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It is strange that there's this whole suite of positions that would seem to be unrelated, but almost always seem to be adopted wholesale. If you know someone is against evolution, you can pretty much predict their positions on abortion, stem cells, the death penalty, education, GW Bush, and homosexuality. I wonder what common force ties all those disparate ideas together?
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Tell the Saudis to fuck off? Sure, as soon as we start pissing oil we can do that ...
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Those leaking the news of the arms deal clearly want to sabotage the deal. They are playing to the fear that the Saudis are backing Sunnis extremists who are infiltrating Iraq and attacking U.S. troops. Yep. That is true. While it is not an “official” policy of Saudi Arabia, they are still not going out of their way to stop well-heeled Saudis from sending bucks and bodies to fight the crusaders and to keep the Shias at bay. Frankly, if we were in the same position as the Saudis we would be doing the same thing. Until we reassure the Saudis that we are not going to let Iran rule the region they are going to continue to send men and dollars to support Sunni tribes in Iraq who will fight the apostate shia. We still have not figured out the Sunni, Shia thing. [my ems]
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It has been widely reported by the AP and others that Spc. Bryan O'Neal, who was at Tillman's side as he was killed, told investigators that Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!" again and again.
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The chaplain said that O'Neal told him he was hugging the ground at Tillman's side, "crying out to God, help us. And Tillman says to him, `Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God's not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling ..."
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(Jivester News, Lmtd.) In a breathtaking announcement today, Rabbi Soyvitch Goldberginsky told a slightly confused gathering of End Timers at a How to Dress for the Rapture: Boxers, Briefs or Dangler’s Puffery seminar in Las Vegas, Nevada that the basis for their religion, the founding gospels of the New Testament were in fact part of an elaborate gag perpetrated by “…a few wisenheimers back in the day. The guys were sitting around, tossing shrimp at pigs for who-knows-why, when one of them says “Hey, what if we say that God shtupped a zaftig and Jr. will give everyone a Get Out of Hell card? And they will have to sing ass-kissing songs and feel bad a lot of the time, just like us.”
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An unsuspecting senior citizen from Long Island, N.Y. is behind one of the incidents that prompted the TSA to issue a bulletin last week about cases in which they suspect terrorists may have been probing airport security by trying to bring peculiar items on board airplanes.
In her case, Sara Weiss tried to bring ice packs on her flight home.
"I'm not a terrorist. I'm just a 66-year-old woman who's coming back from visiting her son and I have a bad back, so I carry these things," Weiss told ABC News' Lisa Stark.
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Right Wing bloggers are the kinds of guys who get a couple sheets to the wind and decide they want to do some blow, so they call up this one guy they’re pretty sure does drugs who works at their law-firm and shout down their cell phone at him from a crowded bar, “Dude! Pete, man! It’s Chad! Chad Anderson! Chad! Anderson! Right, from down the hall, listen man, do you know how we could GET SOME DRUGS? Like some COKE OR SOMETHING? We’d like totally share with you, man! Hello? Hello?!”
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Not only do they happily report to the White House via conference call to get their weekly ration of talking points about How to Spin Questions of Executive Privilege, but then they go around and thump their chests around their even smaller-dicked buddies to brag about it. Think about that. [my em]
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“Hey, Chester, a bunch of Liberty University grads who work for a guy with a 29% approval rating just told me exactly what to say and think for the next week until they call me back! Oh, shit! I forgot to ask them how I’m supposed to wipe my ass!”
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I don’t think the Bush administration is in a position to be giving anybody advice right now. But regardless of that, Right Wingers, you’ve got this all wrong. Blogging is not meant to be a top-down thing. They call the grassroots the grassroots because they grow from the bottom upward.
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The Buckeye State Blog has revealed that the next member of Congress who will be revealed as a client of the DC Madam's, the way David Diapers Vitter (R-LA) was, will be a Republican member of the Ohio congressional delegation ...
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...Most peopleEvery single person we've contacted so far says it's Boehner.
“I’m 76 years old, and pretty soon I’m going to a place where there are no blogs,” said conservative pundit Robert Novak at an American Spectator breakfast on Thursday morning. Speaking of the land beyond, Novak added, “All presidents look better after they’re dead, and George W. Bush can count on that.”
