Earlier today, I was returning from meeting by bus. After having boarded and taken my seat, I settled in for what I anticipated would be a relatively short ten minute ride. Instead, the traffic on Massachusetts Avenue over by Embassy Row snarled to a complete halt. The weather today in Washington, DC, had been dreary …
January 2010 archive
Jan 17 2010
Accommodationists to Mass Murder?
So, if you haven’t seen this, it appears that David Bahati, the main sponsor of Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill, believes he is invited and will be attending the Family’s National Prayer Breakfast in February.
If you’ve been living in a cave for the last six months, Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill includes the death penalty for homosexuals.
In addition, the bill provides for sentences for non-homosexuals knowing homosexuals and not reporting them to authorities, and extradition from other countries (presumably including OURS) Ugandan nationals or others who committed the “offense” of homosexuality on Ugandan soil, and long prison sentences for homosexual “tendencies”. If this bill were passed in Uganda the way it is, you could literally be imprisoned for looking at a person of the same sex the wrong way, and I quote:
4, Attempt to commit homosexuality.
(1) A person who attempts to commit the offence of homosexuality commits a felony and is liable on conviction to imprisonment seven years.(2) A person who attempts to commit the offence of aggravated homosexuality commits an offence and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for life.
So, apparently, certain questions have been raised about this visit
Did the sponsors of the National Prayer Breakfast actually extend the invitation for David Bahati to visit?
If so, what will be the position of the Obama Administration on this? Will he be permitted to come?
Jan 17 2010
Bloggers Behaving Badly: Jason Rosenbaum pulls a Hillary Clinton.
FireDogLake’s resident Obamabot-with-power, Jason Rosenbaum, reacted to a user diary the author of which stated that she will no longer vote for Democrats unless they earn her vote by posting a dishonest, condescending, bullying entry in which he exhorted disaffected progressives not to “be Naderites.” Surprisingly, the diatribe earned well over 750 comments, most of which come from people smart enough to know what they were reading and who are having none of it.
This further illustrates what I wrote about in my previous entry exposing the utter hypocrisy of self-appointed, phony progressive “leaders” in the blogosphere. It is important for us on the left to identify our enemies, not only on the right, but on what passes for the left as well. Bloggers like Rosenbaum are a large part of the reason progressive voters either stay home or vote third party. They are overgrown children who treat adults like children, engage in extremely hostile behavior toward those whose support they claim is so vital, then turn around and whine, just as Hillary Clinton did in 2008, about how we’re too “stupid” to realize how much we need them.
Progressives really deserve better leaders in the blogosphere. The question is, who’s going to step up to the plate?
Jan 17 2010
O’Reilly-izing the Face of Haiti: Racism & Photographs from the Disaster
Frederic Podoux/Getty Images
We are on the brink…so we are told and so we will see as the photographs roll in from Haiti, images of death, destruction, survival, conflict, and despair.
We are ready, as they will paint a whole people as thugs and thieves and we will consume these images with a shake of the head. These descriptions will come from all sources, whether believed to be “left” or “right,” “objective” or Fox.
But we remember Katrina. We remember the power of the photograph and the greater power of seeing behind the image. Experiencing the visual content in light of the context.
Jan 17 2010
Raytheon
Raytheon, a huge defense contractor right here in Massachusetts is hiring to beat the band. There are even postings for a retiree rehire specialist.
Gee, I thought he won a “peace” prize. When that happened I was elated. No, rapturous heavenly joy washed over me in the assured joy this would finally wake people up. But no. This time the prize is not destroying health care via a Scott Brown win. I even saw a real billboard on mainstream TV even. Obama as the Joker character being used against Obamacare. What else is up for the new year?
Jan 17 2010
Haiti: “UN confronts ‘worst ever disaster'”
Latest video news about Haiti from English Al-Jazeera
(3 very short videos posted at YouTube today January 17, 2010)
The United Nations says Haiti’s earthquake is the worst disaster it has ever had to deal with.
Aid is now pouring in, with a steady flow of relief getting through the nation’s only airport.
The World Food Programme says it expects to feed a million people. But survivors say help is not happening fast enough as dead bodies lie scattered on the capital’s streets.
Tarek Bazley reports.
Jan 17 2010
Iraq War Inqury Resumed: War Charges!!
And more continuing reporting on the British Iraq War Inquiry in the lead up to Tony Blairs testimony, as well as many others.
Blair ‘should face war charges’
16 Jan 2010 Almost a quarter of voters (23%) believe Tony Blair deliberately misled MPs over the Iraq war and should face war crimes charges, an opinion poll has found.
Snip
The YouGov survey for the Sunday Times found less than a third (32%) accepted that Mr Blair “genuinely believed in the threat” which he used to publicly justify sending UK troops, while 52% thought he had “deliberately misled” the country.
And by a similar margin (49% to 31%), they also said they believed his former communications director Alastair Campbell was not truthful when he gave evidence to Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry this week….>>>>>
Jan 17 2010
Soldier in Afghanistan Arrested for Child Porn
Specialist Billy Miller was arrested for possessing child pornography while deployed to Afhanistan, is in the brig, and awaits his trial, which could lead to him spending up to 10 years in prison.
At this point, many that are reading this are probably already ready to string him up.
But, wait. This story has a twist…
Jan 17 2010
More “Change” From President Obama
President Obama’s track record has been stunning in its all out embrace and expansion of the corrupt Foreign Policy of the past 8 dark years (and with it, the total rejection of what people voted for) — a darkness Obama won’t let any sunlight near.
Here’s the latest from Obama:
The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November.
With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. McLaughlin has participated in and sought to cover-up many of the CIA’s most egregious failures and misdeeds of the past decade. When he left the CIA, he then served as the agency’s chief apologist.
So, who is John McLaughlin? Most of official Washington and the mainstream media view McLaughlin as the mild-mannered, professorial CIA bureaucrat, who former CIA director George Tenet called the “smartest man he had ever met.”
Few people understand, however, that McLaughlin played the most important role in making sure that the Bush administration received the intelligence that would be used and misused to justify the use of force against Iraq in 2003.
Washington insiders remember that it was CIA director Tenet who told President George W. Bush, “Don’t worry, it’s a slam dunk,” in response to the president’s demand for stronger intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to provide to the American people. Few people remember that it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the “slam-dunk” briefing to the president in January 2003.
McLaughlin was the “villain” behind the politicized intelligence on Iraq in the run-up to the illegal war. He perverted the intelligence process, ignored high-level briefings on the weakness of the intelligence on WMD and then tried to silence David Kay, the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, when the weapons inspectors found no evidence of strategic weapons in Iraq.
When Kay returned to CIA headquarters from Baghdad, Tenet and McLaughlin made sure that Kay was given a tiny, windowless office at the end of a distant, deserted corridor undergoing construction. It had no secure phone or classified computer. Kay called it Siberia.
Continued…