John Fund went on Glenn Beck's show last night to help Beck with his characterization of the Obama White House as a nest of fist-bumping terrorist radicals, mostly by underscoring its supposed connection to ACORN and the SEIU. (According to Beck, SEIU's Andy Stern is "really controlling our country.")

At the end of the segment, Fund began describing the ways ACORN's nefarious activists are supposedly engaged in voter fraud in the New Jersey election:

Fund: People are going door to door in parts of Camden with Hispanics that don't have very much knowledge of English, and they're saying, "We have a new way for you to vote, la nueva forma de votar; just fill out these papers."

But as Media Matters noticed, he's actually describing something that happened in 1993 in Philadelphia. Indeed, he accurately described it in his Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he tried to claim that fraud was occurring in New Jersey:

There are additional reports from Camden that Hispanic voters have been misled into voting absentee ballots. So-called bearers who are allowed to collect and carry absentee ballots are said to have encouraged voters to fill out applications for absentee ballots. A few days later, the bearers reportedly return with the actual ballots, which they offer "assistance" in filling out.

Authorities in nearby Philadelphia know about such scams. In one infamous case, a key 1993 race that determined which party would control the Pennsylvania state senate was thrown out by a federal judge after massive evidence that hundreds of voters had been pressured into casting improper absentee ballots. Voters were told by "bearers" that it was all part of "la nueva forma de votar" -- the new way to vote. Local politicos tell me Philly operatives associated in the past with Acorn may now be advising their Jersey cousins on how to perform such vote harvesting.

Notice that in this version of events, there's no mention of the "la nueva forma de votar" ruse being used in Camden -- just the use of absentee ballots. And despite Fund's claims, there is no evidence of actual fraud yet even in this absentee-ballot operation -- just the potential for it.

Conservatives like Fund have long pinned their electoral hopes on reducing voter turnout, because encouraging large numbers of voters is a certain recipe to right-wing defeat. The Right succeeds most when voter turnout is suppressed -- and absentee-ballot efforts are part of reversing that trend.

They also like having handy excuses when they lose. It's clear that Fund, Beck, and the rest of the Right is setting themselves up with a way to claim that an electoral loss in New Jersey was illegitimate. Because that's what they're best at -- tearing down liberals after they beat them at the polls.

On November 3rd, there will be a Constitutional Amendment on the ballot in Ohio. This is no ordinary ballot initiative. Its very existence and marketing has been bought and paid for --to the tune of millions--by national and international agri-business corporations, such as Pioneer Hi-Bred International (owned by DuPont, a "developer and supplier of advanced plant genetics"--healthy!--and grantee of 100K to the effort),the National Pork Producers Council (113K), and the United Egg Producers (200K!).

(Join our Facebook Group and help us stop this travesty!)

Now why, you ask, would these Big Agra players get involved in a state issue, and to support a campaign that is for touchy feely things like "food safety" and "local control?" I'm not sure, but it might be that this corruption of Ohio's Constitution will provide "food safety" much like George W. Bush provided "healthy forests," "clear skies" and a "mission accomplished." In other words--and I know this will shock you--they're lying. And they're lying with millions of dollars they've acquired, by being, like their "products," pigs at a trough.

So what is Issue 2, what will it do, and why should you care about it if you're not a resident of the Buckeye State? It's simple: Issue 2 was put on the ballot overnight by state legislators bought off by Big Agri-Business and their mouthpiece here, the Ohio Farm Bureau. Why? So that they can corrupt Ohio's Constitution to give the Governor the power to appoint a board of unaccountable agri-business cronies to make decisions in smoke-filled rooms about all farming practices in Ohio.

I know what you're thinking. Unaccountable, corporate-influenced governing has worked out so well with TARP money and preemptive war, we might as well try it with farm policy.

With Issue 2's passage, those only interested in their bottom line can (and you can bet will) stuff millions more animals into smaller and smaller crates together, increasing the likelhood of H1N1 and E. Coli outbreaks and mutations and their capacity for animal cruelty. They can ignore the waste caused by big factory farms that contaminates the water we drink. They can allow workers to be exploited and placed in situations that endanger their health, while putting family farms--held for generations--out of business.

