Bookmark this page |
Tag to del.icio.us
| Add to Technorati Favorites
|
Our discussion forum is open for business. Come say hello. |
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Osama alive: Bush's best asset
By Pamela Leavey:Absolutely astounding. But, yet not at all surprising to hear that BushCo botched another opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden:
We know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite....Even some of the BushCo apologists in the blogosphere are more than a little ticked to read this piece on Faux News from Col. David Hunt. Kevin pegged it on American Street: “Letting Osama Live could be Bush’s favorite pastime.”
Monday, October 29, 2007
Republicans: legacy of failure
By VictorM: If you think that things are screwed up only because George Bush is an idiot, not because of conservative politics, you better think again. Let's take a little trip down memory lane, courtesy of Ken Layne:After just a year in office, the Reagan/Bush administration brought unemployment up to an astonishing 11% while interest rates topped 21%. More than 40 U.S. banks had collapsed by mid-1982, another post-Great Depression record. The steel and automobile industries began a decline from which they would never recover, and more than 17,000 U.S. businesses failed. Massive cuts in social services dumped more than a million homeless people on the streets, from poor people who lost their housing when HUD’s budget was slashed by two-thirds to the hopeless armies of the crazy forced out of federally-funded mental institutions.So no, our current problems aren't just because of the idiot president and the jerks he surrounds himself with. It's because conservative politics believes that a select few should get all the riches and all the power, and the rest of us are just are pawns to be used as needed. If you're not a millionaire and you vote Republican, you're either an idiot or you hate people who are not like yourself.
Something I didn't know about hybrids
By Rebecca Claren:Hybrids aren't necessarily the most environmentally friendly car on the market, says Jim Kliesch of Greenercars.org...
Part of the hybrids' green allure is that when they idle in traffic or at a stoplight, the battery kicks in and shuts down the polluting gas engine. Even so, several cars on the market, such as the Honda Accord and Volkswagen's Beetle and Rabbit, emit less than hybrids. In fact, Honda's nonhybrid Civic GX (it's natural-gas powered) tops Greencars.org's "Greenest Vehicles of 2007."
Some hybrids don't deserve any kind of green bragging rights. The Lexus RX SUV is designed not for fuel efficiency but for speed and power, and gets an average 30 mpg. That's not bad for an SUV but a host of nonhybrid cars get better gas mileage. So why do hybrid owners deserve tax credits and access to high-occupancy lanes? Such tax credits are window dressing that allows politicians to appear as if they're doing something to help the environment, says Jamie Kitman, the New York bureau chief for Automobile magazine. Congress hasn't increased the federal mileage standard in new trucks and cars since 1985. While the Senate has proposed requiring new automobiles to deliver 35 mpg by 2020, the effort is being derailed not only by Detroit's Big Three but by Prius-maker Toyota, the company that claims to be "moving America forward."
In reality, the cheapest and simplest way to cut carbon emissions is with small, lightweight cars that get good gas mileage.
Maybe a fire is just a fire
By Tim Dickinson:What’s wrong with this country that we can’t just have a natural disaster anymore?
What kind of sick people are we that Fox News has linked the Southland firestorm to Al Qaeda, Glenn Beck suggested that this disaster is some sort of divine retribution for those Malibu-ites who “hate America,” while the Huffington Post has seemed all kinds of eager for this to be The Next Katrina — almost rooting on the Santa Anna winds in the dark hope of adding another failed disaster response to the execrable Bush legacy.
Seriously. Take a breath. How did we become this petty and hysterical?...
How far gone are we that we so easily turn a firestorm into a launching pad for our pet political agendas. Let’s put out the flames first before we fight over the ashes.
