"Obama Transition Team Member Explains Why Administration Chose Not to Prosecute Torture"

David Swanson:

So, who is the source of these belated explanations?

The Dean of the University of California at Berkeley Law School Christopher Edley, Jr. His comments will probably be showing up on video, but here is a report I was just sent by long-time peace and justice activist extraordinaire Susan Harman:
(SNIP)
"Then Dean Chris Edley volunteered that he'd been party to very high level discussions during Obama's transition about prosecuting the criminals. He said they decided against it. I asked why. Two reasons: 1) it was thought that the CIA, NSA, and military would revolt, and 2) it was thought the Repugnants would retaliate by blocking every piece of legislation they tried to move (which, of course, they've done anyhow)." MORE...

Ari Melber: "Who's really angry at Obama?" (video)

MSNBC-Dylan Ratigan, video (03:56).

"Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult"

Mike Lofgren:

The reader may think that I am attributing Svengali-like powers to GOP operatives able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. It is more complicated than that. Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of America since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class - without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.

What do the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership Council-style "centrist" Democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China. At the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.[3]

While Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists. How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. MORE...

"McGinn: Can this mayor be rescued?"

Joel Connelly (seattlepi.com):

It's funny, though. I'm still rooting for McGinn to catch his political sea legs, whatever the critical stuff I've written about him and in spite of the press conference set-to.

A hopeless mayor hurts a city. Grant money -- the taxpayers' dollars -- gets wasted if it is used to create a feast for interest groups. If government is keyed to specific groups' agendas (e.g. Cascade Bicycle Club, Transportation Choices, Sierra Club) those left out resist and we witness the kind of conflict seen on the tunnel.

So, here's hoping the "Green Economy" isn't a Potemkin promise, that competent contractors get brought in, workers trained and homes weatherized. Mayor McGinn has it in his powers to shut me up.

On the other hand, it's our duty to shake off the choreography and spin and demand an answer to the question immortalized by an old lady named Sarah Peller in those famous Wendy's ads: "WHERE'S THE BEEF?" MORE...

The Onion: "Obama Earns Money For U.S. By Appearing In Japanese Television Commercial"

A scene from the president's advertisement for Glico Pretz Ham & Cheese.

The Onion:

In an effort to obtain badly needed revenue for the ailing U.S. economy, President Barack Obama recently appeared in a 30-second television spot for the popular Japanese snack product Glico Pretz Ham & Cheese, White House sources reported Wednesday.

According to aides, the advertisement will air nationally throughout Japan and will feature the president endorsing a savory, stick-shaped cracker snack manufactured by the Ezaki Glico corporation, which agreed to pay Obama a one-time fee of $300,000 plus residuals, compensation to be used exclusively for U.S. economic stimulus purposes.

Glico executives say they hope consumers associate the president's face with Pretz Ham & Cheese from now on.

"While the president does not ordinarily endorse retail products, he was willing to make an exception for Glico Pretz Ham & Cheese as a way of easing the current financial burden on our country," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, stressing that the commercial's quick, two-day shoot outside of Yokohama took little time out of Obama's schedule and was of the highest production quality. "Also, we have been assured by Ezaki Glico CEO Katsuhisa Ezaki that the TV advertisement, and accompanying billboard and bus ads, will only be seen in Japan and will portray the president in a very flattering, elegant light befitting a world leader of his stature." MORE...

Ari Melber--"an essential liberal disconnect: The narrators are far angrier than the audience"

Ari Melber (Politico):

Has President Barack Obama hit bottom?

His approval ratings are at an all-time low. The president faced a summer of withering second-guessing from prominent supporters, who questioned his negotiating skills, economic priorities and liberal credentials. Obama seems impervious. Yet that is no surprise — if you do the math. MORE...

Matt Taibbi on "Obama and Jobs: Why I Don't Believe Him Anymore"

Matt Taibbi:

I was hours early for a flight and stuck in a relatively small terminal crammed with people. Only one area in the whole wing had empty seats; an unused gate that contained a TV blaring the CNN broadcast of Obama's Labor Day speech at full volume.

So it was either sit underneath a full-volume broadcast of our fearless president bellowing out his latest hollow promises, or the hellish alternative: retreat to gates full of screaming five year-old children, all of them jacked up on sugar and bawling their eyes out because it was the end of Labor Day weekend and their cruel parents were dragging them home from Disneyworld. MORE...

"Obama & the Left's Not So Magical Thinking" (video)

SamSeder, video (06:23):

Joined by Ari Berman of the Nation, Sam discusses the recent article by Jonathan Chait on "What the Left Doesn't Understand About Obama."

REPORT: "The American Middle Class Was Built By Unions And It Will Decline Without Them" (with chart)

Zaid Jilani (Think Progress):

...despite the many benefits unions have provided the United States, right-wing politicians and business interests have for years sought to undermine the ability of Americans to organize to demand better pay, benefits, and conditions. From the anti-worker Taft-Hartley Act to the recent GOP-led efforts to kill public worker collective bargaining rights, these assaults have successfully decreased union membership over time. In the prosperous 1950′s, nearly one in three Americans was in a union. Today, it is closer to one in ten. MORE...

H/t to Marcia Kato.

"Tar Sands Action: Visit to Seattle Obama Campaign Office" (with video)

StopKeystoneXL, with video (03:51):

A group of citizens visit an Obama 2012 campaign office to make it clear that they will only donate and volunteer for the campaign when President Obama stands up to Big Oil and denies the permit for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

Michael Moore: "30 Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died"

Michael Moore:

This decline will only end when we demand it. And not through an online petition or a tweet. We are going to have to turn the TV and the computer and the video games off and get out in the streets (like they've done in Wisconsin) MORE...