And why should you care if this passes in Ohio? For all the reasons above, but also...because you're next. This amendment was a reaction to successful efforts to rein in their greedy, dangerous and abusive practices in California (Prop 2), Arizona and Florida, among others. If they can use the camouflage of bought off Democratic and Republican Establishments, millions of dollars in lies, and an off-year low-turnout election to enshrine their corporate malpractice into state constitutions, they can fly under the radar while endangering our health, undermining the people's right to petition (another amendment would be needed to overturn it if passed, as the new board's decisions would supersede ballot initiatives, legislative decisions and opinions by the State Department of Agriculture) and spiking their profits.

How can you help? Well, we only have 10% of their budget. But we have the grassroots energy. We have you.

So please join our Facebook group. Tweet this. Blog it. Call and email everyone you know in Ohio. And be prepared when this garbage dressed up as a gift inevitably makes its way to your state.

(Watch this video for more on this - the 1st minute and then from 5:22 on)

Full Disclosure: I am proud to be a consultant in the effort to beat back Issue 2 in Ohio

Imagine that. As I thought, "independent" ACORN filmmaker James O'Keefe has a right-wing sugar daddy - Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal. Via the Village Voice:

James O'Keefe, the activist filmmaker who achieved sudden fame for a series of undercover videos recording ACORN workers, has repeatedly said that he is "absolutely independent" and received no outside funding to make his films.

But the Voice has learned that O'Keefe, in fact, has had heavyweight conservative backers who funded the young filmmaker as recently as a few months before his ACORN films were made.

The ACORN videos are actually just the latest of several films O'Keefe has produced and uploaded to YouTube. An earlier film posted in February, "Taxpayers Clearing House" featured nonwhite, working class people being duped by O'Keefe, who led them to believe they had won money in a sweepstakes.

That video was produced with the help of a grant -- said to be about $30,000 [Thiel's spokesman says closer to $10,000 -- see update] -- from Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook -- an investment which made him a billionaire. Thiel is one of Silicon Valley's more interesting figures: a gay man (according to Gawker's "Valleywag") who has railed against the evils of "multiculturalism." He lives in San Francisco and today runs a hedge fund.

O'Keefe is now well known as the young man who dressed up as a pimp with a colleague, Townhall.com blogger Hannah Giles, who was dressed like a prostitute. The pair traveled around the country, seeking advice from ACORN workers about how to hide prostitution money for tax purposes. At five of the offices they visited, ACORN workers gave such advice while O'Keefe's hidden camera was rolling. The videos have cost ACORN the support of Congress, the U.S. Census and the White House, and the organization stands to lose tens of millions of dollars in government grants.

O'Keefe, meanwhile, has repeatedly claimed to be financially independent. In an interview with the New York Post shortly after the ACORN videos hit the Internet, O'Keefe claimed to be "absolutely independent." Giles said she had "drained my entire savings" to spend the summer making the undercover videos. O'Keefe estimated his budget at $1,300, and said that Giles had paid for her own plane ticket to California. The couple said they lived off of Power Bars and Subway sandwiches for two months.

But O'Keefe turns out to have a substantial history of being funded by conservative figures.

In February, a video called "Taxpayers Clearing House" was posted to YouTube. In it, O'Keefe and others drive around in a van with a logo on the side that looks like the "Publishers Clearing House" vehicle known for showing up and surprising sweepstakes winners with oversized checks. In O'Keefe's video, working class Blacks are shown jumping up and down in excitement - until they learn that O'Keefe is actually delivering a bill for $28,000, their share of the federal banks bailout.

O'Keefe told a friend, Liz Farkas, that he had approached Thiel with the idea for the video, and had walked away with "approximately $30,000" to produce it.

Farkas told the New York Times this week that she and O'Keefe, who met at Rutgers University, clashed over publishing incomplete transcripts from another sting involving an abortion provider.

Through a representative, Peter Thiel confirmed that he had funded "Taxpayers Clearing House" through a "small-government group," but denied having any involvement with the ACORN videos. The representative says Thiel first learned of the new O'Keefe videos after they hit the Internet, and having "watched them on YouTube...he shares the view that taxpayer money should not promote human trafficking."

