Thursday, April 2, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
THE LATEST SLOP FROM "TALENT ON LOAN FROM SWINE"...
The Prince of Putrescence spoke again today and made an observation that can only be explained by the probability that The Largeness of Lardness has participated in the very act he conjures up himself.
Warning that if British Prime Minister Gordon Brown keeps "slobbering" over President Obama, he'll "come down with anal poisoning and may die from it."
Eloquent, eh?
Hey, conservatives! He's aaaaallll yours!
This is not the first time Rush Limbaugh has suggested that a government official would contract, and die from, "anal poisoning."From last year:
Limbaugh was ranting against Sen. John McCain on his radio show during the presidential campaign when a caller asked whether he thought McCain would pick Sen. Lindsey Graham as his running mate. Limbaugh doubted it, though he admitted: "I may be wrong ... Lindsey Graham is certainly close enough to [McCain] to die of anal poisoning."
Is this where Limbaugh lives?
Someone named Angie Harmon explains it for us: "I think one of the greatest things about the Republican Party is the understanding, we don't point fingers and we have class..."
Is this where Limbaugh lives?
Someone named Angie Harmon explains it for us: "I think one of the greatest things about the Republican Party is the understanding, we don't point fingers and we have class..."
I continue to follow Limbaugh's pronouncements because, he is, afterall, the Head of the Republican Party, and we must know how the opposition thinks.
Monday, March 30, 2009
I TOTALLY "HEART" NEW YORK!
I can hardly believe it! I really DO love you, New York. (Um, except, for the, uh, baseball team. Uh, you know...)
Anyway I've just read that Rush Limbaugh is talking about selling his New York condo and promising to never set foot there if he can help it. He uses the office in NY during hurricane season in Florida, so he doesn't miss a beat in his broadcasting. But he's ticked off at New York Governor Patterson and taxes and oh, it is so, so great!
Thank you, New York, for having the class and the smarts to make Limbaugh want to never sully your awesomeness with his large, sweaty, overbearing porcine gruntliness.
Some people who are very special to me live in New York. I visit there quite often. How perfectly grand not to have to think of the Pigness of Pusillanimous Pomposity darkening the beautiful state of New York!
Except for the Yankees, I love you, New York.
Limbaugh, who claims that he pays per-diem city and state New York taxes, said that he would sell his New York condominium and visit the state as little as possible.
Good-bye, Rush, and thanks for all the fish.
WAS IT RACISM? OR THE DALLAS POLICEMAN JUST DOING HIS JOB?
This story is outrageous. Several blogs, conservative and liberal, have been discussing racism over the past few weeks. Some bloggers believe it's over. After you read this story, please ask yourselves, would this have happened if the people involved had blond hair and blue eyes? Especially ask yourselves this after you learn that a nurse confirmed Moats' story and another officer tried to intervene on Moats behalf.
We are most definitely NOT a post-racial society.
Ryan Moats feared for wife's life during ordeal with Dallas officer
11:48 AM CDT on Monday, March 30, 2009
By DAN X. McGRAW / The Dallas Morning News
The pro running back who was detained by a Dallas officer as his mother-in-law was dying said he feared for his wife’s life during the ordeal.
"I was afraid for her because he was pointing a gun at her," Ryan Moats told ABC-TV's Good Morning America. The interview was broadcast locally this morning on WFAA-TV (Channel 8).
When Officer Robert Powell first pulled him over outside a Plano hospital, "I didn’t realize what was going on at the time," Moats said. "Once I got out, I realized it was pretty serious.
Despite Moats' pleas that he needed to get into the hospital because his wife's mother was dying of cancer, Powell detained him for 13 minutes, threatening him with arrest. The officer stopped Moats because his SUV rolled through a red light en route to the hospital.
The stop took place on March 17.
Moats, a graduate of Bishop Lynch High School, lives in Frisco. He plays for the Houston Texans of the National Football League.
Moats, his wife Tamishia and two other family members were headed to Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano when Powell pulled them over.
With his hazard lights on, Moats stopped at a red light near the hospital and then drove through it after the motorist with the right-of-way signaled for him to go ahead, he told police.
