Waterboarding is criminal behavior and and the US government has ratified no less than three international treaties that say so, obligating its lawmakers to prosecute any American citizen who engages in such activity AND it’s torture. So why is George Bush saying it isn’t, and hiding behind the UK to justify it? Perhaps he doesn’t fear prosecution any longer after sweeping Republican gains in this month’s elections or maybe he just doesn’t care. His indifference leaves an indelible stain on the reputation of the country he once led.
Less than a week after gaining control of the House, Republicans are coming out swinging at Obama and the American people. If what they’re saying is any indication of their mindset, and I believe it is, America is in for more war and debt, more fear mongering and attempts at curtailing dissent.
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is already calling for war with Iran, obviously an Israeli objective for quite a long time. The synchronization of efforts between the Republican Party and the Israeli government is an amazing ballet for the American people to sit by and watch since it is their sons and daughters who will be the sacrificial lambs of this play. This talk of more death and destruction comes amid news that the Army’s suicide rate is now double the national average but that doesn’t seem to deter the Republicans from offering the Nation’s children to fight unnecessary, unsustainable wars that are a drain on the American economy. Urged on by challenges to their masculinity, ‘put your man pants on’ I think is how Palin encourages or derides them, Republicans seem to believe in the notion that war helps the US economy. Don’t be surprised therefore to see another causus belli for war with another foreign country far, far away; this is what we as a Nation voted for, and with the ever obsequious press that seems impervious to dissent, intent on silencing even its own voices, a la Keith Olbermann for example, it appears we are witnessing another procession towards war, Rand Paul’s voice notwithstanding.
Marco Rubio, the newly elected Republican senator for the state of Florida less than one week after being elected is being swept off his feet on a trip to Israel by former Philadelphia Eagle owner Norman Braman. I guess a week is about enough time Rubio should give his constituents before heading off to pay homage to his true masters, the likes of which include Braman a rogue businessman who’s managed to upset just about everybody during the span of his business career and even into his retirement down in Florida. Braman has been instrumental in opposing every tax initiative in his adopted Florida, even when those taxes were beneficial to the communities.
Braman, the 76 year old billionaire has infected his protege and campaign funding recipient Rubio with this aversion to taxes, and government spending. As in all things related to American government today and politicians, Rubio has also had to genuflect at the alter of Zionism, tying American interests with Israeli interests and Israeli enemies as our own, a self fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one.
Israel’s enemies are — or will soon be — America’s enemies as well. They are emboldened any time they sense any sort of daylight between the United States and Israel. And now more than any other time, it is important that America has a firm and clear relationship with Israel.
With that he’s off to Israel. Braman and Rubio insist this is a personal trip…you betcha, but it underscores the influence Israel and her American supporters play in US elections.
the French climate of bigotry extends to those visiting France; freedom of choice is no longer a valuable French tenet Vodpod videos no longer available.
But not before enough people have believed them. Racism is insane, inhumane and should be a war crime, and I say that being a racist. I have to deal with my irrational hatred of groups of people on a regular daily basis where I am, but having said that there isn’t even the slightest bit of empathy from me for people who were stupid enough to believe this bit of thuggery from the right.
Even Andrew Card formerly of the Bush White House said, the rumors proclaimed by the wingnut audio/video philes don’t pass the ‘sniff test’ unless what you want to smell is the odor of bigotry. The opposition towards Obama is not principled, please don’t believe that lie either…. It is grounded in hatred for a black president with a strange sounding name whose father was African and possibly Muslim and a white mother who was a “n” lover and procreated with him…something “white America” and especially white males have feared and tried to stop since the beginning of time….if time for you revolves around the beginning of this Republic.
To specifically address today, any of the points of contention, regarding the numbers in the Presidential entourage, ships protecting him and other issues of logistics from the homophobes of the right is pathetic and laughable when such questions impact presidential security. Let’s not forget such questions were an anathema during the Bush years when we were fighting the phony war on terror, and enough to get one called a traitor for potentially endangering the life of the president. Yet today, these questions are the grist of today’s media stars.