I'm guessing that someone explained to him that it would be in his interests to change his tune. After all, he wants his new security business to keep making money, right?

WASHINGTON — Former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, speaking for the first time about accusations made in his new book, says he did not mean to suggest that other top Bush administration officials were playing politics with the nation's security before the 2004 presidential election.

"I'm not second-guessing my colleagues," Ridge said in an interview about The Test of Our Times, which comes out Tuesday and recounts his experiences as head of the nation's homeland security efforts in the first several years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In the book, Ridge portrays his fledgling department as playing second fiddle to other Cabinet-level heavyweights. As secretary, he says he was never invited to participate in National Security Council meetings, he was left out of the information loop by the FBI and his proposal to establish Homeland Security offices in major cities such as New Orleans were rejected.

His most explosive accusation: that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft pressed him to raise the national threat level after Osama bin Laden released a videotape criticizing President Bush shortly before Election Day 2004. Ridge writes he rejected raising the level because bin Laden had released nearly 20 such tapes since 9/11 and the latest contained nothing suggesting an imminent threat.

Noting that Bush's approval ratings typically went up when the threat level was raised, Ridge writes that Ashcroft and Rumsfeld pushed to elevate it during a "vigorous" discussion.

"Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level, and was supported by Rumsfeld," he writes. "There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None. I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?' "

Although he prevailed and the threat level was not elevated, Ridge writes that the episode reinforced his decision to resign. He did so weeks after the election.

Last week, when word got out about Ridge's accusations, Rumsfeld's spokesman Keith Urbahn issued a statement calling them "nonsense."

Now, Ridge says he did not mean to suggest he was pressured to raise the threat level, and he is not accusing anyone of trying to boost Bush in the polls. "I was never pressured," Ridge said.

[H/t Heather.]

Via Media Matters. This is even more shocking than the usual misleading Fox News coverage. This is an outright lie, manufactured by someone treated as credible by the rest of the media. But don't worry, I'm positive it will be covered in depth on all the other networks! (Not.)

On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace repeatedly cropped quotes from a Veterans Health Administration (VHA) document to falsely suggest that the Obama administration is pressuring veterans to end their lives prematurely and to accuse Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs Tammy Duckworth of lying about it. In fact, contrary to Wallace's false assertions, the document he referred to does not require doctors to direct veterans to what conservatives have labeled the "Death Book for Veterans."

WALLACE: If I may, Ms. Duckworth, because we have limited time here --

DUCKWORTH: Sure.

WALLACE: Why would a question -- I can understand questions about if you're in an irreversible coma, do you want us to pull the plug. But why -- as I asked Mr. Towey -- why would you even have a question in an end-of-life plan-- counseling book about, "If you're in a wheelchair, if you're living in a nursing home, does that make life worth living?"

DUCKWORTH: Well, I know that before I was injured, I certainly let my husband know that, you know, being in a wheelchair was something that I feared and I was afraid for, but that I also wanted my life prolonged. This is a tool. This is a simple tool that was put into place, as I said, under Secretary [Jim] Nicholson. It was something that was used throughout -- and let me make a correction. We've not used it since 2007, when under the Bush administration, we decided to go ahead and revise it.

This checklist is still under revision on a timetable according to a program that was actually decided on under the previous administration. Because I know that President Bush and Secretary Nicholson and Secretary [James] Peake all valued life. And that's what we're doing, is we're revising it. It will be out in 2010. It's not yet out. So Mr. Towey was not correct by saying --

WALLACE: Secretary Duckworth, that's just not true. The VHA put out a directive on July 2, 2009, and I want to put up two pages from that directive. The first one, Page 8. "Primary care practitioners are responsible for giving patients pertinent educational materials, e.g., refer patients to the 'Your Life, Your Choices' module." And on Page 9, it says if they request more information, "patients may be directed to the exercises in 'Your Life, Your Choices.' "

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Rather than simply describing the types of coordinated attacks on healthcare reform that are happening, I thought it would be easier to understand exactly what we're dealing with if you could instead read the type of lying, manipulative, inflammatory "facts" being fed to the elderly and conservative Christians by "Godly" men like Gordon Klingenschmitt - the Navy chaplain who was canned for disobeying orders. (Or as he puts it: Disclaimer: The views of Chaplain Klingenschmitt, who was honorably but involuntarily discharged from the Navy in 2007 after facing court-martial for praying 'in Jesus name' in uniform, (but was later vindicated by Congress), are his own personal views.)