Meantime, go cleanse yourselves with a donation to the victims.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Republican party: proxies of evil
By VictorM: Over the last decade or so, we have seen the biggest threat to American freedom come from the christian right, a group that Frank Rich has equated to the good Germans. Their activism in support of a brutal and totalitarian approach to implementing their philosophies has been instrumental in the election of George Bush and his pursuit of disastrous policies.Some point to factors suggestion that the love affair is ending:
The phenomenon of theologically conservative Christians plunging into political activism on the right is, historically speaking, something of an anomaly. Most evangelicals shrugged off abortion as a Catholic issue until after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But in the wake of the ban on public-school prayer, the sexual revolution and the exodus to the suburbs that filled the new megachurches, protecting the unborn became the rallying cry of a new movement to uphold the traditional family. Now another confluence of factors is threatening to tear the movement apart. The extraordinary evangelical love affair with Bush has ended, for many, in heartbreak over the Iraq war and what they see as his meager domestic accomplishments. That disappointment, in turn, has sharpened latent divisions within the evangelical world — over the evangelical alliance with the Republican Party, among approaches to ministry and theology, and between the generations.How I would love for this to be true, but I don't see it. If the right amount of money, from the wrong source, makes its way to the right greedy leaders, the flock will follow the chosen flawed leader blindly. It happened before, it could happen again. The only solution is supporting Democratic candidates, even if you don't support them 100%. Any vote for a Democrat is a vote against the evil that is the christian right and their proxies, the Republican party.
Why are right wingers foaming at the mouth?
By DarkSyde, on possible reasons why right wingers are angry people:[C]onservatives these days are true believers, full blown ideologues, and their ideology, consciously or unconsciously is a big part of who they are as a person. That ideology has had its chance and failed catastrophically for all to see. And that failure has come at the hands in some cases of people, organizations, and competing ideologies that the conservatives have, as part of their rigid platform, denounced with every fiber of their being as something akin to evil.
The failure of conservative ideology over the course of the Bush Presidency and the Republican Congress is, for them anyway, public humiliation at the hands of enemies they despise. They feel it as personally as if a childhood rival had given them an atomic snooky on the playground in front of their classmates. THAT might explain the vitriolic, unhinged nature of rightwing anger directed at progressives these days, even in the face of the enormous gains they’ve made.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Don't upset the CEO
By Paul Krugman, on to what extent news coverage is biased by the corporate interest of the parents:[A]t networks other than Fox, there probably aren't memos saying here is how we are going to slant the news today -- at Fox there are, every day. But there's probably this general sort of pressure to go for the views that won't upset the CEO of the firm that controls the network that has a lot of business interests that are best served by one side or the other ... so yes, this is a problem.
Boo!! Be scared
By Bill Maher:At the Republican debate this week, Mike Huckabee said, "Islamofascism is the greatest threat we ever faced." Really? More than the Nazis? And the Russians? And the Redcoats?
In his latest ad, Mitt Romney warns eerily that Muslim jihadists want to establish an Islamic caliphate covering the whole world, including America.
And I thought the people scared of gays and Mexicans were paranoid. Islamic terrorists taking over America? They can barely get across the monkey bars. Our defense budget is 600 billion a year, they're using guns they took off a dead Soviet in 1981 -- I think we can hold Charleston.
We're the most powerful nation on earth with the largest economy and the best military, and we're made to act the fool by a few thousand cave dwellers who still put out their video on VHS.
And that's because over the last seven years, because of the incompetence that goes by the name George Bush, we've become the most insecure, paranoid superpower ever. We don't think we can get anything right anymore. We can't take care of our own citizens after a hurricane, or plan for our wars, or maintain our infrastructure, and our celebrity rehab facilities obviously aren't working at all.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Righting a wrong
By VictorM:The fact that this case was even allowed to get this far is proof of just how much the assholes in this country have a grip on things. That the decision was 4-3 shows we still have too many assholes in places of power but at least the majority decision offers a ray of hope for the sanity of this country:
The Georgia Supreme Court today ended the 10-year prison sentence of a man who was convicted in 2003 of having consensual oral sex with another teenager. The court said the harsh sentence violated the Constitution’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment...Let's get this straight... he was 17 and she was 15... they had oral sex... it was consensual... and there are still enough assholes who think a 10-year sentence is a fair penalty. ASSHOLES!!!
The inmate, Genarlow Wilson, who is now 21, was 17 when he was caught on videotape having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a drug- and alcohol-fueled New Year’s Eve party in 2003.
How do sleep at night?
By Chris Bowers:At this point, if you favor an endless Iraq war, warrant-less spying on American citizens, and denying poor kids health care, why on earth is someone a Democrat? Let me rephrase that, since this goes beyond partisan self-identification: how can you do those three things and sleep at night?
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Colbert: a Republican buffon
By Josh Marshall, on Stephen Colbert "running" for president:[L]ook at this paragraph down into Rasmussen's write-up (italics in the original) ...
