Notable quote:
"...get back to work and save our country from those cock sucking Republicans!"
"...get back to work and save our country from those cock sucking Republicans!"
BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraqi authorities have asked for a US congressman to leave the country after he called for Baghdad to repay part of the money spent by Washington since the 2003 invasion, a spokesman said on Saturday.
Pakistani Intelligence Announces Its Full Cooperation With U.S. Forces During Upcoming Top Secret June 12 Drone Strike On Al-Qaeda At 5:23 A.M. Near Small Town Of Razmani In North Waziristan
In addition, Pasha thanked American CIA operative Aban Changwani, who he said has been working undercover for quite some time. Pasha confirmed that because Changwani had grown a beard to blend in with al-Qaeda members, he more than likely looked different than the picture currently being shown to reporters.
Added Pasha, "We've also changed the code words we use with the Americans, which is vital to our overall communications strategy."
Specifically, he explained unprompted, Tango, Thunderclap, Pinnacle, Bourbon, Serum, Flinch, Rotary, Wigwam, Crimson, Notebook, and Cask have been replaced by Backpack, Brunette, Icicle, Hallway, Cyclone, Archer, Mustang, Cabin, Velvet, Gambler, Foothold, and Brick.
Pasha said that in addition to U.S. Apache helicopters circling Razmani to prevent the escape of any terrorist operatives, the ISI would be setting up extensive checkpoints on all roads leading north, south, and west out of the town
NRA Refuses To Comment On Al Qaeda Video Urging Supporters To Exploit Lax U.S. Gun Laws
Why I'm Not Going on a CPAC Cruise to Alaska with Donald Rumsfeld
Emmylou Harris & Red Dirt Boys playing in the royal Theater Carré in Amsterdam, 3 June 2011
Rick Perry Resigns Control Of Texas: God In Charge As of August 6
How do you avoid becoming horribly soiled and tainted, downtrodden and depressed every single day by the relentless onslaught, the endless horrors and bleakness hurled forth by the blood-soaked and desperately panicky mainstream media, inside of which you apparently still writhe and (mostly, sporadically, drunkenly) thrive?
The looming U.S. defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan represent a threat to the political fortunes of America’s neocons — if they get blamed for the disasters. However, if they can hang the failures around President Obama’s neck, the two lost wars might help bring the neocons back to power as early as 2013, writes Robert Parry.
If that trick can be pulled off, the neocons could keep U.S. military in the service of Israel’s Likud hardliners as they confront new dangers from their Arab neighbors and may want help attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The neocons also realize that an Obama electoral loss in 2012 would protect the Pentagon’s budget which otherwise could face at least some modest trimming in a second Obama term. Republican leaders have declared that they would spare the Pentagon from budget cuts even as the GOP proposes slashing key social programs, including Medicare.
The longer the wars can be stretched out the easier it will be to count on the famous historical amnesia of the American voters and fault Obama for the eventual defeats. It will be Obama who “lost Iraq” and “lost Afghanistan.”
That will play into the core Republican theme about Obama’s feckless leadership, failing to straighten out the economy and ready to accept U.S. decline around the world. Any suggestion that Bush deserves the blame will be met with the talking point, “there you go again, blaming Bush. When will Obama take responsibility for his own failures?”
The stage will be set for another Republican presidential victory in November 2012 – and a return by the neocons to the war rooms of the White House and the Pentagon.
(CBS/AP)
WASHINGTON - U.S. soldiers returning from Afghanistan posted a YouTube video complaining that they had to pay Delta Air Lines $2,800 out of pocket to check extra bags, prompting an onslaught of online comments critical of Delta and at least one boycott effort.
The video went online late Tuesday. By Wednesday afternoon -- nearly 200,000 views later -- Delta had posted a blog message saying it had revised its bag fee policy for troops. The airline had been allowing troops traveling coach class three free bags, but was imposing a $200 fee on a fourth bag. Now Delta -- in a statement attributed to a company social media director -- says fourth bags will be free.
A military spokeswoman told CBS affiliate WGCL any extra baggage fees assessed by an airline will be reimbursed by the government, depending on the troops' orders.
Army officials said Wednesday they were trying to identify the soldiers in the video and their unit. One sergeant in the video said the unit was returning from Afghanistan to Fort Polk in Louisiana.
But some troops told WGCL that the soldiers will be in hot water when their superiors find out about the YouTube clip.
The Palin-Bachmann Fight We've All Been Waiting For
Oh, the innocent days of July 2007, when a darling of the religious right could not only weather a scandal where he got fucked by multiple hookers over the course of years, including, allegedly, while wearing diapers and being treated like an infant, but he could also be reelected with the full support of his supposedly religious party.
