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Torture personally approved by Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush
… and US press won’t cover it
Media has no questions to ask about Bush's personal OK for torture
Excerpt: Last Wednesday, ABC News reported that, beginning in 2002, top officials in the White House specifically approved torture techniques, including waterboarding. On Friday, President Bush admitted that he, too, was aware of and approved the discussions. ...
There was no mention of Bush's admission in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Los Angeles Times. There was nothing on the major wire services. And nothing on CNN, CBS or NBC.
Comment: The Bush-Cheney administration's use of state-sanctioned torture isn't newsworthy in some of America's most respected newspapers, or on network newscasts, because their job isn't to report the news, it's to protect the powers-that-be. The difference between the New York Times and the Soviet Union's Pravda is a difference of style, not function. Linda L. PERMANENT LINK
We're calling this action our "Torture News Strike"
Excerpt: Call the Editor of your local newspaper and tell him/her you are suspending your subscription until they give Bush's torture confession the serious coverage it deserves either in the news or editorial section, or preferably both.
Dear New York Times: Please report the news
Excerpt: It has now been nine days since reporters at ABC News told us of "dozens of top-secret talks and meetings" held in the White House by senior Bush Administration officials to discuss in fine detail the interrogation techniques to be used on so-called "high value al Qaeda suspects," and it has been one week since ABC told us that President Bush knew about these meetings and approved of the result -- namely, the torture of certain detainees by CIA interrogators.
I make note of this timeline because, as of this writing, I am still waiting for the New York Times to report on these revelations.
White House torture policies are finally mentioned
in New York Times (obliquely, in an editorial)
Excerpt: At the risk of sounding ungrateful, what took the New York Times so long?
I realize that there are flag pins, haircuts, and Weather Underground members to talk about, but it’s been 11 days since the initial ABC News report was published. What does it say about our national media when, over the last 11 days, the most detailed coverage of the scandal ran on Comedy Central?
There is no question that Cheney violated his oath of office
Excerpt: Vice President Dick Cheney, when he assumed the second most powerful office in the land after the disputed election of 2000, swore an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same."
Any reasonable reader of that oath would conclude that Cheney bound himself to abide by the Constitution -- and thus to avoid any involvement with the promotion of acts of torture upon detainees of the United States government.
Yet we now know from revelations made by former senior intelligence officials to ABC News and the Associated Press that Cheney and other members of the administration -- who apparently took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods were discussed -- authorized the use of waterboarding and other generally recognized torture techniques.
Groups call for Rice to resign for personally approving torture
Excerpt: Several groups are coming together in an effort to boot Condoleeza Rice from the White House. They say the effort came to life this week by the news that Condoleezza Rice personally oversaw meetings where top Bush administration officials selected specific torture techniques.
TrueMajority.org, Brave New Films, and Democracy for America are launching CondiMustGo.com and a new television ad campaign calling for the resignation of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The petition reads, "America will not stand for a Secretary of State who approved torture and then misled Congress. We call on the Presidential candidates to ask Secretary of State Rice to resign."
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Election 2008
Obama says he'd ask his
Attorney General to
"immediately review"
potential of crimes in
Bush-Cheney White House
Excerpt: Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as "a partisan witch hunt." However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because "nobody is above the law."
Comment: The stupid hubbub over bitterness, flag lapel pins, and radicals from 40 years ago will blow over soon enough, but this is the kind of statement that really makes me smile ... and of course, it'll really infuriate the McCain-Cheney-Clinton elites, because any honest investigation will reveal scandals we've only imagined, and those are dots the bastards will fight tooth and nail to keep un-connected. Max PERMANENT LINK
The truth behind ABC
and Clinton's "60s radical"
smear against Obama
Excerpt: While nearly all politicians shade the truth now and then, some utterly disdain the truth, a category that includes George W. Bush and increasingly Hillary Clinton, as she made clear again in Wednesday night's debate on the strange topic of Vietnam-era Weather Underground leader William Ayers.
