Why Does Newt Still Think We Care?

A little context for the disgraced FORMER speaker:

Newt Gingrich, on Nancy Pelosi, during an interview on ABC radio:

"She is a trivial politician, viciously using partisanship for the narrowest of purposes, and she dishonors the Congress by her behavior."

This from the guy who was run out of politics more than ten years ago, who viciously used Bill Clinton's affair for partisan purposes, while carrying on his own affair, and who was reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for "intentional or . . . reckless disregard of House rules."

And:



Source: http://www.dailykos.com/

Rain Man

Our President is pretty cool.

Notre Dame Valedictorian Gives Obama Thumbs Up

A whole lot of nothing:

"The media focus on the controversy surrounding President Obama's upcoming Notre Dame speech might give the impression that Obama is not welcome at the university. Class valedictorian Brennan Bollman, the woman who will be sharing the stage with the president on Sunday, says that couldn't be further from the truth.

'This issue has not divided the campus by any means,' says the Catholic, pro-life biology major who will be attending Harvard Medical School after graduation."

Leave it to the Catholic Church to chime in, centuries out of tune:

"Some of the strongest words against the Notre Dame invitation came from Chicago's Cardinal Francis George, who accused Notre Dame of showing it 'didn't understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation.'"

Bollman called Cardinal George's statement out of tune with Catholicism. "We know exactly what it is to be Catholic because we are inviting President Obama to speak to us." She said the University's President, Father Jenkins, had even sent a letter earlier in the week to all graduates affirming he's proud that campus dialogue had not "led to divisions."

This all comes down to a small fanatical anti-abortion group that has siezed this opportunity to demonstrate their own narrow-minded view of the world. I wonder if these people even understand what it to be a Christian?

Source: HuffPo

Obama And Notre Dame

With big issues like poverty, war, environment and education on the table and the real focus of most people, why does the Catholic Church focus on issues like abortion? Most people do not deal with abortions, and as a celibate male group, what insight do they have on women's reproductive issues and condom use? Talk about control issues.

All this comes into the national view with Obama at Notre Dame this weekend. Conservative Catholics are upset that someone who upholds the present laws on abortion [Roe v Wade] and has a "pro-choice" stance, is faithfully married and is a devoted father, could somehow not be morally fit to give a commencement address. Forget that he is President of the United States.

[Mind you, Notre Dame is a Catholic university with millions if not billions in endowment, yet charge student $45,000 per year to there. Very Jesus-like.]

Obama has ended the "torture era" in America. He is about to close the international symbol of torture in Guantanamo. His programs are aimed at helping the middle class, bringing more health care to more people and stresses family wages. He is trying to curb the divisive nature of partisan politics and. He is trying to end an unjust war.

“What’s playing out in Notre Dame this weekend,” says Douglas Kmiec, an anti-abortion Catholic and constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University who worked for presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, “is a lot of post-traumatic understanding on the part of partisan conservative voices that they’re losing the church -- that the hold that they had on the church hierarchy, and certainly the hold that they had on the laity, is gone.”

Catholics are increasingly coming to two conclusions, according to Kmiec: The GOP never delivered on its anti-abortion promises, and Obama is more in tune with their views – on the war in Iraq, harsh interrogations and social justice issues – than his Republican counterparts.

The Church would have you believe abortions are everywhere and are always wrong. Those who have them are evil. Well, it's a lot more complicated than that. And if contradicting Church doctrine should be a barrier for speaking at Notre Dame, George Bush was pro-death penalty [set a record for most deaths as Governor in TX] and started a war, both issues the Vatican opposes. Won't even mention the torture issue.

But why would hypocrisy influence a Conservatives stance anytime soon?

The Church has to realize that the day any religion becomes about a single political topic is the day it has ceased to become about the practice of faith and has become a political action committee. Maybe that is why they are losing their flock.

As for ND, I guess it takes the focus off football coach Charlie Weis' destruction of the program.

Source: Daily Beast

Quote Of The Day: Chris Matthews

I wonder is she writes like she talks? No "g"s at the end of words.

"Sarah Palin -- now, don't laugh -- is writing a book. Not just reading a book, writing a book."-- Chris Matthews on Hardball.

