Yanks In First

Almost June, Yankees in first place. Feels Good.

Chee'burger, Chee'burger

At 0:35 President Obama uses the approved "lemme get"-style of ordering fast food. Classic cheeseburger order. The "yo gimme"-style would also have been accepted.

Five Guys Restaurant now offers the "Obama Burger", the unofficial designation for a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, mustard, and jalapenos.

1 In 5 Harvard MBAs Pledge To Do Good. Gee, Thanks.

While it is good step in the right direction, what happened to the other 80% of the graduating Harvard M.B.A. class?

"Nearly 20 percent of the graduating class have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” a voluntary student-led pledge that the goal of a business manager is to “serve the greater good.” It promises that Harvard M.B.A.’s will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others."

4 out of 5 said "show me the money".

There is the Hippocratic Oath for physicians. Lawyers pledge to uphold the law and Constitution. Why not a commitment or professional code for M.B.A.s?

Source: NYT

Within The Law?

via Andrew Sullivan:

Here's Bush's own time-line on the torture memos:

"The first thing you do is ask, what's legal?" he said. "What do the lawyers say is possible? I made the decision, within the law, to get information so I can say to myself, 'I've done what it takes to do my duty to protect the American people.'"

"What do the lawyers say is possible?" sounds to me like someone trying to obfuscate the law in a new way. It's not "what does the military say is the right thing to do?", it's "what do my own lawyers say is barely legal". You can see how that would get you in trouble.

Andrew Sullivan interprets:

"I can imagine a scenario in which the president essentially directed the vice-president to go as far as he wanted within the law. And with Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury, Cheney was able to dictate what the 'law' was and get Bush to sign off. Cheney clearly made a decision to use torture almost immediately after 9/11. He all but told us in the 'dark side' interview. The law was not a boundary to be respected; it was a problem to be overcome. And, of course, the torturing had started before the first legal memo was fixed."

His duty is to uphold and protect the Constitution in regard to protecting the people. You can't do one without the other.

But for Bush, it was always the easy way, bending the rules, his whole life. From ditching his Air National Guard post to giving up booze, he has never done the correct thing. Always a shortcut.

Source: Daily Dish

O'Reilly And Miller: Two Unfunny Guys

Two white guys acting racist. Dennis Miller outright, Bill O'Reilly enabling in his canned douchey "c'mon now, she's not here to defend herself but keep on goofing on her" passive-aggressive stance.

Miller laughingly misquotes, "she is the one who said, outloud, 'I would probably make better decisions than a white guy'". As if that is the gold standard? White guy decisions trump all other viewpoints? No debate, the white guy wins? How could a woman, or a Hispanic, ever have an opinion better than a white male?

I realize he is a comedian, and Miller is one, too, but this is so unfunny.



Source: RealityChex

700 Architects Say WTF About 9/11

700 architects call for a new investigation.

Not an alarmist or a big conspiracy guy, but never accepted how 3 different buildings collapsed the exact same way. Nothing happens the exact same way, let alone 110 story buildings coming down after being hit at different stories by different planes at different angles. And Building 7 coming down like a Vegas casino was just too much.

The 9/11 Commission did not investigate much, as did the Warren Commission with JFK. Too many politicians trying to cover their ass.

I think now is the time to get 700 architects in there with the facts and information to give us a better explanation of what happened. This video talks about the presence of nanothermite, an explosive used in controlled demolitions, at Ground Zero.



Source: Earth2Obama

More STFU For Cheney, Please

Another large portion of STFU for Cheney:

In a speech to the Atlantic Council yesterday, National Security Advisor Gen. Jim Jones rebutted Vice President Cheney’s assertion that the country is less safe under President Obama. He said that the current administration has rejected “the false choice between our security and our ideals” and the United States “is not only safe but it will be more secure…because of the president’s leadership.”

When has a proven failure, with 13% approval ratings, ever had such a negative, yet national, voice like Cheney? It's like they need his Darth Vader image just to juxtapose Obama's charisma.



Source: ThinkProgress

A Successful Week

via Taegan Goddard:

First Read assesses Obama's roll-out this week:

"Given this conservative divide over Sotomayor, could this week have gone any better for the Obama White House? Yesterday, we couldn't find a single elected Republican serving in Washington issuing any press release on Sotomayor. (Sure, Pat Roberts went on the record against her, but he's not the household name that should fire up the troops.) Instead, all of their focus was on debating the Obama stimulus package...The Sotomayor pick has just devastated the Republicans, split them worse than anything so far the Obama White House has done."