“I got there as safely as I could,” he said in the television interview. “I wasn’t reckless at all.”
Powell, watching traffic from a hidden spot, turned on his lights and sirens, caught up with Moats' vehicle and followed it into a hospital parking lot, just outside the emergency room.
There, the police officer - who has since been placed on leave - detained Moats, threatening and berating him.
Moats' mother-in-law died before he could get in to see her.
SOURCE
SOURCE
We are most definitely NOT a post-racial society.
Ryan Moats feared for wife's life during ordeal with Dallas officer
11:48 AM CDT on Monday, March 30, 2009
By DAN X. McGRAW / The Dallas Morning News
The pro running back who was detained by a Dallas officer as his mother-in-law was dying said he feared for his wife’s life during the ordeal.
"I was afraid for her because he was pointing a gun at her," Ryan Moats told ABC-TV's Good Morning America. The interview was broadcast locally this morning on WFAA-TV (Channel 8).
When Officer Robert Powell first pulled him over outside a Plano hospital, "I didn’t realize what was going on at the time," Moats said. "Once I got out, I realized it was pretty serious.
Despite Moats' pleas that he needed to get into the hospital because his wife's mother was dying of cancer, Powell detained him for 13 minutes, threatening him with arrest. The officer stopped Moats because his SUV rolled through a red light en route to the hospital.
The stop took place on March 17.
Moats, a graduate of Bishop Lynch High School, lives in Frisco. He plays for the Houston Texans of the National Football League.
Moats, his wife Tamishia and two other family members were headed to Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano when Powell pulled them over.
With his hazard lights on, Moats stopped at a red light near the hospital and then drove through it after the motorist with the right-of-way signaled for him to go ahead, he told police.
“I got there as safely as I could,” he said in the television interview. “I wasn’t reckless at all.”
Powell, watching traffic from a hidden spot, turned on his lights and sirens, caught up with Moats' vehicle and followed it into a hospital parking lot, just outside the emergency room.
There, the police officer - who has since been placed on leave - detained Moats, threatening and berating him.
Moats' mother-in-law died before he could get in to see her.
SOURCE
SOURCE
THE QUIET COUP
I've said this before but didn't have someone as prestigious as Simon Johnson to back it up. I don't believe the US President or Congress is running the country, but rather it is an oligarchy of high-powered bankers and corporatists who call the shots for all of us. Johnson writes about this in The Atlantic:
"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time." --Simon Johnson
Sunday, March 29, 2009
General Petraeus: America is NOT less safe under President Obama
On CNN Sunday, General David Petraeus countered former Vice President Dick Cheney's recent claim that Obama's administration had made America less safe.
"I wouldn't necessarily agree with that," said the general, who has served under both administrations. "I think that there is in fact a good debate going on about the importance of values in everything we do. If one violates the values we hold so dear, we jeopardize [our troops]."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/29/petraeus-rejects-cheney-c_n_180451.html
"I wouldn't necessarily agree with that," said the general, who has served under both administrations. "I think that there is in fact a good debate going on about the importance of values in everything we do. If one violates the values we hold so dear, we jeopardize [our troops]."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/29/petraeus-rejects-cheney-c_n_180451.html
SPANISH COURT TO CONSIDER CRIMINAL CASE AGAINST FORMER BUSH OFFICIALS
UPDATE BELOWUH-oh. I guess Abu Gonzales won't be going to the running of the bulls in Pamplona anymore...
A Spanish court “has agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials…over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay.” The officials include former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, former Cheney chief of staff David Addington, Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes. The AP has more details on the case:
Spanish law allows courts to reach beyond national borders in cases of torture or war crimes under a doctrine of universal justice, though the government has recently said it hopes to limit the scope of the legal process. […]
Human rights lawyers brought the case before leading anti-terror judge Baltasar Garzon, who agreed to send it on to prosecutors to decide whether it had merit, Gonzalo Boye, one of the lawyers who brought the charges, told The Associated Press. […]
The judge’s decision to send the case against the American officials to prosecutors means it will proceed, at least for now. Prosecutors must now decide whether to recommend a full-blown investigation, though Garzon is not bound by their decision.
