Oct 03 2008
With a brilliant smile and a confident swagger, Sarah Palin faced Joe Biden, and America, in the first and only vice presidential debate. But the face she presented was that of shallow Pollyanna with a woefully insufficient grasp of issues and facts.
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The Internet’s Chronicle Of Media Decay.
Sep 22 2008
The top of the volcano is starting to come off. Here’s some a’a and pahoehoe (actually, it’s more of a pyroclastic flow):
Naomi Klein
CNN
Boston Sunday Globe
NYT on Foreign Banks bellying up
Agence France-Presse
Wall-to-wall on HuffPo
I got this in my mailbox from democrats.com – a call for Bush/Cheney/Paulson to resign:
http://www.democrats.com/resign
You may want to take about one minute or so to go add your name to the petition. Send it along to friends and family to sign up, too.
Educate yourself tonight or first thing tomorrow. Take the time to read the bill. It’s incumbent on you as a citizen to be self-informed. This proposed bill is a total give-away with no accountability whatever for any decisions made. No oversight. No redress. Pure Bush/Cheney. This is the Patriot Act stampede all over again – and we know where that got us.
I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m on the phone first thing tomorrow to my CC Bill Delahunt and Sen Teddy and Sen Diebolded. I want blood – and I’m a peaceful man. I intend to raise my voice in anger. No more Mr. Nice Guy polite BS. I’ve been through that with Delahunt on impeachment to no avail. Gloves are off now.
No bum’s rush to judgement on this one. It took the assholes eight years to screw things up this badly. They can wait eight weeks to get a better thought-out fix. We’re about to get the hosing of all human history if this goes through as is.
For our sake and for the sake of the coming generations, we need to stop the madness NOW! This is one bridge to oblivion too far. It’s time to stop the billionaire welfare. We need to start taking care of our own.
It’s time to hit the streets, people. The conservatives – the real ones – will be right there with us. Bush has finally united all of us in a way that he could never have foreseen. There comes a point in time when you have to say Enough! You can lie down and let them walk over you or you can stand up and start to act like a free people with basic rights and simple human dignity.
We need a Shock and Awe campaign by the taxpayers and for the taxpayers. Get on the phones Monday: federal and state politicians; newspapers; local TV stations; radio stations; pound out those LTEs to every paper you can name. We need a nation-wide firestorm of public outrage in time for the 6:00 news shows.
Get on it. Stay on it. Don’t stop. Let it all out. Hold no outrage back. Raise your voices. Let them feel the anger and outrage. Make it visceral. Scare them. Make them feel fear. Make them tremble. Let them know we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.
Tomorrow, September 22, is the Equinox. It’s a powerful day for change. Make it happen!
Sep 10 2008
I was working for a bar owner at 44th St. & 9th Ave. He had the news on both TVs. And people started streaming in as large buildings were closed all over town. One guy I knew perished. Another, made it out of the twin towers alive, and walked uptown. Another woman was late for work: she got to the ground zero area in time to see the second plane fly into the second tower, turned around, and caught what was probably the last subway uptown out of that area.
Here’s what I remember about that day:
Shortly before 9 a.m. EDT, I went into the hardware store to buy some paper towels for the sister bar. The store owner, who knew me from similar errands in the past, said, “Did you hear? A plane just flew into the World Trade Center.”
I gaped at him; said something like, “You’re kidding.” It didn’t register, at first: I mean, small planes do fly into big buildings on occasion but…
He said, “No, it’s on the radio,” and turned up the volume.
Sep 07 2008
With both thanks and apologies to Glen Greenwald and Brave New Films, a video mashup I hope you will enjoy.
And remember boys and girls, it’s not about Palin…
Aug 23 2008
This is my LTE to numerous newspapers, locally and nationally!
Mr. Out of Touch, McCain!