Colbert does particularly well with the younger voters most likely to be watching his show and therefore most aware of his myriad presidential-like qualities. In the match-up with Giuliani and Clinton, Colbert draws 28% of likely voters aged 18-29. He draws 31% of that cohort when his foes are Thompson and Clinton. In both match-ups, Colbert has more support with young voters than the GOP candidate.
There's something appropriate in this. Americans in their twenties would prefer a normal person pretending to be a Republican buffoon than the real thing.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune
By Juan Cole:On Sunday, just days after the Turkish Parliament authorized an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish guerrillas ambushed and killed 17 Turkish soldiers inside Turkey. In Karachi, Pakistan, a massive bomb nearly killed U.S.-backed Benazir Bhutto, who was supposed to help stabilize the country. The Bush administration's entire Middle East policy is coming undone -- if it even has a policy left, other than just sticking its fingers in the multiple, and multiplying, holes in the dike...
Like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf. The secular Baath Party in Iraq was replaced by Shiite fundamentalists, Sunni Salafi fundamentalists and Kurdish separatists. The pressure the Bush administration put on the Pakistani military government to combat Muslim militants in that country weakened the legitimacy of Musharraf, whom the Pakistani public increasingly viewed as an oppressive American puppet. Iraqi Kurdistan's willingness to give safe haven to the PKK alienated Turkey from both the new Iraqi government and its American patrons. Search-and-destroy missions in Afghanistan have predictably turned increasing numbers of Pushtun villagers against the United States, NATO and Karzai. The thunder of the bomb in Karachi and the Turkish shells in Iraqi Kurdistan may well be the sound of Bush losing his "war on terror."Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Colbert for president
By VictorM: Stephen Colbert is a very funny guy and his shtick on his TV show mocking Bill O'Rilley is a pure delight. Now he has announced that he's "running" for president of the United States. *yawn* This has been done by several comedians over the years and I'm not quite sure that Colbert will have anything fresh to add to the gag. Heck, I can't even imagine him being funnier than the current crop of Republican wackos who are really running.I agree with these comments:
Which of the other candidates running in either party's primary do you unequivocally know their policies? At least w/ Colbert one knows w/ certainty, "I will support any policy that benefits me." What a mensch. :-)
When I was a kid we weren't so up tight and when Paulson ran around the nation "running for president" for The Smothers Brothers.... no one took it seriously we just all enjoyed the joke.
Many right wingers are offended by Colbert because it is they he mocks.... and they are all so thin skinned.
Mike Huckabee is wacky
By VictorM: If it sounds like a have a thing against Mike Huckabee, one of the many wacky Republican candidate for president, it's because I do. And why? Well, because of shit like this, as covered by Josh Marshall:The man simple is catering so much to the christian right that it's sickening.I've sort of gotten tired of explaining that, no, the Founding Fathers actually weren't all born-agains and bible thumpers. Not hardly... But presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governoer Mike Huckabee, himself a Baptist minister, actually told a crowd yesterday that "most" of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were "clergymen."
As these folks at Politifact.com point out, one out of 56 were clergymen.
Greg Ryan fired
By VictorM: Back in September 28, 2007 I said that Greg Ryan, the coach of the US Women's soccer team, should be fired. Today, I was granted my wish.Back then I said: Should Greg Ryan, the USA coach, be fired? Yes! Not because he's a bad coach. In fact, his record with the USA is excellent. But this move [replacing Hope Solo with Brianna Scully] justifies my belief that national team coaches should be replaced with certain frequency. The reason being that since they are not the ones dealing up close with new players, like club coaches do, they tend to revert back to the ones they are most familiar with. This was Bruce Arena's downfall when he selected the men's team for 2006, and the team proved too slow and too old for the task. And it was the case now with Ryan.
Kristine Lilly, at age 36, and Briana Scully, also at age 36, wonderful as they were in their prime, have no business still being part of the US national team. There a lot of wonderful young talent out there. It's time to call on them. And mister Ryan was not doing it.
The search for a new coach has began. I hope they choose wisely.
Monday, October 22, 2007
A moral failure from the highest levels of government
By PRNewswire-USNewswire:The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), led by President and Trenton, NJ Mayor Douglas H. Palmer, today expressed disappointment at the failure of Congress to override President Bush's veto of reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program known as SCHIP.
