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Listening Post – Drums of war: The Media on Iran, Syria and in Libya

Evans Liberal Politics
February 25, 2012


Listening Post – Drums of war:
The Media on Iran, Syria and in Libya


Commentary by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans: Below is a fairly long (25:05) video produced by AlJazeera, the independent Arabic news operation which does a good job with the English language versions of its news and has a global reach. In my experience, they have been fairly unbiased as a news source. So when AlJazeera does a segment describing the current media frenzy regarding an imagined necessity of going to war with Iran, and comparing that to the run-up to the Iraq war, it sends chills down my spine. And it should for you, too.

If you remember,there was absolutely no need to go to war with Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction, and even the last U.N. inspectors who had been in Iraq (not too long before the war) stated that, while there was no transparency in the inspection process, there also was no evidence of a dangerous capacity in regard to WMD. Moreover, Saddam Hussein (the dictator in Iraq) was a secular Muslim, who hated fundamentalist groups such as Al Qaeda. There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before the U.S. invaded.

Do you remember all the speeches Bush made about WMD and “yellowcake” going to Iraq from Africa and “significant contacts” between Iraq and Al Qaeda? Do you remember the sham speech that Colin Powell was conned into making at the U.N., which gave us the necessary backing to go to war with Iraq?

In this video, the second and third sections are about the media in Syria and the altogether new, free media in Libya.

Please at least watch the first part, describing the building media hysteria about going to war with Iran. Going to war with Iran is a much bigger deal, than was going to war with Iraq, too. You would see the whole Middle East region go up in flames. Israel would be fighting a war on three fronts, against Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria. Probably the U.S. and likely Saudi Arabia would be fighting Iran inside Iraq. (Iraq and Iran share a 906 mile (1458km) border.)

It is also likely that it would be necessary to re-instate the draft, and that gasoline prices would double, destroying the economy’s fragile recovery and sending America deep into an economic depression.

There is no evidence that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program has reached the level of 90 percent purity, necessary to produce an atomic weapon. The last news I read about it had their enrichment level at 20 percent, which is a level consistent with medical uses.

One fifth of the world’s oil passes through the 21 mile-wide Straits of Hormuz, adjacent to Iran. There are two (and only two) main Saudi oil terminuses and Iran has 1,000 or more ballistic missiles. Do you think we could put in a sufficient number of Patriot missile batteries so that the Saudi oil terminuses remained safe? Likewise, Israel has only two major cities, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. So that would give Iran only four primary targets for 1,000 or 1,500 ballistic missiles.

Folks, do we really want to do this?

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State Attorneys General Sue Obama Administration Over Birth Control Rule (Updated)

Evans Liberal Politics
February 25, 2012


The Best in Liberal Christian News
and US Politics

State Attorneys General Sue Obama Administration
Over Birth Control Rule (Updated)

State Attorneys General Sue Obama Administration Over Birth Control Rule, The Raw Story, February 23, 2012, by Eric W. Dolan, quoted verbatim, used with permission: Evans Liberal Politics is happy to partner with The Raw Story to bring you cutting edge news, UPDATED, with poll results, below:

Seven state attorneys general have filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration that seeks to block the implementation of new federal government rules regarding contraception coverage.

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The attorneys general of Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas, along with some Catholic organizations, said in their lawsuit that the new rule violates the First Amendment.

In recent weeks, a controversy has erupted over the policy, which requires virtually all private insurance policies to cover family planning, including female contraceptives, essentially guaranteeing near universal access to birth control once all the provisions of the Affordable Care Act are implemented.

“Obamacare’s latest mandate tramples the First Amendment’s Freedom of Religion and compels people of faith to act contrary to their convictions,” said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. “The President’s so called ‘accommodation’ was nothing but a shell game: the mandate still requires religious organizations to subsidize and authorize conduct that conflicts with their religious principles.”