Obama's Weekly YouTube Address: New Foundation

President Obama's Weekly Address: Two Pillars of a New Foundation.

"Ready for a new New Deal? How about the New Foundation? As Mr. Obama labors to pull the country out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression and simultaneously overhaul energy, education and health care, he has coined an expression to encapsulate his ambitious program in the same way Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the 1930s."

Source: NYT

Gates Leading Charge To Reign In Spending

Trimming the amount of money we spend on the military will be the next big issue for Americans to come to grips with. The rub is Senators want to bust the budgets on programs that don't work to save jobs for their constituents.



The endless amounts of money are not there anymore. Limitless spending on missile systems that don't work and fighter planes we don't need will not will help the US move forward:

As [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates put it, a lot of the cuts he'd imposed were "kind of no-brainers … poster children for an acquisition program gone wrong."

The other contentious debate was over the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter plane, which, to Gates and President Obama, is a textbook case of a Cold War weapon that has no place in the 21st-century arsenal. It is telling that not a single F-22 has flown a combat mission in any of the wars the United States has fought since the plane entered the fleet.

The Pentagon is not used to spending less, or wisely:

This is why the budget debate will be worth watching. Gates' proposals aren't particularly radical by most objective measures, but they're deeply threatening to the inside players. He's trying to change the culture in the Pentagon, and that's like shifting the building's foundations. It's going to be a great fight.

Pop quiz: How much is Obama cutting from Defense budget?
Answer: He's increasing it by $31 Billion.

Obama is cutting programs but still spending more, overall, on needed programs like Special Forces.

Still the conservatives will attempt to call Obama weak on defense. The GOP FAIL.

Source: Slate

Tracing Torture's Trail

Rachel Maddow has a good summary of what we know now about the Bush Administration's motivation to torture. All points lead to VP The Dick Cheney.

Charles Duelfer and Bob Windrem guest.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

When you see Bush talk, as compared to Obama's tone, it's almost painful.

Quote Of The Day: Lawrence Wilkerson

The US is less safe is a crock. Republican talking point killed:

"..no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush.... So, if ...Obama's having shut down the 'Cheney interrogation methods' will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?"
-- Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell

Why do we not hear this in the mainstream media?

Gonzales Opinions No One Asked For

From the guy who could not recall a thing when asked about the US Attorneys being fired.

"In essence what you’re saying, I think, is that I’m going to, I don’t care what the law says, I’m going to come out, I’m going to pursue an outcome that I think is fair and just. I’m going to rewrite the law. And I think that’s dangerous," - Alberto Gonzales, a former attorney-general who secretly approved of breaking the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention on Torture.

Gonzo's exact word was the Geneva Conventions were "quaint". Now he is trying to chime in on the new Supreme Court pick as if anything he says has any value.

Solipsism is the philosophical idea that "My mind is the only thing that I know exists." Sums up the psychopathic Bush years.

Symptoms of a psychopath, just so we can be sure the word fits:
• Glib and superficial
• Egocentric and grandiose
• Lack of remorse or guilt
• Lack of empathy
• Deceitful and manipulative
• Shallow emotions

And isn't "empathy" the word they are attacking Obama for using? Classic.

Cheney's War

We spent the past 6 years at war, the lives lost and the money spent, for the personal belief that Cheney had, but could and will never prove, that Al Qaeda and Hussein were linked by 9/11.

Then he spent years approving illegal torture trying to wishfully connect the two, all at the expense of American lives, goodwill and trillions of dollars.

Cheney Is The King Of Torture

The Bush Administration didn't care what a Sunni or a Shia was, had no care who Al Sadr and his massively popular local army was, and would fire a Arabic translator at the drop of a DADT hat. The War on Terror was a farce from its inception: how do you battle a state of mind? What was next? A war on jealousy?

The more we learn, the more we see how Bush and Cheney were ideologically were set on pushing square pegs in rounds holes:

The chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says that the Bush Administration authorized torture of detainees before even rendering a legal opinion on the practice — and that they sought to torture detainees in an effort to produce intelligence tying Iraq to al Qaeda.