Had the program been approved, it would have provided insurance protection to more than 10 million low-income children by extending the original program by an additional 3.8 million children.
"This is not just a political failure. This is a moral failure from the highest levels of government impacting children all across this country," said Mayor Palmer. "The decision of a few legislators has undermined a bipartisan effort of both the House and the Senate to provide critical help to children who don't have health insurance. This is unacceptable. Just a few weeks of funding for the war in Iraq could cover the cost of healthcare for millions of children in our country," Palmer added.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Bush: Mister 24 percent
By Jon Ponder:Reuters/Zogby poll: Bush’s job approval rating fell to 24 percent from last month’s record low for a Zogby poll of 29 percent. By contrast, Pres. Nixon was around 25 percent in the polls on the day he resigned. Both his numbers and Bush’s reflect the fact that about a quarter of Americans are dangerously delusional. Approval of Congress remains low: A paltry 11 percent gave Congress a positive grade, tying last month’s record low. Ironically, the low approval of Congress is probably due to the fact they haven’t impeached Bush or stopped his war.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Bad guy/girl
Who is your favorite Bad Guy from fiction? It could be from literature, movies, whatever; and it could be a Bad Girl, for that matter.Check out the Favorite Bad Guy responses from our forum members and register to participate.
We could use a few more members so don't be shy.
Remember: Republicans hate American children
By VictorM: So a Democrat makes a statement that is totally accurate, the Republicans, with the help from the media, throw a phony hissy fit purely to divert attention from their problems, and surprise, surprise, the Democratic leadership fails us once again because rather than chastising the Republicans for their phoniness, they go after the truth teller. Oh come on, get real, you weasels!Representative Pete Stark's words were:
You don't have money to fund the war or children, but you're gonna spend it blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their head blown off for the president's amusement.What exactly is wrong with that? Nothing. Every single Democrat who doesn't like the quote and is asked about it can should simply dismiss the question and return the conversation to the real message: Republicans hate American children.
The scary Republicans
By VictorM: The last time I heard of a US president talking to God, George Bush claims that God told him to invade and occupy Iraq. Either God gave a lousy order, the president misunderstood, or the conversation never happened and the president is just plain lying. Take your pick. It just seems to me that the president was just trying to blame God for his bonehead move. Now we have Fred Thompson thinking that he can't be president without some divine help:
Fred Thompson, who has all but disappeared from the campaign trail of late, told Christian conservatives at the Values Voter Summit today that if he becomes president, the first thing he'll do is "go into the Oval Office and close the door and pray for the wisdom to know what was right and ... the strength to do what is right."So, if (I know, huge if) Thompson becomes president, and he gets direction from God, what might we see? The USA flooding all of Arabia? The USA unleashing germ warfare so that non-Christians get some plague? Mel Gibson-like whippings and crucifixions?
Friday, October 19, 2007
Mike Huckabee surging? Oh dear
By Tim Grieve:Having raised a paltry $800,000 in the most recent quarter, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback has reportedly decided to drop out of the 2008 presidential race. Sources tell the Associated Press that Brownback will announce his decision in Topeka Friday.
Ironically, the hard-right Republican's decision to bail comes just as other competitors for the GOP nomination are racing for the mantle of "true conservative." With Fred Thompson failing to make much of an impression and Brownback headed for the door, it's probably a very good day to be Mike Huckabee, who already seems to be surging in Iowa.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Examining Larry Craig's hypocrisy
By Andrew Sullivan, talking about Republican Senator Larry Craig:He grew up in a different time, and a different place, where even the possibility of being gay was inconceivable. I don't think he even thinks of himself as gay, or has any idea what being gay might actually mean. I think he thinks of his sexual orientation as a "lifestyle" (to use that hideous term Lauer kept referring to) that can be overcome the way one overcomes smoking or poor eating or sexual compulsion...
Craig was seeking in that toilet stall a connection, a shard of intimacy, that the world would not give him, or that he could not give himself. No one should have to live without that intimacy and dignity - no one...
It is just a tragedy that the party that Craig belongs to is committed to prolonging the pain and the denial of so many people - in order to appease the casual fears of the insecure, and to use those fears to sustain political power.
Connecting the dots
By VictorM:What connects the following people: Texas governor Rick Perry, Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, a woman from Del Rio, Texas, and the Virgin Mary?
