Saturday, December 20, 2008

Obama's Weekly YouTube Address

He blinded me with science!



On December 20, 2008 President-elect Obama introduced the team of men and women who will head up the nation's major scientific departments.
"Because the truth is that promoting science isn't just about providing resources -- it's about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient -- especially when it's inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us."
Source: http://www.youtube.com/user/ChangeDotGov

Oxycontin Charges On Palin's Baby Daddy's Mama

I know it's tough to say, and maybe not right, but say it with me, "dirt bag".
WASILLA, Alaska — Wasilla resident Sherry L. Johnston, mother of Bristol Palin's boyfriend, faces a Jan. 6 court date for an oxycontin-related arrest at her home by Alaska State Troopers.

Little additional information was available Friday on the case as authorities remained unusually tight-lipped about details. But Palmer court records listed Johnston's scheduled court date and a troopers spokeswoman said in a release late Friday afternoon that the charges "are in relation to the drug oxycontin."
I wonder if fellow drug runner Rush Limbaugh has any comments?

You can't buy class. You can't put lipstick on a pig. Humbling.

Source: McClatchy

Friday, December 19, 2008

Rick Warren Is Just As Bad As All The Rest

So Rick Warren is a bad choice for Obama. Gays and lesbians are offended. Warren has some Bronze Age ideas about society and has missed out on 2000 years of empirical evidence.

I personally find that no matter who you pick, any religious leader, is "anti-something" that is long in need of a current day viewpoint. Whether it be gays, or condoms, or women, or stem cells: you name it, they are out of touch and, at most times, offensive.

What if Obama had Pope Benedict? He's a former Nazi youth, he spent 25 years denying that priests had raped young children, he denies the rights of gays and a whole host of deplorable out-dated laws, yet he is the leader of a billion Catholics out there. You just can't win.

The fact that Obama is so different and his message is above the fray of organized religion, yet has to align himself with some faith, is the problem. He lives a great life, yet is let down by his religious choices. Rev. Wright? Now Rick Warren. As progressives, we like him because he is secular. He's not God Squad like Bush and Palin.

No one cared when Bush used Billy Graham. He's a nut but it made sense. Bush is a Jesus freak, Billy Graham is an Evangelical Christian. Even worse, he's a Southern Baptist. No outrage there.

Offering Warren a place gets millions of Evangelicals excited about Obama and about the next 8 years. There is an upside to that.

At least Obama does not have to worry about the Muslim and swearing in on the Koran rumors anymore. Face it, religion is the cause, and not the solution, to a lot of problems.

On January 21, this will not be an issue.

Rooted in 1997, A Housing Bubble Has Many To Blame

Capital gains is a complex issue these days. The housing bubble is at heart a capital gains issue. While fingers are easy to point, figuring out how you got here helps you assess blame.
Tonight, I propose a new tax cut for homeownership that says to every middle-income working family in this country, if you sell your home, you will not have to pay a capital gains tax on it ever — not ever.” — President Bill Clinton, at the 1996 Democratic National Convention.
So the stage was set. Sell your home, don't pay taxes on the profit. As the tech bubble burst, housing was viewed as safe. Easy credit led to bad lending, not because of the initial loan, but the securitization of those mortgages. Crazy underwriting standards ensued. Cash and debt was not a strong enough "currency".

Wall St. needed a new way to maximize, to margin, to leverage at multiples of the original loan. The housing market was their experiment. Derivatives and credit default swaps were the fuel. It was all funny money.

But cheap money was not the only cause. We still had homeless in record numbers, rents were untenable. Homes were built when the market demand was not really there. Laws from the 80s gave the capacity of real estate owners to write off their real estate property as losses and make more money by doing so than they would if they rented at a modest price.

So yes, many factors got us to where we are. Although rooted in previous administrations, the current Bush Administration was at the wheel and it's de-regulatory, "let the markets run themselves" approach, coupled with no government oversight, made things worse.

Pushing their "ownership society" through home ownership was just another way to get you tethered to a bank for the next 30 years of interest payments. Republicans have an evil way about them like that. Remember Reagan tried to crush social programs like welfare through overspending, claiming no funds were left. Make government ultimately fail is their goal, just ask Grover Norquist.

We are always so proud of the wealth we have in America. How much is just manipulating tax codes? Creating bubbles? Distorting markets through taxation policies. How much is made at the expense of someone else?