A breakdown:

Gingrich calling her a racist.
Limbaugh calling her a racist and a bigot.
Rove calling her dumb and implying she only got where she is thanks to AA.
Tancredo calling her a KKK member without the hood.
Conservative bloggers complaining about the pronunciation of her name.

And then...
Cornyn calling Gingrich and Limbaugh "terrible".
McCain and Snowe complimenting Obama for his choice.
Almost every GOP Senator keeping his mouth shut.

Source: PoliticalWire

Lindsey Graham: GOP Lies, We Just Don't Tell Dems

Lindsey Graham lays it out in black and white.

"Now. I don't know what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it. And I really don't think she's a criminal if she was told about waterboarding and did nothing. But I think it is important to understand that members of Congress, allegedly, were briefed by ... about these interrogation techniques. And again, it goes back to the idea of what was the Administration trying to do. If you're trying to commit a crime, it seems to me that'd be the last thing you'd want to do. If you had in your mind and your heart that you're going to disregard the law, and you're going to come up with interrogation techniques that you know to be illegal, you would not go around telling people on the other side of the aisle about it."

His defense only helps the prosecution as we see the details unfold. Interesting admission that Republicans get together and discuss their criminal activity. And that they’re careful to keep it from the Democrats. And now that they are busted, they resort to using the ol' “I didn’t do it, I wasn’t even there, and even if I was, you can’t prove nuthin’!” defense.

Firedoglake adds these details:

"Because no one in Congress was told that the CIA was going to start torturing in 2002, until it was too late. Pelosi and Goss were told, after CIA had waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times, that CIA might waterboard in the future. Bob Graham was not told of waterboarding at all, according to him.

The first time CIA can say for certain that any Democratic members of Congress at all were briefed on waterboarding was in July 2004, after CIA had waterboarded for what ended up being the last time, and after their own Inspector General determined they were breaking the law.

And then, in 2005, when CIA was trying to sustain their ability to torture against Congressional wishes, CIA had briefings for Ted Stevens and Thad Cochran with no Democrats in attendance. They had a briefing for John McCain with no Democrats in attendance. They had two briefings for Bill Frist with no Democrats in attendance. They had a briefing for Duncan Hunter with no Democrats in attendance. They had a briefing for Crazy Pete Hoekstra with no Democrats in attendance.

Lindsey Graham says that, "if you were trying to commit a crime ... you would not go around telling people on the other side of the aisle about it." And that, as it turns out, is exactly what the public record shows: that the Bush Administration did not tell Democrats about what they were doing. For six months to two years after they started this program, and again when they were under pressure to end it, the Bush Administration did not go around telling people on the other side of the aisle about it."

With the motive and means staring them in the face, why are Democrats still so passive about it?

And the "I don't know if Pelosi is a criminal" line? What a cowardly passive aggressive thing to say. The hearings were about torture and Graham tries to smear her with that? What if someone said, "well I really don't know if Lindsey Graham sleeps with boys" as a segue into a Senate hearing?



Source: EmptyWheel

The Devil You Know

Why attacking the Old Grey Lady is bad for the GOP, as per Francis Wilkinson, executive editor of The Week:

"If conservatives were to look up from hammering nails in the Times’ coffin, they might notice that there is a growing web-based journalism infrastructure preparing to supplant their bête noir. It’s an infrastructure that is not only more liberal than the Times but also less inhibited by the paper’s habits of deference to power and concern for open debate and fair play. Having evolved in the era of Bush and Cheney, WMD and torture, much of the new establishment considers the contemporary GOP irredeemable. And unlike the Times, it refuses to treat conservative charges of liberal press bias as anything but a canard. The more damage the Times sustains, the faster this new infrastructure rises to replace it."

The NYT's deference to power can be seen in their inability to use the word torture to describe the Bush/Cheney era. The blogs have no problem with that issue. This “new infrastructure” includes, Wilkinson writes, TPM, HuffPo, EmptyWheel, and Andrew Sullivan.

