Obama told me so: 11/14/14

Friday, 14 November 2014

Ibrahim held talks with Nusra Front over hostage crisis: reports

Lawyer demands Lebanon release FSA commander

Tarek Shandab, lawyer for several terror suspects held in Roumieh Prison, demanded Friday the release of a Syrian...

China, S.Korea, Jordan offer to help equip Lebanese Army

North Korea to send special envoy to Russia

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will send a special envoy to Russia next week, both countries announce, in a trip...

No Woman Has Led A Larger U.S. City Than Jane Byrne, Who Died Today

i i

Jane Byrne savors her victory in the previous night's Democratic primary in 1979, when she defeated incumbent Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic. She became the city's first female mayor. Carl Hugare/MCT/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Carl Hugare/MCT/Landov

Jane Byrne savors her victory in the previous night's Democratic primary in 1979, when she defeated incumbent Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic. She became the city's first female mayor.

Carl Hugare/MCT/Landov

Jane Byrne, who stunned Chicago's powerful political machine in becoming the first and still only woman elected mayor of the nation's third-largest city, died today at the age of 81.

She is being remembered as a trailblazer for women in politics who cracked the glass ceiling in a city whose political oligarchy 'don't want nobody nobody sent.' *

A product of the machine herself and a protege of late mayor Richard J. Daley, Byrne bucked party leaders to topple their annointed candidate, incumbent mayor Michael Bilandic, in the Democratic primary in February of 1979.

"I've beaten the whole damned machine single-handedly," Byrne said on the night of her primary victory.

"The last time the Democratic organization in a mayoral primary had lost was 1911," says political scientist Paul Green, director of the Institute for Politics at Roosevelt University in Chicago. "So she broke a long string of organization victories ... a 68-year tradition of the Democratic machine winning its mayoral primary."

Byrne tapped into growing anti-machine sentiment in Chicago after the death of Richard J. Daley in 1976, when Bilandic took over the mayor's office. She also was aided in her campaign by Mother Nature, in the form of one of the Windy City's famous snowstorms.

i i

Pedestrians totter, cars crawl, and the snow falls as Chicago is hit by 19 inches of snow on Jan. 14, 1979. The city's poor response to the storm was one reason Jane Byrne won the Democratic mayoral primary later that year. Fred Jewell/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Fred Jewell/AP

Fred Jewell/AP

A blizzard Jan. 13-14 that winter dumped more than a foot and a half of snow on the city, and much of the city was paralyzed for weeks.

Bilandic was criticized sharply for the city's feeble plowing efforts and the failure to keep buses and trains running. When service did resume, Bilandic ordered his mass transit system to skip stops in black neighborhoods, further alienating minority voters and adding to growing anti-machine sentiment in the Chicago.

"She wasn't Michael Bilandic. She was the alternative," says Green. "The snow — and the unbelievable bad reaction by the mayor and his team to the snow — just added to the fact that if you didn't like Bilandic, you didn't like the trains bypassing you, you didn't like this, you didn't like that, (there was) only one way to show your opposition. And that was to vote for Jane Byrne."

But as anti-machine as Byrne was in her campaign, she reversed course early in her term in office, upsetting the liberals and minorities who helped elect her.

"Within six months, she flipped over, dumped reform, and for the next three and a half years ran the city pretty much the way the Machine ran the city," former Chicago Daily Southtown reporter Ray Hanania, who covered city hall during the Byrne administration, tells member station WBEZ.

Some of Byrne's early supporters in politics — and in the press — say they felt betrayed by her new political alliance with the very aldermen she campaign against as a "cabal of evil men."

"She was probably not prepared to be mayor, not that you go to school for it," said Don Rose, who managed her 1979 campaign but later became disillusioned and left the administration. Rose tells the Chicago Tribune that "although the stories were probably wilder than the actual actions, I think some of her eccentricities were due to the fact that she was just really overwhelmed."

Books

Four Books To Help You Master Chicago Politics

Turnover in her administration was high, and she battled the city's labor unions — including city firefighters, who have gone on strike only once in the history of the city, in 1980, during Byrne term as mayor. She also had a very contentious relationship with the media.

Decades later, Byrne would chalk up that last difficulty to what she said was one of her toughest challenges in office: sexism.

"I think the City Hall reporters felt they had always covered Mayor Macho, and now they've got somebody in a pink suit and high heels and it's not their cup of tea," Byrne told WBEZ in 2004.