Not to mention the special interests. The banking world is so powerful they get to lose all the money, break the system, show no remorse, point fingers at everyone else and then get bailed out by taxpayers. That's cajones!

What do you think?

NOTE: One thing left out was the massive amounts of cash pumped into the ststem around Y2K. People thought ATMs would fail, planes would crash, etc. All the cash fueled the internet bubble a bit.

Source: NYT

Condi Rice: I Need Who, When, Where And How To Do NSA Job

Condi Rice was National Security Advisor from the beginning of Bush's first term through 2005. What exactly was her advice to the President knowing an attack was imminent? Oh, she needed exact specifics, but isn't that in the episodes of 24? She need a "ticking time bomb" in order to do her job.
"Outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has acknowledged that she was responsible for the security failures that made possible the 9/11 attacks. However, she did so only fleetingly and in a backhanded manner before returning to justifications of her actions.

"I do take responsibility -- but this was a systemic failure," Rice told CNN's Zain Verjee during an exit interview on Wednesday.

Verjee had begun pressing Rice with a question about whether she had ignored warnings of the forthcoming al Qaeda attack.

"This is simply not true," Rice replied, saying that there had been only "a single item that said bin Ladin determined to attack – not when, where, how."
The worst breach of national security in the history of the United States came under her watch. Was she fired? Did she think of resigning? She became an idiot because her boss was an idiot. Bush need his daily briefing reduced to one-page and read aloud to him.

That's how you know they were all in this together. No one was ever called out for doing the absolute worst at their job.

Source: Raw Story

Bristol Palin And Levi Johnson Have Great Parents

Baby daddy's mama drama. Grandma drama! Ah, the "small town values" of "real America".

Considering Wasilla is the meth Capitol of Alaska, it's not surprising to be pregnant at 18 and have your 42 year-old mother busted on drugs charges.
"A 42-year-old Wasilla woman was arrested Thursday at her home by Alaska State Troopers with a search warrant in an undercover drug investigation. Sherry L. Johnston was charged with six felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance.

Johnston is the mother of Levi Johnston, the Wasilla 18-year-old who received international attention in September when Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, announced their teenage daughter was pregnant and he was the father. Bristol Palin, 18, is due on Saturday, according to a recent interview with the governor's father, Chuck Heath
".
Troopers charged Johnston with second-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance — generally manufacturing or delivering drugs — as well as fourth-degree misconduct involving controlled substances, or possession.

Asked how long the investigation had proceeded before Johnston’s arrest, Troopers would only say “a while.”

Christmas pardon from Bush?

Source: HuffPo

W. Mark Felt, Watergate Deep Throat, Dies at 95

Who knows where would be if it were not for "Deep Throat"?
"W. Mark Felt, who was the No. 2 official at the F.B.I. when he helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon by resisting the Watergate cover-up and becoming Deep Throat, the most famous anonymous source in American history, died Thursday. He was 95 and lived in Santa Rosa, Calif."
There will no need for anonymous sources to bring the Bush Administration to justice. They were brazen in their shredding of the Constitution thinking they have a Rovian run of the house.

Source: NYT

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Christopher Hitchens: Cheney And Torture

Christopher Hitchens on Cheney and torture.

Cheney claims torture's success, the "results speak for themselves".

Michael Smerconish is a tool. He has a radio show? He lives in the world of Fox's 24. The "ticking time bomb" scenario does not exist.

The Bush Two-fer: Ultimate Insults Combined

The ultimate insult to American politics [Bush] combined with the ultimate insult [sole of the show] in Iraq.

The real Bush legacy in the Middle East.

Bush = Torture = Prosecute

The Senate Torture report exposes the Bush Administration for what is is, Anti-Constitution, Pro-torture radicals. Just because your own counsel gives you the thumbs up to use "illegal tortures devised by Chinese agents during the Korean War", that does not mean they are lawful:
"These top officials ignored warnings from lawyers in every branch of the armed forces that they were breaking the law, subjecting uniformed soldiers to possible criminal charges and authorizing abuses that were not only considered by experts to be ineffective, but were actually counterproductive.