This is the new email from In Jesus' Name, the fundamentalist fundraising machine ginned up by Klingenschmitt to replace the Navy pension he lost by willfully ignoring orders:

HOT NEW PETITION to STOP OBAMA'S SOCIALIST HEALTH CARE TAKEOVER. Please click, sign, and WE WILL FAX your petition automatically to all 52 "Blue-Dog" House Democrats and/or all 100 Senators, right away (saving you hours of labor!) and saving unborn children, grandmothers, grandfathers, and all other grand-genders created by this bill from Government-forced extermination.

Grandmas and Unborn Babies Face Extermination by Obama's "Health" Care Plan

Investors Business Daily has just exposed the Achilles' heel of Obamacare, that hostile, socialist government takeover of your hospital, doctors, children, and grandparents. In an editorial entitled, "How House Bill Runs Over Grandma," the editors report how President Obama was personally confronted by a North Carolina woman asking if "everyone that's Medicare age will be visited and told they have to decide how they wish to die."

In response Obama joked that he hadn't yet hired enough bureaucrats to conduct such an operation, yet he could not deny the New York Post's discovery the House bill "compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care" (pages 425-430). In other words, your grandmother will be told, when insufficient resources are rationed to young people, that her duty to die begins with mandatory "end-of-life counseling," or as Obama explained, "encourage the use of living wills" that terminate otherwise salvageable lives prematurely through signed "do not resuscitate" (DNR) legal releases.

1) EUTHANASIA is the first result of Obama's socialist government "health" care plan.

Bankrupt state can't afford to pay for grandma's hip replacement? Obama's plan sends her a lawyer to make her sign a DNR, explaining her hastened duty to die, and obtaining her signature legally absolving him of all guilt. Euthanasia begins where capitalism ends.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN PETITION, AND WE WILL FAX ALL 52 "BLUE-DOG" DEMOCRATS IN THE HOUSE, AND ALL 100 SENATORS, TO OPPOSE OBAMACARE.
Widely respected Minister Rick Joyner wrote this week, after reviewing Mat Staver's analysis of H.R. 3200 "Health" care bill, voicing his strong opinion that this bill "is about euthanasia, the power to determine who lives or dies in America. Hitler and Stalin would have loved to have had a means such as this for dispatching the millions they killed-it would have made their job much easier, and probably given them the ability to kill many more than they did. THIS BILL IS THAT SINISTER. This is not a joke." You can read Mat Staver's line-by-line analysis of the 1000 page health care bill at the bottom of this email.

Now here's something we can do. Any readers from Florida or Virginia can file a complaint with their state bar association that Matt Staver (aka Mathew D. Staver, Founder and Chairman, Dean and Professor of Law, Liberty University School of Law) has used his position as the dean of a law school to lie about the interpretation of this bill and deliberately inflame the public dialogue. (Rebuttals here and here.)

The rest of you? Well, you can call him at one of his offices (434-592-5200, 800-671-1776) and let him know what you think.

2) Tax-payer funded ABORTION on demand is another guaranteed result.

Last week several so-called "pro-life Democrats" executed a bait and switch that will fully fund abortion on demand in the new Obamacare "health" bill. Led by compromiser and ex-pro-life Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH), who was recently booted as an advisor to Democrats for Life of America for his lack of principle, the liberal House Democrats overruled conservative Republicans 30-28 to pass the hideous "Capps Amendment" to H.R.3200 in the Energy and Commerce Committee. This amendment now deceptively creates a phony accounting scheme that gives the false impression your tax-payer dollars will not subsidize abortion, while it simultaneously nationalizes free abortions for low-income urban neighborhoods, fulfilling the dream of Margaret Sanger (and her protege Ruth Bader Ginsburg) that African American babies will be the first exterminated in the government funded ovens that weed out "Populations that we don't want to have too many of."