“What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida,” former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson wrote Wednesday evening.

Cheney is particular is obsessed on connecting dots that don't exist;

“So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods,” Wilkerson added.

Why were they reporting to Cheney's office? Why the VP? Just goes to show how evil Cheney has been and will be.

Please read the linked story to see how devious this story gets.

Source: Rawstory

Illegal Torture Used To Defend An Illegal War

We were attacked by Saudis living in America backed by Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi. The terrorists of 9/11 lived in America, took flying lessons here, rented apartments, spoke English.

Bin Laden's Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan around the time of September 2001.

Look at the map below. Why are we in Iraq torturing people for years? Get past a 4 year-old's grasp of "bad people" and show me the connection. Al Qaeda was not in Hussein's Iraq.

Better yet, explain knowing there was no WMD and no connection to Hussein and Al Qaeda.



Josh Marshall writes:

"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

Source: TPM

GOP To Stall Climate Legislation

The GOP plans to stall climate change legislation:

Republicans know they can’t stop Henry Waxman’s ambitious climate change bill from clearing the Energy and Commerce Committee, but they’re promising to make the ride as bumpy as possible.

The monochromatic fringe party is almost boastful about turning it's back on science. Delay, Deny, Deceive. The GOP code.

Source: Politico

Senators Says CIA Made Up Dates

A Senator backing up what a House member claims is "misleading". Keep in mind as all of this is happening, the same CIA and Bush Administration are pushing the WMD fallacy with virtually no credible evidence. The instinct to mislead was systemic.

The former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, says that the Central Intelligence Agency told him that they had briefed him on the Bush administration’s torture techniques on two dates he was never briefed.

What’s more, the now-retired Florida senator told a New York radio host Thursday that the CIA admitted that they’d gotten the dates wrong. The CIA recently released a report detailing the dates that key members of Congress had been briefed about the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation program,” but acknowledged in a letter accompanying the report that they couldn’t vouch for its complete accuracy.

Source: Rawstory

Distraction Of The Day

Bush: "We do not torture. You gotta trust me."
Pelosi: "Whatevs, trigger boy."



The distraction of the day. Still does not make torture legal. Still does not make Bush's decision to use torture any less illegal. The web of deceit that Bush and Cheney wove was massive and includes a lot of spineless politicians. Complicity will be a subject a lot of people will have to defend.

Still, Bush was the trigger man. Rule of Law will set this straight.

The CIA Lied. What A Shocker

Oh no, you didnt! Nancy Pelosi raises the ante. Truth Commission anyone?

Pelosi repeated that she had not been told about the use of torture techniques, despite the claim in the recently released CIA documents that she had been. "I am saying that the CIA was misleading the Congress," she said.

Pelosi was less clear when asked about reports that her top aide had been briefed about waterboarding in 2003 and told her about it. She said she was told that her aide "had been briefed about the use of certain techniques," but added that there was little she could have done to protest.

Pelosi also said she supports the full release of CIA notes and memos detailing who was told what and when, as GOP Rep Pete Hoekstra has been demanding. "I would be very happy if they would release the briefings," she said, reiterating her call for a truth commission.

Funny how those who really did the illegal activities have very little to say. The Republican strategy will be to pump up this distraction: Who cares if Bush broke the law? Let's all just pretend it didn't happen. Look over there, Nancy Pelosi!

The classic GOP "kill the messenger" but never comment on the actual crimes. The fast and loose days of post-9/11 America has accountability issues that are rearing its ugly head.

Source: Washington Monthly

Do You Know What A Renmindi Is?

"Dr. Doom" Nouriel Roubini has an article in today's NYT about the future of the US dollar. Our status an an empire with net debtor and a net borrower status concerns him.

"But what could replace it? The British pound, the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc remain minor reserve currencies, as those countries are not major powers. Gold is still a barbaric relic whose value rises only when inflation is high. The euro is hobbled by concerns about the long-term viability of the European Monetary Union. That leaves the [Chinese] renminbi."