Since last year, the Clinton campaign has been pushing the supposed Ayers connection to Barack Obama as an attack "theme" to take down his candidacy. But Clinton went even further in the debate suggesting that Ayers had reveled in the 9/11 attacks -- a false claim clearly meant to inflame Americans against Obama.
Ayers, now a graying college English professor living in Chicago, did support Obama's state senate campaign and served with Obama on a board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a philanthropy that gives out grants aimed at alleviating poverty. ...
In her comments, Clinton created the clear impression that Ayers had either hailed the 9/11 attacks or used the 9/11 tragedy as a ghoulish opportunity to suggest that more bombings were desirable.
But none of that is true. The offensive comment that Clinton and Stephanopoulos referred to was from an interview about a memoir that Ayers published earlier in 2001. The comment was included in a New York Times article that appeared in the newspaper's Sept. 11, 2001, edition.
As Sen. Clinton and Stephanopoulos surely know, that edition went to press on Sept. 10, hours before the 9/11 attacks. In other words, the Ayers comment had no relationship to the 9/11 attacks.
What Clinton and Stephanopoulos did was what lawyers refer to as "prejudicial" -- they introduced an emotional component, 9/11, in a deceptive way to elicit a visceral reaction from those listening.
McCain proposal leads
to privatizing Medicare
Excerpt: But many health care advocates see McCain’s proposal is just another opening to privatize Medicare and destroy it as a social insurance program, under which everyone who has paid into the system is entitled to equal benefits as a matter of right.
A provision that was tucked into the recent law that gave seniors the drug benefit (Part D) already requires wealthier beneficiaries to pay more for the Medicare premiums that cover doctor visits and outpatient services (Part B). If drug benefits, too, are based on income, critics fear that support for the program will eventually erode as those with more choices and more money will opt out of the program and buy coverage from private insurers.
McCain gets no media flak
for saying that only
Americans should be
exempt from torture
Excerpt: "I’ve made it very clear, I’ve made it very clear in my statements and in my support of the Detainee Treatment Act, the Geneva Conventions, etc., that there may be some additional techniques to be used, but none of those would violate the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act ... And we cannot ever, in my view, torture any American, that includes waterboarding."
Of course, the question had nothing to do with torturing Americans, something no American would support. The question was about how Americans should treat detainees in the war on terror -- an issue McCain has hardly been "very clear" on.
I was there: What Obama
really said about bitterness
Excerpt: First, I noted immediately how dismissive his answer had been about "talking points" and ten point programs and how he used the question to urge the future volunteer to put forward a larger message central to his campaign.
That pivot, I thought, was remarkable and unique. Rather than his seizing the opportunity to recite stump-worn talking points at that time to the audience -- as I believe Senator Clinton, Senator McCain and most other more conventional (or more disciplined) politicians at such an appearance might do -- Senator Obama took a different political course in that moment, one that symbolizes important differences about his candidacy.
Questions for the class
Entire item: Do you think if Barack Obama had left his seriously ill wife after having had multiple affairs, had been a member of the "Keating Five," had had a relationship with a much younger lobbyist that his staff felt the need to try and block, had intervened on behalf of the client of said young lobbyist with a federal agency, had denounced then embraced Jerry Falwell, had denounced then embraced the Bush tax cuts, had confused Shiite with Sunni, had confused Al Qaeda in Iraq with the Mahdi Army, had actively sought the endorsement and appeared on stage with a man who denounced the Catholic Church as a whore, and stated that he knew next to nothing about economics -- do you think it's possible that Obama would have been treated differently by the media than John McCain has been? Possible?
And -- this is fun to contemplate -- if Michelle Obama had been an adulteress, drug addict thief with a penchant for plagiarism -- do you think that she would be subject to slightly different treatment from the media than Cindypills McCain has been? Anyone?
