Barry in Iraq ...

A White House slideshow of the President in Iraq via Mr. Aravosis.

If ya got nothing to hide ...

Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era. A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to "go nuclear" over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public. The source says these threats are the principal reason for the Obama administration’s abrupt pullback last week from a commitment to release some of the documents. A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward. [my ems]

...

What happened to "accountability"? The Republicans, the Party of Cover-up.

Great thanks to Maru for the link.

This ...

Is gonna save GM? Olbermann called it right, paraphrasing: It's great to zip around through city traffic ... until you're squashed like a grape. The Misfit thinks similarly.

Wasn't the Segway supposed to "change the world"? What happened?

Speaking truth ...

To the boil on the ass of America. Somebody with a brain got past Rush Lintball's screeners and gave the gasbag what for:

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Rush, listen, I voted Republican, and I didn't -- really didn't want to see Obama get in office. But, you know, Rush, you're one reason to blame for this election, for the Republicans losing.

First of all, you kept harping about voting for Hillary. The second big issue is the -- was the torture issue. I'm a veteran. We're not supposed to be torturing these people. This is not Nazi Germany, Red China, or North Korea. There's other ways of interrogating people, and you kept harping about it -- "It's OK," or "It's not really torture." And it was just more than waterboarding. Some of these prisoners were killed under torture.

And it just -- it was crazy for you to keep going on and on like Levin and Hannity and Hewitt. It's like you're all brainwashed.

And my last comment is, no matter what Obama does, you will still criticize him because I believe you're brainwashed. You're just -- and I hate to say it -- but I think you're a brainwashed Nazi. Anyone who could believe in torture just has got to be - there's got to be something wrong with them. His only defense against the caller is to say he's not a Republican... [my ems]

Rush probably had to drop 2 Oxycontin after that. Heh ...

What a Killer Was Watching

Did a steady diet of right-wing radio and Glenn Beck influence Richard Poplawski, the man who allegedly murdered three Pittsburgh cops? Max Blumenthal reports.

Shorter: Yes.

On April 6, two days after the 22-year-old Richard Poplawski allegedly murdered three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a radio host named Alex Jones settled in before a microphone in his studio in Austin, Texas to do some damage control. “The mainstream media has certainly enjoyed tying me into this story,” Jones complained. “They’re attacking me and saying I’m delusional and there’s no New World Order… The Second Amendment, what the country’s founded on—it’s all my fault!”

Poplawski was a neo-Nazi wannabe who railed against blacks, Jews, “Zionists,” and gun control. And like many members of the far-right fringe, he allegedly visited Jones’ Web sites and posted alarming reports by Jones’ writers on the white supremacist message board, Stormfront. (Poplawski’s posts are here (no link from me - G), authored under the handle, “Braced For Fate.”) While Alex Jones generally avoids overt racism, he has found an eager audience on Stormfront by conjuring dark visions of an impending New World Order, claiming FEMA is secretly building a national concentration camp network, and announcing that President Barack Obama has planned mass gun seizures on his way to establishing a leftist dictatorship. “Remember, the first step in establishing a dictatorship is to disarm the citizens,” warned a March 13 commentary on Jones’ website, Prison Planet.

But hysterical warnings of government gun grabs and a socialist takeover of the U.S. are no longer the sole proprietary interest of fringe players like Jones. In the Obama era, Jones’ conspiracy theories have graduated to primetime on Fox News. And radicals like Poplawski are tuning in. [...]

'Radicals' seems to be shorthand for 'unhinged right-wing loonies with guns who just need a little push'. And the 'tard gasbags are there to give it to 'em.

...Jones interrupted a live broadcast by Fox News host Geraldo Rivera (Rivera was reporting at the time on “the secret world of restroom gay sex”)...

I'm glad Geraldo has found his niche...

David Neiwert, a veteran reporter on right-wing militia movements and author of the forthcoming book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, explained that by co-opting conspiratorial rhetoric from the farthest shores of the right, mainstream conservative talkers can inflame the passions of paranoiacs like Poplawski to a dangerous degree. “It’s always been a problem when major league demagogues start promulgating false information for political gain,” Neiwert told me. “What it does is unhinge fringe players from reality and dislodges them even further. When someone like Poplawski hears Glenn Beck touting One World Government and they’re gonna take your gun theories, they believe then that it must be true. And that’s when they really become crazy.”

