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USAF review says next false flag terror attack may hit 'a power plant or a critical link in the nation's financial network'

Thom Shanker & Eric Schmitt
New York Times
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:06 EST

Effort will see if the cost is justified and forces are focused correctly

Colorado Springs - The commander of military forces protecting North America has ordered a review of the costly air defenses intended to prevent another Sept. 11-style terrorism attack, an assessment aimed at determining whether the commitment of jet fighters, other aircraft and crews remains justified.

Senior officers involved in the effort say the assessment is to gauge the likelihood that terrorists may succeed in hijacking an airliner or flying their own smaller craft into the United States or Canada. The study is focused on circumstances in which the attack would be aimed not at a public building or landmark but instead at a power plant or a critical link in the nation's financial network, like a major electrical grid or a computer network hub.

The review, to be completed next spring, is expected to be the military's most thorough reassessment of the threat of a terrorism attack by air since Al Qaeda's strikes on Sept. 11, 2001, transformed a Defense Department focused on fighting other militaries and led to the Bush administration's "global war on terror."

Associated Press
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:31 EST

Committee also rules that Wall Street firms must prepay for their failures

Taking aim at Wall Street and the nation's central bank, a key House committee voted Thursday to assess upfront fees on large financial firms to pay for the failure of their peers and to require a sweeping congressional audit of the secretive Federal Reserve.

The votes were the final brush strokes to the House Financial Services Committee's response to last year's banking meltdown.

In a surprise, however, committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., delayed final action on a long-awaited regulatory overhaul bill until after Thanksgiving. Frank said members of the Congressional Black Caucus requested the delay because they were "troubled by a lack of response to the economic situation."

Geithner told he should go

Brad Norington
The Australian
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:23 EST

US President Barack Obama's administration received a political battering from both sides of the US congress yesterday for poor handling of the economy, amid widespread anger over persistent high unemployment.

Demanding that more be done to help the jobless, senior Republicans asked Mr Obama's Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, to resign yesterday after branding him part of the problem.

In tense exchanges during a joint house committee hearing, Mr Geithner was told the public had lost all confidence in his ability to do the job.

Mr Geithner hit back, telling his Republican accusers the financial crisis was their fault because "you gave this President an economy falling off the cliff".

But attacks over the Obama administration's economic policies following this year's massive stimulus package and bank bailouts were far from one-sided.

Obama's 10 Most Important Faith Leaders

Dan Gilgoff
USNews.com
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:31 EST

Introduction

Even before Barack Obama was elected president, religious figures loomed large in his political career. The greatest threat to his presidential campaign came not from another candidate but from his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, whose controversial sermons prompted questions about Obama's judgment in associating with him. After Election Day, the first big controversy of the Obama era was the president-elect's invitation to evangelical preacher Rick Warren, an opponent of abortion rights and gay marriage, to give the opening prayer at his inauguration. And Obama has offered religious leaders an unusually prominent role in his administration by convening an advisory council for the White House faith-based office that's dominated by clergy and heads of religious groups.

John Byrne
Raw Story
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:24 EST

Go back to jail.

That's the message from Obama administration lawyers to former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, whose case became a cause célèbre among Bush administration critics as ground zero of alleged political prosecutions.

The seeming disconnect between Obama's team and numerous Democrats -- including House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr., who's investigated Siegelman's case -- may be because President George W. Bush's US Attorney in Alabama is still in office. Democrats still haven't settled on a replacement, some eleven months after Obama's inauguration.

In advice to the Supreme Court made public early this week, Obama's Justice Department stood firmly behind the position of Bush US Attorneys who won Siegelman's conviction on bribery charges in 2006. The two US Attorneys connected to the case were Bush appointees -- whose numerous conflicts of interest were documented in the Raw Story series, "The Permanent Republican Majority," which received a nomination for best investigative reporting by the Online News Association in 2008.

Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:39 EST

President Obama directly acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay will not close by the January deadline he set, but he said he hoped to still achieve that goal sometime next year.

Obama refused, however, to set a new deadline.

In an interview in the Chinese capital with Major Garrett of Fox News, Obama said he was "not disappointed" that the Guantanamo deadline had slipped, saying he "knew this was going to be hard."

"People, I think understandably, are fearful after a lot of years where they were told that Guantanamo was critical to keep terrorists out," Obama said. Closing the facility, he added, is "also just technically hard."

Obama came to office pledging to shut a detainee facility that had become a symbol for prisoner abuse at the hands of American officials. He signed orders to shut the military prison by January 2010, but White House officials quickly encountered resistance from members of Congress opposed to moving prisoners to U.S. soil and from other countries they had hoped would accept detainees.

Robert C. Koehler
Common Wonders
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:11 EST

There's no armor, it turns out, for conscience.

So our men and women are coming home from the killing fields wounded in their heads, used up, greeted only by the military's own meat grinder of inadequate health care and intolerance for "weakness."

"Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I've never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness." This is what whistleblower psychiatrist Kernan Manion wrote recently to President Obama about his experience counseling Marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, as reported by Salon.

In September, Manion, having been told to "cease and desist all further correspondence with the government," was fired by the Navy for his urgent, outspoken communiqués about the mental-health minefield the military has on its hands. Two months later, of course, the issue of PTSD was blown into the national headlines by the massacre at Fort Hood. And a day after that, according to Salon, the body of a Marine was found at Camp Lejeune and a fellow Marine was arrested for the murder.

The wars we fight keep getting worse, or seem at any rate to back up on us with an ever-intensifying fury. Our war on terror is tightening the psychological vise on our collective insecurity, beginning with the soldiers who are fighting it. Salon, citing official figures, reported that 42 Marines committed suicide in 2008 and 146 attempted to do so.

Lisa de Moraes
Washington Post
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:44 EST

Oprah Winfrey, one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry, will announce Friday that her iconic daytime talk show will wrap at the end of its 25th season.

But don't panic -- her final appearance as host of The Oprah Winfrey Show is nearly two years away. And it's possible she'll move the whole shebang to the cable network she's setting up, called, naturally, the Oprah Winfrey Network.

"The sun will set on the Oprah show as its 25th season draws to a close on September 9, 2011," Winfrey's Harpo Productions said in an e-mail to TV station executives Thursday evening.

"As we all know, Oprah's personal comments about this on tomorrow's live show will mark a historic television moment that we will all be talking about for years to come."

Nick Turse
AlterNet.org
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:31 EST

Despite ever rosier economic predictions and a surging stock market, the body count from the economic crisis is destined only to grow in the weeks and months ahead.

In 2007, Jason Rodriguez was fired from his position at an Orlando, Florida engineering firm and ended up taking a job as a "sandwich artist" at a Subway restaurant. His salary was cut nearly in half and his debts mounted until, last May, he filed for bankruptcy, listing his assets at just over $4,600 and his liabilities at nearly $90,000. Although he lived only 30 minutes away, according to his former mother-in-law, America Holloway, Rodriguez barely saw his son. When the boy asked why his father didn't visit, Holloway said Rodriguez told him: "'Because I don't have any money. I don't have a job. I don't have anything to eat. When things get better, I'll come see you.'"

Things never got better. On November 6th, the 40-year-old Rodriguez went back to the downtown high-rise office building where he had worked and reportedly opened fire, killing one person and wounding five others at his old firm. Asked to comment following the shooting, a local lawyer who represented Rodriguez in his bankruptcy proceedings, said "That's how it is right now. He's a very typical client. Of people that are suffering through the economy right now, there's nothing extraordinary about him... except that."

YouTube
Sat, 10 Oct 2009 05:01 EDT

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