The officials then issued legally and morally bankrupt documents to justify their actions, starting with a presidential order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners of the “war on terror” — the first time any democratic nation had unilaterally reinterpreted the conventions."
When rounding up all this criminals and War Crimes enablers, don't stop at former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his legal counsel, William J. Haynes and other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, go right to the top.

via Andrew Sullivan:
The NYT takes a stand, the only credible legal stand, given where we now are:
"A prosecutor should be appointed to consider criminal charges against top officials at the Pentagon and others involved in planning the abuse."
That must include the commander-in-chief and his vice-president. This is where the criminality came from and it's unjust to punish people down the line more than those at the very top. If Obama wants to avoid even the appearance of retribution, he should first appoint a Truth Commission of independent, outside but experienced public officials from both parties - along the lines of the 9/11 Commission - to establish the full facts of the past seven years. In my view, it should be restricted to war crimes alone - far graver than the question of warrantless wire-tapping.
Prosecute them all!

Source: NYT

VIDEO: The Making Of Band Aid in 1984

Very interesting documentary on the evolution and recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas?". Proper Crimbo!

The Band Aid Story (part 1/3)
Amazing acoustic segment with Bob Geldolf.



The Band Aid Story (part 2/3)



The Band Aid Story (part 3/3)

Trust In GOP Reaches Record Low

What's with the last sentence?
"Just 23 percent in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll said they trust Republicans more than Democrats to handle the main problems facing the nation, the lowest level reached by either party in surveys dating back to 1982.

A majority, 56 percent, trust the Democrats to handle the nation's top issues over the next few years, also a record in Post-ABC polling. But the GOP's recent losses have not translated into big Democratic gains, instead the proportion who trust neither party has climbed to 15 percent."
Have not translated? Um, the GOP has been crushed in elections in 2006 and 2008. Obama crushed McCain.

Source: WaPo

Cheney Quote: Control The VP

Advice from the guy who was wrong on WMD, "last throes" of the insurgency, "greeted as liberators", elections in 2006 and 2008, and countless other decisions:
"The best thing you can do is keep your VP under control."

-- Vice President Dick Cheney, quoted by CNN, giving advice to White House chief of staff-designate Rahm Emanuel.
Is this an attempt at humor? The Prince of Darkness must have really liked the Bush Chief Of Staffs, but haven been one himself in the Ford administration, he knew exactly how to ignore them.

Republicans are hypocritical to the end.

Rwandan Mastermind Convicted of Genocide

A precursor to the War Crime trials of Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld?
A senior Rwandan military officer charged with being one of the masterminds of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which bands of Hutus massacred hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, was convicted on Thursday by a United Nations court in Tanzania of genocide and sentenced to life in prison.
In a statement, the United Nations tribunal said that it had sentenced the officer, Col. Theoneste Bagosora, and his accomplices, two other Rwandan military officers who were also on trial, Maj. Aloys Ntabakuze and Col. Anatole Nsengiyumva, to life imprisonment for “genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.” A fourth co-defendant, Gen. Gratien Kabiligi, was acquitted of all charges against him and the court ordered his release.

Colonel Bagosora, 67, was the cabinet director for Rwanda’s Defense Ministry at the start of the slaughter by Hutus of 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus in 1994. The three other senior army officers had been on trial with him since 2002 at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is based in Arusha, Tanzania.

The court said that Colonel Bagosora had been “the highest authority in the Rwandan Defense Ministry with authority over the military” in the days after the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994.
Source: NYT

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

I'm Off

Off to my brother's wedding at City Hall!!!!! I'm his witness.

Be back manana.

Naming Your Kid Adolph Hitler

For anyone who wants to defend New Jersey in the battle of the Tri-State:

A guy in Holland Township, NJ names his kid Adolph Hitler. Says it's just a name. Sad.

Source: LehighValleyLive

Omama: Person Of The Year

Barack Obama: Time's Person Of The [Next 8] Year[s]



Source: Time

"Americans Had To Die"

"Constituted a mortal threat"

Frank Gaffney, right-wing commentator, is in way over his head with Chris Matthews.

He said Iraq posed a mortal threat to Americans because they killed Americans? When? Gaffney is still trying to link 9/11 to Iraq.

He then jumps to biological weapons and Hussein's intent. Yes, Hussein used biological weapons on his own people, in the 1980s. After the first Iraq War in 1991, those were destroyed and Iraq was never allowed to rebuild that program through US and UN monitoring.

Then the kicker. Gaffney, responding to Matthews stating 4,000 lives were lost based on all these mistakes:
"My position is that it’s regrettable that any Americans died. It is regrettable that they had to die, but I believe they did have to die."
The ultimate Right Wing Chickenhawk NeoCon.