There you have it: Liberal Weiner sent pictures of his hard cock and sexy messages in a game with women far away and, when he was caught, he lied about it to Wolf Blitzer. Conservative Vitter wore a diaper while he was fucked by hookers, probably involving strap-ons in his ass while he was covered in his own shit. Of course, Republicans would condemn the liberal. Vitter was merely enacting the Republican approach to governance.
(Side note to Breitbart: what a skeevy little poseur bitch you are, the Perez Hilton of politics, attempting for even a moment to appear noble by holding back the photo of Weiner's dick. But, of course, you were showing it off to anyone who wanted to see it because that makes you so much cooler and powerful. Man, Weiner may have fucked up in showing off his penis, but you're the one who sucks 'em.)
10 Reasons Andrew Breitbart Should Apologize (Or Just Shut Up and Go Away)
It's not uncommon for air travel passengers to complain about airlines' baggage policies and treatment of customers, but when it's members of the U.S. military coming home from Afghanistan raising complaints about unfair rules, the grievances tend to be amplified.
Staff Sgts. Fred Hilliker and Robert O’Hair made a video* while on a Delta flight from BWI, where they had a connection on their way home from Afghanistan to Arizona. In the video, they say that despite a contract between airline carriers and the military that says military personnel coming home will not be charged for baggage, the two and their colleagues were each subjected to a $200 extra bag fee. The soldiers in the unit paid out of pocket a total of $2,800 in extra baggage fees for their fourth bag of equipment.
"What was that fourth bag for you?" O'Hair asks.
"For me, it was a weapons case," Hilliker responds, "holding my M-4, a grenade launcher and a 9mm, the tools I used to protect myself and the Afghan citizens while I was deployed in the country."
It seems Palin’s little junket has hit a fatal snag, as did any shred of respect for her across the pond. Interesting how the British are sounding more and more like us now. Via The Guardian:
This is what Palin told Christina Lamb in the Sunday Times:
“I am going to Sudan in July and hope to stop in England on the way. I am just hoping Mrs Thatcher is well enough to see me as I so admire her.”
Beg pahdon, deah, but a Thatcher ally has pulled the welcome mat out from under you:
“Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts.”
If I may quote from my earlier post, how lovely, just like home! No wonder the British are our besties! She really should stick to her ClusterFox telly appearances, things have gone so tickety-boo for her there.
The Department of Homeland Security has stepped back for the past two years from conducting its own intelligence and analysis of home-grown extremism, according to current and former department officials, even though law enforcement and civil rights experts have warned of rising extremist threats.
The decision to reduce the department’s role was provoked by conservative criticism of an intelligence report on “Rightwing Extremism” issued four months into the Obama administration, the officials said. The report warned that the poor economy and Obama’s election could stir “violent radicalization,” but it was pilloried as an attack on conservative ideologies, including opponents of abortion and immigration.
What does it mean that the US Boat to Gaza is a quarter Jewish? Maybe it means that the Israeli authorities will have some compunction about shooting up our boat. After all, isn't the official story of Zionism all about making a "safe harbor" for Jews in Palestine? We're not trying to make aliyah. We just want to visit. Should we be shot for trying to do so? Wouldn't it be a mitzvah to let us pass unharmed?
2. The Actual Big Story
(Found poem from verbatim headlines from the front of Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism site)
Weiner admits he sent lewd picture; won't resign
Breitbart takes over Anthony Weiner news conference
Big Govt publisher challenges media to name one lie he has told or reported
Weiner: "I apologize to Andrew Breitbart"
Blitzer: "Breitbart vindicated"
Slate: "When he said, 'I apologize to Andrew Breitbart,' I smelled a lie"
CNN anchors talk through Breitbart’s entire appearance at Weiner presser
A seminal day for new media
Order Breitbart's book
(Note: No links provided. Fuck everyone involved in this godforsaken story.)
The world's largest submarine rescue exercise, involving 24 nations and 2,000 people, is under way off the coast of Spain.
For the first time ever, a Russian submarine is taking part in the exercise, carrying out test dockings with Nato rescue vehicles.
...
Report: Impacts of Republican Medicaid Cuts in California's 4th Congressional District
This analysis provides information on the impact of the Republican Medicaid proposals in the 4th Congressional District of California, which is represented by Rep. Tom McClintock. Currently, 88,000 individuals in the district receive health care coverage under Medicaid.