Idiotic debate question from "ordinary person" was, again, a "gotcha" plant
Stephanopoulos' most
obnoxious question
at debate was
planted by Hannity
Republican Congressman calls Obama "boy"
McCain is against pork, except when he isn’t
McCain finally admits
US economy is in
a recession, and then
says ‘there’s been great
progress economically’
since Bush took office
In leaked audio, Clinton
blasts "activist base of
the Democratic Party" and lies about MoveOn.org
Clinton campaign honcho
wants her to, uh,
abandon the positive and
go negative on Obama
Poll says fake "bitter"
controiversy had
no effect on voters
Bush aide who quit
in sex scandal
is now McCain advisor
McCain "family recipes"
were plagiarized from
the Food Network
McCain doesn't know
what Petraeus's job is
Democrats charge
Republican shadow
groups with collusion
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Lightning round news |
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Liars in mainstream media
Right-wing loonies Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zell
join board of directors at Associated Press
Associated Press literally gives McCain
a box of donuts, with sprinkles
Limbaugh says ‘Islamofascists’
are campaigning for Democrats
Obama scratches his cheek, and Fox News
calls it flipping off Hillary Clinton (not The Onion)
MSNBC's Scarborough walks off the set when
Air America's Maddow calls him on rudeness, misogyny
Fox News blowhard interviews the wrong priest
(Father Michael Pfleger) but it happened
live so it was actually telecast
Stephanopoulos to Obama: "You have a very
cool style ... How much of that is tied to your race?"
Washington Post reports (at last) that
McCain is famed for his furious temper
ON ABC's This Week, host Gibson and candidate McCain
agree on ‘flawed,’ ‘misleading’ and ‘dubious’ tax theories
Rove has been 'analyst' for Fox News for
two and a half months, with zero mentions that
he's also working for McCain's campaign
CNN chart purporting to compare candidates' wealth
omits mega-mondo-millionaire Cindy McCain
CNN still promotes notion that progressives
don't vote their values and aren't "pro-family"
Radio hatemonger Boortz says teachers unions "do more damage to this country than all the drug pushers together"
MSNBC's Matthews says Jews' "key concern" is Israel,
and African-Americans' main worry is welfare
NBC offers no challenge for McCain's lie
that Clinton and Obama are "going to raise
your taxes by thousands of dollars a year"
Fox pundit Morris contradicts his own lies about Clinton
Fox News lie-caster's son shows up
on MSNBC's Hardball to blast Hillary
L.A. Times, NPR don't even mention FEC chair's
assertion that McCain cannot withdraw
from public funding without approval
Harvard-educated right-wing liar Hewitt blasts
Obama’s "condescending ... Harvard Law School stuff"
MSNBC's Matthews repeats "McCain
maverick" BS for 10,000th time
CNN adopts McCain’s position on public financing: omits
McCain’s FEC violations; frames it as if Obama is waffling
out of it when McCain has his hands dirty in every way
Associated Press scrubs National Security Advisor's
repeated mistaken references to Tibet as "Nepal"
Math whizzes at MSNBC think 18¢ is
"nearly 20%" of the cost of a gallon of gas
Fox News pundit says "It's not as if [McCain] misspoke
three times about the exact same thing" -- but he did
McCain-loving media is un-interested
as McCain is removed from Founding Board at
Project Vote Smart for refusal to talk straight
Disney's hatemonger Savage calls Obama an "Afro-Leninist"
NBC gives Laura Bush an hour as guest host on Today Show| |
Comment: When I was a kid the Today Show was journalism. I don’t know what it is these days besides unwatchable, but even if it's intended as pure vaudeville I would think putting a war criminal's wife in charge is a bad idea. Eva Braun, I guess, was unavailable? Angry Annie PERMANENT LINK |
Washington Post helps McCain lie that he's
opposed to federal intervention or bailouts,
ignoring his approval of Bear Stearns aid
Meet the Press slobbers all over "brilliant" Cheney
Fox's Hume says he hired "strikingly attractive"
news-reader because "she came in believing
there was a left bias in the news"
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UN head: global food crisis reaches emergency proportions| |
Excerpt: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has warned the growing global food crisis has reached emergency proportions.
Ban Ki-moon said the international community needs to take
urgent action in order to avert a larger political and global security crisis.