Not that the different outfit meant a softer approach, says Roosevelt University's Paul Green.

"One never called Jane Byrne dainty. Jane Byrne was as tough as they come and a fighter," he says, crediting much of that toughness to her political upbringing inside the machine as the first woman in the first Mayor Daley's cabinet. "She got her reputation as being a Democratic party insider working for Richard J. Daley."

i i

Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne joins Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., in acknowledging applause Nov. 7, 1979, at a Chicago hotel. Sen. Kennedy, who earlier in the day announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in Boston, addressed Chicago-area Democrats. Byrne endorsed Kennedy, but incumbent President would ultimately win Illinois and the nomination, though not a second term. John Duricka/AP hide caption

itoggle caption John Duricka/AP

John Duricka/AP

In the midst of a tough economy, growing poverty, and rising violent crime, Byrne signed an ordinance effectively banning handguns from the city, and she and her husband moved into the notorious Cabrini-Green public housing complex amid an increase in shootings there.

Byrne is also credited with boosting the arts, music and tourism in the city. She started the city's famous Jazz Fest, as well as and Chicago Fest, which morphed into Taste of Chicago. She invested in downtown and the city's lakefront, extended the city's elevated transit line to O'Hare airport, and modernized the airport, too.

And after years of the city being off limits to Hollywood, she is credited with welcoming film crews and helping turn Chicago into a famous backdrop for many major motion pictures, the first of which was "The Blues Brothers." After initially balking at the crazy car chases and other antic the filmmakers planned, Byrne was won over by actors John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd themselves, both of whom got their start at the Second City in Chicago. The clincher apparently was when they described the car chase through Daley plaza and into the glass lobby of the Daley Center in downtown Chicago.

"They all hate me in the 11th Ward (the Daley family's power base) anyway, so go ahead," she reportedly told them.

But she lost her bid for re-election in 1983 when challenged by her political mentor's son, Richard M. Daley and the ultimate winner, Chicago's first and only black mayor, Harold Washington.

* This is what a cigar-chomping Chicago ward boss told a young Abner Mikva, who after serving in WWII went to his local Democratic ward office to offer to volunteer. As Mikva tells the story, the boss curtly asked him, "Who sent you?" "Nobody sent me," Mikva responded. "We don't want nobody nobody sent," the boss replied, showing Mikva out the door. The liberal Mikva fought the machine much of the way as he became a congressman, a federal judge and White House counsel under President Bill Clinton.

Extremism threatens all Lebanese, not just Christians: Paoli

Hezbollah: Aoun a consensus candidate

Hezbollah said Thursday it considered Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun a consensus presidential candidate,...

Lebanon Agriculture Ministry blacklists Indian meat company

Egypt, Lebanon bound by social ties: envoy

Egypt's new charge d'affaires in Lebanon praises the historical role of intellectuals in both countries for their...

West Wing Week: 11/14/14 or, "The Future That We See"

This week, the President issued a statement on net neutrality, convened both congressional leaders & his Cabinet to discuss the agenda in the years ahead, dove into an 8-day trip to China, Burma, and Australia to foster deeper relations to countries around the pacific and open up markets and opportunities for businesses here at home.

Letters to the President: Kristy and the Affordable Care Act

Every day, thousands of Americans write the President about the issues that matter most to them -- and my job is to help sort through them. This post is part of a series that will help highlight the stories of Americans who have written the President about the Affordable Care Act and what it means to them. Starting November 15, you can visit HealthCare.gov to shop for and enroll in a plan that works for you.

The voices of people across America inform the President and give him invaluable perspective on the progress we've made -- as well as the work we've got left to do. If you want to write the President yourself, you can do that here.

Last November, Kristy Borum of Canyon Lake, Texas sat down to write a letter to President Obama about the Affordable Care Act.

For years, Kristy explained in her letter, she had supported herself and her children by driving 18-wheeler trucks throughout the U.S. This job allowed her to provide for her family, but did not provide health insurance. And unfortunately for Kristy, private insurance on the open market was not in the budget. Kristy is on Medicare now, but she wasn't a couple of years ago, before the ACA took full effect -- when she became seriously ill and spent 27 days in the hospital. Kristy had been without insurance coverage for decades—and by the time she returned home from the hospital she owed almost $100,000 in medical bills.