The fact that such a bald faced lie comes so soon after Rethuglican victories in the House means the wish of Mitch O’Connell, making Obama a one term president no matter what the cost, is indeed the agenda of that misdirected, racist and homophobic party. However, the underlying question for me is can you trust your money, the future an commitment of your country, to a Party that relies on rumor and innuendo from the Press Trust of India in their opposition to the commander and chief of the United States? If you buy that then, caveat emptor.
Below are two of my favorite signs from this past weekend’s event in Washington, DC. the rally for fear or something like that. The meaning of the rally’s name escapes me right now; I think it was in reaction to Beck’s rally earlier of tea party supporters, and no, I’m not gonna’ get into the numbers game either. Of the two rallies, I would hang out with the people at this latest one and the signs below point out why. For a full look at all the signs head over to HuffPost.
That the Tea Party was nothing but a bunch of hucksters out to make a quick buck on America’s dissatisfaction with the current political trends…..(read that racism) sweeping the country and the world, thanks to the likes of Rupert Murdoch and his minions in corporate media. To most in government, as well as government’s aspirants, your money grows on trees that they can pluck from without your permission to use for their personal wealth and power. In order to do that they must keep you mesmerized and afraid in front of your televisions and radios while corporate interests rob you of your money, and yes those corporate interests include the federal government, but also the various and sundry “security” agencies that have sprung up of late.
So this headline should not come as a surprise, nor should this
A website run out of Arizona, ostensibly to support the so-called tea party movement, is under scrutiny after a local news organization dug into their finances and ownership, only to find what some may characterize as a remarkable scam.According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) disclosure forms, JoinTheTeaParty.us took in approximately $469,000 in donations this year and spent roughly half its budget on marketing, with the rest going to distinctly non-political avenues.
This revelation comes on the heels of another tea party member/sympathizer, Christine O’Donnell, no kin to Lawrence O’Donnell I hope, who has been accused of using campaign funds for her own private finances. I certainly don’t mean to imply by all this that the Tea Party movement is so corrupt it won’t win any seats in the upcoming election…..unfortunately, it will. I am equally sure, however if there was any more digging around in the finances of the Tea Party, I betcha’ one can find financial irregularities abound in their midsts. However, everyone should remember the old tried and true saying, ‘you get what you pay for’, and if the last Administration’s stable of crooks wasn’t enough to upset the electorate, just wait until the Tea party guys come along. It will surely be a paaaaaaaaarrrrrrttttyyyyyy!!
I saw Lawrence O’Donnell’s The Last Word where the host asked four tea party group members what they would do to cut government spending and make big government smaller. They all raged on about socialism and wealth distribution, but not one, NOT ONE talked about this kinda’ of government largesse or government waste.
Nearly 18 billion dollars earmarked for reconstruction in Afghanistan remain unaccounted for, snagged in a “labyrinth” of contract bureaucracy, a sweeping US government audit has shown.The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said 17.7 billion dollars was obligated over three years to nearly 7,000 contractors, but the Pentagon, State Department and US Agency for International Development were unable to say how much money has been spent.
The audit addresses fiscal years 2007 through 2009, but the problems go back to 2002 when the United States began funding Afghan reconstruction, because “much of the data available from the agencies prior to 2007 was too poor to be analyzed,” the report said.
Figures doesn’t it that the government waste they should be talking about occurred during a Republican administration which wasted its taxpayers’ money while giving tax breaks to corporations it was also giving taxpayers’ money to. Can you spell double dip anyone?
It’s unfortunate the Obama administration nor many of those who consider themselves among the “progressive” movement in the US media don’t tackle the insane whackos of the Tea Party and conservative media the way Olbermann et.co do on their programs at MSNBC. Thankfully there are some voices among electronic journalist of protest. So in order to pay homage to “righteous” indignation, I present Olbermann, nailing it again.