The World Bank estimates world food prices have risen 80 percent over the past three years and that at least thirty-three countries face social unrest as a result. |
US food inflation reaches highest level in 17 years| |
Excerpt: The US is wrestling with the worst food inflation in 17 years, and analysts expect new data due on Wednesday to show it's getting worse. For the US poor, any increase in food costs sets up an either-or equation: Give something up to pay for food.
"I was talking to people who make $9 an hour, talking about how they might save $5 a week," said Kathleen DiChiara, president and CEO of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey.
For some, that means adding an extra cup of water to their soup, watering down their milk, or giving their children soda because it's cheaper than milk, DiChiara said.
Comment: I'd like to point out that while millions of Americans are facing food insecurity, the first three paragraphs of the AP story deal with how sad it is that an upscale bakery has been forced to raise the price of one pie from $20 to $25. Madeline Zane PERMANENT LINK |
Plastic used in baby bottles causes cancer| |
Excerpt: Health Minister Tony Clement said on Friday he would bring in rules to outlaw plastic polycarbonate baby bottles, perhaps within the next year. These bottles are made with bisphenol A, which is also used in food and water containers.
Clement said bisphenol A could hinder child development and
cited a study which he said showed that overexposure at an
early age could cause behavioral and neurological symptoms later in life. |
Supreme Court approves lethal injection ... because the
indescribable pain it causes is just a pesky side effect| |
Excerpt: The controlling opinion, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and signed by just two other justices, said that a three-drug combination used by Kentucky and most of the 36 death penalty states doesn't violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Two Kentucky inmates had argued that wrongly administered, the drugs could cause agonizing pain or prolong death, and the court had to ignore chilling recent examples of suffering to reach its decision.
Roberts said lethal injection would have to be intended to inflict pain for it to be cruel and unusual, but that more exactly describes torture... |
No charges, no apology, no explanation, as US military
releases Associated Press reporter imprisoned for two years| |
Excerpt: [Bilal] Hussein and the AP strongly denied any improper contacts by the 36-year-old photographer, saying he was doing the normal work of a photographer in a war zone. Hussein was detained by US Marines on April 12, 2006 in Ramadi. |
Senate "foreclosure" bill hands out money to
lots of big companies, ignores actual homeowners| |
Excerpt: The Senate proclaimed a fierce bipartisan resolve two weeks ago to help American homeowners in danger of foreclosure. But a bill that senators approved last week would provide billions of dollars in tax breaks -- for automakers, airlines, alternative energy producers and other struggling industries, as well as home builders.
If the provision becomes law, it could mean checks up to $40 million for the car manufacturers, as long as the companies had made investments in plant or equipment in that amount.
One lobbyist said that the companies that had sought the tax breaks in meetings with lawmakers included Ford, General Motors, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Goodyear Tire and Rubber.
Consumer advocates and other groups who say that the Senate bill does little to help Americans in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. |
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Life in liberated Afghanistan & Iraq
Basra battle -- Bush's "defining moment" for Iraq -- was a 'complete disaster'
Excerpt: The British-trained Iraqi Army's attempt to retake Basra from militiamen was an "unmitigated disaster at every level", British commanders have disclosed.
Senior sources have said that the mission was undermined by incompetent officers and untrained troops who were sent into battle with inadequate supplies of food, water and ammunition. ...
President George W Bush described the battle for Basra as a "defining moment" for Iraq, while British officials at the time praised the professionalism of the Iraqi army.
However, the operation ended in a stalemate, with the Iraqi government agreeing to a ceasefire.
Many Iraqis despise puppet Prime Minister Maliki as "worse than Saddam"
Excerpt: Many Iraqis have come to believe that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is just as much a dictator as Saddam Hussein was. "Maliki is a dictator who must be removed by all means," 35-year-old Abdel-Riza Hussein, a Mehdi Army member from Sadr City in Baghdad told IPS. "He is a worse dictator than Saddam; he has killed in less than two years more than Saddam killed in 10 years."