But I don’t think it would have been in bad taste for members of the press–especially those who cover health care–to point out, as did San Francisco Chronicle columnist David Lazarus, that the president was attended by a team of physicians who made a house call, that they were government employees and that it cost the president nothing. That, of course is how it should be for a president; free medical care for himself, his wife and his daughters come with the job.
But when the president told an audience in Cleveland that “people have access to health care in America; after all, you just go to an emergency room,” he might have thought about his coming procedure and connected the dots to the millions of Americans who don’t have colonoscopies (and risk cancer) because they have no insurance. Or reporters who know how crowded emergency rooms are when their kids need help in the middle of the night, might have reminded him or one of his spokespersons of the realities of health care without house calls.
So I wonder if anyone in the press or on his own staff points out to him that he and every member of his family, including George H.W. and Barbara Bush, have been cared for by government-run health care for as long as they’ve been in public service. And they’ll have government-paid health insurance and care for as long as they live.
No one would seriously object to providing government-paid health care to the president, his family and other government officials, even Vice-president Cheney. They are all entitled to health insurance and it’s mostly paid for by the public. But in addition to their insurance, lawmakers at the Capitol as well as White House officials have doctors on call, and a military or government hospital is available, for the flu, a broken bone or a colonoscopy. And as far as I know, these officials, from the president on down, have not complained about government-run health care–for themselves.
Two American civilian contractors who worked on a massive U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad told Congress yesterday that foreign laborers were deceptively recruited and trafficked to Iraq to toil at the site, where they experienced physical abuse and substandard working conditions.
First Kuwaiti's labor practices are under investigation by the Justice Department, which is looking into allegations that foreign employees were brought into Iraq under false pretenses and were unable to leave because the company had confiscated their passports.
First Kuwaiti has termed those allegations "ludicrous." The company declined the committee's invitation to testify or provide officials for interviews, said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the oversight committee.
Foreign workers lived in tightly packed trailers and had "insufficient equipment and basic needs -- stuff like shoes and gloves," Owens said.
They worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and made as little as $240 a month, he said. They were "verbally and physically abused" and had their salaries docked for petty infractions, he added.
Rory J. Mayberry, an emergency medical technician who worked briefly at the embassy site under a subcontract, testified that he was asked by First Kuwaiti managers to escort 51 Filipinos through the Kuwait airport and onto a flight to Baghdad. However, "all of our tickets said we were going to Dubai," he said, adding that a First Kuwaiti manager instructed him not to tell any of the Filipinos that they were going to Baghdad.
He said the men were basically "kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work on the U.S. Embassy." Their passports had been confiscated, and they were driven away on buses after landing in Baghdad, then were "smuggled into the Green Zone," he said.
Editor's Note: As the nation and the world face 18 more months of George W. Bush's presidency, a chilling prospect is that Bush – confronted with more defeats and reversals – might just "lose it" and undertake even more reckless military adventures.
In this special memorandum, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) collaborated with psychiatrist Justin Frank, author of Bush on the Couch, to assess the potential dangers and possible countermeasures available to constrain Bush:
What a burden to have to face his many inadequacies - now held up to the light of day - whether it is his difficulty in speaking, thinking, reading, managing anxiety, or making good decisions. He will not change, because for him change means humiliating collapse. He is very fearful of public exposure of his many inadequacies.
His certitude that he is right gives him carte blanche for destructive behavior. He has always had a sadistic streak: from blowing up frogs, to shooting his siblings with a b-b-gun, to branding fraternity pledges with white-hot coat hangers.
It may well be that, unconsciously, the government represents his neglectful parents, and those helped by the government represent the siblings he resents. If George W. Bush wanted to destroy his own family, he could scarcely have done better. Thanks to him, no Bush is likely to be elected to high office for generations to come.
And so, we are left with a president who cannot actually govern, because he is incapable of reasoned thought in coping with events outside his control, like those in the Middle East.
Outlined below are three illustrative contingencies, each of which would pose a neuralgic threat to George W. Bush's shaky self-esteem, his over-determined efforts to stave off humiliation, and his unending need for self-protection.
These are not seat-of-the-pants scenarios. Each of them is possible - arguably, even probable. The importance of coming up with educated guesses regarding Bush's response BEFORE they occur is, we hope, clear.
The reaction would come from deep within and would warn, in effect: This is what you get if you try to make me look bad.
