Turns out the firm whose employees were sneaking peeks at Barack Obama’s passports is run by Obama counterterrorism advisor John Brennan.
UPDATE: Correct that, Brennan’s firm employed only one of the three separate people who illicitly accessed Obama’s files.
On Friday, Center for American Progress Action Fund Senior Fellow Robert Gordon and Domestic Policy Advisor James Kvaal released a report detailing how Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) tax plan costs more than $2 trillion in the first decade by doubling the Bush tax cuts. One of McCain’s economic advisers, former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, responded to the report yesterday, as well as CAPAF criticism of McCain’s health plan. Holtz-Eakin concedes that McCain’s tax plan “will make deficits expand up front,” but argues that “voters should wait” before “passing judgment” on McCain’s plan.
Gordon, Kvaal, and CAPAF Senior Fellow Jeanne Lambrew respond to Holtz-Eakin at the Wonk Room.
This may be the greatest piece of surrealist performance art of the internet era:
I’m speechless.
The former First Lady described her 1996 trip to the base at Tuzla earlier this week in a speech:
I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn’t go, so send the First Lady. That’s where we went. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.
I don’t recall that sniper incident, but I was only fifteen or so at the time, and now video has surfaced showing contemporary news coverage of the sniper attack on Clinton, and even capturing a portion of that harrowing dash — including a moment when Clinton uses her body to shield a little girl from danger:
Impressive stuff, I urge everyone to watch the video and see for themselves.
In an upcoming book, Heraldo Muñoz, Chile’s ambassador to the United Nations, writes the efforts by the Bush administration to cajole other countries into supporting the invasion of Iraq “generated lasting ‘bitterness’ and ‘deep mistrust’ in Washington’s relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere.” Muñoz describes how the “rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy” employed by the Bush administration to pressure allies for support included threats and punishment:
In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat. [...]
“In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished” for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein’s government, Muñoz wrote.
Did James Carville really compare Bill Richardson to Judas? Why, yes, it seems that he did! Maybe the Clinton camp’s inner circle has just totally lost touch with reality and they really think that sort of thing is appropriate. The mindset seems a little bizarre, though. When Richardson accepted the appointment as U.N. Ambassador from Bill Clinton was he supposed to take it for granted that that constituted an implicit promise to endorse Clinton’s wife’s presidential campaign years in the future? That he’d signed-on for lifetime service to the House of Clinton?
Meanwhile, consider the reverse proposition — if Clinton’s key backers believed the things they’re saying about the need for experience then why weren’t they supporting Richardson’s presidential campaign? He played a more substantive role in the Clinton administration than she did. Plus he had more years in congress and six years as governor. He’s just the “former members of the Clinton administration who currently holds statewide office” who happens to have the wrong last name.
UPDATE: Of course from a Christian perspective, there’s also a wee problem with comparing Hillary to Jesus.
Our guest bloggers are Robert Gordon and James Kvaal, Senior Fellow and Domestic Policy Advisor, respectively, at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
One of Sen. John McCain’s economic advisers, former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, has responded to this Center for American Progress Action Fund study of the McCain tax plan:
On the question of tax cuts Gordon and Kvaal had a point, he conceded, though he added voters should wait until the senator fleshes out his tax proposal before passing judgment.
“It will make deficits expand up front, no question,” Holtz-Eakin said, adding that helping corporations ultimately helps workers because it ensures their employer remains internationally competitive. “That place has to be economically viable, otherwise they have a problem.”
Apart from the signal that Senator McCain may change his economic agenda yet again, this candid response raises four questions:
1) Why is it necessary to cut taxes for corporations to make them “economically viable” when the United States already has the fourth-lowest corporate tax revenue as a share of the economy in the industrialized world?
2) Why are deficit-financed corporate tax cuts likely to increase growth when (a) in the short-run, Moody’s Economy.com ranked them the least cost-effective stimulus among 13 options, and (b) in the medium or longer-run, the effect on growth of deficit-financed tax cuts “tends to be small?”
3) How do massive tax cuts for the most fortunate further shared prosperity when income inequality is at its highest level since before the Great Depression (or earlier)?
4) Given the admission that this plan will immediately increase federal budget deficits, how will Senator McCain meet his own goal of balancing the budget by 2012?