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) explained the Capps Amendment: "It's one of the most deceptive amendments I have ever seen. The bottom line is that money is fungible, and the plan itself will be subsidizing abortion-on-demand, with taxpayer funding commingled, and the numbers of abortions will go up significantly."

CLICK HERE TO SIGN PETITION, AND WE WILL FAX ALL 52 "BLUE-DOG" DEMOCRATS IN THE HOUSE, AND ALL 100 SENATORS, TO OPPOSE OBAMACARE.

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There are so many lying, hypocritical fundamentalists, why, I can hardly keep track of them all. But let's start today with former Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, since his fabricated tale of woe has made him such a favorite of fundies sunk deep in their persecution complex (and this known liar is sending out fundraising emails warning Christians "Grandmas and unborn babies face extinction" under "ObamaCare"):

Gordon Klingenschmitt is a far-right Christian fundamentalist who claims he sacrificed his 16-year career in the military and a million dollar pension because he was targeted for praying publicly in Jesus’ name while serving as a chaplain in the U.S. Navy:

Klingenschmitt, who now runs a Colorado Springs-based nonprofit, “The Pray in Jesus Name Project,” is also fond of boasting to his right-wing extremist followers that he demanded his own court martial because his superior officers prohibited him from praying in the name of Jesus.

But those claims are flat-out lies.

I know. You're surprised, right?

He was actually charged with disobeying an order and kicked out of the Navy for attending a political rally in front of the White House in March 2006 dressed in his Navy uniform, a violation of military regulations. Dozens of media reports over the years have since debunked Klingenschmitt’s dishonest statements about the nature of his court-martial.

Continue reading »

(h/t Jamie)

Last Sunday on Fox News, Ohio Republican John Boehner raised a few eyebrows when he told host Chris Wallace that there hasn't been a single stimulus job started in his state:

In Ohio, the infrastructure dollars that were sent there months ago -- there hasn’t been a contract let, to my knowledge. And the fact is -- is I don’t believe it will create jobs.

John Boehner is either a liar or he's clueless:

When U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner told a newscaster Sunday that not a single stimulus-funded road contract in his home state of Ohio had been let, he was wrong.

The Ohio Department of Transportation has OK'd 52 stimulus-funded road and bridge projects at a cost of nearly $84 million.

Boehner released a statement to "clarify:"

"The entire process has been absurdly slow moving just as Republicans warned it would be when we called for an economic recovery bill based on fast-acting tax relief for small businesses and working families," Boehner said in a statement. Read on...

Well, he was close, right? He said zero, but the number was actually 52. I really hate liars. It's par for the course with today's GOP. Just make sh*t up as you go and hope that something sticks to the wall.

What a strange feeling it is for those of our era to hear that Robert McNamara is dead. Widely reviled for the Vietnam War, he later expressed great ambivalence in the documentary "The Fog of War." He was a liberal, but of that time - for instance, as Secretary of Defense, he signed a directive that forbade military men and women from patronizing segregated establishments in the communities surrounding a military base - but continued the war long after he knew it was a lost cause.

Mr. McNamara is best remembered — and in some quarters still reviled — for the seven years he spent at the Pentagon and the part he played in waging the Vietnam War. The controversy that erupted in 1995 when he published his memoir, “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,” demonstrated the extent to which the scars he bore remained unhealed.

No one person can be assigned responsibility for escalating the US role in the conflict. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk: Each played his part. To many, though, it was “McNamara’s war,” as US Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon once put it.

“I don’t object to its being called McNamara’s war,” Mr. McNamara said during a 1964 press conference. “I think it is a very important war, and I am pleased to be identified with it and do whatever I can to win it.”

Those words would come to haunt him.

[...] Kennedy reportedly wanted Mr. McNamara to replace Rusk as secretary of state in his second administration. And Robert Kennedy said he and his brother speculated about supporting Mr. McNamara for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968.

