Obsidian Wings: Yeah, torture didn't "work," nor is it really being "investigated."
Balloon Juice: Casino Jack and the United States of Money.
Mad Kane: Spending freeze.
Vidiot: Cui Bono?
Amygdala: Health care reform won't save me.
Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.
Newt Gingrich!
Um, not to put too fine a point on it, but...why?
Yesterday was Gingrich's fifth appearance on "MTP" just this year. In fact, Newt Gingrich, despite not having held any position in government for over a decade, was the single most frequent guest on "Meet the Press" in 2009 of any political figure in the United States. Literally.
From March to December, Gingrich appeared on "MTP," on average, every other month. No one else in American politics was on the show this often.[..]
Keep in mind, "Meet the Press" didn't have the actual Speaker of the House on at all this year. It also featured zero appearances from all of the other living former House Speakers (Hastert, Wright, Foley) combined.
There's just no reasonable explanation for this. Gingrich was forced from office in disgrace -- by his own caucus -- 11 years ago. What's more, he's kind of a nut -- we're talking about a former office holder who speculated, just last week, about hidden messages from God in snowstorms.
Again and again, the media just proves that informing their viewers is the furthest thing from their collective minds.
Rest In Peace, Deborah Yesner, a pioneering blogger and researcher for the movie "OutFoxed."
reed writes: Canada joins the US in staring into the eyes of defeat in Afghanistan
43 Ideas Per Minute: Music of the Decade
You Are Dumb: The End of The Innocence
Dependable Renegade: For the love of God and all things holy, someone, somewhere, please delete Meghan McCain's twitter account.
Mike is away this week; Round up by Blue Gal.
It's hard to listen the GOP reaction to President Obama's decision to move the detainees to a nearly empty prison in Thomson, Illinois, without cringing at their statements. After the US government has tried and sentenced so many maniacs, hard-core criminals, and yes, other international terrorists, there is this feeling within the Republican party that this one prison - located on the Iowa-Illinois border, miles from civilization, with a local population who fervently welcomes the opportunity - is somehow the greatest threat to liberty today. Here's a memo the Repubs are circulating and its statements.
It almost doesn't deserve a response, these statements are so ridiculous. But I can't help myself.
Speaking of senators who lack their manhood, Sen. Lindsey "Brave Sir Robin" Graham is really standing out as a courageous example for us all. "Oh, no, Mr. President, please don't send those dangerous men to South Carolina! We just couldn't handle the stress..." What a coward.
(Sixty-eight years ago on this day, the world was a different place)
The event is fading from view because the participants are slowly fading away themselves. The world has changed in infinite ways since it was December 7, 1941. War is still the same though - that will never change. How it's waged has changed, but the politics haven't. The enemy has changed, but the armies of refugees and innocent loss of life is the same.
George Putnam (NBC News): “The flame of ruthless war is burning clear around the world tonight, set off by a wanton Japanese surprise attack on American Pacific outposts from Guam to Hawaii and on shipping off the continental coast of these United States.”
And that was then, this day sixty-eight years ago.
I'm so glad someone who has been there has finally said it:
(I)n a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, (former Marine Corps Captain Matthew) Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.
"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."
The reaction to Hoh's letter was immediate. Senior U.S. officials, concerned that they would lose an outstanding officer and perhaps gain a prominent critic, appealed to him to stay.
U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry brought him to Kabul and offered him a job on his senior embassy staff. Hoh declined. From there, he was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer," Holbrooke said in an interview. "We all thought that given how serious his letter was, how much commitment there was, and his prior track record, we should pay close attention to him."
While he did not share Hoh's view that the war "wasn't worth the fight," Holbrooke said, "I agreed with much of his analysis." He asked Hoh to join his team in Washington, saying that "if he really wanted to affect policy and help reduce the cost of the war on lives and treasure," why not be "inside the building, rather than outside, where you can get a lot of attention but you won't have the same political impact?"
Hoh is quick to say he's not some hippie peace-nik. Sigh. Why does he make that sound like a bad thing? But Hoh does feel that our presence does nothing but escalate violence and turmoil with the Afghans.
(M)any Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there -- a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war.
As the White House deliberates over whether to deploy more troops, Hoh said he decided to speak out publicly because "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right.' "
"I realize what I'm getting into . . . what people are going to say about me," he said. "I never thought I would be doing this."
Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman weigh in on Sarah Palin’s misguided talking points in her recent speech to financial executives in Hong Kong. Palin apparently thinks that the solution to our economic mess in the United States is less government regulation rather than more to rein the bankers and Wall Street in for their bad behavior.
As Krugman notes we need more regulation and consumer protections and if we can’t even fix the simple things that should be a no brainer like consumer protections, how are we going to fix the bigger problems?
