Tag: WTF

     While former U.S. president George W. Bush talked about democracy inside a downtown Edmonton conference centre on Tuesday, hundreds of protesters were outside exercising their right to free speech with signs, songs and screams.

    “Stop the killing, stop the war,” the protesters chanted to the beat of a drum. They held signs that said “Bush is a war criminal;” “Bush lied, 1,000s died;” and “Canada is not Bush Country.”

    Several dozen police officers kept protesters away from the front of the Shaw Conference Centre and as the crowd grew, metal barricades went up between the police and the crowd.

    Marilyn Gaa, who holds both American and Canadian citizenship, held a three-metre-tall black-clad Grim Reaper with a sign on his back that said: “GWB I am your biggest fan” and on the front, “Thanks for 8 great years.”

google.com/hostednews/

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    I submit this for the approval and enjoyment of my fellow Dharma Bums as a challenge, not just to Kos, but to each and every Progressive in our nation. It is time to stop bitching about Harry Reid. It is time to do something about him politically.

MoT

By At All Costs I mean POLITICALLY of course.

Not just Kos, we need everyone”s help, but I address this directly to Kos, among others whose aid we will need to pull this off.

    Republican filibuster? Democrats have 60 voters. There is no Republican filibuster, just a Democratic one. The problem is Reid’s inability to keep his caucus together. His office can’t even be honest about Reid’s leadership failures. Fucking liars.

    I’ll take a Chuck Schumer-run Senate with 57 Democrats (bye bye Reid, Lieberman, and Lincoln) than a Harry Reid-run one with 75 Democrats.

by Kos

bold and italic added by the diarist

     I need your help, Kos. Are you tired of Reid? Really? Then help me do something about it.

     How I propose to take down Harry Reid and an open dialogue below the fold.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

War is Peace.

    The Military Industrial Complex meets the Terroism Industrial Complex.

     In his widely reported London speech earlier this month, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, described how people constantly offer him ideas for fixing that country’s problems. One of the more unusual recommendations, he suggested, came from a paper that advocated using a “plan called ‘Chaosistan.’ ” McChrystal said it advised letting Afghanistan become a “Somalia-like haven of chaos that we simply manage from outside,” but there was no further explanation of its origins.

Newsweek.com

Bold added by diarist

Much more below the fold

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    If you missed the last two nights of Countdown with Keith Olbermann you missed a lot of new details in the Health care Reform debate, and I don’t want to sound bleak, but things do not look good. The main points are these.

Wendel Potter:      “If there’s not a public option, the plan that is passed, if it’s passed and signed by the President, will not be sustainable. And it ultimately will be a disaster for the middle class and ultimately be a disaster for the Democratic party . . .

~snip~

    “We’ll be paying a lot more out of our own pockets. We’ll have the appearance of being able to afford premiums but we won’t be able to afford health care. That can not be sustained.”

    You can watch the video here

    And then there is the news that Rahm Emanuel will be representing the White House in the presumably upcoming Houuse-Senate Conference committee. Thus the title “If you wanna kill the (Public Option) you gotta do it yourself.

    More below the fold, and it ain’t pretty, with a call for action that puts it all on the line.  

     It seems that Mr. Greenspan has reared his head again to give us more of his unsound economic advice. You’d think one ginormous worldwide financial disaster would be enough for this guy, but Alan Greespan, like an animal trainer after a wild mauling, insists on trying to help even after the white tiger has clawed your face off.

    So I am going to take a page out of Bill Maher’s book and put down a New Rule.

    There will only be 1 Clusterfuck alloted per idiot expert from now on. After that, should you attempt to give us more advice, we get to move you into a box underneath the Queensboro Bridge, and then launch that box into deep space.

    Take the New York Times for instance. Now that we might go to war with a country with four letters in it’s name that starts with I they have “advice” to give us. Good thing for me, between the New York Times’s advice on I country wars and Greenspans expertise, I can wipe my ass with the place I live now.

    America, land of the Double Whopper with WTF sauce. Pass the scotch.