The Kennedys were not alone in falling under the spell of the McNamara mystique. Johnson offered him the vice-presidential nomination in 1964. “He’s the best man available,” LBJ told a friend. When Mr. McNamara declined, Johnson pronounced him “No. 1 executive vice president in charge of the Cabinet.” He later awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

US Senator Barry Goldwater, who would become a harsh critic, initially hailed Mr. McNamara as “one of the best secretaries ever, an IBM machine with legs.” David Halberstam, who would later assail Mr. McNamara in his book “The Best and the Brightest,” wrote in 1963 that “McNamara may well be this country’s most distinguished civil servant of the last decade.”

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As former Vice President Dick Cheney continues his feckless crusade to save his legacy and once again mislead the world about the war crimes he was party to, new revelations about those crimes are beginning to surface.

Denying that White House policy was directly responsible for the vile abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib has been the central goal of a five-year disinformation campaign by Bush officials. 'Torture Team' author Philippe Sands argues that newly-disclosed records show how blatantly Bush officials were willing to lie in order to lead reporters away from the truth. Eighth in a series of articles calling attention to the things we still need to know about torture and other abuses committed by the Bush administration after 9/11.

Soon after the photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib went public, Bush administration officials contrived a high-stakes disinformation campaign to prevent the American people from linking the White House to the vile, sadistic treatment of detainees in that Iraqi prison. They repeatedly insisted that the abuses were just the work of a few “bad apples.” They scoffed at the notion that their orders circumventing historic limits on interrogation were remotely responsible.

Five years later, they’re still at it, with former vice president Dick Cheney waging a clever campaign that would have the debate over government-sanctioned torture turn on what techniques were employed at the CIA’s secret prison -- and whether they “worked.”...

But “Torture Team” author Philippe Sands points out that a vivid illustration of the disinformation campaign – showing just how far officials were willing to mislead and lie in their desperate attempt to avoid culpability for Abu Ghraib – can now be found by comparing one of the newly-released Justice Department memos with statements made by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales in June 2004. Read on...

(Sorry for the missing link!)

I found this clip this morning and thought I'd share it here at C&L. The clip is from 1990 when a much younger Rush Limbaugh got owned by the studio audience during his very brief career in television. The crowd eventually becomes so incensed by his nasty attacks on women that he can't get a word in edgewise and they are forced to clear the studio in order for Rush to actually finish the segment.

Rush has challenged President Obama to a debate, but only because he knows there isn't a hope in hell it will ever happen. He knows he wouldn't stand a chance, but that's not going to stop him from rallying his ignorant minions. He cares nothing for his party, this nation or its people, he's out for power,money and fame -- much like the party he now leads.

If you've ever wondered why cowards like Limbaugh, O'Reilly and those of their ilk never debate anyone of any substance, watching this clip will help you understand. When exposed to the average American, hate merchants and propagandists like Rush don't stand a chance.

el Rashbo hasn't changed much in the past twenty years and neither has the GOP. I wouldn't advise the president to lower himself to debate this idiot, but in my heart of hearts...oh, nevermind!

NOTE: "Ann Coulter's "ideas" and "philosophy" provide all of us with more than enough to talk about on this thread. It is so easy to attack what she is saying, and it is lazy, stupid, and frequently bigoted to use her personal appearance as a basis for attacking her. Anyone who goes the transgender route on this thread will be deleted and possibly banned. You know better. - Sitemonitor

Update: Is your stupid Coulter joke worth being banned from the site forever?

________________________

Interesting that they're finally looking into this. From the NY Daily News, via Skippy:

...Following our Jan. 11 column, Connecticut’s Elections Enforcement Commission is making a “thorough investigation” of whether the conservative pundit broke the law by voting in the Nutmeg State while living in New York City, according to a commission spokeswoman.

Officials are responding to a formal complaint filed by Coulterwatch.com blogger Dan Borchers. “For over 10 years, Ann Coulter has gotten away with illegal, immoral and unethical behavior, ranging from plagiarism to defamation, perjury to voter fraud,” claims the conservative Borchers. Coulter declined to comment, but in the past has branded Borchers a stalker. He says the FBI has determined he poses no threat.

Today, February 5, marks the sixth anniversary of Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in favor of a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. No other testimony had such impact; the mainstream media relied on Powell's reputation and integrity, and, well, you know how it has turned out. Some might argue that with a new administration inheriting this war we should put this behind us. Powell certainly argues that point:

And so, my concern was not my past or what happened in Iraq, but where we're going in the future. My sole concern was where are we going after January 20 of 2009, not what happened in 2003.

