Still Looking For Hannity

Radio host Mancow mans up. Hannity will never. After being waterboarded for seconds, Mancow exclaims, "absolutely torture".



Source: Daily Dish

Moz turns 50

Happy Birthday, Morrissey. Here's to 50 more!

Track from Dallas, 1991. Cover of "Trash" by the New York Dolls. One of my favorites.

The Habitual Lying Of Dick Cheney

When is it a "lie" and not a "false statement"?

RawStory points out all the lies, omissions, exaggerations and misstatements in Dick Cheney's recent speech. Try this one on for size:

Cheney asserted there was no connection between Bush administration torture and detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib.

Does anyone see a pattern here? Lying in office. Lying out of office. When has a private citizen attacked a President from such a flawed position? Cheney's fingerprints are all over everything that is wrong, his "ends justify the means" attitude has no end, just the repitition of his lies. So what if 20% of the people believe him [and watch Fox], the other 80% deserve better.

The disdain Cheney has for Obama, democracy, the American people, the truth, dissenting point of views, the Constitution and traditions of the Oval Office is so obvious. He has taken George Washington's "I can not tell a lie" and turned it into "I can only tell lies because Americans don't deserve the truth".

Source: Raw Story

Obama At The Naval Academy Today

President Obama delivers the commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy today. In the audience will be Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), whose son Jack is the fourth generation of McCains to graduate from the academy.

I wonder if Jack is graduating 5th from the bottom of his class like his dad? John McCain graduated 894 out of 899.

Source: Political Wire

Why Is Liz Cheney Analyzing Her Father On TV?

As Dick Cheney is launching his attacks on President Obama, why is his hack of a daughter Liz Cheney allowed so much TV time to help sell her dad's failed torture policies? Her bona fides are? Her expertise is? Her objective point of view?

Liz Cheney has been on the networks 12 times in the past 9 days:

* On the May 22 edition of ABC's "Good Morning America"
* On the May 22 edition of MSNBC's "Morning Joe"
* On the May 22 edition of CNN's "American Morning"
* On the May 21 edition of CNN's "AC360"
* On the May 21 edition of Fox News' "Hannity"
* On the May 21 edition of "MSNBC News Live"
* On the May 20 edition of Fox News' "Your World"
* On the May 17 edition of ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos"
* On the May 16 edition of Fox News' "Fox & Friends Saturday"
* On the May 15 edition of Fox News' "On the Record"
* On the May 12 edition of Fox News' "Live Desk"
* On the May 12 edition of MSNBC's "Morning Joe"

So says the Washington Monthly:

"There's no modern precedent for such a ridiculous arrangement. Dick Cheney launches a crusade against the White House, and major outlets look for analysis from Cheney's daughter? Who everyone already realizes agrees with everything he says about torture?"

Liz Cheney was brought on to offer analysis of her own father's speech, and parrot her dad's criticism of the president. [What a surprise -- she found her dad's argument very persuasive].

Source: Steve Benen

Yoo Had Me At Hello [To Torture]

The Colbert Report on the Philadelphia Enquirer hiring "Mr. Torture" John Yoo.

Harold Jackson, the paper's editorial page editor defended the decision saying, "There was a conscious effort on our part to counter some of the criticism of 'The Inquirer' as being a knee-jerk liberal publication. We made a conscious effort to add some conservative voices to our mix." As Colbert explains the only two conservatives available were Yoo and a member of the Spanish Inquisition.

Love Colbert's predicted headlines for future Yoo editorials: "Technically It Was The Condom That Was Cheating".

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Daily Show: Obama v Cheney

Jon Stewart looked at Dick Cheney and Barack Obama's back-to-back national security speeches last night and the media's boner over the easily juxtaposable news events.

"The point is to not look back", says Cheney as he mentions "9/11" 25 times in his speech.

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Obama's Speech On National Security

President Obama's speech today. 51 minutes long.

Andrew Sullivan says, "At first blush, I find the balance near pitch-perfect - on detention, torture, interrogation and Gitmo."

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Quote Of The Day: Bob Graham

The CIA, as it relates to Nancy Pelosi seven years ago:

"I confirmed, and the CIA concurred, that three of the four briefings I supposedly attended never occurred. An individual member of Congress should not have better records than the nation's premier intelligence agency."
- Former Senator Bob Graham , who was chairman of the Senate intelligence committee from 2001 to 2003.

Source: WaPo

Cheney: The Alpha And The Omega

Lawrence O'Donnell on Dick Cheney: the ex-VPs speech is an insult to one's intelligence.

He's an "absolute abomination".