Is there nothing to rein in Bush and Cheney? It seems likely that only if impeachment proceedings were under way would senior officers like CENTCOM commander, Admiral William Fallon, be likely to parry an unlawful order to start yet another war without the approval of Congress and the UN.
To do that effectively, he will need senior generals and admirals as co-conspirators. It will be up to them to choose between career and Constitution. All too often, in such circumstances, the tendency has been to choose career.
Impeachment hearings, though, could encourage senior officers like Admiral Fallon to pause long enough to remember that their oath is to defend the Constitution, and that they are not required to follow orders to start another war in order to stave off political and personal disaster for the president and vice president.
Gosh, how are they going to find the money to fund global warming denier Lee Raymond's retirement program? You know if the GOP still controlled Congress, they would be shoveling over more corporate welfare because Exxon only hit $10.26 billion, down slightly from Q2 2006 when they set the all time record for a quarterly profit. At least Exxon found a schmuck from the AP to give them an easy headline "Exxon Mobil 2Q profit slips" in hopes of minimizing the downright massive profit they just reported.
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It's looking like there might not be a GOP CNN/Youtube debate. Rudy appears to be opting out and Mitt Romney doesn't seem far behind. And GOP party functionary Hugh Hewitt is already laying down a line of covering fire for the retreat, arguing that CNN and Youtube are biased against Republicans.
"Liberal Bias", whatever else it once was, now appears to be the new Republican code word for any venue or events not controlled by Republican commisars like Hugh Hewitt along the lines of President Bush's notorious Social Security townhalls in which only certified flunkies who swore to a Bush loyalty oath were let into the room.
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ASTRONAUTS were allowed to fly although their colleagues and flight surgeons warned they were so drunk they posed a flight-safety risk, according to media reports.
An internal NASA panel also reported "heavy use of alcohol'' within the standard 12-hour "bottle to throttle'' abstinence rule applied to NASA flight-crew members, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine said.
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But CUFI has an ulterior agenda: its support for Israel derives from the belief of Hagee and his flock that Jesus will return to Jerusalem after the battle of Armageddon and cleanse the earth of evil. In the end, all the non-believers - Jews, Muslims, Hindus, mainline Christians, etc. - must convert or suffer the torture of eternal damnation. Over a dozen CUFI members eagerly revealed to me their excitement at the prospect of Armageddon occurring tomorrow. Among the rapture ready was Republican Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. None of this seemed to matter to Lieberman, who delivered a long sermon hailing Hagee as nothing less than a modern-day Moses. Lieberman went on to describe Hagee's flock as "even greater than the multitude Moses commanded."
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BLITZER: Your subtitle is "50 Years Reporting in Washington." You have covered a lot of presidents, you covered Nixon, for example. In the book, you say "he was a poor president, a bad man who inflicted grave damage on his party and his country."
Give us your report card, your ranking of the current president, President Bush.
NOVAK: I think he's mediocre. I think he's very disappointing. I don't think he's a bad man as Nixon is. I think he means well. He made a terrible mistake on Iraq. But I thought he was the first conservative Bush. I thought he was a real Texas conservative. It turns out he's like his grandfather, who I covered, a Connecticut liberal. [my ems]
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(CBS) NEW YORK Servicemen and women who made huge sacrifices fighting in the war and now paying yet another price, even after coming home.
One soldier in particular is currently battling against a new "debt of service."
Brian Rodriguez is a fighter, an honorably discharged soldier who'd been deployed in Iraq.
"I was a combat engineer," Rodriguez said. "We deal with land mines, explosives."
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Former Army Specialist Rodriguez started getting bills for $700 for lost or damaged government property this summer. Although he was discharged some four years ago, bills recently arrived demanding payment, but giving no details on what or why -- nor do they offer a way to dispute the charges.
"For doing my job you're going to bill me?" Rodriguez said.
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Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy announced Thursday he had subpoenaed White House adviser Karl Rove and his deputy accusing them of stonewalling a widening probe into the firing of federal prosecutors.
"The Bush-Cheney White House continues to place great strains on our constitutional system of checks and balances," Leahy said in issuing the subpoenas. Not since the darkest days of the Nixon Administration have we seen efforts to corrupt federal law enforcement for partisan political gain and such efforts to avoid accountability."
I do agree that we can't afford to cover everyone under the crazy health-care system we have now. We can't even afford all the people we're covering already, which is why we keep booting them out. But we have an excellent template for universal care right under our noses: good old American Medicare. When you think of reform, think "Medicare for all."