As of April 22, 2008,
” . . . .When George W. Bush took office in 2000, oil was $28 per barrel, the euro was $.87 on the dollar, gold was $274 per ounce, and the national debt was $5.9 trillion. Today, oil is a record $114 per barrel, the euro is nudging $1.60 on the dollar, gold is $945 per ounce, and the National Debt is $9 trillion. The country is presently engaged in a $2 trillion war in Iraq with no end in sight. The federal government has expanded over 30% under Bush. Wages for working people have stagnated, unemployment has risen, 47 million Americans are without health care, and the economy is slipping into recession. By every objective standard, the country is worse off today than when Bush first took office. . . . (source: “Message To Fed Chief Bernanke: ‘Enough With The Cuts, Already'” — Mike is a freelance writer living in Washington state.)
Aug 19 2008
Post partisan my ass! That MIGHT be a good theme as a campaign strategy. It MIGHT appeal to an electorate tired of the incompetent, ineffectual and just plain stupid brand of government they have been getting for the last ten years….you know, since the incredibly partisan impeachment of Bill Clinton by the Republican Congress….
It might sound … nice …and evenhanded and reasonable and mature and responsible and all that. But it ignores the simple and undeniable fact that since the Republicans lied, cheated and smeared (including smearing their current champion when he was running against Bush) their way into having full unfettered dominance of the government…..just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and the country is in sad, sorry shape.
Because of the Republicans.
Everything the Republicans has touched in the last decade has turned to crap. From the micro (life saving stem cell research) to the macro (Climate Crisis) the Republicans have had full power to implement their vision, programs and policies….and have gotten it disastrously wrong every single time.
Aug 12 2008
Random thoughts on a Monday night…
Since impeachment is off the table, and Congress is out to lunch on its oversight responsibilities, the Rethuglican BOMIC is shoveling as much money as it can down its gaping maw. Printing money to bail out Wall Street. Allowing Big Oil to propagandize the public into thinking drilling is the answer to their greedy price gouging. Allowing the Defense Dept. free rein to the Treasury for no apparent gain. Meanwhile the local police become more SWAT-like and wanna-be Rainbow 6 geared-out, Tasering the disabled and elderly for not being subservient and craven when stopped for no reason and harassed. Clockwork Orange time. WHo ever expected a fatality rate for going through airport security?
If you think Iraq is going to stay stable after US troops leave in 2010, 2011,2012, 2025, 2050, I’ve got news for you. People in that part of the world have Saturday night knife fights about things that happened 1300 years ago.
The budget and the currency are kaput. Billions on biodefense pork for big pharma and universities while the alleged Amerithrax terrorist was a US biodefense scientist.
Nothing is in the way of these trends. More broke. More totalitarian. Tell me I’m wrong, show me how Obama or anybody else is going to stop the lobbyist – Defense Dept. Corporate Intelligence Surveillance Society from ruling behind the scenes.
Who can call an oversight hearing when “the past is past” becomes the mantra once the elections are over?
How can the rule of law be real in this kind of political frame?
Aug 09 2008
Meanwhile, back at the Crawford Ranch, W was busy committing War Crimes-
Once Again Forgeries
By: emptywheel- Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 6:09 am
Ron Suskind: White House ordered forgery to link al-Qaeda/Saddam to 9/11 attacks
By: John Amato- Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 8:00 AM – PDT
Sometimes, An Attack Falls Right Into Your Lap
by: Chris Bowers- Tue Aug 05, 2008 at 12:15
Hear No Evil
by digby- Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:30 am (PT)
Tenet and the Creamy White House Stationery
By: emptywheel- Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 12:24 pm
John Dean Confirms Suskind’s Book Focuses On Impeachable Crimes
By: Nicole Belle- Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 2:00 PM – PDT
Not a Question of If, But Who, Forged the Letter
By: emptywheel- Friday August 8, 2008 7:13 am
Suskind’s Report About Forged Iraq-Al Qaeda Letter Holding Up Under Scrutiny
By Andrew Tilghman- August 8, 2008, 3:16PM
The American Conservative!!!