Nice for wormly Pat Buchanan to chime in that if O'Donnell is upset, Cheney must have done a good job. What bizarre logic to cling to failed outdated policies that upset, what we now know are failures, as success.

Imagine having a guy claiming the Earth was flat being hailed as successful.

Ventura Delivers Another Smackdown

Jesse Ventura on Sean Hannity.

Hearing Hannity go on on about how big the deficit will be, as if Bush's 8 years have nothing to do it, is so annoying.

Hannity clearly lives in a delusional world where Bush and Republicans have never done anything remotely wrong. To see any of their flaws or failed core policies objectively would topple the entire house of cards Conservatism and Republicanism is built on.

Obama v Cheney: Deuling Speeches

via Taegan Goddard:

The Cheney speech:

"Former Vice President Dick Cheney's speech this morning on national security was entirely about the past. It was a well-argued defense of Bush administration policies, though sarcastic jabs at President Obama, Democrats and the media make clear Cheney knows he's not a popular politician and has no illusions he will soon become one.

While the speech was probably effective for Bush administration loyalists, it's not likely to impact the current debate. This speech was almost entirely about defending the historical record and Cheney's own legacy."

The Obama speech:

"President Obama's speech on national security this morning was probably the most important of his young presidency. He firmly framed his approach to combating terrorism in both American law and values. He didn't seek to refight the presidential campaign or focus blame on the Bush administration. Instead, he outlined the problems as they exist and the challenges to solve them. Most important, he elevated the issues above the current debate.

By focusing on the future, Obama also made former Vice President Dick Cheney's upcoming speech much less relevant. Very few Americans care about defending the previous administration's policies right now. Even fewer care to hear Cheney refight internal battles he lost.

It was a truly excellent speech."

I can never get over how Bush and Cheney justify what they did by letting 9/11 happen in the first place. Do you think if an attack happened in September of Obama's first year, any Republican would ever forget it happened on his watch? You know the answer is never. Why they choose to see September 11, 2001 any different is beyond reason.

David Frum Slams Rumsfeld

From the conservative side, David Frum tackles the Donald Rumsfeld enigma vis a vis the GQ article:

"Why did Iraq go so very badly wrong – and why, having gone wrong, did it take so ruinously wrong for the administration to shift to a more successful course?"

Frum noticed the right wing blogosphere was virtually silent on the revelations in the article on how bad, ignorant and stubborn Rummie was about Iraq. Lack of self-critique is the GOP calling card.

In his own words, Frum ponders the negative influence:

"Imagine you are a general who has presented the secretary with a war plan requiring 300,000 men. Rumsfeld will incessantly push and probe: 'Are you sure you need so many? Why?' The general did not achieve high rank by disregarding hints from his civilian superiors. 'Maybe we can do with 260,000. Really? Still so many? What if you omitted this factor or that?' 'Call it 200,000.' That still seems awfully high … are you sure? OK, OK, 175,000. 'Very well general, if that’s your military opinion, I respect it.'"

And when situations like this led to disastrous results, Rummie was still asking the questions and never delivering the answers. Example after example, Rumsfeld is all about control, but not about listening or gathering perspective, rather cutting off his nose to spite his face. Not sending his people into NSC briefings, refusing help in negotiations with Jordan causing US airmen to fly 2.5 additional hours to avoid airspace, blowing off Paul Bremer after fighting for DoD to lead Iraqi reconstruction efforts once they started faultering.

For those of us who saw all these mistakes in real time and incredulously questioned the cabal in the White House who were running this failed war, Rumsfeld was a walking failure. A few years on, Frum is asking his fellow conservatives in massive denial about the total shitstorm brought on America by Rumsfeld:

"The record of the Rumsfeld years remains one of the highest obstacles to a Republican recovery. It's hard to imagine how we can achieve that recovery without coming to some kind of reckoning with this record - even if only an inward, private reckoning that will enable us to avoid such mistakes in future. But you cannot reckon with what you won't recognize."

Inward, private reckoning? What a crock. Sucks having to swallow all the bravado and attitude conservatives flaunted under Bush, knowing now, they were completely used.

Source: New Majority

Quote Of The Day: Bristol Palin

Hyperbole from the mouth of babes:

"If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody."-- Bristol Palin

I guess all those lessons from Mom paid off. It's called birth control and condoms. They work. Being a 18 year-old single mother in rural Alaska has given her some perspective.

GOP [Hearts] Dick Cheney

The GOP bro-mance with Dick Cheney.

Table for four: Cheney, Boehner, McConnell and Steele.

Durbin To GOP: Man Up

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) offers a reasoned response to the boogeymen the chickenshit GOP are afraid of incarcerating in America.

