Lou Dobbs Is a Joke, He'd Be Perfect for Fox

The news that Lou Dobbs was forced out at CNN shows that even CNN had enough of the guy's bigotry. But its Dobbs' ideological ass-kissing that have gotten him fired.

Dobbs' biggest joke is a 2002 interview with Henry Kissinger where he actually saves Kissinger on-air from admitting Kissinger was going to go for bat for Bush-Cheney in the 911 Commission, interrupting Kissinger in mid-sentence after Kissinger said, "... this was an event [911 attack] that was totally unexpected to the American public; that it came from a direction that nobody had ever thought of. And that it was the first attack on the continental United States ... ."

Wisconsin Facing Fiscal Peril, Says Report

"While California's economic problems take the spotlight, at least nine other states are toiling with hardships nearly as daunting."

So reads a report by the Pew Center on the States. Download the report on Wisconsin.

Wisconsin: To most, Wisconsin does not seem to have the same problems managing its money as California, its dairy rival. But the recession has hit Wisconsin harder than most state governments, especially when it comes to lost tax revenues and the size of the hole in its budget. On top of that, unemployment is climbing as the state’s largest sector—manufacturing—sputters. Wisconsin’s history of budget shortfalls and pattern of borrowing frequently to cover operating expenses, among other measures, made it poorly positioned to weather the most recent severe economic downturn. Download the report on Wisconsin.

Advocating for Veterans

Update: "Do we call Afghanistan a war? It is more like Detroit," says a Marine veteran.

A few years ago I was contacted by a veteran's wife who told me her imprisoned Vietnam-era Navy veteran husband was being persecuted by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) and the U.S. Department of Justice. Thousands of man-hours of research later, I say there is no question that she's right about her husband and not just him.

I work as a veteran's advocate and staff writer for Veterans Today, and I'm honoring Veterans Day. It's personal for me, not because my father's a veteran or my girlfriend's father is a veteran, it's because I'm proud that a piss-load of work for veterans made me a better person.

I was more PR consultant and writer than I was veterans' advocate when I began, still am. But honoring veterans is something I understand a hell of a lot clearer than say five years ago. The truth is I think this jailed, innocent Navy veteran will likely end up killing himself, and I have a good seat to this slow-burn sick show of betrayal this country committed against Keith Roberts. The fact that he has lots of company doesn't mitigate matters.

The imprisoned veteran's name is Keith Roberts who lost a friend who was crushed to death by the nose of a C-54 aircraft [at right] at an airbase in Naples, Italy in 1969, an act that pissed off Roberts and drove him to despair. [Some guy put a screwdriver where a pin should have been and Roberts lost a friend.] Roberts awaits a decision by the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC) on his 13-year-long benefits claim that could get his ludicrous criminal conviction overturned.

He is an innocent Vietnam-era, Navy veteran wrongfully jailed through a George W. Bush DOJ prosecution after he was targeted by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) for “tenaciously pursuing a claim for benefits” and making whistle-blowing accusations that the VA was fraudulently altering his C-file.

Former VA General Counsel attorney and VA national Director of Compensation and Pension Services, Renee L. Szybala [ask veteran Mike Bailey about her], helped engineer the prosecution of Roberts by former U.S. Attorney Stephen Biskupic, Eastern District of Wisconsin in 2005-06.

But this is not a missing-blond story, it's not sexy to the sensationalist appetite; it's an innocent man who the Bush-led feds nailed so who cares; you won't be reading this in the New York Times or on CNN.

Was all this time put into this case worth it? Did it change policy and help Roberts and other veterans? These questions remain to be answered. I doubt Roberts would have been persecuted and prosecuted under the Obama DVA and DoJ.

But I know now the work honors veterans so, yes, it's worth it so I state this today:
Happy Veterans Day, 2009, and Keith Roberts, you are not forgotten.

Those wishing to send the guy a post card or letter can reach him at:

Keith Roberts, 07827-089
FCI Englewood, East-Upper
FCI9595 West Quincy Avenue
Littleton, CO 80123

Just tell the guy to hang in there.

From Aug 10, 2009, Veterans Court Orders VA Info in Jailed Vet Case

As Wisconsin Navy veteran Keith Roberts fights for his innocence in veterans’ court, the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC), a development in the case may signal a heightened scrutiny on allegations that the Dept of Veterans Affairs (DVA) bypassed laws and regulations to target Roberts in a coordinated hostile act.