Old Spanish saying: "Si quieres el perro, acepta las pulgas."
********************************
(CNN) -- A senior Spanish judge has ordered prosecutors to investigate whether key Bush aides should be charged with crimes over the Guantanamo Bay detention center, a lawyer said Sunday.
Garzon says the case can be brought under Spanish law because several Spaniards were held at Guantanamo.
Investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzon has passed a 98-page complaint to prosecutors that accuses former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and five others of being the legal architects of system that allowed torture in violation of international law, human rights lawyer Gonzalo Boye told CNN.
Garzon says the case can be brought under Spanish law because several Spaniards were held at Guantanamo.
Investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzon has passed a 98-page complaint to prosecutors that accuses former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and five others of being the legal architects of system that allowed torture in violation of international law, human rights lawyer Gonzalo Boye told CNN.
Prosecutors will review the document to determine if a crime has been committed.
The prosecutor's office will make a decision within five days, said Boye, one of the report's authors. Garzon accepted the complaint under Spanish law because there were several Spaniards at Guantanamo who allegedly suffered torture.
The prosecutor's office will make a decision within five days, said Boye, one of the report's authors. Garzon accepted the complaint under Spanish law because there were several Spaniards at Guantanamo who allegedly suffered torture.
The complaint was filed in March 2008 by Boye and the Association for the Rights of Prisoners.
It names Gonzales -- who was President George W. Bush's counsel when the Guantanamo Bay detention center was established -- and other top Bush administration officials John C. Yoo,
It names Gonzales -- who was President George W. Bush's counsel when the Guantanamo Bay detention center was established -- and other top Bush administration officials John C. Yoo,
Douglas J. Feith, William J. Hayes II, Jay S. Bybee and David S. Addington.
A former top aide to Colin Powell, who was secretary of state in the early days of the Bush administration's "war on terror," testified before Congress last summer that the six officials "colluded" to develop a legal rationale for allowing detainees to be subjected to harsh treatment.
Lawrence Wilkerson was Powell's chief of staff in President Bush's first term.
Lawrence Wilkerson was Powell's chief of staff in President Bush's first term.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
DON'T FORGET--TONIGHT 8:30 PM LOCAL TIME ALL OVER THE US--EARTH HOUR
Earth Hour 2009: Cities Around The World Turning Off The Lights
SYDNEY — The floodlit cream shells of the famed Opera House dimmed Saturday as Sydney became the world's first major city to plunge itself into darkness for the second worldwide Earth Hour, a global campaign to highlight the threat of climate change.
From the Great Pyramids to the Acropolis, the London Eye to the Las Vegas strip, nearly 4,000 cities and towns in 88 countries planned to join in the World Wildlife Fund-sponsored event, a time zone-by-time zone plan to dim nonessential lights between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
Involvement in the effort has exploded since last year's Earth Hour, which drew participation from 400 cities after Sydney held a solo event in 2007. Interest has spiked ahead of planned negotiations on a new global warming treaty in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December. The last global accord, the Kyoto Protocol, is set to expire in 2012.
OFF TOPIC: I occasionally check in at Right is Right's blog and did so today. Holy Wingnut, Batman! she's at it again. Read her newest post on race. As we say in Boston, it's a pissah! A wicked pissah!
Friday, March 27, 2009
NATE SILVER OF "FIVE THIRTY-EIGHT" EXPLAINS THE GOP BUDGET PROPOSAL
In their eagerness to answer President Obama's challenge to come up with an alternative budget, the Republican leadership unveiled their budget yesterday to a skeptical public. John Boehner tried to explain how giving more tax cuts to the top 1 percent wealthiest Americans would increase revenues, but was unable to complete his explanation due to the ear-splitting derisive laughter coming from reporters--mainstream, liberal, and conservative.
DISCLAIMER: No teleprompters were used in the reporting of this story.
UPDATE: The GOP will deliver their detailed budgetWednesday.
Wednesday, April 1.
April Fool's Day.
The GOP is now promising to deliver its budget on April Fool's Day.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN, 1915-2009--A GREAT AMERICAN
John Hope Franklin, a towering scholar and pioneer of African-American studies who wrote the seminal text on the black experience in the U.S. and worked on the landmark Supreme Court case that outlawed public school segregation, died Wednesday. He was 94.
