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To: T L Comiskey who wrote (85326)	4/25/2011 9:42:48 AM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 89467

White House Releases Earth Day Proclamation--but nothing for Easter --------------------------------------------------- White House Fails to Release Easter Proclamation AP April 25, 2011 nation.foxnews.com President Obama failed to release a statement or a proclamation recognizing the national observance of Easter Sunday, Christianity's most sacred holiday. By comparison, the White House has released statements recognizing the observance of major Muslim holidays and released statements in 2010 on Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hajj, and Eid-ul-Adha. The White House also failed to release a statement marking Good Friday. However, they did release an eight-paragraph statement heralding Earth Day. Likewise, the president's weekend address mentioned neither Good Friday or Easter. However, the First Family did attend an Easter Sunday worship service at a Baptist church and last week, the president hosted an Easter breakfast for Christian ministers. In that gathering, the president spoke openly about the Christian faith. And today, the president and first lady will host 30,000 people for the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. The secular celebration of Easter includes readings, games, and a yoga garden. This year's theme, "Get Up and Go!" is part of the first lady’s anti-obesity campaign and will also display produce from the White House garden. In 2010, Obama was criticized for releasing an all-inclusive Easter greeting. He reached out to Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and people of no faith at all in a statement about a holiday that is uniquely Christian. "All of us are striving to make a way in this world; to build a purposeful and fulfilling life in the fleeting time we have here," Obama said in his 2010 "Easter" message. "A dignified life. A healthy life. A life, true to its potential. And a life that serves other." "These are aspirations that stretch back through the ages – aspirations at the heart of Judaism, at the heart of Christianity, at the heart of all the world’s great religions," the president added. When the White House released statements about Muslim holidays, no attempts were made to include Christianity or to mention a spirit of inclusivity. For example, in his 2010 statement on Hajj and Eid-ul-Adha, Obama made no references to Christianity or any other religion. By contrast, former President Bush traditionally included Scripture passages in his Easter messages and made a point to explain what Easter is about. Like Obama, though, he did not release statements marking Good Friday. In 2007, he said, “The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important event of the Christian faith.” “On this powerful day, let us join together and give thanks to the Almighty for the glory of His grace,” he added. In his 2008 Easter message, President Bush said: “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ reminds people around the world of the presence of a faithful God who offers a love more powerful than death. Easter commemorates our Savior's triumph over sin, and we take joy in spending this special time with family and friends and reflecting on the many blessings that fill our lives. During this season of renewal, let us come together and give thanks to the Almighty who made us in His image and redeemed us in His love.” ______________________________________________________________ The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release August 11, 2010 Statement by the President on the Occasion of Ramadan On behalf of the American people, Michelle and I want to extend our best wishes to Muslims in America and around the world. Ramadan Kareem. Ramadan is a time when Muslims around the world reflect upon the wisdom and guidance that comes with faith, and the responsibility that human beings have to one another, and to God. This is a time when families gather, friends host iftars, and meals are shared. But Ramadan is also a time of intense devotion and reflection – a time when Muslims fast during the day and pray during the night; when Muslims provide support to others to advance opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere. For all of us must remember that the world we want to build – and the changes that we want to make – must begin in our own hearts, and our own communities. These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings. Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country. And today, I want to extend my best wishes to the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world – and your families and friends – as you welcome the beginning of Ramadan. I look forward to hosting an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan here at the White House later this week, and wish you a blessed month. May God’s peace be upon you. whitehouse.gov _______________________________________________________________ The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release November 15, 2010 Statement by the President on Hajj and Eid-ul-Adha Michelle and I extend our greetings for a happy Eid-ul-Adha to Muslims worldwide and wish safe travels to those performing Hajj. This year, nearly three million pilgrims from more than 160 countries - including the United States - have gathered in Mecca and neighboring sites to perform the Hajj rituals and stand together in prayer. On Eid, Muslims around the world will commemorate Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, and distribute food to those less fortunate - a reminder of the shared values and the common roots of three of the world's major religions. On behalf of the American people, we extend our best wishes during this Hajj season – Eid Mubarak and Hajj Mabrour. whitehouse.gov ____________________________________________________________ The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release September 09, 2010 Statement by the President on the Occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr As Ramadan comes to an end, Michelle and I extend our best wishes to Muslims in the United States and around the world on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr. For Muslims all over the world, Eid ul-Fitr marks the end of a holy month of fasting and prayer. It is a time of self-reflection focusing on the values that Muslims and people of all faiths share - charity, community, cooperation and compassion. This year’s Eid is also an occasion to reflect on the importance of religious tolerance and to recognize the positive role that religious communities of all faiths, including Muslims, have played in American life. On this Eid, those devastated by the recent floods in Pakistan will be on the minds of many around the world. To help in the tremendous relief, recovery, and reconstruction effort for the floods, all Americans can participate by donating to the Pakistan Relief Fund at www.state.gov. On behalf of the American people, we congratulate Muslims in the United States and around the world on this blessed day. Eid Mubarak. whitehouse.gov