Last week [early August], the Court in Keith A. Roberts v. Eric K. Shinseki (05-2425) announced that it:

has determined that additional information from the [DVA] Secretary would be helpful to the Court's resolution of this appeal. The Secretary will describe the procedures, practices and polices used for severing service connection of protected ratings due to fraud in effect at the time of the August 2005 Board decision and the date those procedures, policies and practices were implemented. Additionally, the Secretary will provide the Court with any materials that support these procedures and any associated policies or practices, such as VA General Counsel Opinions, VA Manuals, Chairman of the Board Memoranda, VA Fast Letters, Directives, Circulars, or any training materials.

The en banc (full) hearing before CAVC, the national veterans court, will consider issues raised by Roberts including the imperative of the DVA to follow administrative rules and protect veterans' due process, and the mandate of the DVA to avoid a general adversarial posture toward veterans.

Roberts was convicted of wire fraud in 2007 after U.S. Atty Stephen Biskupic's office had convinced a jury that Roberts and a deceased Navy airman (Gary Holland)--who was crushed to death by a C-54 aircraft at an airbase in Naples, Italy--were not friends though the two men had parallel service histories.

Not being friends and exaggerating his efforts to rescue his fellow airman; this does not seem just cause for a prosecution.

Most any veteran would tell you when the airbase equivalent of a general quarters alarm sounds, any man or woman on line duty would not ignore the alarm as is the U.S. government's official position in this perhaps most asinine case in DVA history.

An affirmative decision by CAVC may affirm that the argument made by veterans in the class action law suit by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that the DVA must perform its Congressionally-mandated function to serve veterans.

Roberts has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by several private and public medical professionals, but again this documented medical condition is insufficient to establish his innocence of fraudulently receiving benefits, though this would change under newly proposed DVA rules.

Contra the government's case, writes Scott Horton in Harper's Magazine (Sept 7, 2007), "The prosecution smacks of retaliation and a plan to suppress veterans claims—Roberts was prosecuted for tenaciously pursuing a claim for benefits, which VA resisted and which is still in the benefits review process."

On appeal, Roberts' criminal conviction for wire fraud was upheld last year with the Court opinion reading in part: "The record might also have supported a jury determination that Mr. Roberts sincerely believed that his statements were true and that he had no intention to defraud the Government. It is beyond our authority to disturb such a finding on appeal."

Writes James W. Ervin, stationed in Naples with Roberts, who supports Roberts' version of the circumstances in Italy that Roberts has for decades asserted was a Navy cover-up that resulted in a friend's death. Ervin wrote his comments after reading a piece on Roberts in Uppity Wisconsin:

I was stationed @ NAF Naoles, Italy at the time of this 'incident,' July 1968 thru Nov. 1969. I also remember the young sailor be trapped / crushed up inside the wheel well (nose) of the aircraft inside the hangar of NAF naples, Italy. I do remember someone wanting to drive a forklift into the side of the aircraft; but an officer or someone of authority would not let them do that. . . so what they did was have men climb up into the plane & go to the rear of the plane to put weight in the rear of the plane to let the nose come up to release the trapped sailor. Unfortunately that process was too slow to save the sailor from death. I also remember taking photographs of the 'Pin' that was in the nose gear at the time. I remember it as being a homemade looking pin without a locking clip to keep it from being removed without unlocking the device. As for the names of the people involved , I don't remember; but there definitely was someone there who wanted to use the fork lift to rescue the sailor from the collapsed nose wheel and was ordered NOT to use the fork lift.

But Ervin was not heard at trial so Roberts sits in prison.

Roberts was an early whistle blower in the shreddergate veterans scandal, accusing the Milwaukee VA Regional Office of destroying documents in his file and engaging in fraud as the VA was in the process of determining the date from which his retroactive disability pay was to become effective. Roberts, of Gillett, Wisconsin, sought a new retroactive date per the advice of his Shawano County (Wisconsin) Veteran’s Service Officer.

Anger and frustration with the VA drove Keith Roberts to phone the VA Inspector General’s regional office at Hines, Illinois, in November 2003 to complain. Roberts spoke with one VA Special Agent Raymond Vasil. When he accused the VA of outright fraud in November 2003, Vasil retaliated against this Vietnam-era who had reportedly become a pain to the VA regional office.

