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Hillary, the monster
Well, my apologies to William M. ... When I first read Why Hillary won't quit, I have to say, I thought it was a little over the top. Hyperbolic."Hillary will remain in the race 'until a nominee is selected.' Can you guess how the math could work for her? Right. One man, one book depository, one magic bullet. ... That's how Hillary wins. She hangs in JUST IN CASE. Anything could happen ..."
But it wasn't over the top at all. It was just exactly at the bottom of the barrel, along with Hillary Clinton's heart and soul.
Clinton explains why she can't quit in May:
"We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June"
Remember when Obama fired some top aide for saying Hillary Clinton is a monster? I hope that aide gets her job back. Is there nobody, Obama, Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy, hell, maybe even her husband, anyone at all with a conscience and a shred of dignity left who can remind this monstrous woman what it was like to once have a soul?
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She later apologized ... not to America, not to Obama and his family, but to the Kennedys.
Hillary Clinton can't win the nomination, mathematically, and now she's admitted what's been speculated for a long time: She's staying in the race in hopes that Barack Obama will be assassinated. Takes the breath away, doesn't it? She's topped Joe Lieberman's 2004 run as the most despicable Presidential candidate the Democrats have had in my memory.
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Stating the obvious
McCain rejects Parsley’s endorsement
OK, that should quiet the (already very quiet) murmur about McCain's two nutty preachers -- he's rebuked both Hagee and Paisley. If America's mainstream media was a fraction as impartial and fair as it pretends to be, this would be the end of it, and for the McCain campaign this will be the end of it. You'll hear very little in the future about Hagee and Paisley.
Just remember how many times over how many weeks did Obama need to rebuke Jeremiah Wright over and over again... and you know we haven't heard the last of Jeremiah Wright. And it still isn't enough (stating the obvious here), you know that we'll still be hearing about Jeremiah Wright until election day, because American mainstream media is owned and operated for right-wing big-corporate interests.
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Grandpa
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Delusional daily
McCain lies that he "received the highest award
from literally every veterans organization in America’
George W Bush was just stupid, but John McCain is downright delusional daily.
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Rebecca
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Soft on crime
by Bleeding Heart Liberal
| May 24, 2008 |
McCain willing to grant telecoms immunity after they say they’re sorry
Criminy, talk about being soft on crime -- breaking the law, and breaking it thousands of times, is AOK with McCain if you just say you're sorry.
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Bleeding Heart Liberal
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Hillary outs herself
Earlier this month William M. saw the truth, and now Hillary confirms the truth: she will do anything, say anything, be anything... There is no calculation, no scheme to evil for her to consider analytically...
Consider her "outed". Big time. Game over. The news media will be on this like ugly on a ape.
Hillary raises assassination issue defends long-running campaign| |
Excerpt: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out. |
Why Hillary won't quit| |
Excerpt: If she dropped out now then maybe the Party would draft someone else. But if she stays in she wins automatically when the vote is taken at the convention if Obama is "unable to attend."
Hillary would be a total fool to drop out of the race now! She might get "lucky". Anything is possible. Good things could still happen for her personal political career! ...
So now ... I totally get it -- why Hillary will remain in the race "until a nominee is selected." Can you guess how the math could work for her?
Right. One man, one book depository, one magic bullet. Obama's plane could crash. He could suffer an embolism, fall down and hit his head, commit suicide and leave two goodbye notes like Deborah Jeane Palfrey... He could O.D. on heroin, he could be taken by aliens, he could be outed for something... maybe even something true-ish. Obama might eat a bad burrito, be bitten by a rabid dog, drown in his bathtub, or be hit by lightning!
That's how Hillary wins. She hangs in JUST IN CASE. Anything could happen, and Hillary won't leave till the Fat Lady sings, because it ain't over 'till its over! |
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Hats off to William, and you're not the only reader who found his piece memorable. I'm still trying to imagine some alternate explanation of what might have been going through Hillary's head when she made her remarks ... at least twice ... and I'm still coming up blank. Seems to me that William was absolutely spot on.
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Help the wealthy, lynch the poor
by Mahdi Abdul Finkelstein
| May 24, 2008 |
This shocked my conscience :-)
SLM, other lenders win 'favorable' terms from US, expert says| |
Excerpt: SLM Corp. and other educational lenders in the U.S. will receive "very favorable" terms from the Education Department for disposing of loans they can't sell to investors, one specialist on the market said.
Department officials met with lenders in Washington to provide details about a program to buy loans, Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, a Web site about student loans, said yesterday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. The department will offer to buy the loans from the lenders at par value plus a rebate of 100 basis points and $75, or take over loans for a year before they revert to the lender, he said from Pittsburgh. ... |
Recall that these loans are guaranteed by the Federal Government, so there was zero risk to the lenders making these loans. It should have been a slam dunk for them.
Except for their greed.
They stopped being in the business of holding the loans and based their growth plans on securitizing the loans and selling them to investors. So when the market for funny paper disappeared, these companies were forced to hang onto the loans they had made and just collect interest.
Hence, bail out time! Help the wealthy. Lynch the poor. Money is free, so don't worry, just print up as much as we need!