"You ought to have a little more respect' for American corrections officers."

Why does he even have to make this point? Federal Super Maximum Security Prisons have never had an escape. We are already holding 347 convicted terrorists in America.

Guantanamo is the international symbol of torture. End of story.



Source: ThinkProgress

Japan's Economic Plunge

Here's what the #2 economy in the world is doing:

Japan's economy during the first three months of 2009 shrank at its quickest pace since records began, as exports slumped, officials figures have shown.

Output in the world's second largest economy contracted by 4% during the period, or by 15.2% on an annual basis.

Japan's economy, which depends heavily on exports, has been hit hard by the global downturn. But economists predict a modest growth in the coming months, after a small rise in production in March.

Relatively, the US is not so bad. The Japanese are increasing their savings which is making the recession worse. Americans don't have that problem.

Source: BBC

Safer Credit Cards

Safer credit cards does not include guns.

The NYT Editorial Board on the gun provision in the new credit card bill passing through the Congress:

Unfortunately, the powerful pro-gun forces in the Senate managed to contaminate the bill with an amendment to allow licensed owners to carry loaded firearms into national parks. This is a cynical attempt by the gun lobby to take advantage of consumers when they most need Washington’s help. The House, which could vote on the Senate version as soon as Wednesday, should reject the amendment — even if it takes a little longer for the bill to go to the White House.

Why can't we find out who slipped that into the bill?

Source: NYT

Credit Card Bill Passes

A Democratic Congress at work for you:

The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to rein in credit card rate increases and excessive fees, hoping to give voters some breathing room amid a recession that has left hundreds of thousands of Americans jobless or facing foreclosure.

The House was on track to pass the measure as early as Wednesday, paving the way for President Barack Obama to see the bill on his desk by week's end.

"This is a victory for every American consumer who has ever suffered at the hands of a credit card company," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Banking Committee. The bill passed the Senate 90-5.

Not the perfect bill, but a step in the right direction. Remember the Republicans went for re-writing the bankruptcy laws to favor the banks a few years ago.

But Republicans are still pricks, don't you worry. Look what they added into a credit card bill:

Complicating the issue somewhat was a measure added to the Senate bill that would allow people to carry loaded guns in national parks and wildlife refuges. That provision, sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., passed, 67-29.

Completely unrelated! That's the GOP playing the retro-Washington card.

Source: HuffPo

The Tipping Point Against Cheney?

From the pages of the Washington Times. The Dark Side speaks.

Lanny Davis, hardly a "left-wing vengeance-seeking Bush-hater", in fact went to school with Bush, scans the landscape:

"I have written many times in this space that I oppose any criminal prosecution of prior-administration officials on torture or other issues relating to the Iraq War and the war on terrorism, especially those CIA interrogators who relied in good faith on the instructions of policymakers and the legal opinions issued by Justice Department senior officials.

I have agreed with President Obama on the need to look forward, not backward.

But … I have changed my mind about the need to indict former Vice President Dick Cheney for complicity in illegal torture."

Davis feels as if Cheney, by doing multiple TV programs [read Fox] and conservative radio talk shows, not only defending torture but offering the defense that it worked, is saying: “I am Dick Cheney, I approved violations of the law in the name of the war on terror, and what are you going to do about it?”

He feels we should take Cheney up on his dare,

"I think it is time to take him up on his implicit dare and indict him for violating the 1994 federal law against torture."

The Right opening their eyes? The tipping point?

Source: Greg Sargent

Poetry In Motion

The world's fastest man, Usain Bolt.

Cool 150 meter race set up in the streets of Manchester, England.



via Oliver Willis.

The Torture 13: A Who's Who

Salon has a great article by Marcy Wheeler on the Bush administration's Torture 13. "They authorized it, they decided how to implement it, and they crafted the legal fig leaf to justify it".

"Some of the 13 manipulated the federal bureaucracy and the legal process to 'preauthorize' torture in the days after 9/11. Others helped implement torture, and still others helped write the memos that provided the Bush administration with a legal fig leaf after torture had already begun."

Wheeler lays out who they were and what they did. SPOILER ALERT. The rogue's gallery are:

1. Dick Cheney
2. David Addington
3. Alberto Gonzales
4. James Mitchell
5. George Tenet
6. Condoleezza Rice
7. John Yoo
8. Jay Bybee
9. William "Jim" Haynes
10. Donald Rumsfeld
11. John Rizzo
12. Steven Bradbury
13. George W. Bush

Source: Salon

Picture Of The Day

Hard to get mad at this guy.