Several VA e-mails point to top officials in the VA engineering a criminal prosecution while gaming the veteran’s VA benefits adjudication, and subsequently putatively financially assaulting the veteran’s family.

Roberts is but one victim of a stacked-against-the-veteran benefits system that was the subject of a class-action lawsuit that found as fact benefits-hostile practices at the VA. Exercising an utter lack of prosecutorial discretion, the U.S. Atty after prodding from U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs (VA) officials began the bizarre prosecution that drew immediate fire from veterans’ groups, such as Colonel Daniel K. Cedusky’s, AUS, (Ret.) and the American Legion.

Adding insult to injury, the VA also began immediate collection actions against the veteran and his two young daughters who had received education benefits related to their father’s service in the Navy, though Roberts' claim is still pending to this day at CAVC.

What prompted the U.S. Atty’s office was a puzzle to many readers who have followed the case of Roberts who has been serving 48 months in a federal prison since 2007, as well as incurring associated costs of some $500,000.

But Keith Roberts was indisputably a major political and legal target of the VA that retaliated against this veteran for seeking retroactive PTSD-related disability benefits and calling out the VA on altering his C-file, a practice that was found to occur in 41 of the 57 VA field offices which have now adopted new procedures to preserve records such as what Roberts complained about in November 2003.

Revealing the Alice-in-Wonderland nature of the case is the fact that if Roberts claim is affirmed by CAVC, Roberts will have been found guilty of receiving benefits to which he was found to be entitled.

In August 2005, the DVA, taking its cue from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) had announced plans to review 72,000 PTSD cases with a 100 percent disability ratings like Roberts’.

But a torrent of criticism by veterans’ groups and Democrats forced the Bush administration to back down. On August 10, 2005 then Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) blasted the administration in a letter to then VA Secretary Nicholson: "In order to truly create fairness in the claims system, the VA should concentrate its efforts on reviewing denials of PTSD claims. Without assessing why some PTSD claims are denied, it will be impossible to fully understand how the VA’s PTSD rating system can be improved. The process of gathering evidence to prove PTSD disability is extremely time-consuming. It requires the compilation of medical records, military service records, and testimonies from other veterans who can attest to a person’s combat exposure. I cannot fathom why the VA would require veterans to go through this emotionally painful process a second time."

Roberts became a target. Now many veterans' advocates are optimistic that under President Obama a change will come in how the DVA treats its veterans in the face of a hostile and selfish entrenched bureaucracy. There is now a political will from the administration to respect veterans.

For now the DVA claims process can be so frustrating that many vets (especially those suffering from PTSD) are thrown into fits of rage directed at the DVA itself, with nothing less that a sordid history, including such scandals demeaning veterans for seeking help with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in this “culture of trauma.”

The Pentagon at one point even blamed veterans “personality disorders” and lack of faith in God for veterans suffering after service.

See also:
- VA Document Contradicts US Atty in Jailed Vet Case
- Weakening US Criminal Case, VA Turns Down Jailed Wisc Vet’s PTSD claim
- Jailed Wisconsin Veteran Sent to Solitary Confinement, Seeks Help
- DVA Attacks Veteran
- National DVA Director Pushed US Atty Biskupic to Indict Wisconsin ...

Billionaires and Black Women

Black women are the fasting growing demographic leaping ahead from 2004 to 2008 with the highest voter turnout rate in November's election (Pew Research Center).

Billionaires George Soros and Warren Buffett are making a difference in their own little way.

Soros is calling for a new world architecture, a multilateral financial system based on sounder economic and regulatory principles.

Buffett is running long ($37 billion) on Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad (BNI), an industry that just happens to be labor-intensive, environmentally friendly and significantly domestically energy-independent. These are qualities that would serve the American people and the Obama administration very well.

Free to Be Free

Reading Jeff Gates' Today’s Ancient Warfare: Facts vs. Beliefs, a related question that always presents itself in reading analyses of propaganda and thought control and other systems employed to dissolve a target population's capacity to think is: Those opinionmakers and policymakers in a position to do something and in the know presumably that the political-propaganda game is on - in 2002 Colin Powell, Sens. Clinton, Biden, Edwards, Kerry, Kohl and so on - can turn around and defeat a carefully crafted propaganda effort in a democracy, correct?