Do most people know that the Chinese currency is called the renmindi? That being said, we aren't there yet:

"At the moment, though, the renminbi is far from ready to achieve reserve currency status. China would first have to ease restrictions on money entering and leaving the country, make its currency fully convertible for such transactions, continue its domestic financial reforms and make its bond markets more liquid. It would take a long time for the renminbi to become a reserve currency, but it could happen."

So if we are in bad times, borrowing too much, and China is not quite there to come in and replace the dollar, what does the Doctor suggest?

"Now that the dollar’s position is no longer so secure, we need to shift our priorities. This will entail investing in our crumbling infrastructure, alternative and renewable resources and productive human capital — rather than in unnecessary housing and toxic financial innovation. This will be the only way to slow down the decline of the dollar, and sustain our influence in global affairs."

Telling America to stop spending more than it makes is a tall order. Clinton got our deficits down to where we had a surplus. Bush destroyed all that by spending way too much while at the same time cutting taxes. It's now up to us and Obama to get us back to where we need to be.

Source: NYT

Vatican Denies, Then Admits Pope's Hitler Youth Role

Leave it to the Catholic Church to not keep the lies from getting in the way of the truth. Most sleazy organizations stick to their fabricated stories during a PR mess, the Vatican can't even get that right.

Pope Benedict XVI's pilgrimage to the Holy Land veered into controversy over his past on Tuesday when the Vatican denied and then acknowledged his membership in the Hitler Youth during World War II.

The conflicting accounts came in response to criticism by Israeli leaders that the German pontiff's address at the Holocaust Memorial on Monday had failed to acknowledge his witness of Nazi terror as a conscript in the youth movement and the German army.

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's chief spokesman, felt compelled to declare that the pope, growing up as Joseph Ratzinger in Bavaria, "never, never, never" belonged to the Hitler Youth. Later he backtracked, conceding what Ratzinger, then a Roman Catholic cardinal, told an interviewer for his 1997 biography: that his membership in the movement had been compulsory.

There was some controversy when the pontiff declared that Hitler's extermination of Jews must "never be denied, belittled or forgotten" but did not use the word Nazi or German.

"The pope spoke like a historian, as somebody observing from the sidelines, about things that shouldn't happen," Israeli Parliament Speaker Reuven Rivlin said on Israel Radio. "But what can you do? He was part of them."

Truth hurts. A picture is worth a 1000 words and Ratzy's Nazi Youth pic above proves it. Born in 1927, Ratzinger would have been 14 in 1941 when he was a member. Seems an age you can remember what you were doing.

Source: Baltimore Sun

Senate Proposes 15% Interest-Rate Cap On Credit Cards

Unfortunately they rejected it.

Did you know one-third of all credit card holders are paying interest above 20 percent and as high as 41 percent?

Despite complaints that banks and credit card companies are gouging customers by charging outrageous interest rates, the Senate on Wednesday turned back an effort to cap interest rates at 15 percent.

The proposal by Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent, drew only 33 votes and needed 60. A bipartisan group of 60 senators opposed it, though the Senate pushed ahead with other restrictions on credit cards. Some Democrats and consumer groups have said that an interest cap is needed to put real teeth into an otherwise solid bill.

“When banks are charging 30 percent interest rates, they are not making credit available,” said Mr. Sanders. “They are engaged in loan sharking.”

The banking lobby will put up a mean fight, but this is a step in the right direction.

Source: NYT

Quote Of The Day: Russ Feingold

"So clearly, the former vice president is misleading the American people."-- Russ Feingold, speaking of Dick Cheney's assertions that classified memos prove "torture works".

New Regulations for Derivatives

Obama working on so many things at the same time:

The Obama administration will detail this afternoon its plan to regulate the exotic financial contracts that helped fuel the global crisis and crippled some of the biggest names on Wall Street, such as American International Group, sources familiar with the matter said.

The administration is seeking to amend securities law so that most derivatives would have to be traded through central clearinghouses regulated by the SEC and the CFTC.

In turn, the clearinghouses would require traders to maintain enough money in reserve so they could cover losses in any investments gone bad. These so-called margin requirements have been a hotly debated issue between the government and private traders because it curbs their profits.

Umm, profits? What about billions in loses? You know the guys behind all this mess on Wall St are already figuring out how to evade these new rules.