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Mahdi Abdul Finkelstein
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B of A customers beware
Holy freaking crap.
Clinton invokes RFK assassination in summer 1968
among reasons to stay in race; later apologizes
Every time I get bored by her she comes out of left field with something completely out of control.
*** *** ***
This morning around midnight I noticed an email from B of A. It had the B of A logo on it and it requested that someone had made multiple attempts to access my account so to click on the link and change my password. My husband clicked on it but Mozilla wouldn't allow it to open. Today he called B of A and they said they never request that kind of change via email. So it was fraudulent. But the email had the regular logo and had a supposed B of A securesite link.
So if you receive one of these emails call your rep just to be sure. abuse@bankofamerica. In case anyone wants to forward their bogus email so it can be tracked.
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I'll pass that along, thanks. The good news in your note is that Mozilla just saved you from being victimized -- I'll bet Internet Explorer would have been happy to cooperate with the phishers.
Our two rules of thumb for safe surfing: If you're surfing with Internet Explorer you're in danger (we recommend Mozilla). And always assume that any unexpected email from any business asking for information of any kind is fraudulent, nefarious, or spam. We never answer or even open unexpected email from any bank, store, business, or non-profit.
As for Hillary, I'll just say that the longer she stays in the race, the more she reveals about herself, the more her support will dwindle. There's never any predicting what random flotsam and jetsam the news media will run with, but I certainly hope this gets plenty of attention.
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Helen & Harry
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Two observations
(1) First it was "WMDs" in Iraq, now it is Iranian made weapons. And they can find neither, however they did find a lot of homemade and some that had markings from Pakistani manufacturers -- probably the Al-Qaeda guys brought them in with them? (yeah another border we can really trust these guys to keep closed...)
Re Doing the Charlton
(2) So some English twit thinks the lower class workers are lower in intelligence? Look, face it, Wells was right, the upper class there has none! They want to be Morlocks and about now all those Eloi in the schools are starting to look just tasty.
As to "(1)" it is way past time for the villagers to stop showing up because the George Boy has cried wolf again. And as for "(2)" it is the start of silly season in Not-So-Great-Anymore Britain again or is that an all year event now? You have to expect this stuff from them every now and again.
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Jos
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Mormon or Jindal
by Scatgreen2
| May 24, 2008 |
Re 1,173 pagesSecond, there's not a word about that baseball-sized lump on the side of McCain's face. What's up with that?
Yeah -- he has a huge tumor and will probably die leaving either the weirdo Mormon or the exorcist Jindal (look it up) to run the country.
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Scatgreen2
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Bananas
by JR Mooneyham
| May 23, 2008 |
Bananas, soon to be extinct: A parable for our time| |
Excerpt: But how does this relate to the disease now scything through the world's bananas? The evidence suggests even when they peddle something as innocuous as bananas, corporations are structured to do one thing only: maximize their shareholders' profits. As part of a highly regulated mixed economy, that's a good thing, because it helps to generate wealth or churn out ideas. But if the corporations aren't subject to tight regulations, they will do anything to maximize short-term profit. This will lead them to seemingly unhinged behavior -- like destroying the environment on which they depend. |
They can't even save the bananas: keep this in mind when you hear them touting genetic engineering and whiz-bang GM crops.
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I knew the general story here -- that bananas as we know them are endangered, and that excessive corporatization and elimination of diversity are largely to blame. But the article is marvelously well-written, and does a very good job tying this tragedy together with the bigger tragedies unfolding around the world.
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Helen & Harry
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Hugging Hagee
by Angry Annie
| May 23, 2008 |
McCain rejects Hagee’s endorsement (and makes it all about Obama and Wright)
Years after it became obvious that Hagee is certifiably insane, months after McCain sought and got Hagee's endorsement, he finally rejects it ... but what do you want to bet he'll flip-flop back and be seen hugging Hagee within a few weeks?
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Angry Annie
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Doing the Charlton
Working classes are less intelligent, says evolution expert
Well my gosh goodness, does that mean my dad and all seven of his children should return their college diplomas?
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Nah, it just means some British twit has punched his ticket for fame and lifetime sinecure at any right-wing think tank or the University of Snoot. What a courageous fellow Bruce Charlton is, to boldly tell the rich and powerful that they certainly do deserve their riches and power.
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I should've been doing those term papers for the spoiled brats that couldn't do their
homework if it latched onto them like leeches.(Yes it happened many times.) Maybe then I
could have had enough money to rub elbows with the big boys ... lol :)
1,173 pages
John McCain is in good health, the Associated Press says. "The details of McCain's health are contained in 1,173 pages of medical documents spanning 2000 to 2008 that his campaign made available to the AP to make the case that he's healthy enough to serve as president, as well as to counter the notion that he's too old..."
I have three observations. First, from the curious wording of that sentence, it sounds like AP got these 1,173 pages of medical records from someone in McCain's campaign... not straight from McCain's doctors. Which would mean that a few or a few hundred pages could have easily been removed, and might explain the absence of any records relating to his mental health.
Second, there's not a word about that baseball-sized lump on the side of McCain's face. What's up with that?