So where was all this talk of 're-education camps' and 'staging crises to impose martial law' and other stuff like that during the Bush years?

Why, on lefty blogs like this one, of course.

Here's the difference:

If you go back through the 12,000+ posts of the Brain, no links, heh, you will find a lot of stuff on these subjects, but other than some 'pitchforks and scythes' type metaphorical calls to action, you will not find one instance of where we actually called for armed insurrection against Bush, or with an eye towards launching the unhinged to violence against wingnuts-at-large. We called for Bush's and others' deaths many times, but only after due process of law. I think me 'n Fixer challenged everybody on the right to fistfights many times. There weren't any takers.

Of course there are fringe lefty loonies too, like PETA and Earth First, but I haven't heard of a Liberal going 'round the bend and shooting up right-wingers on the advice of lefty gasbags. We did advise folks to keep their weapons clean and their powder dry to protect themselves.

The far-right gasbags have kicked it up a notch into very dangerous territory. Freedom of speech does not permit shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater unless it's on fire and what they're doing is exactly that. People are already being killed by the fringe moron 'tards who believe the lies they tell.

The Repugs are out on their ass, and the shoe's on the other foot now. They're whiny-ass sore losers and will do anything, and I mean anything, to try and regain power by means outside the electoral process which threw their flunkies out, including inciting and fomenting deadly violence against those who disagree with their crap. They will disavow it and say they're not to blame for what their misguided and crazy followers do, but they are.

Someone, somehow, has to shut these bastards up before they burn this country down and get more people killed. In the meantime, keep your weapons clean and your powder dry like never before. Truth and reason are powerful things, but they ain't shit in a gunfight.

Update:

Grandpa Eddie's got a much better post on this than I could ever write.

The Torture Report

Andrew Sullivan, a gay Repug whom I respect because he may have seen the light. And unlike many Repugs, he admits it:

It's been another huge day of data-gathering in the years-long bid to get to the bottom of the secret and illegal torture program set up by Bush and Cheney as their central tool in the war on Jihadist terrorism. You can download the leaked - and devastating International Committee of the Red Cross report here. You can read about the chilling similarities between the Bush-Cheney techniques and those used by the Soviet gulag here. You can read more details of how doctors were implicated in monitoring and measuring the torture of human beings here. If you need confirmation that this new data is real and dispositive, then go read the partisan right blogs. Their total radio silence tells you something.

When the Repugs are quiet about anything, they're guilty as sin and know it and hope you don't think about it. When it suits them they understand TR's "speak softly". Most of the time they just "carry a big stick" at high volume, even if their 'stick' has the political and ideological equivalent of cotton candy wrapped around it. Seemingly tasty and filling, but no nutritional value and it's bad for you.

Just as a 'cotton candy' afterthought, my old friend Dave is an electrician. I saw him once prepare to do some work under a house in a very low crawl space that had about fifty years' worth of spiderwebs and their unappetizing content. He took a stick and painstakingly rolled up all the spiderwebs around it. He emerged from the crawl space and handed it to me with a big grin, "Here, have some bug-flavored cotton candy!". As yucky a treat as I've ever been offered. Fits what the Repugs are up to to a metaphorical T.

Sugar ain't the reason ...

Your kids are bouncing off the walls like the flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz, it's the rocket fuel:

...

My friend was really upset about this.

I'm upset that if you pull this shit in China you get executed.

What are the consequences here?

There are no consequences here. Do you think Pfizer will face any consequences in the U.S. for testing drugs on unwitting Africans?

A group of Nigerian families has sued the drugs giant Pfizer following the deaths of 11 children and injury to others who are said to have taken part in tests of a drug to treat meningitis.

...

The lawsuit, filed in a US District Court on Wednesday, seeks unspecified damages on behalf of 30 children who took part in trials in Kano, in northern Nigeria.

The suit alleges that the drug company did not obtain consent and did not explain that the proposed treatment was experimental.

...

They'll settle with the families for a pittance (for Pfizer, more than these poor people will see in ten lifetimes) and will be off the hook for what basically amounts to premeditated murder.

In the United States, only the average person is held accountable for their actions. If you have money, or are a big corporation, laws are merely a speed bump on the road to big profits.

Of Dogs and Cats ...

I saw this some years ago and Ms. Manitoba dug it up the other day. Makes me giggle each time. Heh ...

Quote of the Day

Digby:

...