The White House offered to change the rules by exempting religion-related organizations with moral objections. Instead, the insurance companies would be required provide those services free of charge. Republicans have derided the compromise as an “accounting gimmick.”

The lawsuit alleges that the proposed compromise is too narrow because it does not exempt businesses and organizations that primarily serve or employ persons who do not share their religious tenets.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court of Nebraska.

According to a Quinnipiac University national poll released Thursday, 54 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s compromise concerning insurance coverage for birth control. Thirty-eight percent disapprove. Women are slightly more likely than men to approve of the compromise, while white Catholics are split 46 percent to 48 percent. Not surprisingly, Democrats are much more likely to approve of the compromise than Republicans.

Eric W. Dolan has served as an editor for Raw Story since August 2010, and is based out of San Diego, California. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and received a Bachelor of Science from Bradley University. Eric is also the publisher and editor of PsyPost. You can follow him on Twitter @ewdolan.

Also Watch Jon Stewart – The Daily Show: The Vagina Ideologues, February 14, 2012.

You Are Especially Encouraged to Read Rethinking the Abortion Debate from a Liberal Christian Perspective (Updated), Evans Liberal Politics, May 13, 2011, by Paul Evans.

UPDATE: See Contraception debate divides swing voters, according to new Gallup poll, The Ticket on Yahoo News, February 24, 2012, by Olivier Knox:

The fight over whether religious-based employers should provide birth control coverage as part of their health plans sharply divides Americans, six in ten of whom say they have been following the volatile debate on the issue, according to a new a href=”http://www.gallup.com/poll/152963/Contraception-Debate-Divides-Americans-Including-Women.aspx” target=”_blank”>Gallup poll.

Overall, 48 percent of Americans say they back religious leaders who object to extending such coverage against 45 percent who say they back President Barack Obama’s administration.

Believe what you will about Gallup’s numbers, but you owe it to yourselves to also see: Poll: Most back White House birth control rule, Politico, February 23, 2012, by MJ Lee:

A slim majority of Americans approve of President Barack Obama’s recent change to the administration’s rule that mandated religiously affiliated institutions offer free contraception coverage to their employees, according to a new poll Thursday.

More than half of American voters, 54 percent, said they approve of Obama’s plan to allow faith-affiliated employers to refrain from offering free birth control to employees while mandating that it be covered by insurers. Thirty-eight percent said they disapprove of the plan, a Quinnipiac survey found.

Paul Evans: Looking at these two poll results, given that both pollsters are usually reliable and unbiased, I would say there has to be a problem with the methodology in one or the other. Here are still two more polls you may want to take a look at on contraception:

See Support Is Found for Birth Control Coverage and Gay Unions, The New York Times, February 14, 2012, by Marjorie Connelly.

Recommended: In Polls, Obama Wins on Contraception Compromise, Catholics Hold Steady, The Daily Beast, February 19, 2012, by Douglas Schoen.

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All Things Romney: Mitt Romney in the News

Evans Liberal Politics
Feburay 22, 2012


The Best in Liberal Christian News
and US Politics

All Things Romney: Mitt Romney in the News

Evans Liberal Politics, February 22, 2012, compiled and with summaries by Paul Evans, photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore via The Raw Story:

Mitt Romney is either tied or very slightly ahead in the Michigan polls, and about tied with Rick Santorum in Arizona. Santorum continues to hammer at the Obama administration in what to mainstream America appears to be a radical way, yet about half of Republicans think he should be the nominee. It’s not hard for Santorum to repeatedly point to changed Romney positions from a few years ago, and then to question his credentials as a conservative. What a comedown for the once “inevitable” candidacy of Romney! To make matters worse, although Romney took in a good deal of money during the previous primaries in January, he spent almost three times as much, even though he still has a positive balance sheet. Romeny is fighting back hard though: to hold his own in the conservative state of Arizona, he must be doing something right. Here, then, is a compilation of news relating to Mitt Romney: ~ Paul Evans

Mitt Romney: Obama Administration
Has ‘Fought Against Religion’

Gage Skidmore photograph of Mitt Romney

In this Huffington Post article, we see that in order to compete with Santorum among conservative Christian voters, Romney is resorting to the traditional Republican tactic of demagoguery. Obama’s campaign characterized the Romney comment as “disgraceful.”