But most eye-catching to me is the number 1,173 -- we're told that at least one thousand, one hundred and seventy-three pages of medical records for John McCain have been generated since 2000. I haven't seen a doctor since I lost my insurance in 2004, and when I did have coverage I spent maybe fifteen minutes a year with a doctor, so my medical records are a lot thinner than 1,173 over the last eight years. I went to the emergency room in 2006, waited for two hours and saw a doctor for literally seven minutes, and it cost me $7,600 and my marriage. But hey, John McCain is perfectly happy with the American health care system and doesn't want to change anything substantial about it, because he's had full medical coverage pretty much every day of his life...
So do I have a point here? Well, yes, my point is that John McCain can kiss my ass... 1,173 times.
Heroes are funny things
Re Too, too short
My point was that a woman can run for president because of the sacrifice of others. Our world is changing, but it is changing millimeter at a time. I did not compare Hillary to our heroes from the civil rights movements in history, you did.
As for heroes, they are funny things. Did you know that Thomas Edison experimented with electricity on stray dogs? He would pay the boys in the neighborhood for each one they brought to him. And his research with AC/DC current led to the modern day electric chair. Most remember him as a great inventor who gave us the electric light bulb. I love animals and it breaks my heart that a lot of poor dogs were tortured to death by him.
MLK, great man that he was, cheated on his wife constantly. Moral is some ways, not so much in others.
My point (I will earmark it so it doesn't get lost) is that people don't have to be perfect to be heroes.
And prejudice is prejudgment. I am from WV and I am not a racist. I know New Yorkers who are polite, I know Californians who don't get plastic surgery, and I know men who can't drive worth a flip. Speaking in stereotypes is lazy and offensive.
So. It pains me as much as it does you that everyone is allowed their vote. The ignorant of every shape are allowed to pull the lever. I personally am blown away by the McCain supporters who have family in Iraq. WTF?
You think I am a troll, but my cats adore me. It's all relative.
To Annie: You are right about PC. How can we have the 1st amendment rights to say want, but walk around afraid to say anything for fear the PC police will pounce. I was being too sensitive.
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I'm with you on most of this, but not sure what you mean when you say "It pains me as much as it does you that everyone is allowed their vote". I think anyone who's able-minded enough to mark a ballot should be allowed to vote, but I don't remember the topic coming up before ...
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Oops!
I mean that racists enjoy the right to vote.
Misogynists, pedophiles, con artists, KKK members, all but ex felons can cast a vote.
The equal rights thing means equality with ALL people. Sometimes it is, for me, a bitter pill to swallow.
The topic hasn't been specifically raised, but we were talking about whether or not certain voters were being racist. If there are, unfortunately, that is their right.
Thanks a bunch,
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Thanks for the extra explanation.
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Helen & Harry
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Black vortices
by Kathy Fisher
| May 23, 2008 |
I dreamed about black ominous tornadoes bearing down on my neighborhood eight years before it happened, and when I kept telling my neighbors we would see them right up close and go over them and hit the nearby towns they just laughed at me. They're not laughing any more. The two that went over us hit a half a mile north of us in Rahway, tearing 25-100 year old trees and blowing up 16 houses all in a random scattered pattern. The next one was a month later, hitting the nearby town of Metuchen about two miles west from us. It too passed right over us. We heard the freight-train noise and saw a totally black sky heading towards us, dropping debris and dead birds. A greenish sky appeared five minutes before each storm. I really thought we were doomed, and I have since then watched no less than a dozen of the things in the far off, where the sky is separated on the horizon, very black on the top and light blue on the bottom, as the narrow vortices started to form. I don't mind watching them form in the far distance, but when they start to threaten my space I start to shake inside.
The weather has me very unnerved lately.
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Glad I'm not cursed or blessed with your dreams and nightmares. I find the waking world more than hellish enough.
Rarely do even a few days go by without accounts of wild weather. Today, it's a tornado in Northern Colorado, and I don't keep a weather diary or anything, but I don't remember Colorado as a hotspot for tornadoes. Bit by bit the global climate is changing, and it's going to destroy a lot of homes and kill a lot of people before ExxonMobil will even consider withdrawing their funding for phony scientific research that concludes global climate change isn't real...
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Helen & Harry
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Not at war
Re Treeson!
America is not "at war". We can leave Iraq any time we want. This guy is the blithering idiot and apparently a participant in the "No Child Left Behind" program. He doesn't know how to spell.
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It's intended to be infuriating, I guess, but most of our hate mail is just sad or silly or both. On the bright side, we used to get a lot more hate mail than we do these days, so maybe even the fools are starting to wise up.
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Helen & Harry
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Mysterious ways
by Clem Jones
| May 22, 2008 |
Re Your lyin' eyes
Strikes me that they is a whole lotta people who is gonna be particularly bitter at payin' $4 or even $5 a gallon to fill they pickemups. They for sure gonna cling to their bibles and they guns :-)
The bible is more important than the guns because as the Good Book says, "the ferverent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."