Medicare is what's known as a single-payer system. In the U.S. version, the government pays for health care delivered in the private sector. There's one set of comprehensive benefits, with premiums, co-pays and streamlined paperwork. You can buy private coverage for the extra costs.
Health insurers hate this model, which would end their gravy train. So they're trying to tar single-payer as a kind of medical Voldemort, ready to destroy. Here are some of their canards, and my replies:
Right now, Congress is trying to bring 3.3 million uninsured children into the State Children's Health Insurance Program. President George W. Bush says he'll veto the expansion as "the wrong path for our nation." He objects to "government-run health care" (like Medicare?) and says that SCHIP "deprives Americans of ... choice" (like the choice to go uninsured?). Buzzwords like "government run" are supposed to summon up monsters like "socialized medicine" that apparently still lurk under our beds. If these terror tactics work, prepare for another 46 million uninsured.
News of President Bush's weekend colonoscopy and the successful removal of five benign, non-cancerous polyps put me in mind of Evelyn Waugh's comment after the disagreeable Randolph Churchill, son of Winston, underwent a somewhat similar procedure.
Leave it to medical science, the novelist said, to remove the only part of Randolph that wasn't malignant.
The commander-in-chief doesn't read much in the way of history books, the article continued. "He's busy making history, but doesn't look back at his own, or the world's.... Bush would rather look forward than backward. It's the way he's built."
As my late great uncle and lifelong Baptist W. F. "Bubba" Downs of Temple, Texas, would say: Oy.
But now, it seems, the president is desperate to find his place in history, to search its tomes, old and new, and grill its authors for redemption and justification. Posterity suddenly has become the focus group about which he cares the most.
Despite the presidential reading list, those who forget history still tend to repeat it. This White House even forgets history of its own making. Thus, despite the absence of a plan for rebuilding Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam - the administration's downfall - there now is no plan for the inevitable withdrawal from Iraq, a task that will be an enormous, time-consuming and dangerous undertaking of logistics, lives and resources.
President Bush, better start leafing through your biographies of Churchill to learn more about strategic retreat. Look in the index under "Dunkirk."
The Head of the Mightiest Military Power Ever, Started Two Wars And Lost Three!
WASHINGTON - JULY 25 - – Today, by a vote of 399-24, the House passed legislation introduced by Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) (Yay East Bay! - G) to prevent permanent military bases in Iraq and bar U.S. control over Iraqi oil resources.
“The need to fight right now to restore the Constitution and end the war is strong, and that means some people are going to have to take a stand against a ruthless and intractable opponent. We need to rally behind them and acknowledge their heroism rather than stand back and allow others to tear them down as “partisans” for their willingness to do so.
Because sometimes fighting is the right thing to do.”
The former head of the Michigan Federation of Young Republicans admitted today that he sexually abused a colleague during a national convention here last summer.
Michael Flory, a 32-year-old attorney from Jackson, Mich., pleaded guilty to sexual battery on the day he was to stand trial for rape.
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Flory gained some notoriety at age 18 when he gave a televised speech to the Republican National Convention in the Houston Astrodome in 1992. The Michigan Young Republicans' Web site once hailed him as "one of the rising stars of GOP politics in America" and declared that "Mike has earned a great name for himself."
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Still waiting for the "liberal media" to forget about Hilldog's cleavage and start talking about those "Thompson Twins" that Jeri Thompson proudly displays.
I would bet you that if Osama bin Laden had a colonoscopy, that's where they would find Bush's head ...
A man walked up to Dick Cheney, calmly told him he thought his Iraq policy was reprehensible, and walked away. A few minutes later he was arrested by the Secret Service, in front of his 8-year-old son, for “assault”.
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Much has already been written about inherent contempt, that Congress can have someone arrested and brought to Congress to face trial. It will as directly as possible provoke the constitutional crisis we need. It is the first step to shaming the Bush administration, something that is seemingly impossible to do.
And the key to that first step is Harriet Miers in chains, cuffed and frog-marched before the public. That's right: beat up the old lady (yeah, yeah, late-middle-aged, whatever). First of all, Harriet Miers ain't a sympathetic figure. In the White House, she was as incompetent as they come, a glorified clerical assistant. Outside the White House, where she was far more effective as a lawyer, she was always defending major corporations. The right hates her; the left doesn't give a shit. Drag her out of her office, fuckin' extraordinary rendition her ass from Texas to DC, hooded and everything, showing her what a motherfucking subpoena means. Try her, jail her, make Bush have to pardon her.