He was a United States historian and past president of Phi Beta Kappa, the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Southern Historical Association. Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University, he is best known for his work From Slavery to Freedom, first published in 1947, and continuously updated. More than three million copies have been sold.
In 1995, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The Big Takeover by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone Magazine
Matt Taibbi is a gifted writer. He explains it all for me and you in this Rolling Stone article, and boy is he pissed!
Excerpts:
People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.
The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — "our partners in the government," as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.
The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.
The best way to understand the financial crisis is to understand the meltdown at AIG. AIG is what happens when short, bald managers of otherwise boring financial bureaucracies start seeing Brad Pitt in the mirror. This is a company that built a giant fortune across more than a century by betting on safety-conscious policyholders — people who wear seat belts and build houses on high ground — and then blew it all in a year or two by turning their entire balance sheet over to a guy who acted like making huge bets with other people's money would make his dick bigger.
That guy — the Patient Zero of the global economic meltdown — was one Joseph Cassano, the head of a tiny, 400-person unit within the company called AIG Financial Products, or AIGFP. Cassano, a pudgy, balding Brooklyn College grad with beady eyes and way too much forehead, cut his teeth in the Eighties working for Mike Milken, the granddaddy of modern Wall Street debt alchemists. Milken, who pioneered the creative use of junk bonds, relied on messianic genius and a whole array of insider schemes to evade detection while wreaking financial disaster. Cassano, by contrast, was just a greedy little turd with a knack for selective accounting who ran his scam right out in the open, thanks to Washington's deregulation of the Wall Street casino. "It's all about the regulatory environment," says a government source involved with the AIG bailout. "These guys look for holes in the system, for ways they can do trades without government interference. Whatever is unregulated, all the action is going to pile into that."
As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren't hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.
*********************************************************
The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.
"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?"
But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests.
Excerpts:
People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.
The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — "our partners in the government," as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.
The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.
The best way to understand the financial crisis is to understand the meltdown at AIG. AIG is what happens when short, bald managers of otherwise boring financial bureaucracies start seeing Brad Pitt in the mirror. This is a company that built a giant fortune across more than a century by betting on safety-conscious policyholders — people who wear seat belts and build houses on high ground — and then blew it all in a year or two by turning their entire balance sheet over to a guy who acted like making huge bets with other people's money would make his dick bigger.
That guy — the Patient Zero of the global economic meltdown — was one Joseph Cassano, the head of a tiny, 400-person unit within the company called AIG Financial Products, or AIGFP. Cassano, a pudgy, balding Brooklyn College grad with beady eyes and way too much forehead, cut his teeth in the Eighties working for Mike Milken, the granddaddy of modern Wall Street debt alchemists. Milken, who pioneered the creative use of junk bonds, relied on messianic genius and a whole array of insider schemes to evade detection while wreaking financial disaster. Cassano, by contrast, was just a greedy little turd with a knack for selective accounting who ran his scam right out in the open, thanks to Washington's deregulation of the Wall Street casino. "It's all about the regulatory environment," says a government source involved with the AIG bailout. "These guys look for holes in the system, for ways they can do trades without government interference. Whatever is unregulated, all the action is going to pile into that."
As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren't hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.
*********************************************************
The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.
"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?"
But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests.
LIMBAUGH BROADCASTS HIS GRUNTS, AGAIN...
Rush Limbaugh was at it again on Tuesday, "confusing" Barack Obama with Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, and referring to the president as "one angry guy -- his wife is angry as well."
Limbaugh went on to "accidentally" refer to Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, as "Barack Ogabe."
"The standard of living has increased in places where there are basic free markets," Limbaugh said. "Where there aren't, of course the standard of living has declined, such as Zimbabwe... now run by Robert Ogabe. Ah -- it's Mugabe.
I was confusing him with a well-known Kenyan named Barack Ogabe. This is Robert Mugabe."