I is reminded of the funny movie Bubble Boy, when Jimmy's momma phones the police to tell them her baby is missing. They tell he they cannot do anything because he hasn't been gone very long. So she tells them, "I will keep you in my prayers, and I will be praying THAT YOU GET NUT CANCER!!!"
(((heh)))
God works in Mysterious Ways. And not in our time either, so don't hold your breath waiting for President Bush to see the doc about a nutectomy :-) But tell you what, I think I would not want to be in his position after all the lies he told and how he told everyone that God told him to invade Iraq.
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Clem Jones
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Update: Lebanon & the Hezbollah Party
The 5-days of negotiations between the Lebanese majority alliance and “the opposition” in Doha, Qatar have come to an end. As far as I can tell, the opposition (that includes Hezbollah) have definitely made some headway in getting listened to. Everything will now depend on how well the agreements are carried out.
The Lebanese Cabinet is to become a 30-member body instead of having 24-members. The majority alliance will get 16 seats and “the opposition” 11 seats. 3 posts will be chosen by the president. This will give the opposition the “blocking third” they wanted and the ability to bring down the government if they all resigned at once (i.e. the ability to get minds more focused, let’s say). Also of importance is that the boundaries of the voting districts are to be redrawn. Nothing has been said related to changes in the quotas or the numbers of seats in what has been the 128-member parliament.
The parliament’s election of a president -- set to be Army Chief, Michel Suleiman -- is scheduled for May 25 or May 26 (the news reports I caught did not agree on the day). Those news reports also gave their air time to the majority alliance leaders who did say they viewed the agreement positively, so hopefully they won’t go back on them. Cynically, I figured that they didn’t want to show all of those opposition leaders wearing their dark suits and looking very “Western.” Reported also was that the opposition called off its long running sit-in related to the changes they wanted -- their desire for a “national unity government.” The news reports have also used this term -- saying that it had been achieved.
For the sake of all the citizens of Lebanon, I hope that this truly has been a “breakthrough,” as some have called it, and that all will go well for them.
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Marie K.
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Get rich
by JR Mooneyham
| May 22, 2008 |
Members of Congress may commit only great crimes
Unfortunately, this article gave no references whatsoever for much of its text.
Luckily, in regards to the high dollar thievery, I got their references right here:
How to get rich in America
*** *** ***
High prices still haven't prompted oil companies to use advanced extraction methods| |
Excerpt: Even with record-high oil prices, about two-thirds of the oil in known oil fields is being left in the ground. That's because existing technologies that could extract far more oil--as much as about 75 percent of the oil in some oil fields--aren't being widely used, according to experts in the petroleum industry. |
This is yet another reference ripe for inclusion in the footnotes for:
America's de facto domestic and foreign policies of
artificial scarcity and institutionalized poverty (part two)
Cryptic
Racist Europeans!
MLAs for Hillary?
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Huh? What's an MLA? Where's the racism? I don't get it.
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Helen & Harry
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Sir, may I have sex this weekend, sir?
Why I'd never volunteer:
Ban on sex for soldiers in Afghanistan lifted ... sort of
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That's the seventh dumbest thing I've ever heard. For myriad reasons I'd never join the military as it's presently operated, but criminy, even if I was willing to lay my life on the line for ExxonMobil, I wouldn't let my commanding officer tell me whether I could or couldn't have sex. Seriously -- it's downright frightening to wonder what kind of mental or moral wimps would be willing to tolerate such an intrusion, and it's more frightening to realize that the people who'd take this lying down are the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines we're often told are defending America's freedoms.
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Helen & Harry
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Make matters worse
Bush's Middle East policy in tatters| |
Excerpt: The point is, the historic failure of the Iraq war is yet to be fully grasped. On a regional plane, as the Iraq war interminably rolls on, the situation is fraught with the immense consequence of the unraveling of the entire system of states that was created in the Anglo-French settlement after the fall of Ottoman Empire in 1918. The Iraq war has triggered Shi'ite empowerment and unleashed historical forces that lay chained for centuries. Its geopolitical significance is yet to sink in as winds of change sweep across the entire region.
Fischer underscored that the Iraq war has conclusively finished off secular Arab nationalism, which was, historically speaking, European-inspired. In its wake has appeared political Islam, which cultivates "anti-Western" nationalism and taps into social, economic and cultural grievances and combines them with a revolutionary fervor to confront the authoritarian, corrupt, unjust regimes lacking popular legitimacy. Islamists pilot this trend of "modernization", while the future of political Islam itself remains far from clear. |
And this is the whole problem. What the Islamists hated from day one was the European enforced secularism imposed on them by European installed dictatorial regimes. This has been "the strawberry seed in their wisdom tooth" for quite sometime. And with the forced creation of the Jewish state of Israel and the corrupt governments working in concert with corrupt oil companies, it's no wonder they are more than a bit miffed. Now the shoe is returning to the other foot, so to speak. And though he may not realize it, Bush has had a lot to do with this by his inept handing of an illegal war.
Any further action on our part would only make matters worse and most probably expose Israel to even greater danger.
*** *** ***
Obama inching ever closer to nomination| |
Excerpt: But Clinton insists she still sees a path to the prize by winning over superdelegates, whose support will be needed for either candidate to be clinch the nomination.