Source: WaPo

Lindsey Graham Is A Dick

Shut up, Lindsey, and let the guy talk. Republicans are going to have such a time defending this mess created by Bush. It's getting to the point these Republicans would have defended Hitler if he had an [R] after his name.

Quote Of The Day: Sheldon Whitehouse

Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democratic senator chairing the hearings, on how the Bush administration's lies about how the torture program was approved:

"We were told that waterboarding was determined to be legal, but were not told how badly the law was ignored, bastardized and manipulated by the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel nor were we told how furiously government and military lawyers rejected the defective OLC opinions."

The blinking lights were there, Bush and Torture Inc. chose to ignore them.

Source: TPM Muckracker

Dick Cheney: Why So Chatty All of a Sudden?

Time asks the question:

In the past few days, former Vice President Dick Cheney has appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation" and Fox News to defend the Bush team's harsh interrogation practices. His daughter Liz has done a turn on MSNBC to echo her father. Next week, Cheney is scheduled to give a speech called "Keeping America Safe" at the American Enterprise Institute.

For a man whose public profile was almost nonexistent while he was a public servant, it's clear from his schedule alone that private citizen Cheney hasn't merely resurfaced — he's gone on the offensive. The question is, Why?

A guilty conscience needs no accuser. All Cheney's men are not around him to protect him. His shield of silence, his idiot President, his coterie of evil lawyers, his home knocked off Google maps, nothing can save him anymore.

Cheney may have been able to protect his past, deleting his visitor logs, losing e-mails, but he will not be able to protect his future.

Cheney is "trying to rewrite history," says a Republican consultant who has experience in intelligence matters. "He knows that as time goes by, he will look worse. And so he's trying to put his stroke on it."

From your own perspective, you will always get the answers you want. Approach it from a logical or legal perspective and you get an entirely different answer. For example, a personal campaign for waterboarding is not a good political move.

But it is nice to see Cheney talking. This will help the prosecution out a lot.

Source: Time

Specter Opposed Switching Parties In 2001

You can take the ma out of the Republican party, but you can't take the Republican out of the man.

A Political Wire reader found a clip of a 2001 speech by Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) in which he argues for a rule change to prevent senators from switching parties after Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-VT) left the Republican party.

Hypocrisy is a tough habit to break. Republicans must hate YouTube.

"I'd like to avoid saying something I would later regret..."

Source: Political Wire

Kucinich: Wake Up America

Dennis Kucinich takes on the health care industry. Calls their plan a hoax and swindle. Doubts the industries' intentions to all-of-a-sudden start doing what they are supposed to do and calls for the end of the grip it has on American politics.



Source: http://earth2obama.org/

The FBI Was Onto The CIA's Torture Programs In 2002

Great article on Alberto Gonzales' role as then Attorney to George Bush and the approval of brutal interrogation techniques back in 2002.

The article also mentions the guy, James E. Mitchell, a former military psychologist, who was the architect of the CIA's harsh interrogation plan.

Here's an interesting detail on Mitchell supplied by a star FBI agent Ali Soufan:

But Mitchell, says the former operative, "had no experience whatsoever in Islamic extremism and ideology of al Qaeda." According to the former government official, Mitchell "never interrogated a person in his entire life and he came up with some crazy theories that anybody who's a professional in the agency or in the FBI, all of us agreed at the time that this guy is a quack."

This would not be the first time the Bush Administration relied on a person without qualifications to run a pivotal position, and as usual, we get to all pay the price. He probably passed their Evangelical Christian test or showed his Republican voting records to get the job.

Faced with Mitchell's failed and illegal torture techniques, Soufan blew the whistle and told his superiors at FBI headquarters. Soufan intends to tell the Senate on Wednesday that he "couldn't even dream that the United States would do something like that."

Click here to see Mitchell refusing to talk to ABC News.

Source: ABC

Key Torture Detainee "Commits Suicide"

Add this to the ever growing long list of bullshit the Bush Administration passed on to the American public:

A former CIA high-value detainee, who provided bogus information that was cited by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war, has died in a Libyan prison, an apparent suicide, according to a Libyan newspaper.