Egypt, Lebanon bound by social ties: envoy

Egypt's new charge d'affaires in Lebanon praises the historical role of intellectuals in both countries for their...

US military official meets Salam, Kahwagi; hails Army valor

Army arrests more north Lebanon militants

The Lebanese Army arrested Friday two suspects charged with attacking the military as it continues its crackdown on...

Political Diversity Pioneers Win Medal Of Freedom

Several of this year's recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor the national government gives to civilians, are people of color. They include recording star Stevie Wonder and the late Alvin Ailey, legendary choreographer and founder of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater.

Still, many of the honorees made their presence felt on the political stage, challenging America's presumptions about people of color.

i i

Suzan Harjo testifies on Capitol Hill before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing "Stolen Identities: The Impact of Racist Stereotypes on Indigenous People." Harry Hamburg/ASSOCIATED PRESS hide caption

itoggle caption Harry Hamburg/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Suzan Harjo testifies on Capitol Hill before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing "Stolen Identities: The Impact of Racist Stereotypes on Indigenous People."

Harry Hamburg/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Suzan Harjo

Suzan Shown Harjo, who is Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, has long been an advocate for Native American rights.

Before she petitioned the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office to cancel the federal trademark registrations for the Washington Redskins, she had already successfully stopped other sports teams from using names and mascots demeaning to Native American cultures.

She worked with Native American activist groups to get the University of Oklahoma to retire its mascot "Little Red" in 1970. Soon after, and with pressure from Harjo and these groups, Dartmouth University retired the "Indian" as its unofficial mascot. In the mid-1990s, Harjo convinced the Kentucky Department of Education and schools to change all the schools with Native American stereotypes in their names, or mascots.

In the 1960s, Harjo co-produced Seeing Red, the U.S.'s first Native American news program at New York's WBAI radio station. There she met her husband Frank Harjo, with whom she reported on New York's vibrant Native American community. Her involvement in the local art scene is what initially sparked her interest in work advocating for the repatriation of sacred Native cultural objects held by museums. In 1974, Harjo began working as a legislative liaison representing Native American rights in addition to serving as the news director of the American Indian Press Association.

Under President Jimmy Carter, Harjo served as a Congressional liaison for Indian affairs and supported Native American positions in the formation of federal policy. In this role, she worked toward the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, which was intended to protect the traditional religious and cultural practices of Native Americans, Alaskans and Hawaiians.

She helped found the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian and served as a founding trustee in the 1990s. Harjo was also the guest curator and general editor for a 2014 exhibition and book at the museum about treaties between the United States and Native American nations. Currently, Harjo serves as the President of the Morning Star Institute, a national Native American advocacy organization.

Patsy Mink

i i

Rep. Patsy Mink, D-Hawaii, talks with reporters on Capitol Hill in 1997. Joe Marquette/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Joe Marquette/AP

Rep. Patsy Mink, D-Hawaii, talks with reporters on Capitol Hill in 1997.

Joe Marquette/AP

Patsy Mink (née Takemoto) was born in 1927 to Mitama Tateyama and Suematsu Takemoto, second-generation Japanese-Americans living in Maui, Hawaii. Her grandparents had immigrated to the United States at the turn of the century in search of opportunity and found work in Hawaii's sugar cane plantations. Her family's pursuit of the American Dream butted up against intense xenophobia in the years following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, and those experiences deeply affected her ideas of what it meant to be an American.

Maui's racially-stratified plantation economy would come to inform Mink's own politics for the rest of her life. Early in her career, Mink aligned herself with Hawaii's Democratic minority in opposition to the historically Republican establishment.

Long before she became a lawmaker, Mink planned to practice medicine. According to the Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, she was rejected from the 20 medical schools that she applied to on the basis of her gender. Undeterred in her resolve to make a difference, Mink worked a number of menial jobs before an employer recommended that she apply to law school.

Mink believed that the University of Chicago Law School admitted her in 1948 due to a clerical error that misidentified her as a foreign student. After graduating with her J.D. in 1951, Mink still found virtually no career prospects open to her as a female, Japanese-American lawyer.

She moved back to Hawaii with her husband and daughter. With a loan from her father, Mink founded her own practice where she specialized in criminal and family law. In addition to being the first Japanese-American female lawyer in the state and teaching at the University of Hawaii law school, Mink also became involved in politics there.