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The House Judiciary Committee voted today to issue contempt citations for two of President Bush's most trusted aides, taking its most dramatic step yet towards a constitutional showdown with the White House over the Justice Department's dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys.
The panel voted 22-17, along party lines, to issue citations to Joshua B. Bolten, White House chief of staff, and Harriet E. Miers, former White House counsel. Both refused to comply with committee subpoenas after Bush declared that documents and testimony related to the prosecutor firings were protected by executive privilege.
"If we countenance a process where our subpoenas can be readily ignored, where a witness under a duly authorized subpoena doesn't even have to bother to show up... then we have already lost," committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said before the vote. "We won't be able to get anybody in front of this committee or any other."
74-year-old Alan McConnell was arrested this weekend and charged with trespassing, after police said he was selling "Impeach Him" buttons without permission. McConnell has sold the anti-Bush buttons at a Maryland farmers' market for months.
Officials said that the incident has nothing to do with politics, but that they feared McConnell and his supporters were becoming a safety hazard. As he was being arrested, about 40 McConnell supporters booed and yelled "Free speech!"
Some of the market vendors say that all the controversy may actually help business. "The excitement has certainly brought a lot more people here, but not all of them are buying," one said. "Hopefully, the protesters today will come tomorrow to buy."
At what point will President Bush finally grasp the enormous disaster that the neoconservatives, from Vice President Dick Cheney on down, have visited upon his presidency? Or, to put it numerically, just how does a president descend from a 92 percent approval rating one month after 9/11—the highest of any president since modern polling began—to the two-thirds disapproval score that has stalked him through the last year, thanks to the Iraq debacle, without getting the message?
Angry senators suggested a special prosecutor should investigate misconduct at the Justice Department, accusing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday of deceit on the prosecutor firings and President Bush's eavesdropping program.
Specter later circled back to Gonzales on the matter, warning him: "My suggestion to you is you review your testimony to find out if your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable," Specter said. The maximum penalty for being caught lying to Congress is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 per count. Specter wryly noted to reporters during a break that there is a jail in the Capitol complex.
"Once again he's making up something to protect himself and creating situations that never happened," Rockefeller said, adding that "based on what I know about it, I'd have to say" Gonzales has committed perjury.
BBC: W's grandpappy planned facist coup of USAA BBC Radio 4 investigation sheds new light on a major subject that has received little historical attention, the conspiracy on behalf of a group of influential powerbrokers, led by Prescott Bush, to overthrow FDR and implement a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. based around the ideology of Mussolini and Hitler.
White House aides have conducted at least half a dozen political briefings for the Bush administration's top diplomats, including a PowerPoint presentation for ambassadors with senior adviser Karl Rove that named Democratic incumbents targeted for defeat in 2008 and a "general political briefing" at the Peace Corps headquarters after the 2002 midterm elections.The briefings, mostly run by Rove's deputies at the White House political affairs office, began in early 2001 and included detailed analyses for senior officials of the political landscape surrounding critical congressional and gubernatorial races, according to documents obtained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
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Dear Governor Spitzer,
Joe Bruno and Sheldon Silver have been fucking up New York for years. Diluting their power and death grip on Albany would do wonders for the state. Given these two old farts' track records of obstructing progress, running the state like their own personal fiefdoms, and, in Bruno's case, being a Republican it should be easy. That means you needn't have resorted to acting like a garden variety Republican thug to do it. Honestly, I don't know what's come over you. Maybe you got a little excited by your 69% mandate last fall. Maybe your bull-in-a-china-shop nature overcame your common sense. Maybe you're not as smart as I think you are. Whatever it is, do us a favor and cut the crap. It's going to be hard enough to recover from the twelve years of George Pataki and six years of George W. Bush without having to defend Democrats who run their operations like Republican goons and give the David Broder's of this world fodder for their "Both sides do it!" shrieking.
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"In the New York Assembly, everyone speaks very loud but no one listens to anyone else. Therefore nothing is accomplished." ~ The Hon. Lewis Morris, delegate from New York to the Continental Congress, 1776.
The war was there to take his life because George Bush started it with bold-faced lies.