Imagine that? Just as we are getting exposure to the vast illegal activities of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld and their barbaric love of torture and it's derived misguided intel, one of the guys they tortured, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who gave false information used to justify the Iraq War "commits suicide". While incarcerated in Libya of all places. Funny how Bush used Libya and Cuba as prisons to do his dirty work and the Republicans and Conservatives didn't blink an eye. That's not pallin' around with the wrong crowd.

The bogus Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi claims were most famously delivered by then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in his address to the United Nations in February 2003.

Just like "Curveball" and Ahmed Chalibi gave all false pre-war Iraqi information, the Bush Administration had made up their mind on going to war. This was all window dressing.

This is not a convenient war and we are learning very inconvenient facts about how America was pushed and tricked into a very costly war. Nonetheless, we need to properly understand all these atrocities and put those responsible up to judgement. That is the only way to move forward.

Source: WaPo

Making Empathy A Dirty Word

em·pa·thy
Pronunciation: \ˈem-pə-thē\
1: the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it
2: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.

Republican's definition of empathy:
"lawlessness, activism, & social engineering" & have associated it with "intellectual weakness, judicial immodesty, favoritism, bias, and grandiosity."

"When did the simple act of recognizing that you are not the only one in the room become confused with lawlessness, activism, and social engineering? For a group so vociferously devoted to textualism and plain meaning, conservative critics have an awfully elastic definition of the word empathy."

Republicans argued for deference to Presidential preference for Bush's nominees. They need some justification for reversing that viewpoint. However, the reality is that they will simply oppose his nominee reflexively.

Source: Slate

Innumeracy And Gas Guzzlers

Innumeracy and the car industry:

Small changes in MPG in cars that get poor gas mileage actually have much larger effects than you would think. In the example given, going from 18 MPG to 20 MPG would be a reduction of 56 gallons of fuel each year if you assume 10,000 miles will be driven. To save the equivalent amount of fuel I'd have to replace my 30 MPG car with one that gets 36 MPG.

This is the type of information needed to make improvemnets in the US car industry, our dependence on oil, and making real change going forward. Obama are you listening?

Source: Andrew Sullivan

Middle Class REPREZENT

News for the little guy:

Vice President Joe Biden, making a renewed pitch for a major change in labor law, told union leaders Tuesday that the best way to rebuild the middle class is to help labor unions grow.

Biden said it's time to "level the playing field" for unions by passing a bill that would make it easier for workers to organize.

"You've got to climb up a hill with so many roadblocks on the way to organize that it's just out of whack," Biden told a conference of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which has about 1.6 million members.

"If a union is what you want, then a union is what you should get," Biden said.

The Employee Free Choice Act - also known as "card check" - is organized labor's top priority this year, but business groups are adamantly opposed. It would allow a majority of workplace employees to sign cards to join a union instead of holding secret ballot elections.

Exploiting labor, whether at home or abroad, is the American way. From slaves, to Jim Crow laws, to European immigrants, to Mexicans, to China and the rest of Asia, we know how to find and justify paying people next to nothing, all in the name of the dollar and greed.

The American Unions have given all of us so much, but because they fail in the PR wars against big business, we perceive them as the bad guy.

It's time that view changed. The middle class has shouldered the burden for too long.

Source: AP

Quote Of The Day: Michael Steele

The RNC Chair pretty much says his party "base" does not like Mormons:

"[R]emember, it was the base that rejected Mitt [Romney] because of his switch on pro-life, from pro-choice to pro-life. It was the base that rejected Mitt because it had issues with Mormonism." -- Michael Steele

The religion is the 4th biggest in America. Great to see fundamentalist "Christians" who practice selective Christianity upon their own. A definite WWJD moment.

Source: Politico

Afghanistan: "The Graveyard Of Empires"

Some things to think about in Afghanistan and the commanders are being switched:

• The U.S. has killed twice as many Afghan civilians as the Taliban this year and that number is sure to rise.
• The Taliban are the group we empowered, funded and armed during the 10-year Afghan war with the Soviet Union. The Afghans and the Russians surely remember that.