BiblioSquirrel connects the dots.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Who needs friends anyway?
By Kevin Drum:Turkey has warned us that if Congress passes a resolution calling the 1915 Armenian genocide a genocide, "military ties with the U.S. will never be the same again." Russia and the other states surrounding the Caspian Sea are cozying up to Iran and warning us not to even think about launching an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities. China is "furious" because President Bush is meeting with the Dalai Lama. India is having "certain difficulties" approving its nuclear deal with the U.S. Britain is pulling out of Iraq, the Iraqis are pissed off at us over Blackwater, Afghan leaders are angry over our poppy spraying program, and Pakistan continues to provide a safe haven for the Taliban.
The ever so slow changing of America's sports landscape
By John Kass:In the fourth quarter of the exciting Bears-Packers game last week, my sons drifted away from the TV, went over to the computer and began watching football highlights.
These football highlights were on YouTube, complete with heavy metal coming out of the speakers.
There was John Terry, the great all-England center back, the defender playing for Chelsea, as tough as any NFL linebacker, banging his head against everything that moved, even the ball. And the amazing Cristiano Ronaldo, the right midfielder for Manchester United, standing on a basketball court, shooting baskets beyond the free-throw line, hitting nothing but net, shooting not with his hands but with his feet.
It was then -- ignoring the NFL for the soccer highlights -- that I realized my transformation was complete: from soccer dad to soccer fan.
John McCain: his own bad omen
By VictorM: The man who likes to kiss ass and walk on safe paths couldn't have shown better vision, without realizing it:Oh well, there's always next time... for the Diamondbacks, not for McCain.Asked Monday what was more likely -- the Arizona Diamondbacks win the World Series or he wins the White House -- Sen. John McCain said: "Well, in all due respect, I think they're about the same."
The Diamondbacks were down 3-0 to the Colorado Rockies in the National League championship series at the time. They were eliminated, 4-0, last night.
John McCain: like a broken clock
By VictorM: John McCain, talking about global warming and proving the old saying: "Even a broken clock is right twice a day":It's like Tony Blair said: Suppose we're wrong, and there's no such thing as greenhouse-gas emissions, and we adopt green technologies. All we've done is give our kids a better planet. But suppose we're right, and do nothing? Then what kind of a legacy are we handing on to future generations of Americans? I think we ought to frame the debate that way.
And I think most, if not all, of the ways that we can address this issue are through profit-motive, free-enterprise-system-driven green technologies. General Electric dedicated itself to green technologies, and guess what? They're still making a lot of money.
OK, so with McCain it's more like he's right once in a presidential campaign.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Republican officials: Not safe for your children
By VictorM: Not only do Republican officials hate children (sending them to criminal wars, refusing to give them health insurance, protecting tobacco companies, etc.) but by the sheer quantity of the number of Republicans caught taking sexual advantage of them -- and just imagine how many more benefit from protection of their power and get away with the same stuff -- Republicans aren't the kind of people you can trust with your children. Here's yet another new example:Brown County GOP Chairman Donald Fleischman has resigned his post, says a spokesperson, after being accused of enticement and fondling of an underage boy, reports the Green Bay Press-Gazette Saturday.Yeah, yeah... I know... "only a few bad apples", but damn, how many bad apples do they have? And why are so many bad apples attracted to that group?Fleischman, 37, is free after posting a $20,000 bond on September 28. "My client is innocent of the charges," says attorney Jeff Jazgar, who "declined to discuss specifics."... The boy was found by police in Fleischman's home on two occasions in late 2006 while being sought as a runaway from Ethan House, a home for at-risk youth. Now 17, he says he stayed with Fleischman at his house and a cabin, where he was provided with alcohol and cannabis, and regularly fondled... Fleischman faces two counts of child enticement, two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a child, and one count of exposing himself to a child.
Republicans are notorious for protecting their own, even when they are creeps. They are much more likely to "respect" those in power and not confront them with perceived misdeeds. And because Republicans are such gay haters, being a Republican gives cover to the closet homosexuals who want to be perceived as heterosexuals.
So, for many of these people, it's either the Republican party or priesthood.
Refusal to consider the problems of suffering of others
By Paul Krugman, talking about right wingers in America:[O]n the right, these things get bizarrely conflated. Immigrants become lumped in with black people. Then, in turn, immigrants get lumped in with terrorists. You have all of this stuff about we have to close the border with Mexico because of the terrorist threat. And, gee, there haven't actually been any Mexican suicide bombers...
