Political correctness: When a liberal gets offended.
Treason: When a [right-winger] gets offended.
Constitution: The Second Amendment.
The little guy: Business.
Small business: Big business.
Big government: Government.
Freedom: Doing what I want.
Security: Keeping you from doing what you want.
Reform: Government programs I like.
Socialism: Government programs I don’t like.
Tax reform: Tax cuts.
Job creators: Rich people.
Gay agenda: Being gay.
Competition: When I win.
Corruption: When I lose.
Pro-life: Pro-embryo.
Soft on crime: Pro-innocent.
Tax increase: Expiration of “temporary” tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush.
Birthers: People who refuse to believe that President Obama was born.
War fighters: Soldiers.
War on Christmas: Saying “happy holidays.”
Democrat Party: Democratic Party.
Illegals: Undocumented workers.
Family values: The Gospel according to Ozzie and Harriet.
So-called science: Science.
Unions: Teachers, police, and firefighters.
Main Street: Local strip mall.
Scripture: The parts of the Bible I like.
God: The deity who founded America and who happens to agree with me on everything.
Jesus: Me, when I don’t want to talk about myself.
America: High-income Caucasians who live in the former Confederacy or wish they did.
Friday, May 06, 2011
Right-Wing Labels Translated
I can’t remember a grimmer time for the Republican Party
"I can’t remember a grimmer time for the Republican party in my lifetime. Now that Bin Laden is dead, the 2012 election seems like a formality. The setup is all wrong for the Republicans from almost every conceivable angle, with some of that being bad luck and some of it being poor strategy.
First of all, for the next eighteen months, Obama is going to respond to every single foreign-policy question by holding up Bin Laden’s head and swinging it in front of him like a lantern (metaphorically speaking, of course). It doesn’t matter what the question is: ask Obama about the Irish debt crisis, he’ll answer, “The Irish have been important allies in our fight against terrorism, which as you’ll recall resulted recently in the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden …” Things are so bad for the Republicans on this front that their only strategy left is to adopt an antiwar platform and complain about such things as the brutalizing of Afghan citizens by American troops and the illegality of the Bin Laden operation, things that would have been celebrated by the likes of Karl Rove had they occurred during a Bush presidency.
And from a domestic-policy standpoint the Republicans are similarly screwed, absent a new financial crisis, which of course is far from unlikely. A year or two ago anxiety about the economy and deficits was at an all-time high and the Republicans smartly rode public discontent by bashing Obama’s spending habits. But in following that path the party went a step or two too far, unleashing Paul Ryan on the budget; now, for the next eighteen months, Barack Obama can walk into Florida and Arizona and California and explain to every person over 50 that the Republicans want to eliminate the Medicare program as they know it. The Republicans meanwhile are already running sideways away from Ryan’s program, or at least are clearly concerned about having to enter 2012 owning Ryan’s Medicare-voucher program. Couple that with dropping unemployment levels and the stabilized capital markets (stabilized of course by massive ongoing government spending, but the casual voter knows little of this), and Obama can now waltz into 2012 claiming that while he was busy rescuing the wrecked economy left to him by George Bush, Republicans were using the financial chaos as an opportunity to launch long-planned attacks against Medicare and Social Security."
Matt Taibbi
The Party Of No continues: No Future
Thursday, May 05, 2011
House GOP Unanimously Passes Anti-Abortion Bill That Redefines Rape, Raises Taxes, And Creates Rape Audits | Liberals Are Cool
My blood is boiling. It’s unlikely that it will pass the Senate, and President Obama has publicly threatened to veto it if it ends up on his desk, but the fact that this PASSED the house kills me. Not only does it raise the cost of PRIVATE health insurance that covers abortion, but it also redefines rape. According to this bill, no does not mean no. “Rape” is only committed when the victim physically fights off their assailant, meaning that women who were verbally threatened and violated, drugged and violated or a minor raped by an adult is not really rape. When a woman says “no” or shows in some way that they don’t want sex and the assailant finds a way to silence them and go against their wishes and take advantage of them, THAT. IS. RAPE.
Republicans are so obsessed with control over women, they will go to the extreme of redefining rape as to limit their access to health services for victims. #PureEvil
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Osama in 2002 v Osama In 2003
Osama in 2002 v Osama In 2003
Watch the March 13, 2002 video clip of George Bush lethargically claiming he is not worried about Osama Bin Laden. “The idea of focusing on one person, ah, is, um, really indicates to me people do not understand the scope of the mission,” and “he is a person who has been marginalized,” Bush offers. “The ultimate parasite”.
He is downgrading Osama. He belittles his influence.
Now think of Bush in March 2003 and the build up to the Iraq War. Now the tone is that Osama’s Al Qaeda once met with someone in Iraq, and that relationship alone, is enough to commit trillions to a war. The Bush Administration, in fact, made up the connection, and the subsequent false influence, to show how powerful Osama was in the region.
So when Bush could have killed Osama in Tora Bora in December of 2001, he decided to call off the attack.
In March 2002 Bush is happy with Osama being marginalized.