Suskind Revisited
by Philip Giraldi
Posted on August 7th, 2008
An extremely reliable and well placed source in the intelligence community has informed me that Ron Suskind’s revelation that the White House ordered the preparation of a forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and also to attempts made to obtain yellowcake uranium is correct but that a number of details are wrong.
…
It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public.
Aug 01 2008
Sen. Barbara Boxer has been investigating a cover up directed by the WH and Cheney’s office to hide from the public an EPA finding that global warming endangers our lives and public health — both now and in the future. Even the WH admitted that GHG endangers us. Yet, Bush has obstructed the EPA from fully disclosing how we are endangered and prevented the EPA from complying with the law by regulating GRG.
This cover up has teeth because it affects if we live, where we live and the quality of our lives. It involves WH secrecy, violation of laws, altering sworn Congressional testimony and imposing GAG orders. Yesterday, the fruits of the investigation thus far caused Democrats to demand that EPA Administrator Johnson resign and that a DOJ perjury investigation be conducted.
Jul 18 2008
I’ve only caught some news snippets lately but I noticed what might be a pattern emerging.
The big immigrant round-up in Postville, IA was an exercise in mass processing of a large round-up of illegal immigrants. They were taken to a cattle auction fairground and batch processed through a rigged system that put them each in prison for five months prior to their deportation. There are some good diaries around on the subject. I’ll add some links if I have time, otherwise a google should do it.
My discipline is computer science and I have had a lot of management experience in a large organization (IBM after they bought Lotus out; I was and am a Loti, ex). This whole operation struck me as a trial run for a process that would be repeated and refined over time. The victims in this case were the evil brown people – the illegal immigrants. They’ve been getting demonized for years now so the collective working class sympathy for them is pretty low. After all, they’re taking American jobs. That those are jobs that Uhmericans won’t do doesn’t matter. They are part of the economic problem and therefore – no widespread outrage.
The second mass operation was the combined federal, state and local mass round-up of sex offenders. No big deal, they deserved it right? No one wants to defend that crowd. That makes it very easy to do a trial run on them, too. The feds made this happen by doling out huge sums of cash for lots of OT pay for state and local authorities. Everyone likes more cash in their pockets. One of the big benefits was building longer term relationships among the three governmental law enforcement levels. This was even touted in some of the press coverage. What a wonderful thing to see such cooperation on a multi-state, multi-locality effort.
So first the illegal immigrants and then the sex offenders. Nice, safely demonizable practice groups is what I see. The first run at Postville hit a single location and gave valuable feedback on how to process human beings through a carefully jury-rigged (npi) legal chute. (Check out the huge busing capacity in the first link up top.) It was just like cattle to the slaughter except the outcome was temporary imprisonment at just below the maximum sentence. Of course the immigrants will now be available as free prison labor for those five months.
The second run is more insidious. I’ve seen small rumblings here and there about the feds identifying state and local law enforcement types who would be willing to go so far as to shoot at Uhmerican citizens. I’ll have to research that a bit more. Maybe someone can link to any relevant bits in the comments. The pervert posse set up what can be a continuing and growing bond, well lubricated by federal funds, to develop a vertical enforcement structure that could, if it fell into evil hands, be used to round up any stray thinkers. Not that anyone would actually be so evil as to conceive of such a thing.
Separately, these two events seem unrelated. Add a huge dash of illegal, warrantless wiretapping and let it simmer for a bit. Smells like soup to me. What would be the next ingredient? Across Russia and Europe it would always be the Jews, gypsys and gays. I suppose Muslims could be next. I doubt they’d go after the drug gangs. They’re better armed and funded.
Oops, missed an earlier one in 2006 under Gonzo. They’ve been practicing longer than I thought. Bonus – illegal immigrant sex offenders!
OK. I give up. Here it is: Operation Falcon! Federal And Local Cops Organized Nationally. I guess I’m just slow tonight. That’s the official government web site touting its huge benefits.
I suppose the next move is outsourcing the wet work to Blackwater and Dyncorp. The last eight years will never be taught in American History classes. At least not the way they actually happened. File the American Dream under Nice-Try, No-Cigar.
