Tag: conspiracy theories

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Over at Esquire’s Politics Blog, resident curmudgeon, Charles Pierce reminds us of his “five minute rule” with this little snippet:

If you listen to Crazy Uncle Liberty (!), Senator Aqua Buddha, or their disciples for five minutes, you find yourself nodding in agreement with almost everything they say. At precisely the 5:01 mark, however, the person to whom you’re listening will say something that detaches the entire conversation from the plane of physical reality and sends it sailing off into the ether.

As an example of the stupid that abounds, he presented a link to this video at a Rand Paul supporter’s web site.

I suppose those who signed the petition didn’t see the tee shirt. Sheesh.

The Affordable Care Act is a very flawed bill that lines the pockets of insurance companies by forcing people to purchase junk insurance that even if the premiums are low, the high out of pocket deductibles and co-pays make care unaffordable. Nor are the insured guaranteed access the treatment and medications they may need, since the bean counters can deny permission and referrals. These are facts that the government and media aren’t telling you

The only reason the right wing is trying to defund/repeal this law, which they can’t, is because they have nothing left to draw attention to themselves and try to scare people into believing that President Barack Obama is a socialist, even though has given the right wing and corporations nearly everything they’ve wanted, including the ACA. The war on the 99% continues from both sides of the aisle.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Many of us who doubted the 9/11 Commission Report was really the whole truth. Just the fact that they had President George W. Bush and his Vice President, Dick Cheney, interviewed together, in secrecy and not under oath, diminished the commissions credibility for those of us who were expressing our doubts about the attack. In some places, any question or discussion was too controversial about 9/11, was labeled “conspiracy theory” and further discussion was banned. Even linking to sites or articles as forbidden. But like all skeletons that get locked in the closet, someone gets curious and the door gets opened. Yesterday, on its Op-Ed page, The New York Times took a giant leap toward revealing some of the truth many had called “conspiracy theory.”

We already know about the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) but what was in earlier PDB’s. Surely this wasn’t the first one. Apparently it was not but it was the last and final warning that the Bush administration dismissed.

On the eve of the eleventh anniversary of September 11, Kurt Eichenwald, author of the new book 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars and contributing editor of Vanity Fair, wrote this article:

   The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

   But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

   In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real. [..]

In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush officials attempted to deflect criticism that they had ignored C.I.A. warnings by saying they had not been told when and where the attack would occur. That is true, as far as it goes, but it misses the point. Throughout that summer, there were events that might have exposed the plans, had the government been on high alert. Indeed, even as the Aug. 6 brief was being prepared, Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi believed to have been assigned a role in the 9/11 attacks, was stopped at an airport in Orlando, Fla., by a suspicious customs agent and sent back overseas on Aug. 4. Two weeks later, another co-conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota after arousing suspicions at a flight school. But the dots were not connected, and Washington did not react.

Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped, had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know. And that may be the most agonizing reality of all.

We have known since the Clinton administration that the neoconservatives had wanted Sadaam Hussein overthrown. In 1998, the now defunct Project for the New American Century audaciously sent an open letter to President Clinton urging him to attack Iraq. The signers of that letter were the same men and women that were embraced by the Bush regime, some of whom (highlighted) are advising the Romney campaign:

Elliott Abrams    Richard L. Armitage    William J. Bennett  Jeffrey Bergner  John Bolton    Paula Dobriansky   Francis Fukuyama    Robert Kagan    Zalmay Khalilzad   William Kristol    Richard Perle    Peter W. Rodman   Donald Rumsfeld    William Schneider, Jr.  Vin Weber   Paul Wolfowitz    R. James Woolsey    Robert B. Zoellick

And these lying war hawks haven’t gone away. They have once again reemerged emboldened by the prospect of a malleable Republican president to ramp up the possibility of attacking Iran on the false premise that they are trying to build a nuclear weapon. In fact, Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney has surrounded himself with many of the same people to advise his campaign on military and foreign affairs.

It is clearer now that the Bush administration, surrounded by the neoconservative hawks who were urging attacking Iraq, knew and ignored the warnings about Al Qaeda. It is obvious from what we know now about the run up to the war in Iraq, that the neocons got what they wanted then and are now determined to push the world into another war, this time with Iran.

The facts remain, whether or not the Bush regime disregard of the warnings and intelligence from the CIA was intentional or just out of pure willful ignorance, they let the attack happen.  

Berkeley, CA

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

(DDT) The moderator of the world’s best known blog for policing impure political thoughts, [redacted], today finally banned the wife of the world’s most famous retired politician for promoting and distributing an unproven Conspiracy Theory.  

In a move sure to create controversy in [redacted] and other sites around the blogosphere, an anonymous, off the record spokesperson for [redacted] confirmed that

The FAQ says no conspiracy theories, no exceptions. Certainly this poster was aware of the rule, he or she chose to ignore it, and we decided to ban this person immediately. Any other remaining posters using this website, caught uprating other users who uprated the banned user, will be warned once and their posting ability suspended for the next 2,666 years until a bipartisan tribunal can be assembled to judge the purity of their thoughts and the intent of their actions.