We were short on Daniel Ellsbergs in 2002-03, one guesses in part because Joe Wilson and Valarie Plame-Wilson became a cautionary tale, but guts and humanity can defeat cowards and propaganda in a society where the formal structures of democracy exist.

In theory, can policymakers do the right thing? Robbing a population of its capacity to think is one objective of a propaganda operation, injecting despair is another.

As President Obama considers his course on the war without end, he will not offer up the 'thay hate for our freedom' bromides for justification. But he will adopt the same unstated assumptions and premises behind the same policy as Bush-Cheney, unless he shows courage.
Obama though is free to chart a different course.

President Obama, Read RE Afghanistan

On the matter of the pending Afghanistan escalation, a Vietnam War elite Marine combat veteran shoots down this foolish idea of sending in more troops and delaying withdrawal, and proposes direct negotiations with the Taliban in Scotland [Robbie the Pict of Scotland, at left].

---
The Scottish Taliban Talks

by Gordon Duff

Forty years ago, 3 of us at Veterans Today, Bill Eckard, Eddie Harris and I were in South Vietnam, serving with an elite Marine Special Landing Team, looking for "terrorists."

Decades later, our memories are less than clear. It was 4 AM, 0400H, and we were searching a village. Bill remembers finding an AK47 in one hut, I think it was a Garand.

It's funny we all remember that morning, nothing outstanding about it. I remember being acutely aware I was in someone else's home, uninvited. This is how I was raised. Bill and I remember trying to read the "friendship" ID card, written in Vietnamese that theoretically authorized the weapon we found. Ed was uncovering a large cache of rice which had been supplying the "indigenous" forces we called the Viet Cong.

40 years later, the 3 of us are disabled veterans. Many, perhaps even most of our friends are dead. We can't even begin to count the Vietnamese who died, they numbered in the millions. Now we are invited to return to Vietnam for beach front vacations, our hosts, the people we were fighting.

We are not pacifists but we have learned a thing or two over the years. Not everything is worth fighting and dying over and war, too often, is something turned to for profit and seldom involves fighting to secure the safety of our home and families.

We have grown older in a world of lies.

We will come to Scotland and sit down at a table, meet with those who are said to be our enemies. We will go to Scotland. If we have to we will do it in Afghanistan.

It isn't my job to judge the United States or her NATO allies, such as they are. The reality of it is that a generation of our children is in Afghanistan. We can't change what people believe, not all at once, but we can start.

Few, even few in Scotland remember that it is an occupied country, part of the United Kingdom by force of arms, not free choice. Over 200 years ago, my family fled Scotland after a failed "rebellion," a family divided, half deemed terrorists. We became Canadians and Americans. Now, few remember any of this struggle, lost in history, a history, as we know, written by the victors. We were not the victors.

We now face new decisions and new opportunities. We are being invited to sit down with our enemies, not by clergy but by, of all people, soldiers, veterans like ourselves from Pakistan, those who have known a lifetime of war, political strife and instability, like ourselves.

We recognize the names of our new friends. These are tough people, strong willed and determined. We don't agree with everything they propose but much of it reflects what is in our hearts also.

We have fought too many wars against enemies we vilify as something less than men. This has to end. If we are going to hate each other, kill each other, we can do it as men. My concerns are selfish. I deal with the suffering of our veterans on a daily basis. Anything I can do to stop that suffering, within my power, I will.

If talking, meeting and understanding can provide a basis for something that can move us past conflict I am willing as are many with me.

If there has to be endless, senseless war, perhaps it would be better if we fought instead of our children. If anyone deserves this, it is us. It has been our indifference to the world that has allowed anarchy to rule.

We are the ones who sat by quietly while , what could have been a generation of science, righteousness and plenty has turned into one of continual war, war obviously manipulated by gangsters who have hijacked the political systems of, not only the United States but much of the world.

There is no William Wallace among us. We are all lesser men. Perhaps we live in the times of lesser men. Perhaps this is our doom, to be led, not by the great but by the sly, the servile and weak. Replacing the prowess of Attila or the cunning of the Borgias is an oligarchy of grinning con men enslaved by the leavings, the offal of their masters in the oil, arms and drug cartels.