Both the terminology that the anti-immigrant forces use and the people are pretty much the same as was used in the anti-black backlash. The anti-immigrant Republican base is very much the same as the anti-black Republican base, which is becoming a problem for the Republican Party, because they can't actually separate the two...
In some sense, the meanness is the message. On the right, there's an almost lethal refusal to consider the problems of suffering of others. And it goes right back through time. Ronald Reagan has this line, in the famous speech in 1964 that launched his political career, in which he said, "They told us that 17 million people in America go to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet." The problem of malnutrition in America was and is a serious problem. But to Reagan, from the beginning, it was all a big joke. And Bush remarked, "Well, I mean, everybody's got access to health care in America. You just go to an emergency room." It's just this complete lack of empathy for people who aren't as lucky as yourself.
Click here to read the whole interview with Paul Krugman.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Remove your shoes, for safety
By Patrick Smith, discussing airport security:Especially worrisome is how the system shows no signs of improving. The hysteria hasn't passed, it has become codified. We know that sharp objects can be fashioned from almost anything, yet we continue to fish through bags for hobby knives and screwdrivers. The London liquid bombers weren't close to pulling off an attack, and experts contend there is little practical purpose in restricting liquids and gels, yet we continue seizing toothpaste and bottled water. Caterers and cargo loaders are exempt from screening, yet pilots are subject to shoe inspections. And so on. Rather than rethink these useless protocols, the best we've come up with is a way to skirt them -- for a fee, naturally -- via schemes like Registered Traveler.
Who are the winners in all of this? The contractors and vendors of the security-industrial complex, from purveyors of high-tech surveillance equipment to S.C. Johnson, the maker of Ziploc bags. Travelers, obviously, are the biggest losers, but airlines too are victimized...
According to various lawyers and politicians, the private screening companies that manned the checkpoints at the time of the 2001 attacks were incompetent and unprofessional. The airlines knew this, but either didn't care or weren't paying attention. In response, the TSA was created. It's a quaint notion, is it not, in this era when seemingly every facet of the nation's defense is being sold to subcontractors, that a government bureaucracy be devised to take the place of free-market enterprise? I'm not normally in league with the current outsourcing trends, but when it comes to airport security, count me among those nostalgic for the old days.Compromising our humanity
By Frank Rich:Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America's recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.
"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he "never laid hands on anyone" in his many interrogations, adding, "I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those "good Germans" who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It's up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war's last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country's good name.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Will Bush congratulate Al Gore?
By Tim Grieve:Over the course of the last year, George W. Bush has offered his personal congratulations to the 2007 Presidential Scholars, the Super Bowl-winning Indianapolis Colts, the 2007 Scripps Spelling Bee champion, the owner of the World Series-winning St. Louis Cardinals, the NBA champion Miami Heat, the Stanley Cup-winning Carolina Hurricanes and the NCAA champions from 21 universities.
So, a reporter asked deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto today, will the president be calling Al Gore to congratulate him for winning the Nobel Peace Prize? Fratto's response: "I don't know of any plans to make calls to any of the winners at this point."
Dumbest line of the day
By VictorM: In an article in the Washington Post, Peter Baker looks at the different paths that Al Gore and George Bush have taken since the 2000 presidential election. In A Tale of War (Bush) and Peace (Gore), Mr. Baker looks at the legacy of each man in light of Gore's Nobel Peace prize:What a difference seven years makes. The winner of that struggle went on to capture the White House and to become a wartime leader now heading toward the final year of a struggling presidency. The loser went on to reinvent himself from cautious politician to hero of the activist left now honored as a man of peace...
"It's hard to look at the disaster of the past seven years and not believe that America would be better off if he had been president," said Ron Klain, Gore's former chief of staff. "Perhaps he has done more for climate change as a private citizen than he could have done as president, but I firmly believe that if Al Gore were president, America would not be at war, our standing in the world would be higher, our economy stronger and our civil liberties more secure."
No one will ever know.
"No one will ever know"? Are you kidding me?
The whole world knows it and no newspaper writer seeking "balance" in his piece should ignore the obvious: George Bush has become a war-monger, a middle-class rapist, and a Constitution backstabber while Al Gore has displayed great vision and become a relentless crusader for the human race.