CrooksAndLiars
adds:
"It astounds me that people like Gaffney can continue to cling to the idea that Saddam really did pose an imminent threat/that he really had WMD/that the intelligence wasn't cooked etc. and still be regarded as some sort of foreign policy expert who should be taken seriously. It's 100% clear now that the administration "fixed the facts around the policy" by cherry-picking dubious intelligence reports that supported their case while ignoring others (that were far more credible) that disproved it. Not only should Gaffney and his ilk be laughed out of town, they should be committed and/or indicted."
Source: ThinkProgress

George W. Bush's Nightmare Before Christmas

From Brave New Films.



Source: http://santabush.com

Obama To Undo Bush-Era Rules On Abortion, Birth Control

Command + "z" = undo on a mac. I hope they use that a lot.

The Fox Wall Street Journal reports:
The outgoing Bush administration this week will finalize a regulation establishing a "right of conscience" allowing medical staff to refuse to participate in any practice they object to on moral grounds, including abortion but possibly birth control and other health care as well.

In transition offices across town, officials in the incoming Obama administration have begun considering how and when to undo it.

"We have a lot of work to do to fix the damage the Bush administration has done," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
"Right of conscience" to deny services? Don't you take the hippocratic oath as a Doctor to ethically help everyone? The third part of the oath reads: "Never to do deliberate harm to anyone for anyone else's interest." Seems Bush opened the door on a slippery slope of refusal to just about anyone.

Right to privacy. Separation of Church and State. 40+ years of legal choice. Women's health and safety. Bush attacked them all.

Source: WSJ

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Fed Cuts Benchmark Rate To Near Zero

The Fed had to set a record to battle the epic Bush failure. We need a zero interest rate to fight a zero President. Not the first time "record new low" and "Bush" end up in the same sentence.

At what point are they just giving money away? Oh wait, that was in Iraq.
"The Federal Reserve entered a new era on Tuesday, setting its benchmark interest rate so low that it will have to reach for new and untested tools in fighting both the recession and downward pressure on consumer prices."
Worst. President. And. Administration. Ever.

Source: NYT

Quote Of The Day: Bill Baroni

Just tax it.
"The people who are asking us to do this today, these are people who can't play piggyback with their 3-year-old. These are people who get up every day and battle HIV/AIDS. They are people who wonder if their chemotherapy is going to work. I can't look at those folks and let them be perhaps the only ones who don't have the ability to have less pain,"
- New Jersey state senator, Bill Baroni, on why he voted for a medical marijuana bill.

Parino Takes One For Team

Dana Parino, shoe terror victim. Although not hit by the actual show, she was hit with a microphone in the ensuing scuffle.

No pictures of coffins or military fighting in Iraq, but this will make the front page.



Source: HuffPo

Throw Stuff At Bush

Throw stuff at Bush and listen to his inane babbling. Over 30 items to choose from: pretzel, Bill of Rights, New Orleans, the economy, stem cells. Click the link below.



Source: http://duckduckbush.com/

Child Poverty: Let's Talk About It

Not knowing is one thing, not caring is another.

Check this chart from the OECD. While not the entire world, mostly Europe, Australia, NZ, US and Canada, not the kind of thing you want to be #1.



Also, keep in mind Norway has 4,796,700 people, Sweden has 9,234,2094, The US has 305,904,000.

Matt's point:
"There are things we could do to get more out of our school system, but ultimately it’s inconceivable to me that we’ll ever get a first-rate levels of educational attainment with these kind of child poverty rate — it basically guarantees that portions of the system will be overburdened by too many children with too many problems. That’ll be fine for those getting the long end of the hyper-inequality, but it’s sad to see the extent to which we’re slouching toward that future without any public acknowledgment of it or debate about the wisdom of our priorities. You would think that something like being by far the world leader in child poverty would dominate the political agenda — instead you never see it mentioned."
Education is the key, uniting people is the key. Getting rid of "No Child Left Behind" standardized assessments is key. Paying teachers and supporting unions is key.

This is not an "us and them" problem. This is our problem.

Source: Matthew Yglesias

Bull Markets Meets Bullsh*t

Bernard Made Off Madoff. Where the Bull Market meets bullshit.