We have lost the ability to determine who is or is not a threat, an enemy or an "evildoer" as the world itself has reformed itself as a cesspool where religious hypocrites of all faiths, spew their hate and fear. How have the great religions become so enmeshed in the scheming that has led humanity on this descent into barbarity? For every petty prince there are two "servants" of a higher power following close behind.

Maybe this is the century chosen to prove mankind isn't meant to survive. Little more could be done to prove this the case.

One-term Tommy Thompson in 2010 Has Appeal

A constant in America over the last four years—epitomized in Wisconsin—is the startlingly anxious mood of the electorate.

Get everyone at the table and fix this is the prevailing popular sentiment. The great mass of apolitical voters don't want partisan blame now, just someone to clean it up.

Forget the Tea Partiers-GOP's implausible messages calling President Obama a dithering decider on one hand and a Chicago-based outlaw taking over the economy on the other. These guys are not serious.

Look at Wisconsin to lead. Whatever the result of the Gov. Doyle-Lt. Gov. Lawton-Mayor Barrett-local-national-Democratic-forces' machinations to take on the GOP nominee, a gubernatorial candidate who says, 'I will serve one term to clean up and then I'm out,' has a lot of appeal.

Brings to mind the relatively young, 68-year-old Tommy Thompson whom Scott Walker says is "pretty confident" will support Walker's candidacy. I'm pretty sure that's heavily qualified speculation.

Thompson would get killed in a race against Sen. Russ Feingold. That leaves governor.

Talk around political campfires this weekend is that Thompson is being asked often and is seriously considering a 2010 run for governor, no matter what any declared candidate says.

Clean it up. Tom Barrett gets that, though he seems a tad busy. Obama gets that. And so does Tommy Thompson.

No Religious War

America does not fight religious wars, nor should we have religious escalations. The last thing we need now is to make this a Christian v. Islam thing.

Jason Leopold has a piece noting Mikey Weinstein, the founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, weighed in on the shooting rampage at Fort Hood.

Weinstein called upon President Obama to immediately issue a statement as Commander-in-Chief making it clear that there would be a zero tolerance policy against any member of the US military 'inflicting harassments, retribution or reprisal against an Islamic member of the US military.'

Obama issued a statement earlier Thursday condeming the shootings.

Weinstein, whose civil rights organization was recently nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace prize, said Obama must state, unequivocally, that the US does not judge the worth of a 'service member based on his or her religious faith.'

Weinstein's group has exposed the meteroric rise of fundamentalist Christianity within the US military and has called attention to the fact that military personnel have sought to cast the war in Iraq and Afghanistan as a crusade between Christianity and Islam.

Terrorsim and Propaganda

One appreciates the initial restraint by the U.S. military officials in reporting the mass killing at Fort Hood correctly described as terrorism by commentators. Circumspect and factual, the facts came out few but solid.

Now, suddenly this morning, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, Fort Hood's base commander, tells CBS News that the presumed shooter is rumored to have said, 'Allahu Akbar' (Arab for 'God is great')during the shooting but Cone cannot confirm this.

What is the brass doing repeating rumors as the nation and stricken families ask 'why?' When the administration is deliberating the course in Afghanistan that has the brass pushing for a major escalation against some noun with a vaguely Islamic flavor?

Reporting a rumor seems a bit strange in light of the fact that during the first 12 hours, the brass was silent on the narrative of events and motivation. Now, the brass seems more interested in repeated rumors with no context, and no mention of the culture at Fort Hood.

Point being it's not beyond Pentagon and its lackeys to be utterly full of crap as they handle a crisis at a huge military base charged with maintaining military readiness during two politically unpopular wars.

Solid Pride

As cable-TV know-nothings wail on about Virginia and New Jersey, Ruy Teixeira and Alan Abramowitz offer a sober analysis in the Times in Teixeira's column.

Sustaining their analysis are the people in Madison out for President Obama's visit to Madison yesterday.

Striking was the look in the eyes of several black women I saw, at street corners and lining the street of Fish Hatchery Road near the intersection of Badger Road. The look in the eyes was unmistakable and universal: Determined pride. One woman was a former Madison school principle, another drove up from Racine, others are Madison residents of the neighborhood.

Black women, this fastest growing voting demographic will save this country.