Jul 09 2008
Scooter Libby.
We all know the name. (BTW, a grown man named Scooter really is kinda creepy, don’t you think)? Anyway. Ol’ Scooter stepped on his crank pretty good when he deliberatly outed a CIA covert agent, Valarie Plame-Wilson on what we expect were orders from Vlad Cheney when Ms. Plame-Wilson’s husband, Joe Wilson, told everyone that the Niger – Iraqi “Yellow Cake” nuclear weapons-of-mass-destruction information that the Bush Administration was throwing around was bunk. After Mr. Wilson published his article “What I Didn’t Find in Africa” in the New York Times, BushCo went after Wilson and his wife with a full court press.
Well, Scooter was tried and convicted of lying to the Fed’s about his and the Bush Administrations role in all of this, and subsequently had his sentence commuted by Presnit-wit Bush for his troubles.
It looks as though V.P. Vlad was at it once again when it came to altering evidence in another case where the Administration didn’t like the scientific answers
that were forthcoming and they once again tried to alter the scientific reality into a corporate-friendly reality.
Jun 27 2008
John Yoo and David Addington managed to show up yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee (HOLY Bamboo under the fingernails, Batman! They showed up?!?) and started laying out a considerable load of crap before the members of the Judiciary Committee regarding their “diminished roles” compared to what people have been led to believe regarding interrogation techniques. Well, among other things like Presidential powers, and just plain raping and pillaging the image of America.
First, lets get a little background on these two scumbags (purely MY opinion; McClatchy did not weigh in on this description).
John Yoo – (AKA Bamboo Yoo)
A professor of Law at The University of California, Berkley, Bamboo Yoo is best known for his stint in the U.S. IN – Justice Department’s Office of Legal Council while assisting the Attorney General to give IL – Legal advice to the President (Yes, Bushie) from 2001 – 2003.
After he left the Department of IN – Justice, we learned that Yoo authored memos, including co-authoring the Bybee memo defining torture and American habeas corpus obligations narrowly. The memos, known today as the “torture memos,” advocate enhanced interrogation techniques, while pointing out that refuting the Geneva Conventions would reduce the possibility indivuals face future prosecution under the US War Crimes Act of 1996 for actions taken in the War on Terror.
This is where the Imperial Presidency got it’s beginning. Bushie loved this guy!!
In addition, a new definition of torture was issued. Most actions that fall under the international definition do not fall within this new definition advocated by the U.S. Top military lawyers, including Alberto J. Mora, reported that policies allowing methods equivalent to torture were officially handed down from the highest levels of the administration (see Cheney, VLAD and Bush, Bimbo), and led an effort within the Department of Defence to put a stop to those policies and instead mandate non-coercive interrogation standards. But, Mr. Mora didn’t succeed, because Vlad and Bimbo loved ’em some “enhanced interrogation torture techniques.”
Since he left the Department of In – Justice in 2003, after his return to Cal-Berkley, student protesters at Berkeley have demanded, that he renounce the memos or resign his professorship. However, being a Wingnut Neo-Con, he of course would never ADMIT to having done anything wrong (without the bamboo treatment, of course) and he has thumbed his nose at his detractors ever since.
On to our Not-Friend David Addington (AKA Scooter Two).
This scum-sucking-triple-asswipe of a human being is currently occupying Scooter’s previous job of Chief of Staff to VP Vlad Cheney and was a former legal council to teh Vice Vampire prior to Scooter-boy being convicted of LYING (OMG! A Republican? Lie? NOOOOOOoooooooo!!).
Addington was previously assistant general council for the CIA and an assistant to then Congressman Cheney during the heady days of the Iran-Contra scandal. Addington is also the Main, Number 1 Cheerleader for the idea that the President has Unlimited Powers as our Lying-Cheating-Murdering-Commander-in-Chief during wartime.
Ok, enough with the niceties. On to what McClatchy (whose Service Mark is “Truth to Power”) has to say about these two
%@#*#’s.
To bias or not to bias? THAT is the question…