Source: BAGnews

The "Official" Official Story

George Packer at The New Yorker has read the two official documents on Iraq and the war on terror: a bipartisan inquiry by the Senate Armed Services committee into treatment of detainees, and a report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
"The trouble is, the information in these reports doesn’t tell the whole story, and it doesn’t tell it as a complete story. The reports only give us fragments, which will be too easily overlooked or forgotten. The official sanction of torture and the woeful management of occupied Iraq are related pieces of a much larger epic: the first is marked by criminality, the second by bureaucratic ineptitude, but they are joined together as expressions and outcomes of the ideas and habits of mind of the highest officials in the Bush Administration. Eventually the country will need, even if it won’t entirely want, the whole story to be told."
I thinks it's buy one $3 trillion dollar war, get one FREE Congressional Commission.

With a democratic administration coming in, you know better questions will be asked than by McCain and Palin. You betcha.

Source: The New Yorker

Get Down To Brass Tacks

From a new report, let this sink in:
"The U.S. government has already spent $904 billion since 2001 to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and both of those conflicts are far from over."
But this war was well planned out with an end goal and exit strategy? No, that's right. There was never an exit strategy because they never intended on leaving. Building 30+ permanent bases in Iraq ring a bell. Add Exit Strategy to WMD and Yellow Cake in your Lists Of Bush Myths.

And thank god Bush didn't raise taxes to pay for his war. He borrowed the money. Everyone knows borrowing money with interest is always better than just paying something off. Maybe get a loan shark involved. Add this to your misery:
"the CSBA study warns that the additional burden of accrued interest payments could easily push that tab to $2.5 trillion, depending on how the cost is financed."
And let's give it some perspective:
"That's a steep price, even compared with past conflicts. 'In real (inflation-adjusted) terms, the war in Iraq alone has already cost more than every past U.S. war but World War II,' the study finds."
And show motive:
"The Bush administration has budgeted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in a way that differs markedly from the approach typically used to fund past wars. Because of its reliance on supplemental appropriations, often submitted in the middle of the year and supported by inadequate justification materials, the process has reduced the ability of Congress to exercise effective oversight. It has also tended to obscure the long-term costs and budgetary consequences of ongoing military operations."
Remember when President Bush's chief economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, said back in 2003 that the Iraq war would cost from $100 billion to $200 billion? For that frank appraisal, he was fired.

Source: US News & World Report

Science And Facts

via Washington Monthly:
Late yesterday, Barack Obama held a press conference to introduce most of his environmental team, and the names coincided with the rumors from last week: Steven Chu for Energy Secretary, Lisa Jackson to head the EPA, Nancy Sutley to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Carol Browner to head a new a White House post as a coordinator on energy issues.

But in introducing Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Obama made a comment that stood out: "His appointment should send a signal to all that my administration will value science, we will make decisions based on the facts, and we understand that the facts demand bold action."
Science and facts. Obama stands for science and facts. What a departure from the Bush Administration theocracy who valued ideology over everything.

Source: Washington Monthly

President Elect v President Reject

Monday, December 15, 2008

Bill Moyers Interviews Glenn Greenwald

PBS' Bill Moyers sits down with political commentator, former constitutional and civil rights lawyer and Salon.com blogger superstar Glenn Greenwald.
"For all the questions put to him about his legacy, however, the press seems strangely uninterested in his controversial treatment of the Constitution and the Rule of Law: torture, surveillance without a warrant, or prisoners of war, the Geneva Convention and the claims the president has made for expanding the power of his office. That unlimited view of authority may well be the centerpiece of his legacy.

So there are plenty of tough questions to be asked about it, and Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer, has been asking them."
Click the link at the bottom to watch.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean when you call President Bush a Manichean warrior? I mean, most people don't know what Manichean is and don't care. What do you mean by it?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, the idea of being a Manichean comes from this third century BC philosophy that - or religion really that basically understood the world, a never-ending battle between the forces of pure good and the forces of pure evil. And all human events could be understood said adherence to this religion through that prism.

And it was a very simplistic idea that even early Christianity rejected as not appreciating the complexities of how the world actually is and the ambiguities, the moral ambiguities that characterize who most of us are in most situations. George Bush views the world and his followers viewed the world through this lens of pure good versus pure evil.

And it's not me saying that. He said that in virtually all of his speeches. And when you see the world that way what it means is that if you're on the side of pure good, as he asserted that he was and we are, it means that anything that you do, no matter how limitless, no matter how brutal and immoral, is inherently justifiable because it's being enlisted for service of the good.