Romney says spending cuts
will slow economic growth

The Raw Story broke this headline yesterday, and this is a huge break with Republican orthodoxy on the face of it. The devil is in the details, though:

“If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy,” he said in Michigan. “So you have to, at the same time, create pro-growth tax policies.”

So Romney is not actually calling for not cutting spending, or if there are cuts, he just wants to “balance” these cuts by economically “positive” tax cuts for the rich. That sounds very typical for fiscally conservative Republicans, does it not?

In January, Romney spends
nearly three times his haul

According to CNN, during the four primaries in the month of January, Romney spent a whopping $18.7 million. However he only took in $6.5 million, still somehow leaving his camp with resources of $7.7 million on hand. He came out of the month with wins in two of the four primaries.

Sarah Palin’s 8 best pokes at Mitt Romney

Politico’s video and written summary of Ms. Palin’s surprisingly sarcastic and occasionally witty remarks. The woman appears to be learning. About Romney’s candidacy she said:

“I am not convinced and I don’t think the majority of GOP and independent voters are convinced. He’s still in the 30th percentile… He hasn’t risen above that yet because we are not convinced.”

Mitt Romney talks vice president,
bailout at town hall

Politico: SHELBY TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Mitt Romney today abandoned his efforts to maintain strict control over his campaign’s message, taking questions for nearly 30 minutes at a town hall here.

Fiddling while Rome burns, Romney insists he is keeping an “upbeat” outlook, and steadfastly attends only one event a day, while Santorum maintains a blistering pace of three or four events a day. He characterized the Santorum candidacy as “untested,” and pointedly noted that:

“We had Donald Trump for a while and we had Herman Cain and we had Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich. They’ve all been vetted very carefully. Rick Santorum is now just being seen for the first time.”

CNN/Time poll: Romney
holds narrow lead in Arizona

Politico: Mitt Romney is still in the lead in Arizona — but just barely, according to a CNN/Time poll out this afternoon.

Romney gets the support of 36 percent of likely voters in the state, compared with 32 percent for Rick Santorum. Newt Gingrich comes in third with 18 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 6 percent.

These results are fairly similar to the Arizona Public Policy Polling survey out yesterday, which found Romney with 36 percent and Santorum with 33 percent.

Oddly enough, in its headline, CNN itself took the same data and characterized the contest as “all tied up.” Would this be any sort of indicator of which news organization favors which candidate?

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Romney Facing Unexpected Hurdles in Michigan

NY Times: NOVI, Mich. — This was supposed to be a state, at last, where Mitt Romney could coast. After all, he grew up here. His father, an automobile executive, had been the governor. And the last time there was a Republican presidential primary in Michigan, Mr. Romney won handily.

Yet, with less than a week until Michigan Republicans vote and with polling suggesting that Rick Santorum is mounting a serious challenge, Mr. Romney finds himself urgently pouring resources into his home state — unveiling gauzy television ads aimed at reminding residents of his family roots and rolling out endorsements from a virtual who’s who in Lansing: the governor, a former Senate majority leader, the attorney general, a former attorney general, and on and on.

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum expected
to be focus of GOP debate in Arizona

Mass.com: The Republican presidential debate in Arizona Wednesday could prove to be a key moment in the 2012 race. The CNN-sponsored debate is the last one before voters head to the polls in 18 states. Debates scheduled for March 1 and March 5 have been canceled, and the next Republican debate is scheduled for March 19 in Oregon.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is tied with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum in Michigan and a loss in that state next week could be disastrous to Romney’s campaign. The Arizona debate is expected to be focused on Romney and Michigan and could prove to be a showdown between Romney and Santorum.

