Joe the Journalist

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber,” is currently in Israel covering the war for the conservative site PJTV.com. When asked what he has learned from his new experiences as a journalist, Wurzelbacher said that he believes the media shouldn’t be allowed to do “reporting” on wars:

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what’s happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it’s asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you’d go to the theater and you’d see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for’em. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to downer–and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.

I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, “Well look at this atrocity,” well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.

Watch it:

And the answer is:

The Obama Tax Plan Runs in Opposition

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Palin hits back at the media

Conservative blogger John Ziegler conducted a series of interviews with Governor Sarah Palin about the treatment she received from the media, including the blogosphere, which he will use in an upcoming documentary. He’s put together a few good excerpts in a lengthy YouTube presentation, in which Palin starts off by taking on the biggest smear of the campaign:Why would Palin want to go through all of this again? She says this country has a “great need for reform,” and she still wants to provide it. Perhaps, she says, people would pay more attention to her record rather than the lunatics who still pressure her to give them proof positive that she actually gave birth to her youngest son, Trig. Palin has a few choice words for the strategists in the campaign, and for the media hypocrites who put her and her family through the wringer while anointing Obama.

If we’d seen more of this Palin on the campaign trail … well, we still would have lost, in all likelihood, as VP candidates simply can’t rescue running mates. However, Palin seems determined not to let 2008 be the last word for her on the national stage.

What fun it was during the campaign, remember?

CIA pick unlikely to face Senate challenge

WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama is defending his unexpected CIA nominee Leon Panetta, who faced a surge of skepticism in Congress on Tuesday but is not expected to draw serious opposition when his confirmation reaches the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Obama promised that his intelligence team — led by Panetta and retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the nominee for national intelligence director — will break with Bush administration practices that he said tarnished U.S. intelligence agencies and American foreign policy.

Word of Panetta's selection Monday caught key senators by surprise — notably California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the incoming Intelligence Committee chairwoman.
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Career

Leon Panetta was born in Monterey, California, the son of Italian immigrants who owned a restaurant there. He was raised in the Monterey area, and attended Catholic schools St. Carlos Grammar School and Carmel Mission School. He continued his education at Monterey High School, a public school where he became involved in student politics. As a junior he was Vice President of the Student Body, and became President of the Student Body as a senior.

In 1956 he entered Santa Clara University, and in 1960 he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts Political Science. He also received a Juris Doctor in 1963 from the Santa Clara University Law School, and soon after began practicing law.

In 1964 he joined the United States Army as a Second Lieutenant. There he received the Army Commendation Medal, and was discharged in 1966 as a First Lieutenant.

Political career

Panetta started in politics in 1966 as a legislative assistant to Republican Senator Thomas Kuchel, the United States Senate Minority Whip from California, whom Panetta has called "a tremendous role model"

In 1969 he became the assistant to Robert H. Finch, Secretary of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under the Nixon administration. Soon thereafter he was appointed Director of the Office for Civil Rights.

Panetta chose to enforce civil rights and equal education laws, even under alleged political pressure not to from then-president Nixon. Robert Mardian said of Panetta: "Doesn't he understand Nixon promised the Southern delegates he would stop enforcing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts?" Secretary Robert Finch and Assistant Secretary John Veneman refused to fire Panetta, threatening to resign if forced to do so. A few weeks later in 1970, Panetta resigned and left Washington to work as Executive Assistant for John Lindsay, the Republican Mayor of New York City. He wrote about this experience in his 1971 book Bring Us Together: The Nixon Team and the Civil Rights Retreat.

He moved back to Monterey to practice law at Panetta, Thompson & Panetta from 1971 through to 1976.

Congressional work

Panetta switched to the Democratic Party in 1971, because he thought that the Republican Party was moving away from the political center, and it was working against Civil Rights legislation. In 1976, Panetta was elected to the U.S. Congress to represent California's 16th congressional district, unseating incumbent Republican Burt Talcott with 53% of the vote (the 17th district after the 1990 census), and was reelected for nine terms.

During his time in Congress, his work concentrated mostly on budget issues, civil rights, education, health, and environmental issues, particularly preventing oil drilling off the California coast. He wrote the Hunger Prevention Act (Public Law 100-435) of 1988 and the Fair Employment Practices Resolution. He was a major factor in establishing the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

Eyeless in Gaza

Marty Kaplan

Director, Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School

First I saw a young protester telling a CNN reporter in Trafalgar Square, "Every single day, as soon as we turn on the TV, we see children there die in the hospitals, adults dying, children dying on the floor. Why, why, why? Why do children have to die? Why do innocent children have to die on the floor? Why?"

And I thought, She's right, those children in Gaza are innocent, every human life is precious, civilians aren't combatants. Doesn't everyone deserve basic human rights like food and water and life itself?

But then I thought, Where was she when 80 or 90 Hamas rockets a day were raining down on Israel? Where were all the television cameras when innocent children in Ashkelon and Sderot were being maimed and killed?

But then I saw pictures of massive devastation in Gaza on the front pages of the newspapers, and I thought, What good does it do if Israel appears to act like its enemies?

But then I heard Shimon Peres tell George Stephanopoulos that Hamas "did things which are unprecedented in the history even of terror. They made mosques into headquarters. They put bombs in the kindergartens, in their own homes. They are hiding in hospitals." Where were all the people of Gaza rising up in outrage when Hamas used them as human shields?