Source: CJR

Unexamined Privilege

A rather obvious point:

"The greatest practitioners of whatever it is we call 'identity politics' in this country have always been white males. The lack of self-awareness of this fact is what is termed unexamined privilege". -- Atrios

or:

white Republican males = free of racial and ideological bias.
all others = hopelessly partisan and practicing the politics of race all the time.

To which Paul Krugman adds:

"The thing that is really driving conservatives crazy, I think, is that their identity politics just isn’t working like it used to. Their whole approach has been based on the belief that Americans vote as if they live in Mayberry, and fear and hate anyone who looks a bit different; now that the country just isn’t like that, they’ve gone mad."

Source: Atrios

Dick Cheney Rebuked. Again.

How does Dick Cheney continue to get the facts wrong and still get on TV to repeat these falsehoods? Dick Cheney says that torturing detainees has saved American lives. That claim is patently false.

90% of suicide bombers were foreign fighters who entered Iraq because of the torture abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Those suicide bombers killed thousands of innocent people and hundreds of American soldiers. Torture was was the greatest recruitment tool they had.

A former Navy interrogator stationed in Iraq rebukes all of what Cheney spouts off to his American Enterprise Institute hacks.



Source: Brave New Films

Don't Believe The Hype Pt 2

As I stated before, the media needs the conflict, but it is not there:

"Eighty-seven percent (87%) of voters nationwide believe Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed as the next U.S."

Those 13% who oppose are the ones that still think Bush and Cheney did a great job. And the challenge for the GOP going forward:

"Hispanic voters favor confirmation by a 66% to 15% margin."

The writing is on the wall.

Source: Rasmussen

ba-ROCK And so-toe-my-OR

Not knowing how to pronounce someone else's name, even after being corrected, is a sign you don't really respect the person. Remember Bush Sr calling him SAD-him Hussein instead suh-DAHM.

Then there was Obama's pronunciation of Pakistan with a soft a, like Pock-i-stan. It really upset some on the Right.

Now we have the Righties who are upset over Sotomayor's hard last syllable. From the narrow mind of Mark Krikorian [what a nice Anglo-Saxon name] at the National Review:

"So, are we supposed to use the Spanish pronunciation, so-toe-my-OR, or the natural English pronunciation, SO-tuh-my-er, like Niedermeyer?"

Not knowing how to speak correctly I guess is a Republicans specialty, with George Bush being its best example. Picking on ethnic groups is also one of their greatest thrills ["Macaca" ring a bell] so picking on Sonia Sotomayor's name is the best of both worlds. Ignorance and racism. What a blend.

But I should not feel too bad, they even pronounce Dick Cheney's name incorrectly, it's CHEEN-i [rhymes with meany], not CHAIN-e.

Yankees In First

With their win last night in Texas, the Yankees take a share of first place for the first time this year. Giggity, alright.

Don't Believe The Hype

Ezra Klein has a comforting view on the GOP filibuster bluff:

"A Supreme Court nomination is an important story. But it is not necessarily a dramatic one. The last nominee to actually be defeated -- Harriett Miers was withdrawn, remember, and withdrawn due to conservative unrest -- was Robert Bork. And he was a conservative choice facing a Senate with 55 Democrats. Sotomayor is a Democratic president's nominee who will come before a Democratic Senate... If Sotomayor falls, another Democratic nominee takes her place, with similarly left-of-center positions, to be voted on by a Democratic Senate... As opposed to an issue like cap and trade or health reform, where the defeat of a bill might mean the death of the effort, this is not, in the long-run, an issue that Obama can lose."

Just like everything that Obama has gone through to date, the media will play up how much "opposition" is out there, both on the left and right, second-guessing and questioning his rationale, and in the end it will go through with ease and be seen as the logical choice.

I guess that 24-hour news cycle needs its conflict, whether real or fiction.

Source: WaPo

College Drop-Out Rove Chimes In

Karl Rove, a college drop-out, talking last night with Charlie Rose about Sotomayor's bona fides:

Rove: “She is competent and will be confirmed….She has an interesting and compelling life story…”
Charlie: “She is very smart.”
Rove: “Not necessarily.”
Charlie: “What do you mean? She went to Princeton where she graduating with honors and then went on to Yale Law School….”
Rove: “I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools.”
The crowd applauds.

Ahh, there is a difference between attending an Ivy League school as a fratboy legacy like George W. Bush, getting straight C's, and graduating the top of your class like Sotomayor and Obama.