“We strongly condemn the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell prior to the release of Wikileaks almost 400,000 documents outlining the abuses as well as body counts during the Iraqi invasion. The Wikileaks figures surpass the Pentagon’s figures by some 30,000 and are lower than five other groups’ estimates, which probably doesn’t mean much to you if you aren’t the victim of a foreign invasion. But two things come out both news reports.
First, the Pentagon, despite its own claims during the war to the contrary, was keeping a tally of casualties during the war and secondly the final total was far greater than what the Pentagon claimed during the war when it was releasing it “officially unofficial” figures. Once again, government bureaucracy lied about the war and once again we just seem to take it as business as usual. We get what we deserve, don’t we?
Sometimes it takes an injustice to point out another injustice. The Right is howling about the lack of due process or censorship of Juan Williams’ free speech rights after he was fired from NPR for his incendiary remarks on FoxNews’ Bill O’Reilly show. Once again, they are claiming some type of victim status for Williams who was awarded THE VERY NEXT DAY with a $2 million FoxNews contract to continue spewing his venom, albeit free speech venom, for all those on the Right who love fear but hate their fellow citizens or mankind.
However, in reply to this hypocritical diatribe from the Right I have six words for you
Rick Sanchez, Helen Thomas, Octavia Nasir
Now for a more elaborate and appropriate response, I suggest checking Glen Greenwald here. Oh and before I go, does anyone from the Right recognize this face?
Those of you interested in “free speech” should ask Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) who the man pictured above is and then let’s talk about the First amendment.
An Israeli lawmaker has backed the shooting of Palestinians that throw rocks at settler cars, saying even children should be targeted if they appear “life-threatening.”
“Even a child, if he is endangering someone’s life, should be shot at,” said Michael Ben Ari on Monday during a meeting of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) Committee for Rights of the Child, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Arrest is not good enough for Palestinians, only death is the solution for rock throwing. My question is can I shoot my neighborhood kid when he throws a rock at my car, or if I think he/she is doing that…or walking on my yard? Unfortunately, I don’t have a 10 foot wall that separates me from my annoying neighbors, but in Israel if you’re not out of sight as in behind a wall, then you should be dead.
The entire cast at FoxNews, or rather the Republican Television Network, can win this award because of the constant racist rhetoric they are allowed to get away with over the American airwaves. Bill O’Reilly was owned by Whoppie Goldberg and Joy Behar who walked out on him during his appearance on their show, The View. That confrontation appears below
There’s so much wrong with what he said on so many levels…..did anyone catch his dig to Behar about learning something from him….that’s after he told her to shut up. Classy guy, eh? So O’Reilly, a Fox employee was clear why the two hosts walked out and the very next day………
Brian Kilmead, another Fox employee makes the following statement, ‘Not every Muslim is an extremist, a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim…..You can’t avoid that fact. And that is ridiculous that we got to keep defining this — the people that equate Timothy McVeigh with the Al Qaeda terrorist organization, which is growing and a threat that exists.” Of course this remark was an explicit approval of O’Reilly’s comments made on The View a day before and there we have two Fox employees engaging in racist commentary on a national platform. I had this to say in the comments section here
The double standard is in your face…I mean Sanchez gone, Octavia Nasir gone, Helen Thomas gone. None of them were given a chance to clarify their statements which were far more harmless and not pejorative as this Fox guy’s. In his one idiotic statement, ‘Not every Muslim is an extremist, a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim’ substitute any other ethnic group and tell me he would survive one hour after going off the air. Let’s see, ‘not every Jew is a terrorist but every extremist, terrorist is a Jew’…or how about ‘not every African-American is a murderer/rapist but every murderer is black’. Or how about ‘not every blond woman is dumb, but every dumb woman is a blond’ or not every Polack is stupid but every stupid person is a Polack… I mean this is like looking at or hearing an episode of Archie Bunker’s Place all over again. That Kilmead moron makes his comments because he can get away with it; his bosses let him, maybe even encourage him because it’s good for ratings and perhaps even revenue and that’s the history of our country. Whatever sells works, despite evidence to the contrary. So 94% of terrorism committed from 1980 to 2005 according to the FBI, not Fox, was done by other than Muslims gets spun into 100% with a stroke on the keyboard because those people committing 94% of terrorism resemble the folks who make the decisions at FoxNews. Amazing how that works, isn’t it?