Chris Hedges writes:

"We are the best recruiting weapon the Taliban possesses. We have enabled it to rise from the ashes seven years ago to openly control over half the country and carry out daylight attacks in the capital Kabul. And the war we wage is being exported like a virus to Pakistan in the form of drones that bomb Pakistani villages and increased clashes between the inept Pakistani military and a restive internal insurgency."

What a dismal outlook. Good thing Bush ignored Afghanistan in favor of Iraq and funded Pakistani dictators with billions for all his years.

History repeatedly has taught that Afghanistan is the "Graveyard of Empires." The current state seems to be a particularly evil mess with a convoluted, nonlinear narrative. Americans don't like that. They like nuggets to judge instantly without nuance.

A reader writes:

"I can't help but wonder if the State Department doesn't consciously capitalize on this confusion: the stirred-up pot of Afghanistan is beyond the imaginations of most people to begin with. Add all the other tragic flaws behind this debacle, and nothing is lucid anymore. I believe this works to the advantage of 'our' war chiefs in arguing the case at home."

You start to think there is more covering up than coverage in this War. Would be nice to get some serious information on what the goal of all this war is.

Source: AlterNet

Jesse Ventura's Dick Cheney Waterboard Scenario

Jesse Ventura, former Navy SEAL, waterboarded himself in the SERE program, makes no bones about it: waterboarding is torture. I'd like to see Hannity have Ventura on his show to debate the issue.

"You Give Me a Water Board, Dick Cheney and One Hour, and I'll Have Him Confess to the Sharon Tate Murders."

We'll see how soon Jesse is invited back to CNN after bashing Bush ["he's the worst president in my lifetime"] and Larry King's defensive "all right already with Bush" comments.

Limbaugh's Racist Code

Why hold back the racism with "Barack the magic Negro", just go full bore ahead and don the "blackface" and do some soft-shoe. I'm sure that he is using these exact words against the first black President are pure coincidence.

"This is the objective. The objective is unemployment. The objective is more food stamp benefits. The objective is more unemployment benefits. The objective is an expanding welfare state. And the objective is to take the nation’s wealth and return to it to the nation’s quote, “rightful owners.” Think reparations. Think forced reparations here if you want to understand what actually is going on,"
-- "Boss" Rush Limbaugh, leader of the GOP.

Does Rush know you have to qualify for these programs by having a job for more than 12 months then been laid off? What do you spend food stamps on other than food sold at stores that sell American made goods and employ Americans? These meager programs are not get rich schemes and last for a set amount of time.

I would think most people's unemployment and food stamps are paid on rent and food. They help keep the economy going.

And what do the majority white-folk who are receiving government assistance getting reparations for?

Crist Comes Out....To Run For Senator

Charlie Crist's coming out party. He's running for Senator in Florida. Chris Cillizza breaks it down.

Add this to the growing identity crisis of Republicans: Crist is a potential 2012 player and star for the RNC who not only supported the stimulus; he actually appeared alongside President Obama in Fort Myers, Fla., when the package was being launched.



Source: The Fix

Cheney: The Old Faithful of Nonsense

The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson assesses the self-serving Dick Cheney:

"Unrestrained by protocol or objective reality, he's pretty much guaranteed to say outrageous things.... As far as he's concerned, issues have just one side -- his -- and anyone who disagrees must secretly wish to deliver our nation to al-Qaeda."

Please go back to Wyoming and do what Bush is doing: stewing in his own misery, knowing he is responsible for the worst 8 years in America's history.

Source: WaPo

Paul Krugman: Quote Of The Day

"Remember that what the rest of us call health care costs, they call income."
-- Paul Krugman, on the healthcare industry.

Since 2004 They Knew Torture Did Not Work

A CIA inspector general's report from May 2004 that is set to be declassified by the Obama White House this week.

On Monday, the Washington Post reported the impending release of a May 7, 2004 IG report that, the paper added, would show that in several circumstances the techniques used to interrogate terrorist suspects "appeared to violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture" and did not produce desired results. It is difficult, the report will conclude, "to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks."

This information is from 2004 yet Dick Cheney, the most evil guy in the room, has been going on for years about how torture was needed, almost justified.