What happened in 2003, and Powell's essential part in that, is why we are still in Iraq in 2009. More at Day of Shame.

See, I'm a little confused. Because for years, big companies like IBM have insisted there were so few talented IT workers in the U.S., they had to import them from India. And yet now we have so many, we can send them to India! Isn't that funny?

If I were a suspicious sort (and God knows, I'm not), I'd wonder if this isn't really a way to keep experienced American workers while artificially suppressing their wages. And of course, I'd also have to wonder: If you're offered one of these jobs and you decline, are you then ineligible to collect unemployment compensation? Because that already happens with big companies in the U.S.

Isn't this new personal responsibility thing fun? Who knew we'd get to see the world at company expense?

The climate is warm, there's no shortage of exotic food, and the cost of living is rock bottom. That's IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s pitch to the laid-off American workers it's offering to place in India. The catch: Wages in the country are pennies-on-the-dollar compared to U.S. salaries.

Under a program called Project Match, IBM will help workers laid off from domestic sites obtain travel and visa assistance for countries in which Big Blue has openings. Mostly that's developing markets like India, China, and Brazil.

"IBM has established Project Match to help you locate potential job opportunities in growth markets where your skills are in demand," IBM says in an internal notice on the initiative. "Should you accept a position in one of these countries, IBM offers financial assistance to offset moving costs, provides immigration support, such as visa assistance, and other support to help ease the transition of an international move."

The document states that the program is limited to "satisfactory performers who have been notified of separation from IBM U.S. or Canada and are willing to work on local terms and conditions." The latter indicates that workers will be paid according to prevailing norms in the countries to which they relocate. In many cases, that could be substantially less than what they earned in North America.

IBM has laid off more than 4,000 workers in the United States since the beginning of January, according to an employee group. The company has confirmed layoffs but won't comment on specific numbers.

I wrote on Wednesday about the Pentagon's claim that 61 Gitmo detainees had "returned to terror" and noted previous Seton Hall Law studies that said the Pentagon was...umm...lying through it's teeth.

Seton Hall now has a new report out examining the evolving claims and hyped allegations entitled Propaganda by the Numbers. The accompanying press release says:

Professor Denbeaux of the Center for Policy & Research has said that the Center has determined that “DOD has issued “recidivism” numbers 43 times, and each time they have been wrong—this last time the most egregiously so.”

Denbeaux stated: “Once again, they’ve failed to identify names, numbers, dates, times, places, or acts upon which their report relies. Every time they have been required to identify the parties, they have been forced to retract their false ID’s and their numbers. They have included people who have never even set foot in Guantanamo —much less were they released from there. They have counted people as “returning to the fight” for having written an Op-ed piece in the New York Times and for having appeared in a documentary exhibited at the Cannes Film Festival. They have revised and retracted their internally conflicting definitions, criteria, and their numbers so often that they have ceased to have any meaning— except as an effort to sway public opinion by painting a false portrait of the supposed dangers of these men.

Fourty-three times they have given numbers—which conflict with each other—all of which are seriously undercut by the DOD statement that “they do not track” former detainees. Rather than making up numbers “willy-nilly” about post release conduct, America might be better served if our government actually kept track of them.”

The study itself notes that  the Pentagon keeps hedging it's bets:

Eighty-two percent (82%) of the publicly made claims catalogued in the Appendix of this report contain qualifying language, including terms such as: “at least”; “somewhere on the order of”; “approximately”; “around”; “just short of”; “we believe”; “estimated”; “roughly”; “more than”; “a couple”; “a few”; “some”; “several”; and “about.”

Why? Because the Department of Defense "does not keep track of released detainees nor does it follow their post release conduct". It makes these claims up from data collected which might show Gitmo detainee involvement but having previously claimed as recidivists men who were never in Gitmo in the first place and someone whose only terrorist act after release was to pen an op-ed for the new York Times it's amazing that the mainstream takes them seriously.

When you really, truly, need a statistic pulled out of someone's ass - call the Pentagon's Geoff Morrell.