"Neither Senator Obama nor I will have reached that magic number when the voting ends on June 3," she said Tuesday night in Kentucky. "And so, our party will have a tough choice to make -- who's ready to lead our party at the top of our ticket, who is ready to defeat Senator McCain in the swing states and among swing voters."
Clinton won at least 54 delegates in the delegates from Kentucky and Oregon and Obama won at least 39, according to an analysis of election returns by The Associated Press. All 51 delegates from Kentucky were awarded but there were still 10 of 52 to be allocated in Oregon. |
I'm still trying to figure how any presidential candidate, save for Newt Gingrich or the late George Wallace, could possibly be proud of winning over the racist, bigoted, ignorant unwashed. As my mother is so fond of saying, "It taxes one's credulity".
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Piling it high| |
Excerpt: In April, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, announced that her committee will hold hearings on the issue this summer. The catalyst is a confluence of recent news reports about sludge-related scandals.
In the Potomac River, 60 miles upstream from Washington, D.C., scientists have discovered many small-mouth male bass with eggs inside their sex organs. The cause of these 'intersexed' fish is almost certainly endocrine disruptors -- also known as estrogen mimickers -- in the water, chemical pollutants that disrupt an animal's natural hormonal system.
In February, the Washington Post reported that the concentration of intersexed fish is greatest near towns or near heavily farmed land. One major source of these endocrine disruptors is thought to be the post-treatment 'cleaned' water from municipal sewage treatment centers that is discharged directly into the Potomac River system and runoff from fields 'fertilized' with sludge. |
Ok... I think I see now. Fish screwed up with this junk is a bad thing, but screwed up people are not. Well obviously, since that would make everyone in Washington DC a bad thing.| |
In 2006, U.S. Geological Survey scientists surveyed chemical contaminants found in sludge 'destined for land application' and concluded, 'Potential concerns about the environmental presence of OWCs [Organic Wastewater Contaminants] include adverse physiological effects, increased rates of cancer, and reproductive impairment in humans and other animals, as well as antibiotic resistance among pathogenic bacteria.' |
But who cares about people as long as the fish are OK. Right?? Typical government reaction.
*** *** ***
Clinton fades away on television| |
Excerpt: "No matter how this primary ends," he said, "Senator Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and yours will come of age."
That serenity is not yet shared by women who identify with Clinton. Whoopi Goldberg asked her co-hosts on "The View" how they would describe Clinton's historic battle for the Democratic nomination.
"A man took it away from a woman," Joy Behar replied. "Then they yelled at her for complaining about it." |
As is too often the case people are looking at the gender and/or race and not the person. If one steps back and ignores the gender and race, one sees a carbon copy of her husband. A Dixiecrat that will go to any lengths to get what she wants regardless of the consequences. Someone who has been up to her ears in malfeasance, and semi (if not completely) illegal activities. Who put her own interests first. In short, just another neo-con pseudo Democrat.
*** *** ***
Israel and Syria confirm peace talks| |
Excerpt: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said both sides were talking "in good faith and openly".
The Syrian foreign ministry also confirmed the Turkish-mediated talks, the first since 2000.
The last round of negotiations broke down because of disagreement over the extent of Israel's possible withdrawal from the Golan Heights. |
This would be good for both sides. First of all, Syria is not all that happy about Iran's influence in the region and a settlement with Israel would send a clear message to Tehran that they aren't happy with them. Israel would see this split with Iran and its backing of Hezbollah (and possibly Hamas) as plus to their security.
Syria getting back the Golan Heights would be quite a feather in Bashar al-Assad's hat and increase his power and support. It could turn out to be a win-win situation for both sides. Assuming neither acts like a hard headed putz.
I think this time it may work since there is now more to gain on both sides than to lose. Especially Israel who has been humiliated twice now by Hezbollah.
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Sounds like both sides are rotten appeasers, just a couple of Neville Chamberlains.
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Actually, the thought that went through my mind was that if we (and the rest of the global community) would keep are bloody noses out of the Middle East, these countries would most likely find their own solutions. They would have no other choice.
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Well said and enthusiastically agreed.
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We're all in this together
Re Ugly indeed
Hey Chris, re your comments to the Good Doctor --
The difference between you and most Americans (or "sheeple" as you call them) is that you have the time and interest to pursue the facts instead of just absorbing the news as it's reported. That's a difference of time and interest, but it's not necessarily a difference of superiority and inferiority.
The root of the problem isn't, as you and others here frequently imply, that most Americans are dumb or that average Americans are just sheeple. No insult intended but snap out of it. You seem like a likeable, intelligent fellow, but the problem is not a big difference in clear thinking between you and everyone else.
Fact is, we're all in this together. Very few of us are particularly stupid or especially bright, and you're likely not at either extreme any more than I am. A lot of people don't know what's going on, but they're not necessarily stupid and insulting them doesn't help.
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Grandpa
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Memorial Day
by Kathy Fisher
| May 22, 2008 |
Oh, they're clever. All American towns are doing it... They know people want to stay in their own back yard, and for that matter just can't afford to gas up and GET OUT OF TOWN, so they are all having fairs and shindigs of all sorts to get the people to spend their money (WHAT LITTLE THEY HAVE LEFT) Locally.