Now with the benefit of declassifying the reports, the more we know about these programs, the more it seems they were not effective. Add the enormous WMD charade Cheney has pushed from even before 9/11, and all the subsequent bogus connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda and The Dick is batting 0.000.

This is the kicker: now that we know the Bush Administration tortured and how waterboarding compromised American values, we now are learning that, from as far back as 2004, that particular act of torture was deemed useless:

Medical personnel at the detention facility protested the use of the waterboard in that form, stressing that "there was no a priori reason to believe that applying the waterboard with the frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist/interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe.'"

What this shows us is that the internal reports and checks and balances were all there, blaring blinking red lights, warning the Bush Administration of all these illegal and ineffective activities. Bush and Cheney chose to ignore them and endlessly promote the exact opposite position. They lived the past 4+ years knowing this was illegal, pushing their flawed agenda. Malice personified.

I say let the indictments flow. Cheney, since he has left office, is practically begging to be brought in. Every TV appearance can be used as evidence. A true sociopath.

Source: HuffPo

The Haunting Of George Bush

George Bush will haunt Republicans for generations:

"Who was President when you turned 18? As annotated in the chart below, the popularity -- or lack thereof -- of the President when the voter turned 18 would seem to have a lot of explanatory power for how their politics turned out later on":

The writing is on the wall:

What's more remarkable, though, is how sharp the increase in the partisan ID gap becomes at about age 25. People aged 26-34 are pretty Democratic, put people aged 18-25 are really Democratic.

There is a difference between "keep your values" and "stay the course" that the Republicans never learned. GWB had his moment, drove off the cliff, and bragged about not blinking.

As Andrew Sullivan commented:

"Republicanism has been branded as toxic in the imagination of a generation. That won't end soon.

And if Obama manages to engineer an economic recovery that lasts ... then the retrospective could hurt the GOP for the rest of our lifetime. Rove will have managed the durable majority he long sought - for the Dems."

Source: Nate Silver

Slow Jamming The Supremes

Jimmy Fallon & the Roots Slow-Jam the Supremes:

America's Next Supreme Court Model, I Mean, Justice

First Read has a short-list of six possible nominees for President Obama's Supreme Court pick:

The co-frontrunners: Diane Wood of the 7th Circuit, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Circuit, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Merrick Garland of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

"Obviously, folks can slice this list all they want: Five are women; one's Hispanic; one's male; and all are in their late 40s or early 50s, except two (Wood, 58, and Garland, 56). Keep an eye on Napolitano. For this pick, it would be surprising if Obama named someone he didn't either know well or trust personally. Wood, Kagan, and Napolitano all fit this bill (Wood taught at the University of Chicago with Obama, and Kagan and Napolitano already have top slots in the administration). As for Napolitano, remember that she endorsed Obama early on (despite Emily's List pressure to do otherwise). And from people familiar with the president's thinking, he's been as impressed with Napolitano as anyone in his cabinet. They click. That matters..."

These lists are seldom right, but do start the conversation.

Obama At The White House Correspondents' Dinner

President Obama at the White House Correspondents' Dinner over the weekend. The guy is funny. The Michael Steele jokes at 5:00 are classic.



Source: CSPAN

The "Holy Grail" Of Torture Reports

This is for those Republicans demanding that the administration declassify more relevant materials about torture: the CIA Inspector General report - "this report is the 'holy grail,' because it is expected to detail torture in unprecedented detail and to cast doubt on the claim that torture works."

According to excerpts included in those memos, the inspector general's report concluded that interrogators initially used harsh techniques against some detainees who were not withholding information. Officials familiar with its contents said it also concluded that some of the techniques appeared to violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the United States in 1994.

Although some useful information was produced, the report concluded that "it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks," according to the Justice Department's declassified summary of it.

It's a one step forward, three steps back policy for torture. What ever "success" you try to claim, you have made countless people and their relatives lifelong enemies. When that hatred boils over will that undermine the "success"?

Plus, building a prison like Guantanamo was an International symbol for torture that threw out America's values and put service people in harm's way.

Remember as you read all these reports that this was an Administration that said,"we do not torture". Just as with WMD, it's a constant changing invalid justification that never supports the original compromise to our democracy.