And by contrast, anything that you do to those on the other side is inherently justified as well because they're pure evil. And from the war in Iraq to the torture camps and secret prisons that we set up all of the things that have done so much damage, I think that's the mentality that lies at the heart of it.
Source: Bill Moyers

GIF Of The Day

From Lame Duck to "nice duck".

Sex And The Citizen

Survey asked 14,000 people in 48 countries:
"The survey asked respondents to consider seven questions related to sex. Some questions were factual: how many sexual partners have you had in the past year and how many one-night stands have you had? Other questions were about attitudes to sex: is sex without love acceptable, or sex with casual partners? From the answers, the researchers compiled an index of promiscuity for respondents from each country.

The result appears to show that Finns and other Europeans are the most promiscuous, whereas respondents from more conservative countries, such as Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, are less promiscuous."


Source: The Economist

"Yeah Brother, This Is Iraq"

CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware reports that Muntader al-Zaidi — the 28 year-old Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush yesterday during a press conference — “is being investigated for possible charges not connected to assaulting President Bush, but for doing it in front of the Iraqi Prime Minister and hurling the shoes in the Prime Minister’s general direction rather than at President Bush’s head.

The errant throw at Bush's head has prompted the NY Mets to sign al-Zaidi to a MLB contract, sending the rightie to AAA New Orleans Zephyrs. I keed.



Source: ThinkProgress

The Made-Up Drama

What a lame headline on Reason.com.

Obama's 'My Pet Goat' Moment
"Why did it take Barack Obama 48 hours to renounce Rod Blagojevich?"

Equating an attack on the World Trade Centers where Bush, after being warned, sat motionless for 7 minutes with Obama not commenting on a scandal for 48 hours?

Forget that the President-elect is running the economy while Bush is dodging loafers in Iraq, forget that he is putting together a cabinet and appointees to lead us out of the greatest recession in our lifetime, forget that he seems to be addressing all the real problems of the day with thought-out meaningful answers and solutions, you want to get on him because it was 48 hours instead of maybe 24 hours? Would 36 have worked? What about 18?

I'm sure when Obama heard that Blagojevich was held by the Feds he didn't sit motionless for 7 minutes. Yes, it's his Senate seat, but it's not his job to fill it.

This whole notion that Obama is going to make everything right and be perfect every step of the way is ludicrous. Mike Tyson ludicrous. Was it ever in question that Obama was not going to renounce him?

"My Pet Goat" is a moment that has no peers. It is the epitome of ineptitude. Don't use it like Fox News uses "Nazis" to describe any dissenting views. Obama is the opposite of Bush. The childrens book was a metaphor for Bush's child like intellect. Don't even try to link Bush and Obama with these types of images.

Would the author have favored a McCain-style approach and have had Obama shut down his transitional duties to make a statement?

Source: Reason Magazine

The Torture President

Under Saddam Hussein torturers were rewarded and promoted.

In America they are.......taxpayer-paid US soldiers given orders by Bush.

How much intelligence did these guys give us? How many hearts and minds did we win?

Supreme Court Allows Cigarette Case Disputing Marketing

You mean breathing smoke into my lungs is bad?
"Tobacco companies suffered a defeat in the Supreme Court on Monday when the justices ruled , 5-4, that the companies can be sued by smokers who contend they were deceived by advertisements promoting “light” cigarettes."

To win their suit, the decision emphasized, the complaining smokers [from Maine] still have to prove that the companies’ “use of ‘light’ and ‘lowered tar’ descriptors in fact violated the state deceptive practices statute.”
Guess who was for and against?

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority decision, which was joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

And the Dark Side? Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

The liberal Judges are pushing for State's rights. The Conservatives are arguing the State laws are “expressly pre-empted” by the federal labeling act.

Seems to be the ol' flip flop here. But big money is involved so it makes sense for the conservatives to flush their values down the toilet.

Will this end smoking? No. Will lawyers be paid? Yes. Just make them $50 a pack and end the charade.

Source: NYT

Instart Karma Is Gonna Get You

And in the end, the hate you take, is equal to the hate you make.

Sarah Palin's Church in Alaska pictured below.



I do not condone arson or cowardly actions, it could just as easily have been bad circuitry in this cheap looking building, but Rev. Wright might say the chickens have come to roost.