Look at the amazing track record Bush had with that Harvard MBA: Arbusto, Spectrum 7 Energy Corp, Harken Energy. All failures that lost millions and involved SEC investigations.

Intellectualism And The GOP

Pick an attack and stick with it:

Obama graduates top of his Harvard Law class, elected President of the Harvard Law Review and is labeled an elitist.

Sotomayer graduates the top of her Princeton class, then goes on to Yale Law and is editor of the Yale Law Journal is labeled an "intellectual lightweight".

I guess since the last attack failed, they would just do the opposite thinking that would work.

All things relative:
John McCain graduated fifth from the bottom of his Naval Academy class.
Sarah Palin went to four schools in six years and graduated from U. of Idaho.
Sean Hannity is a college drop-out.
Karl Rove is a college drop-out.

The Idiot Logic Of Dick Cheney

via Andrew Sullivan:

Dick Cheney last week:

"And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don’t stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for – our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity."

Cheney seems to forget that he is no longer one of the country's executive leaders. So at this point, he, by his own argument, is the one destroying "unity," "distracting" the new president, and "shaking" our resolve. By his own logic, he is now refuting his own position.

By his own logic, he should shut up and wait to be prosecuted by a united government under one supreme leader.

Source: Daily Dish

Mancow On Olbermann

Meathead radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller on Olbermann talking about how instantaneous and horrific the the torture of waterboarding is:

"I was willing to prove, and ready to prove, that this was a joke, and I was wrong. It was horrific. It was instantaneous. And look, I felt the effects for two days."

Discussing the euphemism-like nature of "waterboading sounds like snowboarding", Mancow states "drowning is not harsh enough" to describe the sensation. "Until you do it, you have no idea".

Mancow also revealed that his friend, uber-wimp Sean Hannity, "called me and said 'it's still not torture.'"

It was torture during the Inquisition.
It was torture in World War II.
It was torture during the Khmer Rouge.

But alas, Hannity will play the pansy and never get waterboarded/drown himself because he doesn't really believe what he is saying. The weak charlatan playing his audience of rubes.

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

Source:

Opposing The First Hispanic SCOTUS Justice?

Greg Sargent ponders Obama's pick, Sonia Sotomayor, for Supreme Court:

"First question: How do Republicans oppose the first potential Hispanic Supreme Court justice, given their much-vaunted outreach to Latinos in 2006 and 2008, the losses the GOP has suffered with this group given the party’s immigration stands, and the party’s desperate need to expand racially and demographically among such groups? The optics of GOP opposition here likely would look awful."

There is going to be a showdown between the moderate wing of the Republican party and the anti-immigrant/racist dipshit Palin wing of the GOP and how hard they pushback over her nomination will only highlight how monochromatic the all-white party has become.

You can lose a few people in your base over such things, but playing this the wrong way, which Republicans call "the usual" as of late, could lose an entire race of people. Texas may end up a Blue State after all this.

How do you say "bring it" in Spanish?

Source: The Plum Line

Petraeus Backs Up Obama On Gitmo

For all the weak-minded still clinging to the 14th century:

General David Petraeus said this past weekend that President Obama's decision to close down Gitmo and end harsh interrogation techniques would benefit the United States in the broader war on terror.

Another horrible Bush legacy coming to an end. But will Dick Cheney see how wrong he is?

Those who served the country, McCain, Gore, Powell, Ventura, Bob Kerrey, agree on torture and waterboarding.

Those who didn't, Dubbya, Gingrich, Cheney, Rove, Limbaugh, Kristol, O'Reilly, all makes excuses.

Source: HuffPo

Happy Memorial Day

Enjoy the day off, get out your white shoes and slacks.

Powell On "Face The Nation"

Colin Powell on "Face The Nation".

"I am still a Republican. I'd like to point out that in the course of my 50 years of voting for presidents, I have voted for the person i thought was best qualified at that time to lead the nation. Last year I thought it was President-now Barack Obama," Powell said.

Source: CBS

Olbermann Covers Mancow, "Absolutely Torture"

Keith Olbermann covers the Mancow waterboarding. He lasted 6 seconds.

Imagine doing that 183 times?

Lawrence O'Donnell guests. Makes a great point: it's not waterboarding, it's drowning stopped just before you die. The semantics has to end.