Comment: Ah, the surge is working? Wig PERMANENT LINK
NATO admits mistakenly supplying arms and food to Taliban
Excerpt: The coalition helicopter had intended to deliver pallets of supplies to a police checkpoint in Ghazni, a remote section of Zabul late last month.
By mistake they were dropped some distance from the checkpoint where it was taken by the Taliban, the Internal Security Affairs Commission of the Wolesi Jirga -- the Afghan parliament's lower house -- was told.
Comment: We supply the bullets (and our soldiers as targets) for the Taliban. JR Mooneyham PERMANENT LINK
Defense study concludes that Iraq is "a major debacle" and the outcome is "in doubt"
Excerpt: "Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle," says the report's opening line. ...
The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers" from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the US armed forces.
"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq) were designed to enhance US national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East," the report continued.
Woolsey admits Democrats in Congress have gven up on Iraq
Excerpt: "I’ll tell you one of the things -- and you’re just going to hate this -- because I hate it. But, there’s this sense that we don’t have the votes to do what we need to do, the right things to do, so we’re not going to do anything, virtually."
Justice Dept won't investigate or prosecute KBR's flurry of rapes
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Trashing the planet
EPA defies subpoena to turn over documents
Excerpt: In a remarkable show of contempt, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has flatly refused a House Global Warming Committee subpoena. The subpoena for documents relating to the EPA’s refusal to obey the Supreme Court mandate to regulate greenhouse gases was issued by a unanimous, bipartisan vote on April 2, a year after the Supreme Court decision. On April 11, the EPA requested and received an extension to respond, but today the agency has decided not to turn over the documents.
Comment: The arrogance would be breathtaking, but the Bush-Cheney cabal's arrogance took all my breath years ago ... Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK
Pollution is reducing flower scent; possibly linked to bee colony collapse
Excerpt: Air pollution is killing the smell of flowers, possibly eliminating the "scent trail" that helps guide those terribly important pollinators, like bees, to the plants that depend upon them for survival, scientists believe.
Bush's speech on climate change is, of course, all hot air
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NY Times blows the lid off obvious propaganda use of "military experts" on TV news| |
Excerpt: Most of the [military] analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.
Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror.
Comment: There's nothing here that's news to Americans who are awake, but it's a well-written if far too long article, and it's important because nothing's really 'news' for some people until it's been in the New York Times. Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK |
Second jury also refuses to convict chuckleheads as dangerous terrorists| |
Excerpt: After 12 difficult days of deliberations, a federal jury on Wednesday deadlocked in the second trial of a Miami group accused of plotting with al Qaeda to overthrow the United States.
The central charge was conspiring to provide "material support" to the global terrorist organization for plans to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower and federal government buildings.
Defense lawyers countered that the six men tried to con up to $50,000 out of an FBI informant who posed as an al Qaeda operative and set them up in a terrorism plot they had no intention of carrying out.
They also pointed out that no guns, ammunition, explosives or terrorist blueprints were found on the Liberty City suspects after their arrests in June 2006. |
Gov't spies on reporter who uncovered illegal spying| |
Excerpt: Former government officials have recently been called before a federal grand jury and confronted with phone records documenting calls with a reporter who covers intelligence issues at The New York Times, according to people with detailed knowledge of the investigation.
The grand jury witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to draw new attention to himself, and others with knowledge of the investigation said it was unclear whose phone records were obtained by the Justice Department -- if they were records of calls made from Risen's telephones or from the phones of officials who may have talked to him.
The Times has not been subpoenaed for Risen's office phone records, although there are other ways that the department could obtain them, possibly by a subpoena to phone companies without any notice to the newspaper. |
ACLU sues Pentagon to uncover records of deaths at Guantánamo| |
Excerpt: "Over six years into Guantánamo's existence, there have been dozens of suicide attempts and four apparent suicides and yet the Bush administration refuses to come clean about what happened, when, and most importantly, why," said Hina Shamsi, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "The secrecy surrounding deaths at Guantánamo hides the dire consequences of indefinite detention from the American public. The prison camp is a blight on America's conscience and the public needs to know the truth about what is going on there." |
Bush’s S-CHIP policy violates law, report says| |
Excerpt: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) unlawfully bypassed congressional review when it issued a directive to states in August alerting them that federal authorities would seek to restrict raising the income eligibility level for the program, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in a report issued Thursday.