Today We Are All Italian Loafers

What were the Secret Service doing? Not one, but two shoes.

Bush thought he did it to get on TV, didn't know his beef. Classic. On his final visit, his exit interview to revive his legacy, he gets called a dog and has 2 shoes thrown at him. What an image around the Arab world. A fitting epitaph.

Holiday Sales Non More Black

Black as in death. ["but death sells", Ian Faith, Spinal Tap manager]
From Nov. 28, the day after Thanksgiving known as "Black Friday," through Dec. 6, luxury sales dropped 34.5 percent compared to the same period last year, while overall apparel sales fell 22.9 percent. Electronic sales fell 22.3 percent.
Source: Yahoo

Google Slams Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal twists a story about Google looking to build an internet fast lane? Tries to make Obama anti-net neutrality? Would Sith Lord Rupert Murdoch do such a thing?
"In short, the Wall Street Journal story is wildly, dramatically overblown and reflects a misunderstanding of both our caching practices as well as our position on net neutrality," Adam Kovacevich, a Google public affairs spokesperson, told Portfolio.com
Will the WSJ publish a clarification?

To start a war, you have to build your case in the media months ahead of time. Sell your story. Seems Rupert is making up a drama, using the President-elect as a strawman.

Oh, the liberal media bias.

Source: Portfolio.com

Net Neutrality's Slippery Slope

This is what CEO Henry Blodget had to say about net neutrality in his recent article on Silicon Alley Insider:
One of the most kneejerk Internet causes in recent years has been "net neutrality"--the absurd conviction that phone and cable companies who paid hundreds of billions of dollars to lay the cable that Internet data travels over shouldn't be able to charge different rates for different tiers of data service.
Absurd? What a ignorant, dick thing to say. His lame site may have never gotten off the ground if carriers were charging tiered service for internet access.

Public dollars paid a big part in the development of the net and the companies pipes' through massive tax subsidies. The inherent competition and level playing field is the backbone to the success of the net.

When his readers call him out for his asinine quote, Henry fires back, "FedEx charges different rates for different delivery times. Is that so horrible? Where are the cries for 'Mail Neutrality'?"

Is he kidding? When you see all this loss on Wall St and Ponzi schemes behind $50 billion house of cards, just know that these guys are in charge.

Equating FedEx with the internet makes no sense. If you charged FedEx access to the highways for every mile they use, or if FedEx were allowed to take over a lane of a public highway for a competitive edge, then you have a case. His analogy is useless.

This is about content. FedEx doesn't ask what's in the box and charge you different rates. A box is a box.

And as for true competition for internet access, we only have one pipe coming into our homes. There are not 100s of wires outside at your curb. ISPs pay for access to that pipe. The government regulates this, they have anti-trust laws.

Hopefully Net Neutrality and it's greedy opponents are a done argument with the new Obama administration.

Source: SAI

200 Torture Lawsuits Against Rumsfeld [So Far]

'Tis the season to start addressing War Crimes:
AMMAN, Dec 15, 2008 (AFP) - A Jordan-based Iraqi rights group said on Monday it has filed 200 lawsuits against US former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and American security firms for their alleged role in torturing Iraqis.

Ali Qeisi, head of the group the "Society of Victims of the US Occupation in Iraq," said the cases, relating to torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners, have been recently filed in federal courts in Virginia, Michigan and Maryland.

"Around 30 lawsuits have been accepted so far," Qeisi told AFP. The others are still under consideration.

"The torture was systemic, and those responsible for it should be punished and the victims should be compensated," he said.
Source: RawStory

Bush's 'So What?'

Bush today expanded his guiltless-even-though-I-destroyed-everything asshole rejoinder, "So what?", from Cheney's equally dickish "So?" from a few months back.

George, you've just been called out for having 100% wrong reasoning for pre-emptive war. So what? I'm sure some soldier's parents appreciate that quip. Watch this video and feel the uncontrollable need to punch someone in the face.



The interview was with ABC’s Martha Raddatz.
BUSH: One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take–

RADDATZ: But not until after the U.S. invaded.

BUSH: Yeah, that’s right. So what? The point is that al Qaeda said they’re going to take a stand. Well, first of all in the post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat. And then upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a stand.
The mind of a fool. Is he that dumb to not know? He's beyond cognitive dissonance.

So his point is: after you attack someone not responsible for the initial strike and they take a stand, then you have to fight them because they took a stand.