UPDATE: Center for American Progress Action Fund Senior Fellow Jeanne Lambrew responds below to Holtz-Eakin’s comments on the criticism of McCain’s health care plan: Read more
Asked on PBS’s The Charlie Rose Show earlier this week about “how fragile” the surge in Iraq is, surge architect and American Enterprise Institute “military analyst” Frederick Kagan declared that “the situation in Iraq today is, I think, not that fragile.” He then added that he believed Iraq would be “fragile” if America made “the mistake of pulling out prematurely.”
“If we don’t make that mistake, then I think what we’re seeing in general terms is that the momentum on almost all of the trend lines is in the right direction,” said Kagan. “There are a lot of good reasons to think that this will continue if we don’t make the errors that would undermine it.”
Watch it:
Kagan’s bold claim about the surge’s lack of fragility is directly contradicted by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who told CBS News this week that “while military progress has been made with a ‘surge’ of U.S. forces, ‘progress in Iraq is fragile, it is tenuous.’”
In fact, the very next day following Kagan’s remarks, the Guardian reported on one key aspect of the surge’s strategy that is quite fragile: the reliabilty of U.S. alliances with Sunni militia. The report noted that “Sunni militia employed by the US to fight al-Qaida are warning of a national strike because they are not being paid regularly”:
Leading members of the 80,000-strong Sahwa, or awakening, councils have said they will stop fighting unless payment of their $10 a day (£5) wage is resumed. The fighters are accusing the US military of using them to clear al-Qaida militants from dangerous areas and then abandoning them.
A telephone survey by GuardianFilms for Channel 4 News reveals that out of 49 Sahwa councils four with more than 1,400 men have already quit, 38 are threatening to go on strike and two already have.
Iraq is fragile beyond the question of whether American troops withdraw or not. “What happens if the Ayatollah Sistani gets assassinated?” Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb has asked rhetorically. His answer: “All hell breaks loose.”
Okay, famed scientist James Lovelock didn’t say that second part. But the Daily Mail headline of a recent interview with the creator of the Gaia theory makes clear that this blog is can hardly be accused of real climate alarmism:
Why he thinks we’re doomed:
“It was last as hot as this 55 million years ago. There was a geological accident in the North Sea, near where Norway is. A volcanic layer of lava came up underneath one of the large petroleum deposits. It vaporised the whole lot, putting into the atmosphere about two million, million tons of crude oil.
“We will have put that much into the atmosphere within the next 20 years or so. We know what happened last time, we know how long it lasted. It hung around for about 200,000 years….”
“Everything moved to the North,” Lovelock explains. “The Arctic Ocean was tropical, the sea temperature was 23C (73F). You could find the remains of crocodiles in the sediments.”
[Jim -- you forgot to mention sea levels were 250 feet higher!]
As for what will happen to humankind:
We will face a ruthless period of natural selection.
“I reckon there are about 80 per cent more people than the world can carry,” he says sanguinely….
“By 2040, China will be uninhabitable.” Lovelock believes that the Chinese, because of their high levels of industrial activity, will be the first to suffer, with the death of all plant life.
“So I think the Chinese will go to Africa. They are already there, preparing a new continent – the Chinese industrialists who claim to be out there mining minerals are just there on a pretext of preparing for the big move.
Okay, so now you’re thinking he’s a crackpot. But then he appeals to your vanity:
Lovelock sees Americans moving to Canada. Americans have the natural advantage of being born migrants….
“White Americans are descended from those who had the guts to cross on rough old ships and find a new life. They have the right spirit of can-do.”
Hmm. Interesting sentiment. Guess he’s not an Obama-maniac. Europeans, however, have got it all wrong:
“European governments are doing daft things, investing huge sums in renewable energy which makes a hell of a lot of profit but does no good at all for our survival.”
No greenie, he. In fact, in an earlier interview he said:
“Green,” he tells me, only half-joking, “is the color of mold and corruption.”
But don’t feel bad, humanity. We were probably doomed all along:
The AP reports that yesterday in federal court, the White House disclosed that older “computer hard drives have been destroyed,” the latest revelation in the controversy surrounding missing White House e-mails from 2003-2005. The White House said that a court proposed e-mail recovery plan stemming from lawsuits brought on by the National Security Archive and CREW would be worthless because “[w]hen workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired … the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction.”
(HT: TPM)
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