    More ranting below the fold

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Sen. Barbara Boxer, who heads the committee, told CNN that there is a preliminary investigation of Ensign’s actions. “We will look at all aspects of this case, as we do whenever there is a case before us, and try to get to the bottom of it as quickly as we can in fairness to all,” said Boxer, D-Calif.

huffingtonpost.com

    John Ensign, of C Street and extramarital affair infamy, will get off scot free here, because the game is rigged. What a surprise, the Select Senate Committee on Ethics is Unethical.

    Regarding C Street and The Family, Senator Mark Pryor is up to his eyeballs in this scandal.

Who sits on the Senate Ethics Committee?

Chairwoman

Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

Mark Pryor (C-Street) (D-AR)

Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

Vice chair

Johnny Isakson (R-GA)

Pat Roberts (R-KS)

Jom Risch (R-ID)

    My bet, Ensign walks away without a slap on his wrist, 2 -4 bipartisan vote in favor of corruption and sex scandals.

    More on this and a call to action below the fold

Crossposted at Daily Kos

      “You guys,” David said, “are here to learn how to rule the world.”

~snip~

    “It’s called a covenant. Two, or three, agree? They can do anything. A covenant is . . . powerful. Can you think of anyone who made a covenant with his friends?”

We all knew the answer to this, having heard his name invoked numerous times in this context. Andrew from Australia, sitting beside Doug, cleared his throat: “Hitler.”

“Yes,” Doug said. “Yes, Hitler made a covenant. The Mafia makes a covenant. It is such a very powerful thing. Two, or three, agree.”

harpers.org Jeff Sharlet’s “Jesus + Nothing”

     What Douglas Coe is talking about is fascism, Christofascism, where a few powerful dominate the masses despie their collective will and against their interests.

    Go below the fold. I’m Naming Names.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    In a startling article at huffingtonpost.com by Andy Worthington, author of “The Guantanamo Files”, puts together an absolute must read in my opinion.

False confessions obtained through torture

   The judge also noted the significance of the evidence in the record indicating that al-Rabiah “subsequently confided in interrogators [redacted] that he was being pressured to falsely confess to the allegations discussed above,” and also the significance of the fact that, although “al-Rabiah’s interrogators ultimately extracted confessions from him,” they “never believed his confessions based on the comments they included in their interrogation reports.”

    After noting — again with a palpable sense of incredulity — that “These are the confessions that the Government now asks the Court to accept as evidence in this case,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly proceeded to demolish them all . . .

From Huffingtonpost.com

Bold added by diarist

     More below the fold

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Remember how proud you felt when you heard change meant a 2% deal with big PhRMA to allow Health Care Reform to pass (as if their permission were essential?)

    Well, it looks like someone in the Senate actually wants to fight to help Americans, not help screw them.

    A Senate Democratic leader is hoping to blow up the deal reached between the White House, drug makers and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), by introducing an amendment on the floor to allow prescription drugs to be re-imported from Canada.

    It’s one of the simplest ways to reduce health care costs but was ruled out by the agreement, which limits Big Pharma’s contribution to health care reform to $80 billion over ten years.

 firedoglake.com  

    This is another instance of competition vs massive monopoly that harms people. I’m glad to see someone doing something about it.

    More below the fold

Crossposted at Daily Kos

2008 Should live on in infamy as the year the class war became OBVIOUS.

No permit was obtained for the grassroots protests of the G20 in Pittsburgh. You have to ask your government permission to protest it. This is what Democracy looks like?

THIS IS WHAT A POLICE STATE LOOKS LIKE!

America, Class War; Battle of Pittsburgh.

~ September 2009

Fascism is coming? IT’S ALREADY HERE!

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Beck’s new book “Arguing on behalf of with Idiots” is a real gem, which includes this piece where Beck explains why SLAVERY is good and Uhmerican, just like the Founding Fathers wanted it.

    Provision Beck praised actually “barred Congress from ending the international slave trade before 1808.”

    Beck praises “Migration or Importation” tax provision in taking cheap shot at “immigrants.” In the chapter, Beck reprints and then praises Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 of the Constitution. Beck specifically highlights in yellow the phrase “ten dollars for each person”:

from page 278 “Aguing with Idiots”

mediamatters.org

    Oh, and by gem, I mean AssNugget

More below the fold