"President Barack Obama bends over so the son of a White House staff member can pat his head during a family visit to the Oval Office May 8, 2009. The youngster wanted to see if the President's haircut felt like his own."

Source: White House

Look Back To Reagan As Example Of Not Looking Back

RNC Chair Michael Steele invokes Ronald "The Gipper" Reagan as example GOP need not look to the past. The comedy writes itself.

Reagan proved you can't live in the past if you "Cant Recall" any of it.

But past is prologue. Reagan's push for a Star Wars missile defense system did set the stage for Darth Cheney.

Source: ThinkProgress

Ventura Gives Smackdown To Hasselbeck

Jesse Ventura from the top turnbuckle.

“If we hadn’t waterboarded to begin with, none of this would be a controversy, would it? Torture is torture."

Liz Hasselbeck is on TV because she was on Survivor and had big boobs. Other than that, she is a child. An annoying blindly partisan child.



Source: Soup Tumblr

UK Speaker Of The House Resigns

Order! Order!! Order!!!

I am always amazed when I see Parliament in session on CSPAN. I guess reform and expectations in government has risen around the world.

The powerful speaker of the British House of Commons resigned Tuesday because of a backlash over excessive expense claims by lawmakers, marking the first time in three centuries a speaker has been forced out.

Though Michael Martin has not been caught up in recent revelations about lawmakers expenses - reimbursements for chandeliers, moat cleaning and mortgage payments have outraged taxpayers - he was blamed for creating a climate in which such excesses were allowed.

The last speaker to be forced from his position was Sir John Trevor, who was found guilty of accepting a bribe in 1695.

Blamed for creating the climate? That would have wiped out the entire Bush Administration.

Source: HuffPo

Wilkerson Connecting The Cheney Torture Dots

Col Larry Wilkerson on Rachel Maddow talking torture.

Great segment on Liz Cheney attacking Wilkerson.

"I don't pay a lot of attention to Liz Cheney, her bona fides are that she is the former Vice President's daughter".

Nepotism alive and well in the Cheney family.

Imagine how the conservatives would have taken Chelsea Clinton taking on a Colonel regarding her father's discretions.

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Source: Rachel Maddow/MSNBC

Shrinkage

The gift of George Bush, neo-cons and compassionate conservatism.

Gallup has a new study. Over the past 8 years the GOP is shrinking in every demographic. Except old church goers. Fair enough. O'Reilly, you're safe for now.



With it's current leadership, the downward spiral will only continue.

Source: Gallup

Married Mel Gibson Representin' Devout Catholics

From the producer of "Passion Of The Christ" and wacked-out devout catholic, Mel Gibson, comes a child out of wedlock with Russian model, Oksana Grigorieva. [Word is Oksana is in her second trimester.]

I have an idea for the kid's name: Sanctimonious. Making the child pay for the sins of the father will be biblical enough for Mel.

Mel is still married to, though estranged from, wife, Robyn, who filed for divorce on April 13. Do the math. The bangage happened before papers were served. What a perfect compliment for Mel's jew-baiting and drunken rampages.



Source: HuffPo

Rumsfeld's Renegade Unit Blamed For Afghan Deaths

Another news story for "shoot first, maybe ask questions later" Dumsfeld:

The Black Ops program spearheaded by Rumsfeld, MarSOC [Marines Corps' Special Operations Command] was behind at least three of Afghanistan's worst civilian casualty incidents.

MarSOC was created three years ago on the express orders of Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary at the time, despite opposition from within the Marine Corps and the wider Special Forces community. An article in the Marine Corps Times described the MarSOC troops as "cowboys" who brought shame on the corps.

At what point does "war crime" enter the conversation? Just because his cronies enabled him and Rummy sounds a bit enigmatic because he makes up the shit as he goes along, does not mean he is above the law.

Can you imagine a military group of Iranians driving through New York, opening fire on traffic and killing women and children? This would be unacceptable because Americans are seen as people. Civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen as a kind of undesirable obstacle, getting in the way of the military somehow.

Are Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush that charismatic that they can get away with all this?


Source: The Independent UK

The Evil Done With God On Their Side

Andrew Sullivan asks:

"I wonder what's worse: a defense secretary who puts Old Testament quotes on progress updates on an invasion of a Muslim country or a defense secretary who thinks this will add to his president's knowledge and expertise. The lethal combination of a Christianist president and a cynical coterie helped make the Iraq debacle happen."

A slide from Rumsfeld's briefing. Bible quotes on intelligence documents?:



Ponder Rumsfeld's jihad via Frank Rich:

"As [GQ's] Draper writes, Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible."