From Think Progress-Delegates walk out of Palin’s first international speech:
Sarah Palin made her international debut today in a closed-door speech at the CLSA Investors’ Forum in Hong Kong. AFP reports that Palin’s speech, which touched on issues like international terrorism and the U.S. debt, “divided” the audience and even prompted a few delegates to leave in disgust:
Former US vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin divided an international audience of financial big-hitters at her first speech outside North America on Wednesday with some leaving in disgust. [...]
Some listeners praised her forthright views on government social and economic intervention but others walked out early citing boredom or disgust. [...]
A US delegate leaving early with a colleague said: “it was awful, we couldn’t stand it any longer.”
As Krugman noted during this interview unfortunately Sarah Palin is not that far out of the mainstream of the Republican Party with her views on regulation.
I know that old Rush "Oxycontin" Limbaugh's a little upset these days, what with Glenn Beck on the cover of TIME and all. But this is bad, even for him. Time to call the advertisers and radio stations:
In a remark extraordinary even by the standards of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio heavyweight declared on his program Wednesday that the United States needed to return to racially segregated buses.
Referring to an incident in which a white student was beaten by black students on a bus, Limbaugh said: “I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.”
A full transcript of Limbaugh’s comments on his radio show is available at MediaMatters.org.
Limbaugh’s comments came after a called complained to say that local law enforcement said the attack probably wasn’t racially motivated. The incident had been hyped by the conservative Drudge Report, which posted a video of the fracas.
“Police initially said the beating of the white student by two black students appeared to be racially motivated,” the Associated Press wrote. “But police on Tuesday backed away from that.”
That didn’t stop Limbaugh from making his comments Wednesday.
“In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” Limbaugh also said. “I wonder if Obama’s going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.”
“White Americans are racists who have created what they call free markets that really just enslave the rest of America and her trading partners,” Limbaugh also mocked. “I mean, it was white Americans that ran off Van Jones. No, look, let’s just follow Eric Holder’s advice and not be cowards about all this. Let’s have an open conversation, an honest conversation about all of our typical white grandmothers. You had one, I had one. Obama had one. They’re racists just like our students are. ACORN — hey, nothing but racism fueling the pursuit of ACORN.”
Limbaugh also suggested that racism itself was acceptable.
“If homosexuality being inborn is what makes it acceptable, why does racism being inborn not make racism acceptable?” the talk show host asked. “I’m sorry — I mean, this is the way my mind works. But apparently now we don’t choose racism, we just are racists. We are born that way. We don’t choose it. So shouldn’t it be acceptable, excuse — this is according to the way the left thinks about things.”
Really, isn't it time that decent people just said NO to Rush Limbaugh?
Good little torture advocate Joe Scarborough seems to think that anything the United States does is justified, if it works. I'd like to know just what Joe Scarborough and the rest of his guests would ever find objectionable enough that it finally goes over the line for any of them? Scar starts out feigning indignation for the poor demoralized CIA that got their feelings hurt by that mean old Amnesty International and the ACLU for letting the public know they tortured prisoners. He's completely unfazed by her report and at the end of course questions whether it's even true.
Mitchell: Well when they looked at the details and when they looked at some of the more gruesome aspects of this program, they say, they believed they had to uphold...
Scarborough: Now when you say gruesome, what are you talking about gruesome. Uhhhmm....
Mitchell: Well we don't know frankly. Pete Williams and I went through all this and we're told that we don't even know some of the worst cases that were still censored. So....
Scarborough: Well the cases we do know is somebody turned on a drill and made a detainee think that they were going to get drilled...
Mitchell: Well...
Scarborough: And then somebody fired a gun in an adjoining room. Have we heard of anything worse than that right now?
Mitchell: Yes we have.
Scarborough: What have we heard?
Mitchell: We've heard of threats to, we will bring your mother in here and we'll bring your children here and we'll kill your children when the children were in custody of the U.S. Military. So we will rape your mother in front of you. These are things that, this is not, you know, me talking. This is the Geneva Conventions. You've got a lot of...
Scarborough: We will rape your mother in front of you. Who is suggesting that was said by an interrogator?
Mitchell: Yes, exactly.
Scarborough: Okay. And when are we going to get that information released?
Mitchell: Well, we're not sure that we're going to ever get that information released. There are a lot of lawsuits out there and some of the plantiffs are still complaining, Amnesty, ACLU said what was released yesterday still has too many blacked out sections.
Scarborough: Okay. Andrea...ah...it is, this is absolutely fascinating.
Mitchell: It's a mess. There's no question it's a mess. And it's really damaging morale at the agency. There's no questions about that.
Scarborough: Listen, I personally believe it's a nightmare moving forward. I know David Ignatius has said as much. We're going to have him on and talk to him for about thirty minutes.
Scarborough and Richard Haas then go on to more or less say that the CIA cannot do it's job if they're not allowed to torture people, and carry water for that "torture saved us from terrorist attacks" canard.