Anyone caught discussing  this particular conspiracy theory in any diary, comment, or cat picture with caption, on this website, or any other website we had a FPer, administrator, or grandma click on deliberately or accidentally in the past 48 hours, or the next century, will also be warned once and then banned.  

Extraordinary claims, such as being made by this poster,  require extraordinary evidence.

We have reviewed the evidence, and have found no proof that anything untoward or unusual was consumed by the poster in question, or her husband.  

Further scrutiny reveals that the source of the rumors were obviously not Americans, and therefore never to be trusted.  You can’t trust those pesky Irish musicians. Never.  Everybody knows the Irish are a bunch of overimbibing, socialist Celtic Pagans, or maybe Druids, who knows, they all look alike, they who hate this country, and plot its downfall or at least plan to inflict their wretched European commie ginger haired marxist worker’s rights universal healthcare on us, which would destroy the delicate, negotiated detente we’ve negotiated with Kent Conrad and his very special donors.  Anyone caught posting youtubes of any music of the above, or posting recipes containing potato or cabbage ingredients, will also be banned.    

We here at [redacted] take election integrity very seriously.   We’ve banned thousands of people for far more, and we’ll ban as many people as possible for far less, for even having these impure thoughts.  

You have all been warned. Henceforth, by the Power Invested in Me, as Commander in Chief of the [redacted], this topic will not be discussed anymore on this website. Forever. Until the end of time.  

We have an election to win.  Look forwards, not back.

Example of Irish people being subversive and undermining the American pragmatic progressive agenda. Note upraised arms and dancing in audience, outside the white castle walls, clear indications of wanting a unicorn.

This is Amerika, Damnit !  We don’t DO unicorns!  We do Hope Nobody Notices!

The heart is a bloom

Shoots up through the stony ground

There’s no room

No space to rent in this town

What you don’t have you don’t need it now

What you don’t know you can feel it somehow

What you don’t have you don’t need it now

Don’t need it now

Was a beautiful day



http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyri…

B*stards.  Never could trust ’em in the first place.  They ought to be wiretapped or something.

I’d like to think I am a tolerant man.  I like Docudharma partly because of this toleration.  There are few rules, and what rules there are are largely sensible.  It’s not a single mission blog, like some others, and so there’s a great deal of freedom to explore what some people might consider the “wacky and crazy”.

One of the reasons I spend more time here as of now as opposed to anywhere else in terms of participating on the internet is that I find most or many ideas that aren’t palatable, at least tolerable, and that this benign toleration is preferable to constraining conversation and trying to create a community where topics that are “off-mission” are grounds for being banned from a site.

And, being a hermit, online community is important to me.  One of the things that strikes me is if you think about it, most of us have people in our own lives who are dear friends and family members who hold views that we might consider crazed.

I once had an eminently accomplished and deeply analytical friend who thought that the Earth was 6,000 years old and that dinosaur fossils were placed in the earth to lure people to Satan.

I have a family member who is a conservative Christian, committed adultery, married the woman he committed adultery with and divorced his wife, and once told me that my being gay was an abomination because it was “selfish” and that I was denying all my manifest charms to a woman.  Apparently there have never been any limits on a person with such a history judging others while refusing to look at the “plank in his own eye” to employ a Biblical phrase.

I had a friend who came over unannounced at all hours, and called me up all the time for help, and finally what precipitated the end of our friendship was his trying to introduce me to the joys of crystal meth.

And, as I have said more than once, I have one sibling, a dear brother, who remains dear to me, who thinks among other things that the problem with Democrats is that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are too darn liberal and thinks that gay people shouldn’t have certain civil rights because it would “cost the taxpayers money”.

So, yeah, I’d like to think I am a tolerant man.  The reason for me pointing out the above examples is to posit that sometimes we will tolerate a lot more in terms of bug-eyed battiness from family and the people we care about and adore in person than some people do on blogs.  And that is the reason, I believe, that Docudharma cultivates viewpoint toleration as a social good.  I know, there are some who believe that Docudharma is a “nutty fringe” website.  This, I believe is worth the price, because when you start shutting down discussion you start losing good conversation and good ideas and anything that might result from that.

What I feel most of us realize on Docudharma is that people are more than the sum of their words on a blog.  It is the totality of their existence that matters, and further too many other blogs forget that, to the detriment of forming the communities that are going to be the backbone of the liberal movement.

There are on this site people who appear to believe that the Illuminati are real and that the biggest problem we have today is a shadow government that is about to take over the world.  There are others who seem to believe that global warming is a hoax and that vaccines cause autism and that 9/11 was a conspiracy.

Honestly, I don’t care.