Brian Kilmead, one of your racist Islamophobes on the Fox channel. Do we really want an America where we are all at one another’s throats because of the lies of people in the media. For an excellent analysis of who’s doing what in the world of terrorism, run over to the thread here. It’s very revealing about who is and isn’t a terrorist in the real world.
Or in other words, Sean Hannity is Christine O’Donnell’s bitch. Now of course he doesn’t think so, which makes him not only her bitch but cuckold as well.
The above billboard can be found in somewhere in the state of Colorado. It obviously takes aim at Obama and shows him in images America has come to fear and loathe the most. Very stereotypical in nature it appeals to the most base of American suspicions and fears of this President.
With the exception of health care, Obama has managed to continue the policies of the previous president, especially in the area of foreign policy, yet he still is faced with the demons portrayed above.
Paul Snover, the artist who conceptualized the board is known in the area as a Tea Party supporter but he is not the one who paid for the board itself and he won’t say who paid him to do it. It really doesn’t matter who paid for it, the presence of the board is what matters. It’s nice to read there is some discomfort about the images, and in these days of spurious talk of ‘freedom of speech’ the board’s presence means the concept is still alive and well in a very divided country but it shows just how serious a problem America has with people and ideas that are even in the slightest bit different than a centuries old status quo that now feels itself besieged by the likes of Obama.
It’s something “progressives” have known since September 12, 2001 but now someone else in the US military has come out and said so. Hugh Shelton has written a book entitled, Without Hesitation and in it he has some pretty damning things to say about “Rummy”. Of course he’s doing it at a time that is beneficial to him…i.e. he’s plugging a book and while the message of the book is there were some very evil people making policy that drove this country to war, the book’s author didn’t exactly come out and say all this when it might have mattered, but at least it’s being said now. Better late than never is kind of like the rule to apply I suppose.
I’m slightly amused therefore that Rumsfeld is still a free man, that there’s no talk of citizenship revocation or even a small slight on the wrist jail term for committing what was in effect a war crime. In the process he endangered the lives of America’s young men and women, displaced millions waging a war on their soil and in the process thumbed his nose at everyone, including the American people. No matter how we try to glamorize it or give it a patriotic flavor, the US military was abused by the likes of Rumsfeld and his patrons who have now slithered away in the darkness untouched by American law, while those who followed their command and fought for nothing are either dead, physically or emotionally traumatized for life and the lives of their loved ones as well.
Unfortunately, Rumsfeld will have the last word when he releases his memoir next year. Don’t believe any of it! Rumsfeld lost all credibility in 2002 when he said, ‘I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won’t last any longer than that.’
Not much has changed since this report was aired a year ago. Not only has ArmourGroup done a masterful job at being unproffessional they’ve done any even better job of putting the lives of American personnel at risk while spending our money…and you thought the only enemy we had to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq was al-Qaida?
“There is significant evidence that some security contractors even worked against our coalition forces, creating the very threat they are hired to combat….These contractors threaten the security of our troops and risk the success of our mission.”
ArmorGroup North America was hired to provide security and used two competing warlords in the region to provide the men for the guard force.
The report said that over the course of the contract at the base, warlords and guards involved were implicated in murder, revenge attacks, bribery and anti-coalition activities. One of the warlords even hosted an August 2008 Taliban meeting that was raided by U.S. and Afghan forces, it added.
The ArmourGroup has had a federal contract in the millions and it has processes in place that endanger the lives of Americans who are supposedly at war and that’s ok with the federal bureaucracy. Meanwhile back at home, millions of Americans are out of work, and millions more are at each others throats while defense contractors and security firms continue to rob the national coffers dry. Only now during the reign of the Obama Administration is anyone taking note of the perils of federal spending which has gone unabated for the last ten years and we wonder why we have the likes of Sharon Angle, Pam Geller, et.co setting the national agenda?
The above 
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