The GAO’s findings are consistent with an analysis completed in January by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), another legislative branch agency. |
Pentagon seeks authority and more than doubling of budget to train and equip foreign militaries| |
Excerpt: Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Congress on Tuesday to grant the Pentagon permanent authority to train and equip foreign militaries, a task previously administered by the State Department, and to raise the annual budget for the effort to $750 million, a 250 percent increase.
Comment: Will someone please say no to these monstrous mega-bullies? Boris Chorus PERMANENT LINK |
Report reveals that Iran seized British sailors in disputed waters| |
Excerpt: The Britons were seized because the US-led coalition designated a sea boundary for Iran’s territorial waters without telling the Iranians where it was, internal Ministry of Defence briefing papers reveal.
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act detail for the first time the blunders last spring that led to what an all-party committee of MPs came to describe as a "national embarrassment". ...
Iran always claimed that it had arrested the Britons for violating its territorial integrity.
Comment: And so, what the Iranians said at the time was true, and what Bush and the Brits were saying wasn't true. This is, of course, entirely in keeping with the ongoing pattern of disinformation about Iran, which will almost certainly culminate in American bombs dropping on Tehran. Angry Annie PERMANENT LINK |
Bush says it's "probably true" that next terror attack will come from neglected Afghanistan
Lawmakers want FBI access to data curbed| |
Excerpt: Bipartisan groups in Congress are pressing to place new controls on the FBI's ability to demand troves of sensitive personal information from telephone providers and credit card companies, over the opposition of agency officials who say they deserve more time to clean up past abuses.
Comment: A tiny smidgen of good news ... JR Mooneyham PERMANENT LINK |
J.K. Rowling's lexicon lawsuit is an assault on fair use, say experts| |
Excerpt: "J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. are asserting a startling claim," said Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project and counsel on the case. "The right to create literary reference guides like the Lexicon has remained nearly unquestioned for hundreds of years. The Lexicon is a valuable resource that helps people better understand and enjoy the Harry Potter books. It’s exactly what copyright law should encourage, not suppress." |
Bush names yet another inept crony to replace Jackson as HUD Secretary| |
Excerpt: Keep in mind, [Small Business Administrator Steve] Preston got the SBA gig in the first place because he was known to be a "Bush loyalist." In fact, Preston is a self-described "committed Republican," which apparently was the principal qualification for the job. Put it this way, Bush’s choice to head the Small Business Administration did not have any experience running a small business.
And now Preston is going to run a scandal-plagued Housing Department in the midst of a housing crisis. Raise your hand if you’re optimistic. |
Two years later, media notices earmark slipped into bill after bill had passed| |
Excerpt: The Senate voted Thursday to ask the Justice Department to investigate allegations of impropriety and possible criminal violations involving a $10 million Florida highway project slipped into a bill after Congress had approved it.
Comment: Like no doubt ten thousand other blogs, we commented on this within days after it happened. Where was the L.A. Times then? Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK |
Pirate Bay launches uncensored blogging service| |
Excerpt: The Pirate Bay is known for defending people’s right to freedom of speech on the Internet, and this is exactly what motivated them to start this new blogging service. ...