He got this lovely kid killed by lying.
If Bush did this in Queens, he would be in court on Queens Boulevard on a murder charge.
He did it in the White House, and it is appropriate, and mandatory for the good of the nation, that impeachment proceedings be started. You can't live with lies. You can't permit them to be passed on as if it is the thing to do.
The same is desperately needed now. Curious, following the words, an investigator - the mind here sees George Mitchell and Warren Rudman, and you name me better - can slap a hand on the slitherers and sneaks who have kept us in war for five years and who use failing generals to beg for more time and more lives of our young. A final word in September? Two years more, the generals and Bush people say.
Say impeachment and you'll get your troops home.
And in Washington we had this Bush, and it is implausible to have anyone who is this dumb running anything, smirking at his country. He sure doesn't mind copying those people. On his PBS television show the other night, Bill Moyers said he was amazed at Sara Taylor of the White House staff saying that she didn't have to talk to a congressional committee because George Bush had ordered her not to. "I took an oath to uphold the president," she said.
That president had been in charge of a government that kidnapped, tortured, lied, intercepted mail and calls, all in the name of opposing people who are willing to kill themselves right in front of you. You have to get rid of a government like this. Ask anybody in Rosedale, where Le Ron Wilson wanted to live his young life. His grave speaks out that this is an impeachable offense.
Veterans' Civil Rights Case, first of its kind, includes Department of Veterans Affairs and U.S. Attorney General Gonzales as defendants; focuses on veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts; alleges "unconscionable delays" and other violations of veterans’ constitutional and civil rights
Morrison & Foerster estimates the class size as between 320,000 and 800,000 veterans, by multiplying the number of military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan (1.6 million) by the estimated percentage of PTSD amongst the returning troops (20% to 50%). The non-profit Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth are among the plaintiffs.
The complaint further alleges that federal government officials have improperly induced many soldiers suffering from PTSD to accept "personality disorder" discharges, precluding veterans from obtaining disability benefits or receiving ongoing medical treatment because the disorder is then classified as a pre-existing condition.
"More than 22,500 soldiers across the armed forces have been suspiciously diagnosed and discharged with 'personality disorder' in the last six years, condemning them to a lifetime of disability without any compensation or access to VA medical care," the complaint states.
The complaint summarizes: "Unless systemic and drastic measures are instituted immediately, the costs to these veterans, their families, and our nation will be incalculable, including broken families, a new generation of unemployed and homeless veterans, increases in drug abuse, increases in alcoholism, and crushing burdens on the health care delivery system and other social services in our communities."
Bush is pushing this "executive privilege" thing so far, it's only a matter of time before we are told we serve as citizens at the pleasure of the president.
Chris Hedges, in a widely read article in The Nation, describes a photo showing a U.S. soldier "reaching in to scoop out some of [an Iraqi's] brain, looking at the camera and ... smiling."
** Technically, as a reader notes below, abusing a corpse in military as well as civilian life is a crime. In this case, I’d apply the legal principle of who cares?
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And, by the way, who are we at war with again? Iraq? The country these right wingers insisted that we "liberate?" Are these soldiers only scooping out the brains of foreign terrorists? Or are they insurgent brains? Suni? Shia? Innocent bystanders? It's so hard to tell which brains are suitable for scooping over there. (Or, maybe these keyboard commandos think we should just scoop 'em all and let God sort it out.)
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Success on the ground in Iraq is being overshadowed by spectacular attacks designed to draw attention from good things which are happening there, a U. S. Central Command officer told online journalists and bloggers in a conference call Thursday. [my em]
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"The more successful you are, the more spectacular the events," [U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert H.] Holmes said. "The spectacular attacks are what I call attacks using weapons for mass effect. And they're designed, in my mind, to do just that, to create this mass effect for spectacular coverage in the media, to create spectacular terror in the mind of a population, to create chasms in national wills, (and) to create doubt in military forces."
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BAGHDAD (AP) - Three parked cars exploded within 30 minutes in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 12 people, police said, the deadliest in a series of bombings and shooting attacks nationwide.