LOL! I guess that bit of what he thinks passes as incisive commentary helps Limbaugh deal with Mr. Obama's high approval ratings. He apparently gets some sort of thrill running through his chubby pink loins when he makes up stories about Mr. and Mrs. Obama. The reality is that Mrs. Obama is admired and quite popular, and President Obama is well regarded as a cool and even-tempered man, with a nimble intellect and a stable personality.
In short, Mr. Obama is everything Limbaugh could never be.
It takes a really sharp mind to be able to draw comparisons between people as different from each other as Mugabe and President Obama--so, of course, Limbaugh couldn't do it. Instead he makes a "mistake" involving their names; and while chuckling to himself over his junior-high school level wit, continues to feed his Dittoheads more third-rate slop, in which they so eagerly wallow.
Even if a swine gets its own radio show and maintains a large audience, it’s still, afterall, a swine.
In short, Mr. Obama is everything Limbaugh could never be.
It takes a really sharp mind to be able to draw comparisons between people as different from each other as Mugabe and President Obama--so, of course, Limbaugh couldn't do it. Instead he makes a "mistake" involving their names; and while chuckling to himself over his junior-high school level wit, continues to feed his Dittoheads more third-rate slop, in which they so eagerly wallow.
Even if a swine gets its own radio show and maintains a large audience, it’s still, afterall, a swine.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
JINDAL, MT. REDOUBT, AND FRANCE, OH MY!
Bobby Jindal, in his rebuttal to President Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress had this to say about what he considered foolish government spending:
"But Democratic leaders in Congress rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history -- with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest.
While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring." Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C."
The high-speed railroad project turned out to be non-existent and the "something called "volcano monitoring?"
Alaska volcano Mount Redoubt erupts 5 times
By MARY PEMBERTON,
Associated Press Writer –
Mon Mar 23, 7:28 pm ET
The 10,200-foot Redoubt Volcano, roughly 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, last erupted during a four-month period from 1989-90.
In its last eruption, Redoubt sent ash 150 miles away into the path of a KLM jet and its four engines flamed out. The jet dropped more than 2 miles before the crew was able to restart all engines and land safely. The plane required $80 million in repairs.
The volcano became restless earlier this year. The observatory had warned in late January that an eruption could occur at any time.
Increased earthquake activity over the past 48 hours prompted scientists to raise the alert level for Mount Redoubt on Sunday.
The "something called volcano monitoring" probably saved lives.
And more foolishness from the Conservatives:
Obama writes letter to Chirac - [rightwing] blogosphere goes crazy
By Jimmy Orr 03.23.09
Want to know how quickly rumors get spread on the Internet? Here’s a prime example.
The right side of the web is apoplectic this morning claiming that President Obama doesn’t know who the French president is.
They point to an article in the French newspaper Le Figaro reporting that President Obama last week wrote a letter to former French President Jacques Chirac.
“I am certain that we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world,” Obama is purported to have written.
Wrong guy
This has electrified the Internet. Why would President Obama initiate correspondence with Mr. Chirac instead of President Nicolas Sarkozy?
One excited blogger writes, “Doesn’t Obama ever consult his staff before acting? Sarkozy is the President there! It’s like Sarko writing to George Bush and saying he looks forward to working with him. Chirac is the FORMER president.”
That’s a good heads up. But let’s dig a little deeper.
French-speaking pal
Our handy colleague, Laurent Belsie, who writes the New Economy blog here at the Monitor, speaks French. (We don’t hold that against him.)
With his help we found out that another French newspaper, the New Observer, explained that Obama was merely replying to a Chirac letter who was writing him as the head of his foundation — the Jacques Chirac Foundation for sustainable development and cultural dialogue.
The foundation is promoting access to water and medicines in west Africa, combating deforestation in the Congo Basin, and trying to save dying languages in Polynesia, according to a spokesman who helped set up the foundation.
"But Democratic leaders in Congress rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history -- with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest.
While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring." Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C."
The high-speed railroad project turned out to be non-existent and the "something called "volcano monitoring?"
Alaska volcano Mount Redoubt erupts 5 times
By MARY PEMBERTON,
Associated Press Writer –
Mon Mar 23, 7:28 pm ET
The 10,200-foot Redoubt Volcano, roughly 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, last erupted during a four-month period from 1989-90.