In the 4th congressional district in California, which Rep. Tom McClintock represents, these provisions could:
- Reduce coverage for 16,400 dual eligible seniors and individuals with disabilities who rely on Medicaid to supplement their Medicare coverage or pay their Medicare cost sharing.
- Jeopardize nursing home care for 1,400 whose expenses are paid by Medicaid.
- Impair the health care of 47,000 children, including 1,800 newborns each year, who receive coverage under Medicaid.
- Cut payments to hospitals for 14,000 emergency room visits paid for by Medicaid each year.
- Cut payments to hospitals for 4,800 inpatient visits paid for by Medicaid each year.
- Reduce jobs and hurt economic growth by eliminating $1.2 billion in Medicaid spending.
Patriot is a word much abused in today's America. The simplest definition of patriot is one who vigorously supports his country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors. Yet, many who wave the flag, associate the nation with a superstition (one nation, under God), support every war, approve laws dubious at best if not unconstitutional (e.g., The Patriot Act) render patriotism unattractive. Today, many would say, If that's patriotism, count me out.
There are some things about this country that many of today's flag-waving, USA USA, We're # 1 patriots don't want to learn, think about or acknowledge. Many Americans, perhaps a majority, know little about some extraordinary realities of the nation's history. I'll give you one example. The example I have in mind reflects a fact about one entire section of the country, the Southern states. I believe the situation, what it reflects and how it is viewed today shows that there is profound ignorance about the evil nature of a good proportion of the American people who lived at that time.
Today, patriots in the south honor those who fought for slavery. There are parades in their honor. Statues line a main avenue in Richmond. Robert E. Lee, who turned against his country to lead a rebellion, is judged a hero by most people throughout the present souther states. It's mind-boggling and infamous.
Who better to put the nature of the southern (white) people then and their apologists today in perspective than Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), who fought valiantly as a Colonel in the Army of the Republic. In his Decoration Day Oration in 1882, he said:
... in the South, the negro toiled unpaid, and mothers wept while babes were sold, and at the auction-block husbands and wives speechlessly looked the last good-bye. Fugitives, lighted by the Northern Star, sought liberty on English soil, and were, by Northern men, thrust back to whip and chain. The great statesmen, the successful politicians, announced that law had compromised with crime, that justice had been bribed, and that time had barred appeal. A race was left without a right, without a hope. The future had no dawn, no star -- nothing but ignorance and fear, nothing but work and want. This was the conclusion of the statesmen, the philosophy of the politicians -- of constitutional expounders: -- this was decided by courts and ratified by the Nation...Ours appeared to be the most prosperous of Nations. But it was only appearance. The statesmen and the politicians were deceived. Real victories can be won only for the Right; The triumph of justice is the only Peace. Such is the nature of things. He who enslaves another cannot be free. He who attacks the right, assaults himself. The mistake our fathers made had not been corrected. The foundations of the Republic were insecure. The great dome of the temple was clad in the light of prosperity, but the corner-stones were crumbling. Four millions of human beings were enslaved. Party cries had been mistaken for principles -- partisanship for patriotism -- success for justice.
But Pity pointed to the scarred and bleeding backs of slaves; Mercy heard the sobs of mothers raft of babes, and justice held aloft the scales, in which one drop of blood shed by a master's lash, outweighed a Nation's gold. There were a few men, a few women, who had the courage to attack this monstrous crime. They found it entrenched in constitutions, statutes, and decisions -- barricaded and bastioned by every department and by every party. Politicians were its servants, statesmen its attorneys, judges its menials, presidents its puppets, and upon its cruel altar had been sacrificed our country's honor. It was the crime of the Nation -- of the whole country -- North and South responsible alike.
Nicholas Kristof had quite an interesting rumination imagining just what the ideal American society should look like according to the values of ultra-patriotic Tea-Partiers. Our country should have the lowest tax burdens of any major country: fewer than two percent of the people would ever pay any taxes. Government would be so limited that burdensome regulations could never kill jobs. Our American rightwing Eden would embrace traditional religious values and a conservative sensibility, where school prayer is mandatory, same-sex marriage is unthinkable, and criminals are never coddled.
Our economy policies would make a strong military, the nation’s most respected institution, the number-one budget priority, and politicians would defer to the advice of military generals. Citizens would be deeply patriotic, and nobody would ever burn the flag. Sounds like the perfect society according to the opinions of Tea Party Republicans and their champions, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, etc. Right?
The problem is, this Republican Utopia already exists.
It’s Pakistan.
Stupid Fucking Sarah Palin Quotes You Didn't Hear About
Sarah should be feeling more than
Just a little bit skittish
Because he was warning Americans
Not (as she claims) the British.