Then I heard Palestinian negotiator Hannan Ashwari say that Gaza was a secondary issue, that the real imperative was to reach a lasting political agreement, not a temporary military outcome, and I thought, She's right, there will be no peace and security for Israel unless a viable two-state solution is reached.

But then I read a blog by Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg recounting his interview with Nizzar Rayyan, the Hamas leader who was killed by Israeli bombs last week. "This is what he said when I asked him if he could envision a 50-year hudna (or cease-fire) with Israel: 'The only reason to have a hudna is to prepare yourself for the final battle. We don't need 50 years to prepare ourselves for the final battle with Israel.' There is no chance, he said, that true Islam would ever allow a Jewish state to survive in the Muslim Middle East. 'Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God... You [Jews] are murderers of the prophets and you have closed your ears to the Messenger of Allah.... Jews tried to kill the Prophet, peace be unto him. All throughout history, you have stood in opposition to the word of God.'"

And I thought, How can you negotiate with people who reject your nation's right to exist, and whose version of religion calls you a murderous race? If someone claimed that the best way for America to deal with Bin Laden is to reach a political agreement with al-Qaeda, I'd say that they're nuts, that there can be no negotiation or accommodation with people lusting for a final battle to rid your people from the earth.

But then I heard an Arab diplomat railing against Israel's continuing tolerance of illegal settlements, and I thought, As long as Knesset coalition governments are dependent on ultra-Orthodox parties who have no respect for the law, how can anyone expect Arab moderates to gain enough political power for Israel to negotiate with them, when Israeli moderates can't muster that clout either?

Then I reminded myself that the people of Gaza overwhelmingly voted for Hamas in a democratic election, and I thought, What good is democracy, if it can put terrorists in charge of governments?

But then I read that tens of thousands of Israeli Arabs in the Israeli town of Sakhnin had rallied against Israel's Gaza offensive, and I thought, What Middle East nation except Israel would ensure that anti-government protesters had the right to hold such a demonstration?

And then I remembered reading that former Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon warned Israelis not to delude themselves about Israel's Arab population, that Israeli Arabs - a fifth of Israel - constitute a potential fifth column.

Then I saw a Teleseker Institute poll saying that 95 percent of Israeli Jews support Operation Cast Lead against Hamas. But then I saw a Rasmussen poll saying that while 44 percent of Americans think Israel should have taken military action against the Palestinians, 41% say it should have tried to find a diplomatic solution - essentially a tie, within the poll's margin of error. And I wondered, How long does diplomacy have to keep failing, how many bombs have to keep dropping, before self-defense finally trumps talk?

I wish I didn't believe that the events now unfolding in the Middle East are too complicated for unalloyed outrage. I wish the arguments of only one side rang wholly true to me. I am the first to accuse myself of paralyzing moral generosity -- the fatal empathy that terrorists prey on. But ambivalence is not the same as moral equivalence, and holy war, no matter who is waging it, makes my flesh crawl.

In Milton's poem Samson Agonistes, Samson - blinded, in chains -- cries out, "Promise was that I / Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver; / Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him / Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves." But when Samson shows the strength to shun Delilah, God restores his power, enabling him to pull down the temple and kill the Philistines, though along with himself.

What makes Samson Agonistes a tragedy is the self-destruction that victory entails. I passionately assert Israel's right to exist in peace with its neighbors and within secure borders. But I can't help fearing that its military success in Gaza, should it come, will also entail a tragic cost.

Franken Winning Vast Majority of Wrongly Rejected Absentee Ballots

Norm Coleman's lawyers tried to stop the counting of hundreds of wrongly rejected absentee ballots and now we know they had good reason: those ballots are breaking for Al Franken who is winning nearly 60 percent of them. With another 15 percent going to "other" that doesn't leave many for Coleman.

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The Uptake has a live feed where the votes are now being counted and you can also check their live updated spreadsheet here. But as of right now:

Franken: 270

Coleman: 160

Other/No vote: 79

So to win, Coleman must get a court to throw out these newly counted ballots and then trim another 50 votes off Franken's total somehow. Good luck with that Norm.

source: Alternet

from Wikipedia:

Alan Stuart Franken (born May 21, 1951) is the Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate in the 2008 US Senate race in Minnesota, an Emmy Award–winning American comedian, writer, liberal political commentator, and politician. He first became famous as a writer and a performer for Saturday Night Live, eventually writing and appearing in several movies. Since then, Franken has become more known for his political commentary, writing numerous best-selling books, and being the talk-radio host of his own nationally syndicated radio show on Air America Radio.

On February 14, 2007, Franken announced his candidacy for the 2008 United States Senate election in Minnesota as a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, was endorsed by that party on June 7, 2008, and won the nomination in its primary on September 9, 2008.^[1][2] On November 18, the Minnesota state canvassing board certified results of the election with Franken trailing Senator Norm Coleman by 215 votes, or less than 0.0075 percent of the over 2.8 million votes cast.^[3][4] Under Minnesota state law, an automatic recount was mandated, because the official margin was less than one-half of one percent of the total votes cast. The recount began November 19.^[4]

As of January 3, 2009, Franken had unofficially taken the lead by 225 votes.^[5] The canvassing board confirmed Franken's 225 vote lead. Later that day, the Minnesota Secretary of State's office announced it would certify Al Franken as the winner of the 2008 election for the United States Senate on January 5, 2009, absent any rulings from the Minnesota State Supreme Court.^[6] The results will then likely be subject to challenge by the Coleman campaign.^[7]

Richardson to withdraw as Secretary of Commerce

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