On the frontpage of the newly launched service Brokep writes: "Many blogs are being shut down for uncomfortable thoughts and ideas. We will not do that. Our goal is to protect freedom of speech and your thoughts. As long as you don’t break any Swedish laws in your blog, we will defend it". |
Bush library, like Bush administration, will be stuffed with fact-free propaganda| |
Excerpt: Continuing to ensure that partisan praise of Bush will trump academic scholarship in the library, advisers now say they "will rely chiefly" on the design firm PRD Group, rather than historians, to showcase Bush’s policies as president. |
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This week's
commentary
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A society that erects pedestals, and digs dungeons
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: All our professions and institutions are now led and controlled by people whose only claim to superiority is their political cleverness and ruthlessness. This is what comes from idolizing wealth and fame, and being influenced by the lies that ambitious people use to entice and confuse us. The way out of the corner is start forming small, local groups where the true character and capacity of the membership can be accurately assessed. |
The mote in Hillary's eye
by Hazel Burke, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: OK, so we know for a fact that Hillary Clinton is a chronic, serial, truth-avoider who lies frequently but is not actually very good at it, at least compared to her husband's skill as fabulousity and prevarication. |
It's a lie to say it's a mis-statement
by Amber Perez, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Basically, anyone making actual, real-life decisions involving money, property, liberty or happiness would be well advised to ignore television news completely. Even when they are right, they're wrong because their information is so dated that it is nearly impossible to use -- when they say buy houses that means that the richies are selling houses and short-selling banks! |
Without sexism, where would Hillary Clinton be?
by Lloyd B., Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Hillary Clinton deserves the respect due any person with six years' experience in politics, with no apparent ideals, with no original ideas of consequence, with a track record supporting an idiotic war, and with a political agenda that can only be described as Hillary Clintonist. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in her life to suggest that she is of anything remotely approaching Presidential stature. |
A supersized stack of good advice
by Pavel C., Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Eventually I realized that I needed to do work for which I already had skills and training, which would, even though I disliked it, pay be some ok money and use my abilities. And that meant moving back to Civilization, or at least, near a big city in California. |
The destructive power of greed
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Eventually, as we now see, a corporate infrastructure of lobbying and public relations firms, wielding massive budgets for campaign "contributions" and espionage activities, becomes the true governmental power, and proceeds to systematically loot the ostensible governmental tax coffers. |
Democrats must be cautious
by JR Mooneyham, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: If impeachment were feasible, I think the Democrats would have done it. Their razor-thin Congressional majority though -- diluted still further by Lieberman and a few others -- plus the Republican-dominated Supreme Court, and the Republican-owned mainstream media, would simply make a real impeachment effort on the part of Democrats worse than futile: it would likely help the mainstream media to hand the next election over to the Republicans in a landslide. |
Limbo debate: How low can these candidates go?
by Penny Nichols, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Both Clinton and Obama swore blood oaths not to raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 a year. FYI, that cap works out to $100 an hour. I don't think even Obama has measure the depths of bitterness and rage "out there" if he is considering people who earn $99 an hour "middle class". |
America has just out-evilled Evil itself
by Chris D., Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Not only does your Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, deign to openly dictate what Iraq's government will do while claiming it tastes freedom for the first time, they now force the Iraqi people to reimburse the military that carpet bombs entire city blocks for the fuel they expend in the process of raining death and terror upon them and have publicly declared that all aid Iraq received after being crushed beneath jack-booted heels was some undeserved kindness. |
How to destroy a great nation's economy
by JR Mooneyham, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: In a nutshell, this is what the whole country of America has been doing to itself, via outsourcing and miscellaneous other wage depression schemes, for decades now. If we're not yet beyond the point of no return, we sure as hell must be close! |
Less is more, and tarnished is better
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Please spare me from bigger, better, prettier, brighter, quicker, faster, cleaner, cooler, hotter, freer, slimmer, fitter, fancier, trendier and more of anything than I need to get through my day. |
Will America become one huge tent city?
by Sherri B., Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Just how close are we to the homeless that we help, but hope like hell we never to have to live their lives? What happens to us, the USA, as a family? |
Heckuva job, GMie!