Romney reverses course, praises
‘important role’ of labor unions

Sherrod Brown's petition for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision

Just last week, the Romney campaign blasted labor unions, saying that “they too often stand as obstacles to growth and fight against the workers they are supposed to serve.”

On the face of it, this is a revolutionary, new position for a major Republican to take. Ah, but he is campaigning in Michigan, now, so all of a sudden the leopard changes his spots and is pro-union. Still, Romney can be reasonable at times, unlike Santorum.

Also See In Republican Race, a New Breed of Superdonor, The NY Times, February 21, 2012, by Nicholas Confessori, Michael Luo and Mike McIntire:

NY Times Summary: An exclusive club in presidential politics includes individuals, couples or corporations that have given $1 million or more to “super PACs.”

UPDATE: See Rick Santorum Mocks Mitt Romney, AP on Huffington Post, February 22, 2012, by Charles Babington:

TUCSON, Ariz. — Rick Santorum is mocking Mitt Romney as a “Johnny come lately to the conservative cause.”

Ahead of Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate in Arizona, Santorum told a tea party gathering in Tucson that Romney proposed a lower corporate tax rate only after Santorum had done so.

The crowd of 400 laughed and clapped when Santorum said America doesn’t need a leader who has been “a well-oiled weather vane.”

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Drones Set Sights on U.S. Skies

Evans Liberal Politics
February 17, 2012


The Best in Liberal Christian News
and US Politics

Drones Set Sights on U.S. Skies

The Information Society is Becoming
The Surveillance Society

Drones Set Sights on U.S. Skies, The NY Times, February 17, 2012, by Nick Wingfield and Somini Sengupta, excerpt quoted verbatim, with commentary by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans:

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WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. — Daniel Gárate’s career came crashing to earth a few weeks ago. That’s when the Los Angeles Police Department warned local real estate agents not to hire photographers like Mr. Gárate, who was helping sell luxury property by using a drone to shoot sumptuous aerial movies. Flying drones for commercial purposes, the police said, violated federal aviation rules.

“I was paying the bills with this,” said Mr. Gárate, who recently gave an unpaid demonstration of his drone in this Southern California suburb.

His career will soon get back on track. A new federal law, signed by the president on Tuesday, compels the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to be used for all sorts of commercial endeavors — from selling real estate and dusting crops, to monitoring oil spills and wildlife, even shooting Hollywood films. Local police and emergency services will also be freer to send up their own drones.

But while businesses, and drone manufacturers especially, are celebrating the opening of the skies to these unmanned aerial vehicles, the law raises new worries about how much detail the drones will capture about lives down below — and what will be done with that information. Safety concerns like midair collisions and property damage on the ground are also an issue.

American courts have generally permitted surveillance of private property from public airspace. But scholars of privacy law expect that the likely proliferation of drones will force Americans to re-examine how much surveillance they are comfortable with.….

Read the full article here.

Commentary by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans: If I am not mistaken, 1984 was quite a few years ago. The FBI stores an untraceable, untouchable cookie on every computer that was ever connected to the internet. Microsoft has been collecting emails from Outlook Express and Outlook for quite a few years, sorting them by keywords. And with the Patriot Act starting in 2001, ALL Americans’ electronic communications (emails, internet surfing histories, cell phone calls, landline calls), are collected by NSA’s supercomputers. With NSA, certain keywords trigger human analysis.

That’s the way it is these days, the price we supposedly must pay for security. (Incidentally, did you know that Americans have more chance of drowning in a bathtub than they do of running into a terrorist?)

We’ve had radar on the highway and cameras at intersections for a number of years now. So added to all this, we will now have surveillance by drones. Private companies and corporations will be free to spy on us and gather all sorts of data, and cities and even smaller towns will have new, “added security tools.” Not to mention the federal government.

Brave New World, indeed.