But in 2003, well, now Osama is ruling the Middle East with his Al Qaeda network and must be stopped before, as Condi Rice would put it, the “smoking gun would be a mushroom cloud”.
Never forget how terrible George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were as people and as leaders. The. Worst. The Bush Administration wanted to go to war in Iraq and would invent the information to confirm their narrative. Never forget.
Monday, May 02, 2011
Back In TIME
Osama Bin Laden will be given TIME’s Red X treatment in this week’s issue. Previous recipients include Saddam Hussein (April 21, 2003), Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (June 19, 2006), and Adolf Hitler (May 7, 1945), who happens to share the same death date as Osama (May 1st).
Bin Laden Buried at Sea Within 24 Hours of Death: Why?
After spending many years hunting down the world's most wanted man, why did the U.S. bury Osama bin Laden at sea within 24 hours of killing him?
The reason is bound up within Islamic practice and tradition. And that practice calls for the body of the deceased to be buried within 24 hours, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters.
"We are ensuring that it is handled in accordance with Islamic practice and tradition," confirmed the official. "This is something that we take very seriously. And so therefore, this is being handled in an appropriate manner."
But the lingering question is, Why at sea? The official said that finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, so the decision was made to bury bin Laden at sea. Furthermore, one suspects that the U.S. would not have wanted there to be a grave site for fear of it turning into a place of worship for bin Laden's followers. There are rumors, however, that the U.S. asked Saudi Arabia to take the body (bin Laden was born there), but it allegedly refused.
In Death, Mythology of Bin Laden Falls Apart
Osama bin Laden is hiding in a cave in Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions, far from any major cities. He is guarded by specially chosen bodyguards instructed to shoot the militant leader to ensure he isn’t captured or killed by U.S. forces. After nearly a decade of successfully evading the CIA operatives and military commandos charged with finding him, he is unlikely to ever be found by American counterterror forces.
Bin Laden’s killing Sunday at the hands of elite Navy Seal commandos brought a dramatic end to the decade-long search for the al- Qaida leader. But it also destroyed many of the myths that had grown up around the fugitive terror mastermind in the nine-plus years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Below, the four most important things U.S. officials thought that they knew – wrongly, as it turns out -- about bin Laden.
1) Bin Laden is hiding in a remote part of Pakistan. For years, the conventional wisdom in official Washington was that bin Laden was being sheltered somewhere in Pakistan’s mountainous tribal areas, which are under effective insurgent control and possess some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet. In January 2009, President Obama said he thought the militant was “in a cave somewhere.” More recently, CIA Director Leon Panetta told ABC that the militant was “in very deep hiding, in an area of the tribal areas of Pakistan” with terrain that “is probably the most difficult in the world.” Instead, bin Laden turns out to have been living in a comfortable house in a relatively affluent suburb of Abbottabad. Television images of the town show leafy streets lined with telephone poles and street lights. Photos from the scene suggest the terrorist leader slept on a comfortable mattress in a spacious bedroom, not on a dirt floor.
2) Bin Laden’s bodyguards will kill him to prevent Americans from doing so. In 2006, Abu Jandal, a former personal bodyguard of bin Laden told CBS that he always carried two guns, one designated for use if American forces were closing in on bin Laden. “There was also a special gun to be used if Sheikh Osama bin Laden was attacked and we were unable to save him, in which case I would have to kill him," Abu Jandal said at the time. In the years since, multiple American officials said they believed bin Laden was surrounded at all times by bodyguards prepared to kill him if American operatives ever found the militant. But when Navy Seals blasted their way into the house where bin Laden had taken shelter, there were no specially-trained bodyguards, and the militant’s men didn’t kill him to prevent the Americans from doing so. Instead, the fugitive was shot dead by a Navy Seal, who fired two rounds into his head at close range.
3) Bin Laden’s use of human couriers make him impossible to track. U.S. counter terror officials often spoke, with frustration, about how bin Laden evaded the sophisticated electronic eavesdropping systems by communicating solely through trusted couriers who hand-carried messages to and from the militant leader. The compound in Abbottabad had no phone lines or Internet access, a sign of the al Qaida leader’s desperation to evade electronic surveillance. In the end, though, it was bin Laden’s reliance on a courier which led to his death. U.S. officials say that in 2004 several Guantanamo Bay detainees told their interrogators that bin Laden had one trusted courier and provided his nom de guerre. By 2007, the U.S. knew his real name, and by 2010, they knew his whereabouts and were able to track his movements. The courier is the one who ultimately led the Seal teams to the fortified compound where they killed bin Laden.
4) Pakistani officials don’t know bin Laden’s whereabouts and provide it if they did. This may be the most disheartening truth to emerge from bin Laden’s capture. The fugitive was living in a compound located just a short distance away from a Pakistani police station, its famed Kakul Military Academy, and a large military hospital. In Washington, furious U.S. officials are openly wondering how Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence services could have somehow missed that bin Laden was living in their midst. “He was more or less hiding in plain sight,” a U.S. counterterror official told reporters Monday morning. With the war on terror still raging on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, that may be the most alarming fact of all.
Will be interesting to see how the story develops over the next days and months.