The problem is that conservatism has shot its wad and there's nothing left. It's not a matter of individuals; it's a matter of philosophy. No matter who they trot out to mouth their tired old saws and boring mantras, nobody wants to hear it.

...

Presidentialism ...

This post stays on top today - G

Watching Euronews this weekend, I got to see a lot of our President speaking. I must say, it's nice to have someone who doesn't embarrass us at every turn. Speaking with my cousin in Germany confirmed many in Europe like him and are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt regarding our foreign policy. He's saying the right things.

While I have great reservations about his Wall St. resurrection plan (more of the same to me), I do admire his vision in the international arena. His policy toward Iran, popular in Europe, is designed to get the Persians talking to us in an atmosphere of mutual respect. There is a reason our puppet, the Shah, was run out of there 30 years ago (read up on the history of the area) and a people who've been a civilization 5000 years before anyone realized there were two more continents to the west do not respond to threats from 'upstarts'. Something the Chimp and the neocons never understood. It's nice to see diplomacy given a real chance and hopefully, dialogue with Iran will ratchet down some of the tensions in the area.

His handling of the North Korean launch, though, does nothing to change the status quo in that region. While I understand quite well the fine line one must walk on the peninsula (close to a million men under arms on the north side of the DMZ and an insane leader who would think nothing of sending them south), Obama must find a way to break the 50 year cycle of demands and saber rattling while the North Korean people slowly die. Shoulda shot the thing down (as opposed to blowing it up on the pad; on North Korean soil - big difference in message), unless that weapons system doesn't work quite as well as the Bush Pentagon said it did. Diplomacy, in this case, probably won't work (though the South Koreans are very inclined to wait the Kim regime out though it might seriously bite them in the ass anyway) as there are already forces aligned to block any more sanctions. It seems Obama did the best he could in that sticky situation.

In all, I'm impressed with our President on this trip. He made a good start on rebuilding the American brand and repairing the damage the Republicans did to our international relations. Now, if he'd only realize his economic team is sleeping with the enemy ...

Gates Announces End To Production Of F-22

Think Progress

The decision is welcome on two fronts. First, the F-22 contributes little to U.S. national security. It has not flown a single mission in the Iraq or Afghanistan campaigns. Further, as the Center for American Progress’s Larry Korb explained in 2005, the F-22 was designed to address threats that the U.S. last faced during the cold war:

The F/A-22 Raptor is the most unnecessary weapon system being built by the Pentagon. In fact, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld tried to do away with it in the summer of 2002 but backed off when his Air Force secretary threatened to resign over the issue. It was originally designed to achieve air superiority over Soviet fighter jets, which will never be built.

I think most of the fixed-wing aircraft combat usage in Afghanistan and Iraq these days is for Close Air Support (CAS). The planes for that are not first-line strike fighters of course, but they still fly too high and too fast to be very discerning about their targets. I propose a retro alternative that can fly low enough and slow enough that the pilot can tell a war party from a wedding party. For a buncha guys only with weapons to be a wedding party, it would have to in a pretty secure and liberated part of the country!

Empty yer Kalashnikov one last time at this, Osama. It will look good in Paradise if yer heater is still smokin' when you arrive. Kiss yer ass goodbye, but be sure to get yer lips off yer ass before you get there. That wouldn't look good at all. Heh.

Maybe you can pick yer nose with the tailhook too.

Douglas Skyraider - "A propeller-driven anachronism"

Speaking on behalf of anachronisms everywhere, just, sighhhh...

Italy muzzled scientist who foresaw earthquake

Raw Story

A powerful earthquake tore through central Italy on Monday killing more than 90 people as Renaissance buildings in a historic town were reduced to rubble.

We're not unfamiliar with earthquakes out here in California. I shudder to think of all the unreinforced masonry there must be in a medieval Italian town, or how you would go about earthquake-retrofitting it without destroying it. We have been reinforcing buildings out here since the Long Beach earthquake of 1933, and we don't have very many brick homes for the same reason. Frame houses will shake around a lot, but they'll stay standing even if they are damaged, and if one does fall on you, you stand a better chance of surviving than if tons of masonry fall on you.

That said, my heart goes out to the affected folks over there.

Probably the most research on earthquakes in California is in how to predict them. See the Parkfield earthquake experiment just for one. It looks like this is coming along OK.

The quake hadn't been completely unexpected. Italy muzzled a scientist who foresaw it.