"Teamsters President: ‘No Regrets’ After Fiery Speech Draws Right-Wing Criticism"

Evan McMorris-Santoro (TPMDC):

"How is that different than Mitch McConnell saying he wants to take out Barack Obama?" Hoffa said.

Progressive Fox News watchdog Media Matters For America charged that the clip had been deceptively edited in Fox's re-airing of it.

Hoffa said his tough tone reflects the nature of the forces massed against unions -- and tells the truth about the dangers faced by organized labor and their allies in the progressive movement during the Republican ascendancy.

"The right wing -- the tea party, backed by the Koch brothers, the Chamber of Commerce and the Walton family are underwriting, you know, bills to take away collective bargaining," Hoffa said. "Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor want to take away Social Security and Medicaid."

"The answer to that is, people that do that, is we're going to declare war on them," he added. MORE...

Fineman: "Obama Aide Discusses 2012 Campaign Strategy"

Howard Fineman:

...as he and the Republican field launch the active, above-ground phase of the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama’s strategists are planning to focus less on his record –- which is spotty at best -– than on what they regard as the frightening prospect of a Republican Party not only of wrong but medieval thinking.

The strategy will be more accusatory, alarm-filled and defensive than the one used during the uplifting, even joyous campaign of 2008, symbolized as it was by depicting the first letter of the candidate's name as a rising sun.

Asked how President Obama could win reelection in the face of persistently high unemployment, a stagnant economy and restiveness in his own Democratic base, a top Obama strategist gave a three-part answer: MORE...

Obama Labor Day Speech" (video/transcript)

truthdig, with video (24:18) and transcript:

On Monday the president celebrated working people and the contributions of unions to our society and he previewed some of the proposals in his forthcoming jobs plan at an AFL-CIO-sponsored speech in a GM parking lot. MORE...

"Labor Day and the spirit of Joe Hill": Joan Baez At Woodstock (with video)

Huffington Post with video (01:47):

...a clip of Joan Baez singing a song for Joe Hill at Woodstock, 40 years ago...

Hill was a labor activist and member of the Wobblies executed in 1915.

Howie P.S.: "Labor Day and the spirit of Joe Hill" (Clancy Sigal-GuardianUK):

Anyone who is a fan of Billy Bragg, as I am, or Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie or the sixties protest singer Phil Ochs knows that radical America's greatest songwriter-educator Joe Hill is still alive in the young-in-heart on this besieged Labor Day. MORE...

"Rep. Maxine Waters: We Need To Spend A Trillion Or More On A Jobs Program" (with video)

Josh Feldman (MEDIAite) with video (01:33) from "Meet the Press":

On Meet the Press today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters called for President Obama to take a more forceful approach to a jobs program, and likely made Republicans drop their jaws with the amount of money she argued the United States should invest in such a plan.

David Gregory asked Waters if it would be possible for the president to take on an ambitious role in working on job creation in Congress, given the recent partisan fights over the debt ceiling. Waters put the impetus on Obama to take the first step.

“The president must be bold. I agree that he must have a jobs program, he must create jobs. I’m talking about a jobs program of a trillion dollars or more. We’ve got to put Americans to work. That’s the only way to revitalize this economy. When people work, they earn money, they spend that money, and that’s what gets the economy up and going.”

Waters insisted any kind of effective jobs plan could not “shrink” to the demands of Republicans or give tax breaks to those in the highest income tax brackets.

"U.S. Wasting Billions While Tripling No-Bid Contracts After Decade of War in Iraq, Afghanistan" (with video)

Democracy Now! with video (31:40):

As the war in Afghanistan approaches its 10th anniversary, a pair of new reports reveal how the Pentagon has squandered tens of billions of dollars while tripling the amount of no-bid contracts. The bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting concludes that between $31 billion and $60 billion spent on projects in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 10 years has been lost to waste and fraud. MORE...

"Obama’s Boeing Union Headache"

Chaplain Rob Dewey of the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy leads government officials and company workers in a prayer to bless Boeing Co.'s $750 million assembly plant in North Charleston, S.C. on Friday, June 10, 2011., Bruce Smith / AP Photo

Jill Lawrence (The Daily Beast):

Republicans are savaging the administration for opposing a non-union Dreamliner plant in South Carolina. Jill Lawrence on how the tag of jobs killer could be used against Obama in 2012. MORE...

AP: "Labor unions adjust to new reality under Obama"

In this March 5, 2011, file photo, people protest against legislative efforts to do away with teachers' collective bargaining rights in Nashville, Tenn. The measure passed in Tennessee this year and ended collective bargaining for teachers unions in the state. Photo: Mark Humphrey / AP

Sam Hananel (AP):

"Obama campaigned big, but he's governing small," said Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union.Labor remains a core Democratic constituency and union leaders will stand with Obama in Detroit this Labor Day, where he will address thousands of rank-and-file members during the city's annual parade Monday.

But at the same time, unions have begun shifting money and resources out of Democratic congressional campaigns and back to the states in a furious effort to reverse or limit GOP measures that could wipe out union rolls.

The AFL-CIO's president, Richard Trumka, says it's part of a new strategy for labor to build an independent voice separate from the Democratic Party. MORE...

GRITtv: Bill McKibben: "Growing Global Movements" (video)

GRITtv, video (23:17).

Howie P.S.: Bill McKibben on the status of the politics of climate change and the price of energy.