Sotomayor has been accused of “anticipation in a cover-up of concealment of assets as part of a judicially run and tolerated bankruptcy fraud scheme” by Dr. Richard Cordero. His web site is here. His letter to the Judiciary Committee re Sotomayor is here.
July 24, 2009 archive
Jul 24 2009
I Am So Sick of This
From CNN Politics:
Images of detainee abuse at the hands of U.S. troops, which President Obama has barred from public view, so “infuriated” the nation’s highest-ranking military officer he demanded leaders ensure continued training of troops to prevent abuse, according to a senior Pentagon official.
Adm. Mike Mullen said in a memo that mistreatment of detainees would have a lasting negative effect.
In a July 10 memo, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote the service chiefs and the U.S. combatant commanders around the world that mistreatment of detainees would have a continued and lasting negative effect on the image of U.S. forces.
(emphasis mine)
“A lasting negative effect.” Ya think?
Jul 24 2009
4,500+ people will die if Congress vacations w/o passing HCR. More than 9/11 or Katrina
Simulposted at Daily Kos
Consider this your health care reform talking point for the rest of the summer.
This is why this legislation is urgent. This is why it cannot wait!.
If Congress is allowed to go to recess without passing the legislation, that will be at least a 3 month delay, resulting in at least 4,500 more Americans dying than if the bill was passed now. That’s more than the number of people who died in 9/11.
We passed the Patriot Act overnight.
By the same measure of urgency of lives, the current Healthcare Reform Bill has been scrutinized to death. The deaths of those 4,500 Americans to be precise.
4,500 lives. That’s more than 9/11 or Katrina.
The article at democraticunderground.com goes on to blame Republicans for playing politics with our lives. I will not blame the Republicans because they are utterly powerless. I am blaming Harry Reid and Congressional Democrats.
Jul 24 2009
Docudharma Times Friday July 24
A $4 Billion Push for Better Schools
Obama Hopes Funding Will Be Powerful Incentive in ‘Race to the Top’
By Michael D. Shear and Nick Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 24, 2009
President Obama is leaning hard on the nation’s schools, using the promise of more than $4 billion in federal aid — and the threat of withholding it — to strong-arm the education establishment to accept more charter schools and performance pay for teachers.
The pressure campaign has been underway for months as Education Secretary Arne Duncan travels the country delivering a blunt message to state officials who have resisted change for decades: Embrace reform or risk being shut out.“What we’re saying here is, if you can’t decide to change these practices, we’re not going to use precious dollars that we want to see creating better results; we’re not going to send those dollars there,” Obama said in an Oval Office interview Wednesday. “And we’re counting on the fact that, ultimately, this is an incentive, this is a challenge for people who do want to change.”
IMF lends $2.5bn to Sri Lanka despite concerns for Tamil refugees
From The Times
July 24, 2009
Rhys Blakely in Mumbai
The International Monetary Fund is expected to approve a controversial $2.5 billion (£1.5 billion) loan to Sri Lanka today, despite concerns over the treatment of the Tamil minority.Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the IMF, said this week that the organisation had agreed the terms of the deal with the Sri Lankan Government after four months of talks.
The move comes two months after the army crushed the Tamil Tiger rebels, ending a 26-year civil war that had weighed heavily on the nation’s economy and claimed at least 70,000 lives.
The loan – desperately needed by Sri Lanka to stave off a looming balance of payments crisis – was delayed initially by Britain and the US in an attempt to force a ceasefire, which would have allowed hundreds of thousands of civilians to escape the battle zone during the brutal climax of the conflict in May.
Jul 24 2009
Muse in the Morning
 Muse in the Morning |
 Spindled and Mutilated
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Jul 24 2009
Do not worry about me.
Jul 24 2009
Gordon Liddy, a Sad, Dottery Fool . 20090724
I just watched Hardball (The Tweetie Show), and damned old Gordon Liddy was a “guest”. He looks very poorly, and speaks almost in a whisper.
He is “birther”, or one that does not believe that our President is a natural born citizen of the United States. Unlike the horrible folks Hannity and Limbaugh, I thing that Liddy actually believes his own distortions.
Jul 24 2009
It’s Just Ridiculous
This one caught my eye in the NYT front page :
Although she may well benefit from Mr. Obama’s plan to subsidize health insurance for the working poor, Rowena Ventura, the uninsured worker from Cleveland, wondered whether she could afford it. “I’m worried because they’re talking about forcing people to buy insurance,” said Ms. Ventura, a registered Democrat and part-time health care worker. “You just can’t ask any more of me. You just can’t.”
Ms. Ventura, 44, who also attends community college, has moved her ailing mother into the living room of the house she shares with her disabled husband. She said she recently discovered a lump on her left foot but cannot afford to see a doctor about it. Yet she is cynical about Mr. Obama’s prescription.
“You see,” she said, gesturing at Mr. Obama on the television, “he’s saying he wants to continue private insurance, but then he says they’re part of the problem. Well, which is it? It’s just ridiculous.”
*
It is indeed ridiculous.
It’s beyond comprehension.
You say you want to hand over 35-40% of Americans health care dollar to an institution that has been screwing them for decades and has no purpose and call it reform? And have the additional money paid for by the:
Working Poor?
How does this not make the health insurance industry more powerful and entrenched than it already is ??
Single Payer addresses the real issue.
Public Option: window dressing.
Jul 24 2009
Do You Hear What I Hear? updated
Sometimes I really wonder about myself. I have not been paying super microscopic attention in the past 24 hours, like I’d like to. Like I used to. Like I would if I could. But… sometimes, I wonder if that doesn’t make it a little easier to actually hear & see through all the alarms and smoke better.
Think about this and tell me what you think, dharmadears.
UPDATED with Daily Show Video link, Jon Stewart… below.
Jul 24 2009
Former Iraqi Weapons Monitor Describes U.S. Abuse For First Time
Crossposted from MY LEFT WING
From the Huffington Post
By Michael Bronner
… Amin’s story of his incarceration, related here for the first time, offers another instructive chapter in the scandalous history of detainee treatment — one that encompasses both physical torture and the more subtle moral quandary of leaving prisoners to languish indefinitely without any meaningful legal process, the status quo for prisoners at U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. It again raises key questions the Obama Administration has yet to fully answer as it assumes control of America’s unconventional wars: How can it square urgent, real battlefield needs with the rule of law and the spirit of the nation’s ideals?
You simply MUST go read the rest. It has to be read to be believed. You don’t know how bad it got till you read it.
(Though I do have one bone to pick with Michael Bronner, the author of the piece, about the part I’ve excerpted: “…the more subtle moral quandary of leaving prisoners to languish indefinitely without any meaningful legal process???” Just what, exactly, is SUBTLE about that moral “quandary,” may I ask? Just, you know, wondering. But… I digress.)