT

THE GAME THAT GOES ON AND ON: A SWISS BANK, A PRESIDENT, AND THE PERMANENT GOVERNMENT

A little-noted presidential golf outing opens the door to an intrigue-filled world of financiers, murky international interests, money-laundering, tax evasion, and politics as not-so-usual.
 — 
Last August, the presidential press corps followed Barack Obama and his family to Martha’s Vineyard for their brief vacation. The coverage focused on summery fare—a visit to an ice cream parlor, the books the president… [Read the rest]

What Obama Is Up Against

What Obama Is Up Against

The first anniversary of Barack Obama’s historic election finds many of his supporters already grousing. Fair enough: Obama has been more vigorous in some areas than others. But one essential question goes unasked: How much can any president accomplish against the wishes of recalcitrant power centers within his own government?
We Americans harbor a quaint belief that a new president… [Read the rest]

Behind Clinton Backer’s Arrest:  a Bipartisan, International Affair

Behind Clinton Backer’s Arrest:
a Bipartisan, International Affair

AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano

WhoWhatWhy.com reports exclusively on the background of Hassan Nemazee, the top Hillary Clinton fundraiser who was arrested and charged with forging loan documents. Early media accounts cast the event as an embarrassment for Ms. Clinton and the Democratic Party involving the financial misdoings of one prominent backer. Actually it is much more.  Behind the Nemazee… [Read the rest]

Hillary’s Bush Connection

Hillary’s Bush Connection

Research support for this story was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute. Published in conjunction with The Nation.
IN THE CLINTONS’ PURSUIT OF POWER, there is no such thing as a strange bedfellow. One recently exposed inamorata was Norman Hsu, the mysterious businessman from Hong Kong who brought in $850,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign before being unmasked as… [Read the rest]

CIA Helped Bush Senior In Oil Venture

CIA Helped Bush Senior In Oil Venture

Newly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush's oil company emerged from a 1950's collaboration with a covert CIA officer.
A Real News exclusive, first published on The Huffington Post
Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford.… [Read the rest]

25 Democratic Consultants

25 Democratic Consultants

Jack Quinn served as Vice President Gore’s Chief of Staff, and later as Counsel to President Clinton. Now he is a partner in a political consulting and lobbying firm with a close friend of Tom DeLay, and together, they have represented clients who want to drill in fragile areas of Alaska, put the screws to already beleaguered American consumers, and… [Read the rest]

Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh and Brown

Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh and Brown

Michael Brown will forever remain the poster child for federal incompetence. And the central question has yet to be answered: who was Michael Brown, and how did he end up at the helm of the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Indeed, how did he and his predecessor and mentor, Bush political operative Joe Allbaugh, manage to turn FEMA, a once proud… [Read the rest]

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