What was that Mick Jagger said about being so happy he felt like running 20 red lights? Grosser bruder beobachtet dich!

Privacy In the News: See Google Secretly Tracked Apple’s Safari Users, WSJ Reports, The Huffington Post, February 17, 2012, by Ramona Emerson:

A Wall Street Journal report published Friday revealed that Google, along with several other companies, covertly tracked the online moves of users of Apple’s web browser Safari, in spite of the fact that the browser blocks such tracking by default.

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Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Lady and the Troops

Evans Liberal Politics
February 15, 2012


The Best in Liberal Christian News
and US Politics

Daily Show with Jon Stewart:
“Lady and the Troops”

"The Pentagon opens frontline combat positions
to women, but Rick Santorum worries over the effect
female troops will have on their male counterparts." (03:15)

Poll finds low enthusiasm for Republican candidates

Evans Liberal Politics
February 15, 2012


The Best in Liberal Christian News
and US Politics

Poll finds low enthusiasm for Republican candidates

Poll finds low enthusiasm for Republican candidates, The Raw Story, February 14, 2012, by Agence France-Presse, quoted verbatim, photo of Mitt Romney courtesy of Wikipedia courtesy of Gage Skidmore: Evans Liberal Politics is pleased to partner with The Raw Story to bring you cutting edge news:

WASHINGTON — Most Republicans believe Mitt Romney will be their party’s presidential nominee and that he has the best chance to beat President Barack Obama in November, a national poll released Tuesday found.

Wikipedia photo of Mitt Romney by Gage Skidmore

But the CNN/ORC International poll found little enthusiasm for the former Massachusetts governor’s presidential bid, instead favoring Christian conservative Rick Santorum over Romney, 34 to 32 percent.

The poll findings underscored Romney’s failure to ignite his base weeks into a primary season that has seen one candidate after another surge to challenge his de facto frontrunner status, and then lose steam.

Santorum is the latest to be lifted by a sudden wave of support that has taken him to the front of the Republican field in national polls.

The poll showed that Santorum had the strongest support of all the candidates among Republicans over 50, college graduates, strong Tea Party supporters, self-described conservatives and men.

But women preferred Romney by a 38 to 29 percent margin over Santorum, who has drawn fire in the past week over a 2005 book that scoffed at the “radical” feminist view that men and women should have equal opportunity to rise to top jobs in the workplace.

And when it came to which candidate was most likely to win the nomination or had the best shot at beating Obama, Romney won hands down.

Sixty-eight percent of those polled said Romney would most likely get the nomination, a 29-point jump from when the same question was asked about a month earlier.

That compared to 13 percent for Santorum, 11 percent for former House speaker Newt Gingrich, and five percent for Texas congressman Ron Paul.

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed said Romney had the best chance to beat Obama, well ahead of Santorum at 18 percent, Gingrich at 14 percent and Paul at seven percent.

But only nine percent said they were “very satisfied” with the field of candidates, and 44 percent said they were either “not very satisfied” or “not satisfied at all,” almost as many as say they were “fairly satisfied.”

In Romney’s case, 21 percent said they would enthusiastically support his candidacy if he were the nominee, while another 44 percent said they would be “pleased but not enthusiastic.” Another 35 percent would be either “displeased” or “upset.”

Santorum fared only somewhat better with 32 percent saying they would welcome his nomination with enthusiasm; 37 percent would be “pleased but not enthusiastic;” 21 percent would be “displeased but not upset;” and 10 percent would be upset.

The poll was conducted February 10-13 among 478 registered Republicans and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percent.

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Daily Show with Jon Stewart: The Vagina Ideologues

Evans Liberal Politics

 

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and US Politics

Daily Show with Jon Stewart:
“The Vagina Ideologues”

"The contraception debate gets heated as Rick Santorum
and Catholic Church leaders object to the Obama
administration’s birth control health plan requirement." (06:32)

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon – Thurs 11p / 10c
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