Screw them conniving bastards! I'm planting my vegetable garden and laying low, not gonna fall for their shit. In fact, I'm gonna hang my flag upside down in distress!
It's MEMORIAL DAY -- a day of remembrance, and it's sad that men, women and children are still dying.
Delicious karma recipe
by Mary Ann M.
| May 22, 2008 |
Delicious: Tesler went along with the OTHER cops' lies because he was afraid THEY would frame HIM.
These aren't police. They are mafia clowns. They are gunmen wearing police uniforms terrorizing the populace, too stupid for honest work.
Jury convicts Atlanta cop of lying after raid| |
Excerpt: A jury convicted an Atlanta police officer Tuesday of lying to investigators after a disastrous drug raid that resulted in the death of a 92-year-old woman, but cleared him of two more serious charges. ...
Plainclothes narcotics officers burst into Kathryn Johnston's northwest Atlanta home on Nov. 21, 2006, using a special "no-knock" warrant to search for drugs. Johnston fired a single bullet at the invaders, and they responded with a hail of 39 bullets. Johnston was hit five or six times. ...
After searching the home and finding no drugs, the officers tried to cover up the mistake, prosecutors said. They said Smith handcuffed the dying woman and planted three baggies of marijuana in the basement of her house. He then called informant Alex White and told him to pretend he had bought crack cocaine at the house, they said.
White later filed a federal lawsuit against the city and police, claiming that police kidnapped and held him against his will for hours in hopes he would help them with the cover up.
Tesler was stationed at the back of Johnston's home and never fired a shot during the raid, according to testimony. He testified that his former partners, Smith and Junnier, planned the cover up, and said he feared they would frame him if he didn't go along with their plan.
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Mary Ann M.
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Takes a lot of chutzpah
by Numb Chuck
| May 22, 2008 |
So I'm reading this babble about "If Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) holds true to his recent promise to slap Karl Rove with a contempt of Congress charge..." and I just wanna retch.
I'd be pleasantly startled if John Conyers kept his word about anything. It takes a lot of chutzpah to literally write a book about why impeachment is necessary, and then refuse to consider impeachment when you're given the chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee.
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Numb Chuck
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Delusional
Clinton compares the Florida and Michigan fight to civil rights movement| |
Excerpt: Hillary Clinton compared her effort to seat Florida and Michigan delegates to epic American struggles, including those to free the slaves and win the right to vote for blacks and women. |
Holy crap. Good grief. What the hell. Is Hillary Clinton as delusional as GW Bush and John McCain?
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Sparky K.
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Enormous hidden costs
by JR Mooneyham
| May 21, 2008 |
Eating junk food may help stressed-out monkeys cope
This and plenty of other findings suggest right wing governments damage the health of citizens in all sorts of ways by piling extra and wholly unnecessary stress upon them. In this case, it looks like a smoking gun in regards to the well-documented obesity epidemic in America. But there's lots more, as can be seen in:
The enormous hidden costs to society of 'right-wing' political governance
Savaging the mountains
This article shocks the conscience. It is as if the Vogons have landed in Kentucky and are building a Hyperspace Bypass ...
The mountain that lost its top| |
Excerpt: The devastation being wrought on Appalachia is best appreciated from the air. An organization called Southwinds offers people an eagle-eye view of the carnage, not readily appreciated from the road. Another way to see what's going on behind the ridge-line is to take a Google Earth virtual tour of an online memorial to the 470 mountains blown up and leveled in recent years.
The act of destroying a million-year-old mountain has several distinct stages. First it is earmarked for removal and the hardwood forest cover, containing over 500 species of tree per acre in this region, is bulldozed away. The trees are typically burnt rather than logged, because mining companies are not in the lumber business. Then topsoil is scraped away and high explosives laid in the sandstone. Thousands of blasts go off across the region every day, blowing up what the mining industry calls "overburden". |
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Juan P.
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Your lyin' eyes
by Mr. Chuckles
| May 21, 2008 |
They can cover up a tremendous amount of shit, but they have gone too far this time. Even people who don't have internet are starting to figure out they're being shafted. Even people who get all their news from Fox are figuring it out. Even people who don't read, watch, or listen to news are figuring it out! ... Click for more ...
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Mr. Chuckles
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Strive for the best
McCain is likened to the Christ on his cross? Well about to Passover I would agree with, but not expecting any resurrection Divine or otherwise here. I think he isn't going to be elected and that career is over.
I was thinking more Dawn of the Dead myself...
And as to the reference elsewhere about it all being a game and that we are all doomed. Well, yes and so what? It kind of is how it all works, nobody gets out of here alive. The important thing is what we do between being born and dying. Ted Kennedy, the news tells me, has a malignant tumor in his brain. Look you don't think that unless he passes soon that he is not going to try and stiff arm the angel of death anyway?