Mink would eventually win a seat as Hawaii's Democratic senator and become a prominent Asian-American voice in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, joining the NAACP in 1960s. In 1972 she threw her hat into the ring and became the first Asian American to run for the United States presidency campaigning on an anti-war platform.

Though Mink did not ultimately secure the Democratic Party's nomination, she cemented her legacy as a legislator that same year when she co-sponsored Title IX of of the United States Education Amendments. Title IX forever changed the way institutions of higher education welcomed women.

Two years later, she introduced the Women's Educational Equity Act, which was signed into law by President Gerald Ford and outlines federal protections against gender discrimination of women in schools. After Mink returned to Congress in 1990, Mink co-sponsored a bill intended to combat gender bias in grade school, and, in 1995, organized and led the Democratic Women's Caucus.

Mink served in the House until her death in September 2002.

Edward Roybal

Edward Roybal was known for his advocacy on the issue of creating services for the U.S.'s aging population as well as championing civil rights.

Edward Roybal was known for his advocacy on the issue of creating services for the U.S.'s aging population as well as championing civil rights. The USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging hide caption

itoggle caption The USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging

Edward Roybal was a groundbreaking politician who became a role model for a generation of Latino elected officials. He served as the founding chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and was one of first Hispanic lawmakers to hold national office in the 20th century. In the 1970s, Roybal also co-founded the National Association Latino Elected Leaders and Appointed Officials (NALEO) to help more Latinos carry out successful bids for public office.

Roybal began his political career in 1949, serving on the Los Angeles City Council, an experience he recounted in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. At his first meeting, Roybal balked when a colleague introduced him as "our new Mexican-speaking councilman, representing the Mexican people in his district." Discarding his prepared remarks, Roybal responded by explaining that he was not Mexican, but Mexican American; and did not speak "Mexican," but Spanish.

During his time on the council, Roybal worked with local political organizations to launch voter registration drives and efforts to stop police brutality. Roybal left the council for the halls of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962, where he would serve for the next 30 years. As a representative from Los Angeles, Roybal supported measures that restored cuts to senior citizens' healthcare programs, funded AIDS research in the early 1980s, and created bilingual education programs.

Roybal's congressional career wasn't always smooth. In 1978, he was targeted by the House Ethics Committee for failing to report a political contribution. He received a reprimand after several House colleagues and Latino leaders from around the country came to his defense.

Roybal ended his career in Congress in 1993. Within California's political circles, he became known as "The Old Man," whose endorsement could play a decisive role for political victories. His daughter, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, began serving in Congress in 1993 and currently represents California's 40th District.

Roybal was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001 by then-President Clinton. He died in 2005, at age 89.

When Legislative Leaders Fail In Other Countries, They Lose Their Jobs

i i

With the enthusiastic backing of his caucus, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was reelected as the leader of the Senate Democrats this week following devastating midterm losses. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Alex Wong/Getty Images

With the enthusiastic backing of his caucus, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was reelected as the leader of the Senate Democrats this week following devastating midterm losses.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Last week, you may have heard, the Democrats took a historic drubbing in the midterm elections for Congress. They lost their majority in the Senate and saw their numbers in the House fall to their lowest point in nearly seven decades.

Yet they could hardly wait to get back to Washington and reelect the party's leaders in both chambers — unopposed.

The 2014 election may have been mainly a referendum on the president, but two other names were mentioned almost as often in Republican ads: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Republican candidates everywhere ran against those two leaders more than they ran against their actual opponents.

Yet Reid already has been swept back into his party's top spot, and Pelosi will follow next week — and in neither case was there so much as a struggle.

To some degree, this reflects the attitude in the Democratic cloakroom that these two longtime symbols of the party have served the cause well, and are not to blame for the deluge on Election Day. To this way of thinking, ousting Reid or Pelosi would be scapegoating.

But surely there are other Democrats in both chambers who see these two names as being more useful as targets for the enemy than they are valuable as inspirational figures. They rouse the opposition far more effectively than they rally the faithful.

Yet not one member in either chamber has been willing to step forward as a challenger to either Democratic leader. And without such a challenge, the leader simply wins again — either party, either chamber, every time.

Congress has reached historic lows in approval, and despite the election results, that disapproval applies to Republicans, too.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who began 2014 with the lowest home-state approval ratings of any senator seeking re-election, has just become the new majority leader in the Senate for 2015. He is the toast of Washington.