"Vans with loudspeakers had driven around the town a month ago telling locals to evacuate their houses after seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani predicted a large quake was on the way, prompting the mayor's anger," Gavin Jones reports for Reuters.

Jones adds, "Giuliani, who based his forecast on concentrations of radon gas around seismically active areas, was reported to police for 'spreading alarm' and was forced to remove his findings from the Internet."

The Telegraph reports he also "posted a video on YouTube in which he said a build-up of radon gas around the seismically active area suggested a major earthquake was imminent."

I am glad Mr. (Dr.?) Giuliani was able to foresee the event, but I think the science of earthquake prediction is not yet at the point of being able to give practical timely warning. It's not his fault that his warning was considerably previous, he tried to do good.

The problem is with human nature. To most people, I think, 'imminent' means 'in the next ten minutes'. They'll evacuate buildings and hang around with their day on hold for maybe an hour or two, then the prediction is called hogwash and it's back to business as usual. Thirty days is an eternity.

So's a week. I offer as example the fact that the attack on Pearl Harbor was predicted to happen on or about November 31, and the military in Hawai'i was on full alert for several days around that time frame. By the time the attack actually came on December 7, all hands had stood down and were caught completely by surprise.

Obviously, predicting an earthquake thirty days out is useless, good intentions notwithstanding. A day in advance might be too much. Research must continue until the authorities can say with great finality, "GET OUT NOW!". Until that day...

In other words, if you are going to run in circles, scream and shout "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!", there had damn well better be pieces of it on the ground you can point to or people will think you're a quack, however correct your prediction turns out to have been later.

Alternatively, of course, the day may come when an accurate prediction will be possible several days out and we can mark our calendars. Until that day...

Just as an aside, livestock, pets, and other animals seem to be pretty good at sensing imminent earthquakes, though not good enough that dumb ol' humans can pick up on what they're saying unless they're abnormally alert. Gummint scientists, in their wisdom, deny that any such of an unscientific thing could possibly occur, even though it's been goin' on since before science. Us dumbass country f**ks have animals we can watch, but I guess city folks only have pigeons. Heh.

Since seismology and vulcanology are closely related and intertwined, whatever we do, we must not let Governor Jindal hear about earthquake research lest he deem it 'liberal pork' or 'anti-christian' or something equally ludicrous!

Repugs: effectively cornered within just Dixie

P.M. Carpenter comes up with some odd conclusions, but some of his piece is spot on:

You know the right is in big, big trouble when even David Horowitz, one of the movement's leading intellectual charlatans and classic paranoids, begins to realize that so many around him are just plain nuts.

Yeah, thinkin' everybody's crazy but you is a symptom of something. Heh.

If the GOP leaves its fantastical condition untreated -- which, it appears, it is likely to do -- then the party's prognosis is likely terminal. Perhaps in 30 years, 40 years, the general electorate will forget what the "tenets of Reaganism" inflicted on this nation and once again become seducible. But I'm skeptical that the GOP can survive in the wilderness that long; it is already effectively cornered within just Dixie.

Watch it! A rabid, red-eyed beast frothing at the mouth is at its most dangerous when cornered. I think we are seeing signs of their desperation and they're liable to do anything. Anything, even if it brings our nation down.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Ohio Man Charged With Drunk Driving On Motorized Bar Stool
However, GM has expressed interest in vehicle.

Chinese Beer Surpasses Bud Light as World’s Best-Selling
American century officially over.

The Chinese have beer as good as Bud Light? I didn't even know they had horses!

Big Bank Stress Test Results Due Shortly
Just before autopsy reports.

Cyber Spies Hack Into Systems Worldwide, Steal Everything
There is nothing left.

Ho hum, yawn...

Gregory: will no one bash Obama but me?

The Bobblespeak Translations translates yesterday's Press The Meat for us.

First, Dave Gregory interviews Fritz Henderson, replacement CEO at GM:

Gregory: look the reality is Obama is a fascist - now say it!!!

Henderson: Obama told me not to

Gregory: how can you and I work together to destroy the unions?

Henderson: see me in the green room

Gregory: people think GM cars totally suck

Henderson: that's true

Gregory: how do you win consumers back?

Henderson: two words: big fins

Gregory: you are the worst spokesman ever

Henderson: yeah I know

And later during the panel discussion:

Gregory: Bibi says the messianic crazy people should not have nukes

Kay: well Bush is out of office

Gregory: How do we handle a girl named Israel?