On my front it is all a lesson in how to deal or how one should strive to deal with adversity. Next week I am leaving where I live for one of two homeless shelters where I can enter a program to deal with the demons inside that I have acquired from my recent troubles here. It scares me but I intend to not fall. This is a setback and I will rise again! I find I am very scared and having anxiety attacks, but they aren't going to go away without facing and confronting my situation and what others have done. I will try to learn to be forgiving something... that used to be easier but now I have let disappointment and bitterness cloud my better judgement and self.
On the upside I so intend to succeed and get the job I want and a place of my own... another alternative that popped up is offers from two friends to go live on their land. One is in Norway and other is in Montana. Okay, not walking distance from Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Or do people still hitchhike and not get arrested for it?
Well, I can have a place at shelter and stay there until I have money saved up for place or move, I am told.
It brightens me to have people offer me encouragement. Ted Kennedy style fighting back is what I aim for, also he is well regarded by a lot of people. I have much to learn and emulate. McCain does too but I don't think he will, sad to say. Underneath it all he strikes me as someone who would be a decent guy but like the Clintons, McCain seems to let politics bring out the worst in him.
I must strive for the best.
Zen hugs to all and may you all do well and good!
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You've got two people and one cat here, rooting for you, and no doubt more people rooting for you on the website. Ain't no advice I can offer that's better than your six words at the end, six words that say it all, for you and for lots of us... "I must strive for the best." I'm expecting some rough times ahead myself, and I too must strive for the best.
I will say, if that offer from Norway includes the cost of transport I'd sure give it some serious consideration. I love my country but I hate the bastards running it, and the notion of escaping to a sane society definitely has its appeal...
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Helen & Harry
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Whether or not
by Angry Annie
| May 21, 2008 |
Re Insulted
Appalachia is generally more racist than the rest of the country. This is true whether or not saying so offends you, MonkeyMan.
I'm usually annoyed by the almost-always empty claim that "political correctness" stifles debate, but that's what it is, when you suggest others shouldn't state unpleasant facts that offend you.
About to get hot in here
If this story has made it to subpar Yahoo, things are about to get hot in here. It's like saying: Well hell, everyone knows now. We might as well chime in.
White House denies story about attacking Iran| |
Excerpt: The White House on Tuesday denied a published report in Israel that said President Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term in January.
A story in the Jerusalem Post quoted a "senior official" there as saying that Bush plans to attack Iran in the coming months. The story says the unidentified official claimed that a "senior member" of Bush's traveling entourage made the statement about attacking Iran in a closed meeting. Bush was in Israel last week. ... |
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American media covered this exactly the way it usually covers any especially startling or unpleasant news -- by not covering it at all until there's a denial, and then giving the denial wall-to-wall coverage. And really, is there any better way to get back in control of breaking news, than by preventing it from breaking at all until you've got the proper spin? Of course, it goes without saying that the same White House officials also denied reports that they were planning to attack Iraq, before attacking Iraq.
In several minutes of searching, I'm finding the AP "denial" story everywhere, but the only article I can find that's actually reporting what the Jerusalem Post allegedly reported is this article in the Jerusalem Post, headlined "White House denies Iran attack report" and reporting that the original report was an "an [Israeli] Army Radio report" that was quoted by the Jerusalem Post.
My guess is that it's all much ado about something worth much ado, but the mainstream coverage in America will now be ended. As usual, we'll keep our eyes on the international press, and we'll appreciate readers who help -- like you.
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Helen & Harry
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Backing the local losers
by Theo Lipschitz
| May 21, 2008 |
I excerpted key paragraphs from some long webpages.
If War Nerd is giving us the straight scoop then not only is the U.S. going to "lose" but it is backing the local losers.
Who won Iraq's "decisive" battle?
by Gary Brecher, The Exile| |
Excerpt: If you want to know how NOT to think about Iraq, just start with anything ever said or imagined by Cheney or Bush. Our Commander in Chief declared a week ago, when the Iraqi Army first marched into Basra, “I would say this is a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq.” But when the Iraqi Army fled a few days later, he suddenly got very quiet. But anybody could see how deluded the poor fucker is just by all the nonsense he managed to cram into that 15-word sentence. I mean, “the history of a free Iraq”? That’s like that Mad Magazine joke about the “World’s Shortest Books.”
But that’s nothing compared to Bush’s fundamentally wrong notion that there’s even such a thing as a “defining moment” in an urban guerrilla war. Guerrilla wars are slow, crock-pot wars. To win this kind of war, the long war, takes patience. Trying to force a “defining moment” by military action is not just ignorant and idiotic, but risks further demoralizing your side when that moment doesn’t happen, as it inevitably won’t. What happens when you launch premature strikes on a neighborhood-based group like the Mahdi Army is that you just end up convincing their neighborhoods that the occupiers are the enemy, and the Mahdi boys -- all local kids you’ve known all your life -- are heroes, defending your glorious slum from the foreigners and their lackeys.