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"The essential hardware elements of a (Total Information Awareness)-type spy program are being surreptitiously slipped into 'real world' telecommunications offices," Wired News reported former AT&T technician Mark Klein as writing. According to Klein and a report published by the New York Times, the NSA-AT&T "Orwellian project… is vastly bigger" than previously figured "and was directly authorized by President Bush, as he himself has now admitted, in flagrant violation of specific statutes and constitutional protections for civil liberties." In the meantime, Bush has signed a number of executive orders essentially granting himself the power of a Roman Magister Populi, a dictatorial master over the commoners.
Considering all of this, it makes perfect sense for the Apple iPhone to double as an NSA iSnoop device.
I've been settling into my couch and reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows and rather enjoying it. I'm something of a Potter admirer; the only bumper sticker on my car reads "Republicans for Voldemort". Of course, I don't come close to Mrs. Orcinus, who finished the book within the first day and who reread all six in the series just before the release of No. 7.
In any event, my enjoyment of the books is enhanced by the knowledge that it also drives the fundamentalist right nuts. Ever since the books gained great popularity, they've been on the warpath against Harry Potter, as you can see from the excerpt from Jesus Camp above, in which we see the head of the camp telling children that Potter should be put to death. (Talk about Republicans for Voldemort!)
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The pyramid signifies strength and duration.
The Eye over it and the motto Annuit Coeptis allude to the many signal interpositions of providence in favor of the American cause.
The date 1776 underneath is that of the Declaration of Independence and the words Novus Ordo Seclorum under it signify the beginning of the new American Era, which commences from that date.
President Bush tries to sell the latest US intelligence estimate as part of his grand victory narrative. The only things standing in the way are the facts.
One of the more memorable and revealing statements explaining the nature of the Bush administration build-up to the invasion of Iraq was offered in September 2002 by then White House chief of staff Andrew Card. "From a marketing point of view," he said, "you don't introduce new products in August." Five years later, a period longer than the Civil War and World War II, the administration is preparing to present its case for continuing the surge in Iraq. But rather than waiting for September, when General David Petraeus is scheduled to deliver his report, the administration has moved up the marketing to July.
According to intelligence sources, CIA director Michael Hayden has been under attack within the administration from Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives since testifying frankly to the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group that urged a strategic redeployment of US forces and new diplomatic efforts in the region, which were rejected by President Bush. A virtual paralysis is setting in within the intelligence community. Analysts are even anxious about putting their names on their reports. While they are homogenising information, the administration is still unhappy with the result, as it was with the new NIE.
For the embattled president, filled with "self-confidence", the "motives" he doesn't wish critics to examine turn out to be far more utopian than the military success of the surge, as he explained to his conservative interlocutors. "There is such a thing as the universality of freedom. I strongly believe that Muslims desire to be free just like Methodists desire to be free." Beneath the seething chaotic violence, beyond the tribal and religious strife, past the civil war, the Iraqis, according to the president, under their robes are no different from American Methodists. There's nothing more to understand. If only we can prevail, they can be just like us. The rest is marketing.
Come September, he'll learn whether he made or lost that sale.
Halliburton Charged $110 Million for Food, Housing, Laundry at Bases Which Had Already Closed
Vice President promises thorough investigation.
Huge Ancient Underground Reservoir Discovered Beneath Darfur
But it's water, not oil, so U.S. not interested.
Bush Briefly Transfers Power to Cheney During Colonoscopy
Cheney launches invasion of Iran but suffers mild heart attack and is forced to transfer power to Nancy Pelosi who orders troops out of Iran and Iraq, closes Guantanamo, ends warrantless wiretapping and fires Alberto Gonzales, but Cheney recovers, voids her actions and is about to launch invasion again when Bush comes out of anesthesia and resumes control.
RAND Suggests "We Will Help You" as PR Campaign For U.S. Military Abroad
"We will help you" start your own civil war, "we will help you" give us your oil.
Diaper Ad That Uses Beatles' "All You Need is Love" Infuriates Fans
Most felt "When I'm 64" more appropriate.
On 'Meet the Press' this morning, I announced that I will introduce two censure resolutions aimed at holding President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other administration officials responsible for the destructive path down which they've taken our country. It's clear to me, and millions of Americans, that the time has come for accountability – on everything from the disastrous war in Iraq, to refusing, time and time again, to follow the rule of law. Members of Congress can no longer stand by and allow the White House to shred the Constitution, and thumb their noses at the American people.
...
A long time ago I used to believe that a lot of these people were just talking over my head, their discourse too lofty for a regular guy like myself. But that isn't true. They're just stupid.
