Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said Thursday that President George W. Bush’s administration was actually happy after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011.
Speaking to about 1,000 students on the Iowa State Campus in Ames, Iowa, Paul explained that the Bush administration was eager to capitalize on the attacks.
“Think of what happened after 9/11, the minute before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq, and so the war drums beat,” Paul told the crowd, according to Politico. “That’s exactly what they’re doing now with Iran.”
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“Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked because you had bases on our holy lands in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment,” Paul said before being interrupted by boos from the tea party crowd. “I didn’t say that, I’m just trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombings.”
Right-wing media have spent years claiming President Obama incorrectly celebrates or snubs Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas, so it's no surprise that this year, they're attacking how he celebrates Jewish holidays, too.
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And blogger Jim Hoft featured a post about the Hanukkah celebration on his blog Gateway Pundit, writing, "It's OK. It's just a Jewish Holiday. Obama celebrates Hanukkah two weeks early and lights all the candles."
This follows the right-wing media's long crusade to desperately portray Obama as antagonistic to Jews. Blogger Pamela Geller has claimed that Obama was "wet-nursed on Jew hatred," while Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds suggested he "hates Jews." This year, conservative bloggers attacked Obama's Passover statement, calling him "vicious" and "tone deaf" and saying he "punch[ed] the Jewish people in the face" for comparing Passover's story of freedom to the revolutions that were then sweeping the Middle East; few of them noticed, though, that Sarah Palin made the exact same comparison in a Passover statement of her own.
And right-wing media figures have also claimed Obama is anti-Israel, saying his policies will lead to the "destruction of Israel" and claiming he's "sided with terrorists" and "people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to exist." Yet recent polls show that a majority of Israeli Jews support Obama.
Dakota Meyer was a 21-year-old Marine sergeant in Afghanistan when he came under ambush, defied orders to stay put, and under heavy fire saved 36 men, including two dozen Afghans. Back home, he was awarded a Medal of Honor and went to work for massive military subcontractor BAE Systems. But when he protested the sale of advanced thermal-optic scopes to Pakistan, his "superiors" launched a smear campaign against him to make sure he could never work in the industry again; he responded with a defamation lawsuit. A look at how veterans are used and abused by a defense industry interested only in the brutal bottom line.
For the record, this program of indecent disposal of dead American service members began, and concluded, during the administration of George W. Bush. It is no accident, for that administration - despite perhaps the slickest PR campaign about America and patriotism and "Supporting The Troops" ever undertaken in our history - had no more regard or concern for the troops they consigned to death and dismemberment than a dog has for the snowbank it pisses on. They consigned thousands of US service members to death, tens of thousands of US service members to gruesome injury and the permanent aftermath of PTSD, and hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians to the same fates, for two reasons: to win elections, and to make money.
The soldiers themselves? The ones who have borne the battle? They are turned away from VA hospitals for lack of funds or insurance coverage, foreclosed upon by predatory lenders, left to shrift for themselves if alive, buried in the cold ground of a soldier's grave if not, or simply tossed into a landfill like a bag of household garbage. If anyone ever needed to see and fully encompass the true sum and substance of the administration of George W. Bush, and of all that has gone wrong in America, this despicable scandal tells you all you need to know.
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With only minor adjustments, Roosevelt could have said precisely the same thing today about Republican critics of the Occupy Wall Street movement who refuse to even consider the causes which first provoked average Americans to take to the streets to protest Wall Street abuses, preferring instead to focus entirely on the bad behavior of a few in order to satisfy themselves as to the stupidity and illegitimacy of the movement as a whole.
Many of us have been saying for the past three years that the hysterical nature of right wing attacks against this remarkable and much-maligned President -- called a dangerous radical bent on destroying the country and undermining its history, institutions and traditions -- says a lot more about the current state of the Republican Party than it does about Obama himself.
Extremists, after all, always need extremists on the other side to justify their own extremism. And claims that President Obama is a "radical socialist" were always preposterous when Obama's actual performance was placed within the currents of American history, since Obama has always been squarely within the American mainstream.
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The Air Force reportedly dumped the ashes of at least 274 U.S. troops in a landfill in Virginia before it ended the practice three years ago, according to records obtained by the Washington Post.
Posters on Facebook, identifying themselves as cops, call participants in Brooklyn West Indian Day parade 'animals' and 'savages'
Nancy Pelosi provides Newt Gingrich ethics report
Here’s the 1280 pages of the Ethics Committee report.
"Progressives Must DIE! SHOOT Nancy Pelosi!"
Talk about a war on Christmas.
The music teacher at Cherry Knoll Elementary School in Michigan decided to replace the word “gay” in the popular Christmas carol “Deck the Halls” because students were giggling.
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"If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?"
We don’t even a have a Republican nominee yet, but they’re floating names for cabinet appointments.
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And yet organized resistance to foreclosures and evictions continues to grow, thanks to the joint efforts of Occupy Our Homes and Take Back the Land to occupy empty houses while calling attention to fraudulent business practices by the big banks. The resistance is having an effect, as a leaked memo from Bank of America indicates:
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Yet lately images from Occupy protests streamed on the Internet — often in real time — show just how readily police officers can adopt military-style tactics and equipment, and come off more like soldiers as they face down citizens. Some say this adds up to the emergence of a new, more militaristic breed of civilian police officer. Others disagree.