By the time a homegrown group like Sadr’s is ready to “announce itself” on the streets, it’s put in years of serious grassroots work winning over the locals block by block. The Mahdi Army runs its own little world in the neighborhoods it controls. It distributes food to the poor, deals out rough justice to the local crims, and runs the checkpoints that keep Sunni suicide bombers off the block. It’s the home team, the Oakland Raiders times one million, for people in places like Sadr City. You can’t eradicate it without eradicating the whole neighborhood -- or making it so rich that people don’t need a gang. That’s probably the only sure way to end guerrilla wars: make the locals so rich they’re not interested in gang life any more, turning them into Sean John Combs-alikes. And that’s not going to happen any time soon for the two or three million people crammed into places like Sadr City. Until then, the Mahdi Army is their team and they’re sticking by it. ... |
From Lebanon to Iraq: We’re in deep Shia now
by Gary Brecher, The Exile| |
Excerpt: Hezbollah took their beach trip on May 9, but it wasn’t announced to anybody in the media. The Lebanese elite was stunned. This was not supposed to happen. It would be like West LA being overrun by Baptist gangs from Bakersfield. And there was nothing the cool Lebanese could do about it but sneer and whine and blog. Boy, did they blog. In the blog-o-sphere battle, the West Beirut coolsters won hands down. Out on the streets, though, it was all Hezbollah. They came, they saw, they burned down a TV station that had been broadcasting anti-Hezbollah stories…and a couple of days later, they left. It wasn’t like your classical military maneuver; these are commuter troops, and what they did was pack their weapons -- mostly rifles and RPGs, some of the rifles looking surprisingly new and expensive -- in the trunks of their little fuel-efficient sedans, and head back to the slums of South Beirut. ...
Like I said, this wasn’t supposed to happen. It’s part of a pattern that isn’t supposed to be happening all across the Middle East: the Shia militias are kicking serious ass. In the past few weeks we’ve seen weirdly identical moves by weak central governments in Iraq and Lebanon to push back against Shia militias: in Iraq, al-Maliki’s government, acting as a front for al-Hakimi and the Badr Brigades, tried to "assert itself" against Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra and in Sadr City; and now the weak interfaith committee trying to run Lebanon moved against Hezbollah, firing their security chief at the airport and cracking down on Hezbollah’s private communication network, which apparently has 100,000 private telephone lines running.
Nasrallah, the mullah who runs Hezbollah, called that crackdown a "declaration of war" against his boys and sent them out onto the streets of West Beirut, where the rich Sunni Muslims live.
Militarily, it was over pretty fast. There’s no armed Sunni group in Lebanon that can stand against Hezbollah. ...
Demographics first: like I’ve said before, the Shia suddenly found themselves as the only ghetto boyz in a rich, spoiled neighborhood. While all the other "Cedar Revolution" (aka "Crock of Shit") Lebanese were partying on the "fashionable" beach, the Shia were living in slums, pumping out lots of kids, hearing about martyrdom and finding out up close and personal what it feels like to get shelled, bombed and sniped. They raised a whole lot of kids who were natural soldier material, with your classic Shia martyr complex and a don’t-give-a-fuck slum attitude that was straight outta Karbala. All they needed was a movement they could actually believe in, and they’d slice through the rich-boy gangs like a scimitar through hummus.
Hezbollah provided the Shia with the cause they were looking for. You can say what you want about the Hezzies, but unlike most other Lebanese movements, including Amal, the other big Shia party, Hezbollah is NOT in it just for the money. They actually believe the stuff they say, and they prove it by getting their hands dirty rebuilding blasted slum neighborhoods, handing out food to the hungry, and trying to bring water and electricity to Shia dumps that never had them before. That kind of actual concern for the poor is just about unheard-of in these places, and it inspires fanatical loyalty when people see it happening for the first time in their lives.
Sadr’s people are the only ones who manage to get food, water and electricity to the huge stinking Shia slums in Iraq, and Hezbollah has an even longer record of putting in the money and time, like Mao said a guerrilla army should, on civilian projects. So for example, after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah campaign, there was a lot of grumbling, even among Shiites in Lebanon, that Hezbollah’s glorious fight against the Israelis had left a lot of ordinary Lebanese with bombed-out houses as souvenirs of that divine victory. Instead of dealing with these subversive complainers the usual Arab way -- making a gross, gory example of the loudest naysayers and continuing to pocket all that Iranian aid money -- Hezbollah actually went out and rented the heavy equipment, cleared the rubble, and put up new apartments.
So it’s not that much of an oversimplification to say that Hezbollah built a movement and an army from the bottom up, and then took it into battle last week against a bunch of traditional top-down gangs whose "gunmen" were in it only for the money. You don’t have to ask who won a fight like that. Just imagine Valmy, where French troops who really believed in the republican revolution went into battle against old-style degenerate European troops. A wipeout. The hired guns who were supposed to protect West Beirut just fled, while the Hezzies popped up all over that expensive beachfront like Bugs Bunny’s instant Martians popping up out of every manhole.
And where was the Lebanese Army that we’re funding, you ask? Keeping very, very quiet. Maybe waving a nervous "Hi!" to the Hezbollah fighters as they got out of their cars and started walking toward the Mediterranean. The Hezzies had no armored vehicles, but they had RPGs which they actually know how to use, and against the Lebanese Army’s Thrift-Store mix of light armored vehicles, RPGs work all too well. ... |
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Theo Lipschitz
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Ugly indeed |