It's justified as long as you sprinkle a little al Qaeda on top.

Source: ThinkProgress

The Architect Of Abu Ghraib

No longer up for debate: did he, didn't he, did he know? The Senate's bipartisan report, issued with no dissents, reiterates and adds factual context to what we already know. And there is no equivocation in the report. Bush tortured. And there is no statute of limitations for war crimes.

Via Andrew Sullivan:
Those ghastly pctures of naked, hooded prisoners? Bush approved nudity and hooding of prisoners. Hypothermia? Sleep deprivation? Bush signed a memo removing the most baseline protections for all human beings under the Geneva Conventions. Waterboarding? Bush knew full well. As did Rice and Tenet and Powell and that poseur in defense of human rights, Paul Wolfowitz. But even before the memo, before any prisoners were captured, the Bush administration was working on how to torture them:
"In December 2001, more than a month before the President signed his memorandum, the Department of Defense (DoD) General Counsel’s Office had already solicited information on detainee “exploitation” from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), an agency whose expertise was in training American personnel to withstand interrogation techniques considered illegal under the Geneva Conventions."
Let's be absolutely clear what this means: When we saw an image of Lynndie England pulling a naked prisoner around on a leash, we assumed at the time that she improvised this, or was some kind of "bad apple." This is and was a conscious lie to the Congress, and to the American people, and to the world. The person who authorized the use of nudity and leashes on prisoners was not Lynndie England or any of the other grunts thrown to the wolves.
The man who directly authorized the technique shown below, who violated international law and our Constitution, was the President of the United States. She was just doing her job:



Notice the total near silence form the Republicans?

Source: Daily Dish

The Fruits Of Republican Rule

Thank you George Bush, thank you Republicans.

via Harpers:
Linda J. Bilmes, lecturer in public finance at Harvard's Kennedy School, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and University Professor of Economics at Columbia, describe the cost of the Bush Presidency in an article titled "The $10 Trillion dollar hangover: Paying the Price for the Bush years."
"The result of deficit spending is debt. When President Bush took office, the national debt was $5.7 trillion. Now it is $10.6 trillion -- and Congress voted in October to raise the debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion, the seventh such hike since President Bush to office and the second since last July. If, as is quite likely, we reach the new ceiling by January 20, the outgoing President will have managed to amass more debt than all of his predecessors combined."
So the Republicans who say small government and fiscal responsibility is their strength, who say government is the problem, they sure have no problem spending all the money.

What's worse is that they spent all the money, and at the same time gave the richest people tax breaks. We are going to have to pay for both now. Twice the pain.

Source: DailyKos

The Comeback

Bush's comeback is awesome. The neck move alone is priceless.

The Shoe Thrower In Us All

How dead is the Iraqi show thrower? I'll give it to Bush, he ducked both shoes successfully. His Dad, he of vomiting on himself in Japan fame, would have took one of them to the grill.

CNN notes that shoe throwing is considered an insult among Muslims. Really? As opposed to most places where shoe throwing is a compliment?

In an eyewitness account of the shoe-throwing incident, Modest Bee reporter Adam Ashton reports that Bush and Maliki had just finished their speeches and were preparing to take questions from the Iraqi media, who "have never had a chance to ask a question to the American president" when "the shoes started flying."
Source: HuffPo

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Obama's Logo Options

Much has been made of the successful "O" logo Obama used in his campaign. See the ones that didn't make the cut.

Obama logo option #4


Source: LogoDesignLove

Imagine That? War Is Massive FAIL

I'm sure this report could have come out before the November 4 elections.
"An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures."
Do we need any more evidence to get Rumsfeld locked away?

Make sure all your conservative war monger friends get this message. They were the ones a few years back that said the liberal media only talked about the negative stories. Well, we were right. The positive stories, and the way the conservative blogs and media tried to spin it, were made up. They chose ideology over facts.
"The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed.

By mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money."
That is about 4 auto industry bailouts but who's counting.

Does this sound like the Bush way of doing things, something he has done his whole life:
"Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the history concludes, 'the government as a whole has never developed a legislatively sanctioned doctrine or framework for planning, preparing and executing contingency operations in which diplomacy, development and military action all figure.'”
Please read the entire article. Should be mandatory reading for any pro-war "might-makes-right" flag-waving asshole out there. Should print it on the back of all the NASCAR tickets.

Source: NYT