The reason sectional, chained or flexible shafted tools make such excellent weapons is because of the "whip" amplifying effect of the "cords" causing a small hand movement to be translated into a much larger movement and hence bigger momentum. This then translates into either a greater throwing distance and/or bigger impact once the head of the weapon hits the target. You will most likely already know this if you have ever been hit by some fast moving poi.
The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association said it would disband after this year's landmark commemoration because so few veterans remained.
It was the last assault on US soil until al-Qaeda's attacks of 11 September 2001, another surprise offensive that shocked the US into military action and transformed its strategic outlook.
And so I thought, I need to reconnect with her. Need to send her a note. Need to say hi and see what's what and how wildly her world is spinning.
So I reached for the phone to... wait, no, I clicked on the link to... no no, I opened the chat window to... um, text her an email about the Facebook photo I was about to Skype in the... dammit, wait a second.
I was, for a ridiculous and surreal moment, paralyzed. What's the best way to reconnect in this particular context? Which mode has the right tone and feel? Should I send her a text? A funny photo? Facebook message? Skype? How about a more thoughtful, considered email? It's been a few months, after all. Maybe a postcard? An iPhone Postagram of an Instagram of a Hipstamatic snapshot of a letter I wrote on an iPad chat window's notebook app? Who can tell?
Or maybe I should do the least common, most archaic thing of all, something with which the next generation apparently has almost zero skill and hence which might just spell the end of civilization as we know it, and pick up the damn phone?
ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and legislative leaders announced on Tuesday that they had reached an agreement to overhaul New York State’s income tax, creating a higher tax bracket for the highest-income residents and reducing the tax rate for millions of middle-class residents.
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Pelosi, in an interview with Talking Points Memo, echoed Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) in saying “I never thought I’d live such a good life that I would see Newt Gingrich be the nominee of the Republican Party.”
There’s no better illustration of how ecstatic Democrats are about Newt Gingrich leading the GOP primary pack than Nancy Pelosi’s strategic silence.
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Pelosi didn’t go into detail about Gingrich’s past transgressions, but she tipped her hand. “One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich,” Pelosi said. “I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.”
Pressed for more detail she wouldn’t go further.
“Not right here,” Pelosi joked. “When the time’s right.”
Which is to say that if Gingrich somehow clinches the nomination, there’s one hell of an oppo dump coming.
NEW ORLEANS -- BP has accused Halliburton of destroying damaging evidence about the quality of its cement slurry that went into drilling the oil well that blew out last year and caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
In a court filing, the oil company alleged that Halliburton did inadequate cement work. BP also asked a federal judge to punish the oilfield services company.
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Life’s a happy song, but not when Fox Business is singing along. The network is upset that the new Muppets movie, The Muppets, features an oil tycoon as a villain, with various contributors complaining last week that the film amounts to “indoctrination” of young people into “hating corporate America” that borders on “Communist[ic].” Dan Gainor of the conservative Media Research Center agreed with host Eric Bolling that “liberal Hollywood is using class warfare to brainwash our kids” and the discussion rambled on from there.
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Republican presidential candidate hopeful Newt Gingrich sounds a little worried that Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi might follow through with her threat to divulge details of his past transgressions.
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It's the tale about the laudable efforts of a local property owner -- who happens to be a county employee -- with an offensively named creek on her land to drag Nevada County government kicking and screaming into the 21st century by renaming it on current maps -- like the Assessors parcel maps (APN maps). Emphasis on the word current.
For now, the name Negro Creek will remain on federal maps since it was the federal government that removed the word Nigger on all its maps in 1964 and replaced it with Negro. In 1983 (during the Reagan administration) the Board of Names enacted the following: "The Board will not adopt a name proposal that includes the word "Jap" or the word "Nigger" whether or not it is in current local usage and regardless of by whom proposed." That directive, signed by the Secretary of the Interior, whizzed right by Nevada County.
Nevada County's conservative Republican majority on the BOS is famous for declaring its disdain for government in general and its preference for local control over state or federal mandates. OK, so how does that work in this case? Let's see...
What the BOS fails to acknowledge is that the word "Negro" – while hardly as odious as the word "nigger" -- is perceived by many people today of all races as offensive, and not just "outmoded" -- to use Supervisor Weston's inane adjective. "Outmoded" is a word more appropriate for describing unfashionable hairdos and clothing styles like mullets and go-go boots, not to describe what an entire generation of the biggest racial minority in the United States chooses to name itself in view of past discrimination. The term "Negro" is "outmoded" today precisely because it is offensive to many since it is reminiscent of the Jim Crow period. And, it is used by racists today as a replacement for the now "outmoded" term "nigger." Bottom line, the word "Negro" is still used today by people who don't have the guts to use the word "nigger." Does anybody remember the song "Barack The Magic Negro" played ad nauseam on the Rush Limbaugh show during the last presidential campaign? Had he used the word "nigger" on the air, he would have lost his job. He was safe using "Negro," but we all heard the dog whistle.