Most of us know it.
Gore's win: poetic justice
By Josh Marshall, commenting on Al Gore's Nobel prize:There are several layers of irony and poetic justice wrapped into this honor. The first is that the greatest step for world peace would simply have been for Gore not to have had the presidency stolen from him in November 2000. By every just measure, Gore won the presidency in 2000 only to have George W. Bush steal it from him with the critical assistance of the US Supreme Court. It's worth taking a few moments today to consider where the country and world would be without that original sin of this corrupt presidency.
And yet this is a fitting bookend, with Gore receiving this accolade while the sitting president grows daily an object of greater disapproval, disapprobation and collective shame.
Obama's lapel "controversy"
By Bill Maher:Last week we had the first genuine controversy of the presidential campaign: the shocking news that Barack Obama doesn't wear an American flag lapel pin... Another in a series of bullshit non-stories that have zero effect on the troops, the war or anything in the real world -- or, as Fox calls it, "Breaking News."...
Of course, the Republicans are the party of Mark Foley and the Rev. Ted Haggard and Larry Craig and countless other closeted homosexuals, so their fixation on jewelry is understandable...
A reporter in Iowa asked Obama why he doesn't wear the pin and Obama explained that, to him, wearing the pin had come to seem like a "substitute for true patriotism." Bravo, Senator.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Global Warming Scientific Consensus Wrong!
By chatper1:The world's climate experts have long been making some very dire predictions about Global Warming. Because they are predictions, they rely very heavily on computer models.
Many people-- especially conservatives-- warned about this. They pointed out that models are prone to many errors, and the scientific consensus is not always right...
The consensus of climate experts were wrong. Absolutely, verifiably wrong. The computer models were wrong. They simply do not match reality...
The reality is much, MUCH worse than the scientific consensus predicted. The arctic ice cap is melting decades faster than expected. DECADES. (Details here)
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Al Gore deserves the Nobel Peace prize
By Carl Pope:What's world peace got to do with global warming? Perhaps everything. Or it will if things don't change fast -- if, in 10 or 20 or 40 years devastating floods and droughts displace millions of refugees and spur nations and tribes to desperate bloodletting. At which point, no one will have the slightest doubt why members of the renowned Scandinavian foundation thought former U.S. Vice President Al Gore was an obvious choice for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Speculation has been growing that Gore will be chosen for the prize on Friday. Regardless of the outcome, Gore is, quite simply, the indispensable player in the drama of mankind's encounter with the possibility of destroying the climatic balance within which our civilization emerged and developed...
In 2004, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai. She is not a general or president. She was founder of the grass-roots Green Belt Movement, which planted more than 30 million trees across the country, providing jobs, power and education to women in the process. In the Nobel committee's words upon awarding that prize: "Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment."
The committee apparently sees Gore in a similar light, as someone who has spent much of his career staving off conflicts by uniting strange bedfellows behind the common cause of protecting humanity's only home.
In the 20th century peace was something to be achieved after the horrifying bloodletting of world war began. In the 21st century, although the world faces a new era of turmoil, peace ultimately must be about identifying and resolving the sources of conflict before battles break out. That's why no one deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than Al Gore.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Huckabee... hahahaha
By VictorM: Dan Bartlett, a George Bush adviser, thinks that Mike Huckabee is one of the best Republican candidates for president but doesn't think he stands a chance because Huckabee is a funny name.Hey, if Dan Bartlett is correct --who am I to doubt one of the staunches supporters of the Iraq invasion and occupation? -- I can't say that I would be sad about it. But while I may agree with Mr. Bartlett about his assessment of Huckabee's chances, I'm more inclined to believe that he will lose for other reasons, such as: a poor record as governor, his disbelief in evolution, and his most recent comment that going to Congress to ask for approval to start a war should only be done if the president has the "luxury" to do so.
Like we need another war mongering president who pisses on the Constitution to please the bunch of religious fanatics most likely to get him elected.
Funny name or not, we have been there and it hasn't been fun.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
George Bush not the only one who hates children
By Joan Walsh:The right wing has been smearing 12-year-old Graeme Frost, who lauded the State Children's Health Insurance Program vetoed by President Bush last week. Graeme and his sister used the program after they were in an SUV accident -- his sister suffered a lasting brain injury -- a