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (85326)	4/25/2011 9:59:21 AM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Respond to of 89467

IBM offered to help reduce Medicare fraud for free... The offer is true. Zukermann, US News and World Report, owner, a Democrat was interviewed on Fox and confirmed it. IBM has confirmed it. You won't believe it . IBM offered to help reduce Medicare fraud for free... What if I told you that the Chairman and CEO of IBM, Samuel J. Palmisano, approached President Obama and members of his administration before the healthcare bill debates with a plan that would reduce healthcare expenditures by $900 billion? Given the Obama Administration's adamancy that the United States of America simply had to make healthcare (read: health insurance) affordable for even the most dedicated welfare recipient, one would think he would have leaned forward in his chair, cupped his ear and said, "Tell me more!" And what if I told you that the cost to the federal government for this program was nothing, zip, nada, zilch? And, what if I told you that, in the end and after two meetings, President Obama and his team, instead of embracing a program that was proven to save money and one that was projected to save almost one trillion dollars - a private sector program costing the taxpayers nothing, zip, nada, zilch - said, "Thanks but no thanks" and then embarked on passing one of the most despised pieces of legislation in US history? Well, it's all true. Samuel J. Palmisano, the Chairman of the Board and CEO for IBM, said in a recent Wall Street Journal interview that he offered to provide the Obama Administration with a program that would curb healthcare claims fraud and abuse by almost one trillion dollars but the Obama White House turned the offer down. Mr. Palmisano is quoted as saying during a taping video.foxnews.com of The Wall Street Journal's Viewpoints program on September 14, 2010: "We could have improved the quality and reduced the cost of the healthcare system by $900 billion...I said we would do it for free to prove that it works. They turned us down." A second meeting between Mr. Palmisano and the Obama Administration took place two weeks later, with no change in the Obama Administration's stance. A call placed to IBM on October 8, 2010, by FOX News confirmed, via a spokesperson, that Mr. Palmisano stands by his statement. Speaking with FOX News' Stuart Varney, Mort Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief of US News & World Report, said, "It's a little bit puzzling because I think there is a huge amount of both fraud and inefficiency that American business is a lot more comfortable with and more effective in trying to reduce. And this is certainly true because the IBM people have studied this very carefully. And when Palmisano went to the White House and made that proposal, it was based upon a lot of work and it was not accepted. And it's really puzzling...These are very, very responsible people and don't have a political ax to grind. In Mr. Obama's shunning of a private sector program that would have saved our country almost $1 trillion in healthcare expenditures, presented to him as he declared a "crisis in healthcare," he proves two things beyond any doubt: that he is anti-Capitalist and anti-private sector in nature and that he can no longer be trusted to tell the truth in both his political declarations or espoused goals.

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (85326)	4/26/2011 1:12:36 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