Gerson: Weaponization is easy - comedy is hard

Dave: I do it week after week

Gregory: Obama has a weird approach to foreigners - he listens to them instead of killing them

Gerson: fuck him

Rogers: it's almost as if after Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II we decided to elect a man without dementia or psycho-sexual hangups

Gerson: jesus Dave even I think you're in the tank for the GOP - Obama had to take on big business

Gregory: will no one bash Obama but me??

Rogers: Obama is doing the right thing

Kay: sorry dancin' dave i think Obama is right here

Gregory: [ weeps openly ]

Gregory: today we celebrate two rites of spring - the cherry blossom festival and Karl Rove and I will interpret Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps on the White House Oval - don't miss it!!

Get a tan first, Dave. Yer liable to blind someone.

More.

Cape Breton Island Celtic Music Blogging

A Celtic tune done in the Cape Breton Island style. Lovely.

The video for the single, "The Drunken Piper", featuring the vocal stylings of Cookie Rankin. From Natalie MacMaster's 1996 release, "No Boundaries".

I know I must yank my head back south of the border sometime, but this is soooo much fun...

Cookie Rankin & Natalie MacMaster ~ The Drunken Piper

Thanks to lbrankinfiles, Canada.

Sunday Crazy Frog First Lady Music Blogging

I'm on a roll today! A 'French' roll. Heh.

Mme. Sarkozy has a nice new Gibson 'Legend' guitar now, too, courtesy of Mme. Obama. Expensive and worth every dime to post-Bush international relations with our first ally.

Carla Bruni ~ L'amour

Thanks to Traumwetter, Germany.

Sunday Crazy Quebecker Really Alt.country Music Blogging, Eh?

I've been a fan of these Canuckistanian gals since I can remember. This is a very pretty song.

Kate & Anna McGarrigle ~ Petite Annonce Amoureuse

Thanks to limeyloop.

Pope, extra ribbed

Ooh! Does he come in bright colors and flavors too? Easy-opening wrappers?

Mark Morford with a column on the unconscionable statement by The Wrongly-Accused-Of-Being-Infallible Old Fart that condoms make AIDS worse. Worth a read, but I'll distill it down to this:

[...] Perhaps we should look at it differently, and use Benedict as our grand reminder that the general Rule of Divinity still holds true: the more you claim to be some sort of inviolable authority on things sacred and holy, the less you are to be trusted and the more we should all hope and pray for your urgent obsoletion. Simple enough?

Yep.

Sirota on drugs

Hmmmm. Maybe the title of this post didn't come out exactly right...

David Sirota on The War On Some Drugs in the wake of Secretary Clinton's honest and astonishing and astonishing in its honesty statement about who's partly to blame for the real Drug War in Mexico.

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Americans spend about $9 billion a year on Mexican pot.

Add that to the roughly $36 billion worth of domestically produced weed, and cannabis has become one of the continent's biggest cash crops. As any mob movie illustrates, mixing such "insatiable" demand for a product with statutes outlawing said product guarantees the emergence of a violent black market — in this case, one in which Mexican drug cartels reap 62 percent of their profits from U.S. marijuana sales.

That last stat, provided by the White House drug czar, is the silver lining. Every American concerned about Mexico's security problems should be thankful that the cartels are so dependent on marijuana, and not a genuinely hazardous substance like heroin. Why? Because that means through pot legalization, we can bring the marijuana trade out of the shadows and into the safety of the regulated economy, consequently eliminating the black market the cartels rely on. And here's the best part: We can do so without fearing any more negative consequences than we already tolerate in our keg-party culture.

Though President Obama childishly laughed at a question about legalization during his recent town hall meeting, his government implicitly admits that marijuana is safer than light beer. Indeed, as federal agencies acknowledge alcohol's key role in deadly illnesses and domestic violence, their latest anti-pot fear mongering is an ad campaign insisting — I kid you not — that marijuana is dangerous because it makes people zone out on their couches and diminishes video gaming skills.

(This is your government on drugs: Cirrhosis and angry tank-topped lushes beating their wives are more acceptable risks than stoners sitting in their basements ineptly playing Halo ... any questions?).

This entirely leaves out the question of whom would you rather share the highway with - a guy blowin' a .3 who has to close both eyes to get an idea of where he's going, or a stoner who wants to sit there an extra second or two to make sure the light is really green and not just trying to fool him?

Pleae read the rest.