by Mr. Chuckles, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: As with many other things, GM was at an all time high shortly before Bush took office -- up over $90 a share. After 7+ years of our first MBA president, GM is down to $19 a share, and the only reason it is still alive (I'm guessing) is that they're hoping for a government bail-out. OR... the Bush Regime doesn't want to preside over the bankruptcy of General Motors. |
The new war of independence
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Once we begin to recognize each other as coming from a common humanity, we can begin again to knit together the kind of local communities that were the true motive force in our country's original War of Independence. We will not need to fight pitched battles in order to win this New War of Independence. All that will be needed is to survive the coming tumult and watch the unsustainable structure of oppression self-destruct around us. |
Motivating more terrorists
by JR Mooneyham, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Polls show that 6% of the American public thinks attacks in which civilians are targets are "completely justified." In Saudi Arabia, this figure is 4%. In Lebanon and Iran, it's 2%. ... But maybe if we bomb Iran, we can boost bin Laden's popularity over there to match what it is in America. |
Treat Hillary Clinton respectfully
by M.M., Unknown News| |
Excerpt: How would you feel if someone treated your mother the way Hillary has been trampled? There is a young woman, who loves her mother, who is watching you and others spit on her. Would you have your own daughters' heart broken that way? |
Flags of our world
by Don Nash, Unknown News
Live with the elite, die with the elite
by Sam Smith, Progressive Review| |
Excerpt: This then is Obama's problem now: not so much that he's an elitist but that he's surrounded by them, funded by them, guided by them -- and for too long has been trying to imitate them. |
What have we learned, if anything?
by Tony Judt, The New York Review of Books| |
Excerpt: Americans, perhaps alone in the world, experienced the twentieth century in a far more positive light. The US was not invaded. It did not lose vast numbers of citizens, or huge swathes of territory, as a result of occupation or dismemberment. Although humiliated in distant neocolonial wars (in Vietnam and now in Iraq), the US has never suffered the full consequences of defeat. ...
As a consequence, the United States today is the only advanced democracy where public figures glorify and exalt the military, a sentiment familiar in Europe before 1945 but quite unknown today. Politicians in the US surround themselves with the symbols and trappings of armed prowess; even in 2008 American commentators excoriate allies that hesitate to engage in armed conflict. I believe it is this contrasting recollection of war and its impact, rather than any structural difference between the US and otherwise comparable countries, which accounts for their dissimilar responses to international challenges today. Indeed, the complacent neoconservative claim that war and conflict are things Americans understand -- in contrast to naive Europeans with their pacifistic fantasies -- seems to me exactly wrong: it is Europeans (along with Asians and Africans) who understand war all too well. Most Americans have been fortunate enough to live in blissful ignorance of its true significance. |
The unambiguous treason
of George W. Bush
by Robert Scheer, TruthDig| |
Comment: Robert Scheer has written a succinct brief explaining the unambiguous treason of George W. Bush following 9/11, something that ought to be read by everyone in that stubbornly stupid demographic that still supports the Bush administration. Inexplicably, Scheer has hidden this raw truth at the end of an otherwise ordinary, almost tedious article about John McCain, but let's cut the crap and get straight to the point, near the end of the article. Dionne N. PERMANENT LINK
Excerpt: In the name of fighting the 9/11 terrorists, the Bush administration overthrew the one Arab government most adamantly opposed to the Saudi financiers of that son of their system, Osama bin Laden. Instead of confronting the royal leaders of a kingdom that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers, we invaded a nation that supplied not a single one. While Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein, who had no ties to the hijackers, he embraced the leaders of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the only three nations in the world that had diplomatically recognized and supported the Taliban sponsors of al-Qaida.
Consider that historical marker at a time when the UAE and Saudi Arabia bankers are buying major positions in distressed US financial and other key corporate institutions. I know, it all sounds too conspiratorial, like imagining that we might wake up from this national nightmare and discover that the CEO of Halliburton, who replaced Dick Cheney when the latter selected himself to be Bush’s vice president, now has his headquarters in Dubai, tucked safely into the obscenely oil-revenue-rich UAE that our troops were sent to Iraq to protect.
There is no national outrage, or even seriously sustained media interest, over the fact that Cheney’s old company profited enormously from ripping off US tax dollars going into the Iraq occupation. Nor is there even much curiosity about the shenanigans of Halliburton, which is doing business with Arab oil sheiks at a time when the US banks these Middle Eastern oil interests bought into are moving to foreclose on American homeowners. |
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