Whenever there's an easy answer that
She manages to botch, a
Quick defensive move is defensively
Whining it was a "gotcha."
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum formally launched his campaign for president Monday, offering himself as a tested leader with the "courage to fight for freedom . . . to fight for America" against the power of an expanding social-welfare state.
...
Over the course of roughly three decades, Alvin has compiled one of the great, if underappreciated, California songbooks, cataloging the people and places most overlook or choose to ignore.
His is not the confectionary California of endless summers and Hollywood glitter or the kooky capital of New Age seekers and sunbaked hedonists. Alvin sings of life on the margins and between the cracks, of farm workers and illegal immigrants, of meth heads and lost souls and places like Bellflower, Fontana, the High Sierra and the 605 Freeway.
He sings in a throaty rumble of love and loss and ghosts of things past. California natives, Alvin believes, suffer an odd kind of nostalgia that comes when talk of old times refers not to generations ago but a period only a few years back. “By the time you’re 20, you’re 40 in the sense of waking up in the morning and thinking, Let’s go see the orange groves. But they’re not there anymore,” he says. “They’re just gone.”
Alvin, 55, has never been an overtly political singer, in the sense of writing protest songs or lending his name to a cause. But he is an acute observer of politics—especially California politics—and with the Golden State in seemingly perpetual crisis, with high unemployment, meat-cleaver budget cuts and a government paralyzed by partisanship, he suggests the state, as we know it, may be headed the way of those orange groves. Listen closely, and you might hear it in a song.
Red flames are growing
At the top of the hill
If the fire don’t get ya
Well, you know the
mudslide will
For all the darkness, that resilience shows through in Alvin’s music. In “Dry River,” the ode to a trench, he sings hopefully of the water returning and the blossoms blooming. It’s the kind of defiant optimism that marks a true Californian—and the stuff that keeps dreams from dying.
California’s burning
No one knows when this will end
Well, what that fire burns down, boys,
We’ll just build it back again
The great Dave Alvin with Cindy Cashdollar and Christy McWilson at Eddie's Attic. Feb 25, 2010
Eating dirt can be good for the belly, researchers find
The new Nielsen numbers show that "The Daily Show" averaged 2.3 million viewers, beating every program on Fox except Bill O'Reilly's average of 2.8 million. "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" beat all other cable and broadcast programming in a number of categories, including having the most affluent viewers and the most active web-sties.
“HE WAS RIDING TO WARN SAMUEL ADAMS THAT THE BRITISH WERE COMING TO CONFISCATE REAL AMERICAN BEER, AND REPLACE IT WITH CASES OF WARM NEWCASTLE BROWN ALE.”
Fox News uses Tina Fey photo for Sarah Palin report
Palin fans attempt to rewrite Paul Revere’s Wikipedia page
The US has been endowed with abundant resources, and there have always been a more than sufficient supply of psychopaths of the first intellectual grade to supply corporate suites and their subsidiary, the Congress. Why is there now a downgrade to the dumb ones, like the lowering of standards for military recruits to deal with a shortage of cannon fodder?
It is no secret that the Koch brothers and others of the super-rich seem to have undertaken a final push to consolidate control through the conversion of a marginally democratic to an essentially fascist state; extreme right-wing, authoritarian, and demagogic. This kind of government is ideal for control of a populace by the moneyed elite. To carry this out requires the employment of many ‘kept’ politicians to excite and misdirect scared and angry – and ignorant – voters. Lest the citizenry realize who stole their money and storm their castles with torches, the rapacious elite need politicians who will carry out the work of re-directing anger at teachers, or labor unions, or the poor. I can only conclude that the people who now own the country couldn’t find any first-rate psychopaths to carry out their work. Or maybe the smart ones were all occupied. So they had to go to second-stringers, people who could actually believe what they were told to say.
We are a country who has become second-best, even in the quality of our psychopaths.
French Riot Police Up in Arms Over Ban on Drinking on the Job
Say cracking heads no fun while sober.
U.S. Surpasses France for First Time in Wine Consumption
Still trails in soft cheese, frogs, snails.
Study: New Pill Could Erase Painful Memories
Unfortunately, your spouse will remind you.
Obama, Boehner Will Play Golf Together June 18
After cage fight falls through.
Alfredo Speranzoni and Massimo Plati. Trip to Auschwitz by bike, Kawasaki ZRX 1200 R and Honda CB 1300 F, january 27 2010 day of memory. With electrically heated clothing by Klan srl.
Kissinger mulling over FIFA offer