MONDAY, APR 25, 2011 09:28 ET Newly leaked documents show the ongoing travesty of Guantanamo BY GLENN GREENWALD salon.com AP Photo/Brennan Llinsley A detainee shields his face as he peers out through the so-called "bean hole" which is used to pass food and other items into cells, within the detention compound at Guantanamo Bay Numerous media outlets -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and NPR, among others – last night published classified files on more than 700 past and present Guantanamo detainees. The leak was originally provided to WikiLeaks, which then gave them to the Post, NPR and others; the NYT and The Guardian claim to have received them from “another source” (WikiLeaks suggested the “other source” was Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former WikiLeaks associate who WikiLeaks claims took, without authorization, many WikiLeaks files when he left). The documents reveal vast new information about these detainees and, in particular, the shoddy and unreliable nature of the “evidence” used (both before and now) to justify their due-process-free detentions. There are several points worth noting about all this: (1) Given that multiple media outlets have just published huge amounts of classified information, it is more difficult than ever to distinguish between WikiLeaks and, say, the NYT or the Post under the law. How could anyone possibly justify prosecuting WikiLeaks for disseminating classified information while not prosecuting these newspapers who have done exactly the same thing? If Dianne Feinstein, the DOJ and Newt Gingrich are eager to prosecute WikiLeaks for “espionage” – and they are – how can that not also sweep up these media outlets? (2) Once again we find how much we now rely on whistleblowers in general – and WikiLeaks and (if he did what’s accused) Bradley Manning in particular – to learn the truth and see the evidence about what the world’s most powerful factions are actually doing. WikiLeaks is responsible for more newsworthy scoops over the last year than all media outlets combined: it’s not even a close call. And if Bradley Manning is the leaker, he has done more than any other human being in our lifetime to bring about transparency and shine a light on what military and government power is doing. (3) The difference among the various newspapers in how these leaks are being presented is stark, predictable and revealing. The Guardian emphasizes exactly what is most important about these documents: how oppressive is this American detention system, how unreliable the evidence is on which the accusations are based, and how so many people were put in cages for years without any justification: On its front page, the Telegraph trumpets the “more than 150 innocent people held at the U.S. prison.” The NYT, by stark contrast, emphasizes how Dangerous and Menacing these Evil Terrorists are shown to be (while at least noting underneath that many were held without cause): Unsurprisingly, the Washington Post is the most absurd of all; here’s what they found most newsworthy: In sum, foreign newspapers highlight how these documents show U.S. actions to be so oppressive and unjust, while American newspapers downplayed that fact. That reflects Jack Goldsmith's praise of American media outlets as comprising a “patriotic media”. (4) These documents shed new light on the persecution of Sami al-Haj, the Al Jazeera cameraman who was encaged at the camp for more than 6 years and then abruptly released without ever being charged. As I’ve written many times, this was one of the most discussed cases in the Muslim world – that the U.S. would imprison an Al Jazeera journalist without charges for years – yet (outside of Nicholas Kristof) it was almost entirely suppressed in establishment media outlets (even as American journalists obsessed on the imprisonment of American journalists by Iran and North Korea for far shorter periods of time). Al-Haj has long claimed that he was interrogated almost exclusively about his work for Al Jazeera, and virtually nothing about the accusations against him (being an “Al Qaeda courier”). The files released about him corroborate that claim, as The Guardian notes : “An al-Jazeera journalist was held at Guantánamo for six years partly in order to be interrogated about the Arabic news network.” In particular: His file makes clear that one of the reasons he was sent to Guantánamo was "to provide information on ... the al-Jazeera news network's training programme, telecommunications equipment, and newsgathering operations in Chechnya, Kosovo and Afghanistan, including the network's acquisition of a video of UBL [Osama bin Laden] and a subsequent interview with UBL". Al-Haj was far from the only journalist the U.S. imprisoned for years without charges during the War on Terror, but his case represents one of the most egregious – and under-reported – American acts during the last decade, given that he was detained to learn more about Al Jazeera. These newly released files dispel any doubt about the accuracy of al-Haj’s claims regarding his detention experience. (5) Perhaps most important of all, these documents conclusively underscore the evils of the Obama administration’s indefinite detention regime. Just last month, President Obama signed an Executive Order directing that dozens of detainees held for years at Guantanamo continue to be imprisoned indefinitely without any charges: either in a real court or even before a military commission. Although indefinite detention was one of the primary hallmarks of Bush/Cheney radicalism, this order was justified by the White House and its followers on the ground that the President knows of secret evidence that shows that these detainees are Too Dangerous to Release, yet cannot be prosecuted because the evidence against them is tainted (see this post for why that line of reasoning is so logically and morally twisted). The idea of trusting the government to imprison people for life based on secret, untested evidence never reviewed by a court should repel any decent or minimally rational person, but these newly released files demonstrate how warped is this indefinite detention policy specifically. The New Yorker's Amy Davidson highlights some of the most extreme inanities in how "evidence" was assembled, while McClatchy’s Carol Rosenberg describes just some of the reasons to find this “evidence” so unreliable: beyond the fact that so much of it was extracted using torture: The U.S. military set up a human intelligence laboratory at Guantanamo that used interrogation and detention practices that they largely made up as they went along. . . . The documents, more than 750 individual assessments of former and current Guantanamo detainees, show an intelligence operation that was tremendously dependent on informants — both prison camp snitches repeating what they'd heard from fellow captives and self-described, at times self-aggrandizing, alleged al Qaida insiders turned government witnesses who Pentagon records show have since been released. Intelligence analysts are at odds with each other over which informants to trust, at times drawing inferences from prisoners' exercise habits. They order DNA tests, tether Taliban suspects to polygraphs, string together tidbits in ways that seemed to defy common sense. In one sense this is not new, as federal courts which have reviewed these detentions during the Obama administration have overwhelmingly found them lacking any credible evidence. Still, these files provide important new specifics. The NYT describes the case of Omar Hamzayavich Abdulayev – placed in Guantanamo in 2002 when he was 23 (he’s now 32) and one of the detainees just ordered indefinitely detained by Obama. The newly released files reveal what the NYT calls “the haunting conclusion of his 2008 assessment: ‘Detainee’s identity remains uncertain’.” In other words, the person who has been in Guantanamo for 9 years – most of his adult life – and whom Obama just ordered detained indefinitely with no charges, very well may not even be the person we think he is. (6) Those condemning these disclosures – consisting of the now-familiar union of Bush neocons and the hardest-core Obama followers – are saying, in essence, that it would be far better if we had remained ignorant about the extreme unreliability of the “evidence” justifying these detentions, and that it would be preferable if the evidence showing the extreme injustice of continuing to imprison people there without so much as charging them with any crimes continued to be concealed. * * * * * Over the weekend, The Washington Post published a detailed account of why Obama has not closed Guantanamo, debunking the apologists' claim that he did everything he could but was thwarted by an independent Congress. Marcy Wheeler highlights just some of the key points from that article.