Antiwar.com Blog

The Night Watchman State has been replaced by Highway Robber States – governments in which no asset, no contract, no domain is safe from marauding bands of politicians. (from my Freedom in Chains, 1999)

If you voted in the congressional elections two years ago, were you ceding the right to the winners to give @ a trillion dollars to their Wall Street friends and donors?

Did any politician mention on the campaign trail in 2006 that a vote for them would be a vote for lavishing tax dollars on some of the richest wheeler-dealers in the nation?

Did any congressional candidate run on a platform of seizing tax dollars and using it to pay above-market prices for worthless assets for Wall Street’s benefit?

How in Hades can this bailout have any legitimacy within any notion of democracy that does not proclaim that citizens exist to be financially slaughtered for the good of whomever the rulers please?

Will Congress follow the same standard for the financial bailout that it used to approve Bush’s warring? If groveling and cheering worked for Congress rubberstamping policy in Iraq, why not assume it will also work great for Wall Street?

McCain’s surrogates, Max Boot and Richard Williamson, told a gathering of the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) in Virginia last weekend that the Republican candidate, if elected, would not become actively engaged in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and discourage Israeli-Syrian peace efforts, according to an important article by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s excellent Ron Kampeas. Consistent with my last post, Abrams’ influence on both McCain positions is apparent.

As noted by Kampeas, Williamson’s endorsement of those positions “signified how closely the McCain campaign has allied itself with neo-conservatives.” Frankly, the position of those foreign-policy realists who have endorsed McCain and who, according to the mainstream media, are supposed to be advising him — I’m thinking of James Baker or Richard Armitage as examples — is becoming increasingly untenable in this campaign.

Not terribly surprising, but I have it from a reliable source that Elliott Abrams, currently Deputy National Security Adviser for Global Democracy Strategy who also heads the NSC’s Near East office, is regularly briefing the McCain campaign — Randy Scheunemann appears to be the main contact — and has told friends and colleagues that he is confident that he will get a top post in a McCain administration. Now, assuming Abrams is not talking through his hat, I very much doubt that a Democratic-majority Senate would confirm Abrams, who pleaded guilty to essentially lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra affair, to any position that required confirmation (especially as long as Chris Dodd, who clashed frequently and bitterly with Abrams when the latter served as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs under Reagan, remains alive). That would leave his current abode — the NSC — as his most likely destination. But he is already a deputy national security adviser. Does that mean that he thinks he will be THE Deputy National Security Adviser — in charge of the day-to-day operations of the NSC — or even THE National Security Adviser in the McCain White House?

Abrams is no fool, and his political instincts have always been very sharp, so, unless my informant is mistaken, I assume he has reason to feel confident about his future under McCain. If so, there can remain really very little doubt that McCain’s foreign policy will be thoroughly neo-conservative and very aggressive; a replay of Bush’s first term. After all, it was Abrams, backed by Cheney, who drove the isolation policy against Hamas (so much for democracy promotion!); it was Abrams who suggested to Israeli leaders that they extend the 2006 war with Hezbollah to Syria; it was Abrams who, for all practical purposes, undermined Rice’s efforts to get a Israel-Palestine framework agreement before Bush leaves office. Among many other things.

The Independent has a really fascinating talk with Tina Kandelaki, a well known television personality in Russia who is originally from Georgia, and several other Georgians living in Moscow.

As President Saakashvili called Georgians who live in Russia “traitors,” its unsurprising that they don’t view him with an awful lot of sympathy (Ms. Kandelaki calls him “Mikheil the Destroyer”). But it also tells the story of several of Moscow’s less famous Georgians and the discrimination they’ve experienced since last month’s war.

I’d really recommend giving it a look.

In order to save the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Bush administration seeks boundless power that cannot be reviewed by federal courts.

Didn’t we try this already at Gitmo, and it didn’t work out so well?

from Bloomberg:
Treasury Seeks Asset-Buying Power Unchecked by Courts (Update2)

By Alison Fitzgerald and John Brinsley

Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) — The Bush administration sought unchecked power from Congress to buy $700 billion in bad mortgage investments from financial companies in what would be an unprecedented government intrusion into the markets.

Through his plan, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson aims to avert a credit freeze that would bring the financial system and the world’s largest economy to a standstill. The bill would prevent courts from reviewing actions taken under its authority.

“He’s asking for a huge amount of power,” said Nouriel Roubini, an economist at New York University. “He’s saying, `Trust me, I’m going to do it right if you give me absolute control.’ This is not a monarchy.”