Source: Daily Dish and AmericaBlog

Rumsfeld's A**hole Status Grows

"I can't quit you, Rummy".

A must read article in GQ by Robert Draper on how Donald Rumsfeld spun and played Bush for the chump. Lest we forget how sick and horrible Rummy's faux alpha dog mentality used to stupefy and exploit the Chimp Boy President really was.

Like any co-dependent couple, though, they needed each other [until Bush dropped him the day after the 2006 elections proving my point]. Not so much "who ruined who?". They were both stubbornly dim and appreciated the deception used by each other.

Rumsfeld's exploitation of the Rapture-livin' Bush: using Old Testament Bible quotes in his daily briefings from the Iraq War:

"The Scripture-adorned cover sheets illustrate one specific complaint I heard again and again: that Rumsfeld’s tactics—such as playing a religious angle with the president—often ran counter to sound decision-making and could, occasionally, compromise the administration’s best interests."

The bullying of Bush: denying troops in the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans:

"Rumsfeld threw truck-size obstacles in the way of deploying troops to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Claiming that there’d be problems with 'unity of command,' Rumsfeld was adamant that only the National Guard be sent out—but they were slow in arriving and did little to stem the chaos. Bush snapped at him for the disorder in a meeting about the situation: 'Rumsfeld, what the hell is going on there? Are you watching what’s on television? Is that the United States of America or some Third World nation I’m watching? What the hell are you doing?' Five days after the hurricane hit, Bush told Rumsfeld he had to deploy troops. “If we had put those troops in on Thursday, the narrative of Katrina would be a very different one,” one senior official said."

The former Secretary of Defense was a real asshole. There are many more instances in the article, so be prepared to hit something after you read it.

Donald Rumsfeld has always answered his detractors by claiming that history will one day judge him kindly. Sadly for us who lived through his horrendous reign, that day is never coming.

Source: Daily Beast

Bush Ignored Humane, Legal Alternative To Torture

You knew this day would come, when the Bush Administration is outed time and time again for making the wrong, poor decisions in the face of doing the right thing.

The Bush administration was given clear and unequivocal advice encouraging a detainee interrogation system that followed humane practices that adhered to US and international law, a previously secret memo reveals.

A detailed memorandum authored by a counselor to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005 also reveals that the Bush Administration was offered a comprehensive alternative to its use of torture techniques. The author, Rice deputy Philip Zelikow (along with then-acting deputy secretary of defense Gordon England), asserted that the adoption of a clear and humane approach to interrogation would pay dividends for the US in the years to come.

You know they were all in on it because not one person was fired, asked to leave or resigned from their job when all this made the headlines. They all backed each other up. The cabal of torture enthusiasts.

Zelikow and England argued for a less ambiguous torture policy that would hold and must “pass muster for years to come under American law and relevant standards of international law.” They noted, almost shouting:

In all capital letters, they wrote: “WE ARE NOT SAYING THAT THESE DETAINEES ARE NECESSARILY ENTITLED TO THIS STATUS. TO BE CLEAR: WE ARE GIVING THEM A TEMPORARY STATUS THEY DO NOT DESERVE. BUT WE ARE NOT DOING THIS FOR THEM. WE ARE DOING IT FOR US.”

As I've written before, the alarm bells were going off, the red flags waving, the reports were warning of the compromises the Bush Administration were making, the check and balances of government were there, any oversight could have stopped a lot this mess, but they just chose to ignore them all.

Bush, Cheney, Rove and Rice all knew they were shredding our Nation's laws, grasping at the nothingness they used to justify going to war. To somehow think they were going to torture the information out of someone to match the exact lies they made up is beyond belief. But it happened.

Source: Raw Story

Quote Of The Day: Barack Obama

Your base appreciates this:

"I think one of the biggest mistakes that is made in Washington is this notion you have to dumb things down for the public."

-- President Obama, in an interview with Newsweek.

The end of the simpleton "divide and conquer" era has enabled and called for pragmatism and appreciation of intellect and science.

ND Afterthoughts

I guess the two things I think about now, that seem obvious, but that were not stressed prior to Obama giving the commencement speech at Notre Dame were:

1. Obama was invited by the University. They asked him to be there. Seems a simple point but I think it was lost in all the pre-hype.
2. Obama accepted an invitation to place he knew would be a problem. It was not a pre-screened bunch of loyalists. He went into a situation where he knew they would be opposition and protests and looked to reach out and try to connect people.

Could you imagine Bush going to a hostile situation to try to win over those who thought different from him?

So much has changed in the past few months. The divisive nature of politics is changing.

You can watch the speech here:

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