That, in its way, is as curious as the re-election of Reid and Pelosi. If this is democracy at work, its works are strange indeed.

But then, it is not exactly democracy that is operating: It's the internal rules of the party conferences in Congress. Those rules make it all but impossible for an incumbent leader to be dislodged.

The difficulty of mounting a challenge — and of gaining the needed commitments from colleagues in secrecy — is matched only by the risk of doing so and failing. Ask the last person who challenged a Speaker or any other party leader.

Or perhaps you don't remember what became of Heath Schuler, former member of Congress.

And so, whatever the voters may say, the leaders march on.

There is an alternative to this that is readily available. The party caucuses could hold a vote of confidence (often called a vote of "no confidence") in the leader by secret ballot after each congressional election. Individuals could vote to remove the leader while remaining anonymous, and the question of succession would be taken up separately as required.

Would it be pretty? Perhaps not. But with such an arrangement you would gain at least the possibility that the party leader might yield to a fresher face with a cleaner slate. And if such a fate were more plausible than it is now, shaky leaders would be more likely to step aside voluntarily when circumstances dictated.

Alternatively, if the vote of confidence was positive, the party leader could begin anew in the next Congress knowing that he or she really had the bona fide support of his troops. That would be far better than the default endorsement that comes with winning a no-contest reelection.

There would, of course, be no guarantee a new leader would be better, but a new leader would be new. In an office of largely symbolic importance, mere newness can be a cardinal virtue.

The "no confidence" vote is a feature of parliamentary systems the world over, and it serves an obviously useful purpose. That purpose is not limited to the majority or the minority leader, nor would it require as devastating an election loss as the Democrats just had.

Doubtless there are those in both parties and chambers who agree such a mechanism would be useful — but the same old survival instincts and cost-benefit ratios still apply, and the math always looks pretty much the same. So we shouldn't expect to hear the idea of a "no confidence" vote being endorsed in any floor speeches next week, when Congress returns for its lame duck session.

Egypt, Lebanon bound by social ties: envoy

Berri wants food scandal away from hubbub

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said the law should take its course in the food security scandal uncovered by Health...

Lebanon charges 5 over Army ambush

North Lebanon offensive nears end: Salam

The four-day Army offensive in north Lebanon is drawing to a close after troops made significant advances against...

Bassil gifts 1,000 boxes of Lebanese apples to UAE

Hezbollah: Aoun a consensus candidate

Hezbollah said Thursday it considered Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun a consensus presidential candidate,...

Fletcher: Lebanon needs president, not new formula

BEIRUT: Lebanon can do without discussions on a new constitutional formula and should instead concentrate on electing a new president, British Ambassador Tom Fletcher said Friday, emphasizing the critical need for protecting the border with Syria in the face of an ISIS infiltration.

In an interview with As-Safir published Friday, Fletcher said there were continuous discussions about reconsidering the confessional system in Lebanon but that the focus should be to work according to the current Constitution and to elect a new president.

He said the presidential election was an easy and clear process that required meetings not in Iran, Russia, Britain or the United States but a single meeting under the roof of the Lebanese Parliament.

As for the future of the Constitution, Fletcher said such deliberations only brought major challenges Lebanon did not need.

Fletcher also commented on recent talk about dividing the region into smaller sectarian entities, saying Lebanon was a small country and could not be divided as such or revised into a federal state.

The ambassador also spoke about the recent security breaches in Lebanon and the Lebanese Army’s measures as part of a nationwide security plan to curb the rise of terrorist activities.

While he commended the security plan led by the military, particularly on the border with Syria, Fletcher said the authority of the state had declined, making the situation frailer.

He voiced concern that ISIS could infiltrate several parts of the border with Syria, which he said was the biggest challenge facing the military, saying that his country had recently donated nearly $7.8 million to train an Army unit on border security.

He said the U.K. had so far trained more than 3,500 Lebanese troops, most of whom fought against militants in Tripoli and Arsal.

Asked about Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria, Fletcher said it was sad that Iran was sending young Lebanese to die in Syria and that the approach should be to build a strong Lebanese state.

He also expressed hope Hezbollah would make the right decision to preserve stability in Lebanon as a priority, saying there was disputes within the party over its role in the Syrian conflict.