[...] And then there was the Bosnia-Kosovo war. As Bismarck said, the risk of Europe being set aflame occurs when some damn fool starts a war in the Balkans. And then there was the way it was conducted: $200,000 US missiles were decoyed by the Serbs wiring $100 microwave ovens to operate with the door open.
As if that isn’t bad enough, Newt has decided that not only is he running for president, he is also laying claim to the crown of the King of Making Shit Up (You didn’t think Karl Rove could hold it forever, did you?)
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Recent cases in point:
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–He said of the Occupy movement, that they should “go get a job after you take a bath.” Because as everyone is aware, you can then go jump on the back of the job unicorn who will take you to the land of jobs where the man behind the curtain will open the drapes and expose the place where there aren’t 4 job seekers for every job. I think that place is called China.
–Then he pointed out that poor people have no work ethic and no understanding of what it’s like to have a job unless they are involved in an illegal activity. His solution, is to channel Marie Antoinette, ignore child labor laws, turn them into janitors, and let them clean shitters. Nevermind that by far, most poor folk are of the working variety and often have multiple jobs that may just allow them a hand-to-mouth existence.
“We have people who take their food stamp money and use it to go to Hawaii.”
If the food stamp system bars beneficiaries from buying decorative gourds rather than pumpkins, you can be sure it also bars the purchase of airline tickets. (Our guess: The benefit amount would be less than the tickets anyway.)
Yes, you read that correctly, the Food Stamp Program, disallows the purchase of decorative gourds, but according to Newt, you can just take that card and swipe it at the airport and land in Honolulu later in the day, or conceivably, Mordor.
Which leaves us with this question: ”Why would Gingrich make these claims, and what the hell is he thinking when he does?” Well, Newt is laying a bet that becoming the master of the right-wing dog whistle plays well with a republican primary electorate that has little use for pesky things like facts or evidence. And you know what? He’s probably right. The republican field has only one candidate in it that is neither a clown or certifiable and his name is Jon Huntsman (my em). And the former governor of Utah is polling so low nationally, that he has not even qualified to attend the two upcoming Iowa debates.
On second thought, I’m not that worried at all.
After Signaling Support, John Boehner Calls Tax Break For Middle Class ‘Chicken-Shit’
Speaker John Boehner referred to the package he’s putting forward as turning “chicken-sh — into chicken salad,”...
Secret Senate Bill Would Allow Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Without Charge or Trial
To bring our justice system in line with those of other dictatorships.
It's Legal to Buy a Gun if You're on the Terrorist Watch List
When a terrorist can't buy a gun in America the terrorists will have won.
Ignoring Their Concerns, Republicans Line Up Behind Gingrich
Values voters ignore his three marriages, anti-immigration activists ignore his liberal stance, evangelicals ignore his conversion to Catholicism, fiscal conservatives ignore his profligate personal spending and everyone else ignores his pseudo-intellectual bullshit.
Expert: Mayan Tablets Do Not Predict Apocalypse in 2012
They predict slew of 3-D movies about the Apocalypse, which is worse.
New York City Posts New Pedestrian Warning Signs in Haiku
One reads:
Hey you with the hat
Want to walk across the street
Fuhgeddaboudit
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Think about what it takes to be a viable Republican candidate today. You have to denounce Big Government and high taxes without alienating the older voters who were the key to G.O.P. victories last year — and who, even as they declare their hatred of government, will balk at any hint of cuts to Social Security and Medicare (death panels!).
And you also have to denounce President Obama, who enacted a Republican-designed health reform and killed Osama bin Laden, as a radical socialist who is undermining American security.
So what kind of politician can meet these basic G.O.P. requirements? There are only two ways to make the cut: to be totally cynical or to be totally clueless.
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10) Couldn't tolerate the idea of another one-on-debate with Newt Gingrch, especially one moderated by Donald Trump. Even THE Herman Cain has standards, bitches.
9) Campaign was beginning to seriously cut into his texting and phone sex addiction.
8) Soul-searching turned up no results.
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Iceland's special prosecutor has taken Larus Welding, the former head of the failed Glitnir Bank, into custody, Reuters reports.
Glitnir Bank was the first of the top three Icelandic commercial banks to fail in 2008.
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KOBLENZ, Germany — Officials in Germany's western city of Koblenz say some 45,000 residents have to be evacuated as officials try to defuse a World War II era bomb discovered in the Rhine river.
The BBC reported that this is the biggest bomb-related evacuation ever in Germany since the war.
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Herman Cain announced he's "suspending" his Presidential Campaign. Much like just under a century ago the Titanic suspended floating.
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The US Republican race is dominated by ignorance, lies and scandals. The current crop of candidates have shown such a basic lack of knowledge that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein. The Grand Old Party is ruining the entire country's reputation.
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Welcome to the wonderful world of the US Republicans. Or rather, to the twisted world of what they call their presidential campaigns. For months now, they've been traipsing around the country with their traveling circus, from one debate to the next, one scandal to another, putting themselves forward for what's still the most powerful job in the world.
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