July 23, 2009 BBC World
The Satirical Political Report: Why Sarah Palin's resignation is DEVASTATING to the GOP. Naturally, on Independence Day, one day after she quit her job, this narcissist insisted that we pay attention to her on the internet.
Newshoggers: Where's my monkey wrench?
Seeing the Forest: It Was About The Oil
Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog: The Enemy Within?
Raw Dawg Buffalo: united states of entertainment
onegoodmove: Buncha kewel links
It is curious that this AP article left out one giant aspect of the UBS scandal -- the role former GOP Senator Phil Gramm may have played in their illegal activity.
MIAMI – Swiss bank UBS AG "systematically and deliberately" violated U.S. law by dispatching private bankers to recruit wealthy Americans interested in evading taxes and must be forced to reveal the identities of 52,000 of those clients, the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday.
The filing, which comes amid several published reports that the case may be near settlement, urges U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold to hold UBS accountable for conducting years of illegal business on U.S. soil — business that earned the bank more than $100 million in fees but cost the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.
"It is time for UBS to face the consequences that it has brought upon itself," said Justice Department tax attorney Stuart Gibson in the 55-page filing. "The United States has proven its case for enforcement."
As Jon Perr wrote earlier this year, Gramm was instrumental in handcuffing the IRS while he was in the Senate, and may have paved the way for UBS to commit their crimes once he became their Vice Chairman in 2002.
Good God. They really are wishing and hoping for a terrorist attack.
Michael Scheuer, on Glenn Beck's show last night:
Scheuer: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.
Beck: Which is why, I was thinking this weekend, if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.
I guess the wingnuts have given up the pretense of decency and normalcy. Now they're rooting for another terrorist attack, so that we stoopid Americans will finally WAKE UP! to the nature of the evil that conspires against us ...
Actually, we're becoming quite awake indeed. And it isn't bin Laden who scares us right now. More like Glenn Beck and his guests.
So we'll see. It's quite a mess we've created over there, and this is only the first step on the long road back to anything approaching normal:
BAGHDAD, June 30 -- This is no longer America's war.
Iraqis danced in the streets and set off fireworks Monday in impromptu celebrations of a pivotal moment in their nation's troubled history: Six years and three months after the March 2003 invasion, the United States on Tuesday is withdrawing its remaining combat troops from Iraq's cities and turning over security to Iraqi police and soldiers.
While more than 130,000 U.S. troops remain in the country, patrols by heavily armed soldiers in hulking vehicles as of Wednesday will largely disappear from Baghdad, Mosul and Iraq's other urban centers.
"The Army of the U.S. is out of my country," said Ibrahim Algurabi, 34, a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen now living in Arizona who attended a concert of celebration in Baghdad's Zawra Park. "People are ready for this change. There are a lot of opportunities to rebuild our country, to forget the past and think about the future."
On Monday, as the withdrawal deadline loomed, four U.S. troops were killed in the Iraqi capital, the military announced Tuesday. No details about the deaths were provided. Another soldier was killed Sunday in a separate attack.
Some American troops have expressed concern about becoming more exposed after the withdrawal, because Iraqis will have unprecedented authority over U.S. military operations. U.S. commanders have said they were bracing for an uptick of attacks from extremist groups during the transition period, which occur almost daily, and will rely heavily on Iraq's security forces for protection in the months ahead.
The withdrawal has also created enormous fear and uncertainty among many Iraqis, who believe that the U.S. military pullback will open the door for insurgents to increase their attacks. On Monday, some normally congested streets were virtually deserted after dark, as Iraqis appeared to heed warnings of impending attacks by insurgents. But city streets were also largely empty of Humvees and U.S. troops.
Those Iraqis who ventured out were in the mood to party, celebrating a moment that the Iraqi government has said represents its return to full sovereignty.
Pat Buchanan on MSNBC during a break in their wall to wall Michael Jackson coverage fear mongering over the energy bill that just passed the House.
Witt: Why doesn't anyone want to call it a climate bill?
Buchanan: Well, because the science is suggesting that maybe all of this isn't really happening or it's not really dangerous or it's not really man made. Barack Obama, the President is right when he said we shouldn't be afraid of the future. That is how this bill got passed through fear. We're all going to change. The climate's going to change. The oceans are going to rise. Our cities are going to be under water.
But more and more scientists are coming forward to say this is a hoax and a scam which is designed to transfer wealth and power from the private sector to the government sector and from the government of the United States to a world government. Which is what we're going to get in Copenhagen when we get this Kyoto two agreement.
Witt: Okay, here come the emails.
Alex, no one believes you didn't fully expect Buchanan to say something outrageous before you and your producers allowed him on the air. Don't go whining after it's too late about getting nasty emails for doing it. Buchanan fails to specify, and Witt fails to ask him just who these scientists are.