In its last eruption, Redoubt sent ash 150 miles away into the path of a KLM jet and its four engines flamed out. The jet dropped more than 2 miles before the crew was able to restart all engines and land safely. The plane required $80 million in repairs.
The volcano became restless earlier this year. The observatory had warned in late January that an eruption could occur at any time.
Increased earthquake activity over the past 48 hours prompted scientists to raise the alert level for Mount Redoubt on Sunday.
The "something called volcano monitoring" probably saved lives.
And more foolishness from the Conservatives:
Obama writes letter to Chirac - [rightwing] blogosphere goes crazy
By Jimmy Orr 03.23.09
Want to know how quickly rumors get spread on the Internet? Here’s a prime example.
The right side of the web is apoplectic this morning claiming that President Obama doesn’t know who the French president is.
They point to an article in the French newspaper Le Figaro reporting that President Obama last week wrote a letter to former French President Jacques Chirac.
“I am certain that we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world,” Obama is purported to have written.
Wrong guy
This has electrified the Internet. Why would President Obama initiate correspondence with Mr. Chirac instead of President Nicolas Sarkozy?
One excited blogger writes, “Doesn’t Obama ever consult his staff before acting? Sarkozy is the President there! It’s like Sarko writing to George Bush and saying he looks forward to working with him. Chirac is the FORMER president.”
That’s a good heads up. But let’s dig a little deeper.
French-speaking pal
Our handy colleague, Laurent Belsie, who writes the New Economy blog here at the Monitor, speaks French. (We don’t hold that against him.)
With his help we found out that another French newspaper, the New Observer, explained that Obama was merely replying to a Chirac letter who was writing him as the head of his foundation — the Jacques Chirac Foundation for sustainable development and cultural dialogue.
The foundation is promoting access to water and medicines in west Africa, combating deforestation in the Congo Basin, and trying to save dying languages in Polynesia, according to a spokesman who helped set up the foundation.
***********************************
In their eagerness to discredit the less than 100 days of Mr. Obama's presidency and declare it a total failure, the GOP and its hysterical followers are making themselves look sadly foolish.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
SARAH PALIN'S JOKE ON SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN
After registering her outrage over Mr. Obama's comment on his bowling and Special Olympics, we note what the Anchorage Daily News reported:
Palin rejects over 30% of stimulus money
JUNEAU -- Gov. Sarah Palin is refusing to accept over 30 percent of the federal economic stimulus money being offered to Alaska, including dollars for schools, energy assistance and social services.
The news Thursday drew anger from those who accused Palin of putting her national political aspirations ahead of the state's interests, and admiration from others who say she has courage to turn down money that would expand government. The state Legislature will have an opportunity to override her decision.
Palin is not taking about $288 million of the $930.7 million that Alaska is due in the federal stimulus. Palin said she is accepting the federal stimulus money that would go for construction projects, but not funding directed at government operations.
"We are not requesting funds intended to just grow government," Palin said. "In essence we say no to operating funds for more positions in government."
Palin first told the news media that she's turning down nearly half the federal stimulus money -- but later conceded that does not count the Medicaid money she is accepting. That brings down what she's refusing to 31 percent of what the state government could get. Local governments and nonprofits could still compete for stimulus grants.
The biggest single chunk of money that Palin is turning down is about $170 million for education, including money that would go for programs to help economically disadvantaged and special needs students. Anchorage School Superintendent Carol Comeau said she is "shocked and very disappointed" that Palin would reject the schools money. She said it could be used for job preservation, teacher training, and helping kids who need it."
Gov. Palin has to do what she thinks is best for her political career and her state. But after pouncing on President Obama over his unfortunate comment, it appears a bit hypocritical for her to withhold money that would actually help and improve the lives of the children she felt she needed to defend.
Mr. Obama's remarks won't affect Alaska's special needs children as much as Gov. Palin's withholding of funds for the special needs kids in her state.
Palin rejects over 30% of stimulus money
JUNEAU -- Gov. Sarah Palin is refusing to accept over 30 percent of the federal economic stimulus money being offered to Alaska, including dollars for schools, energy assistance and social services.
The news Thursday drew anger from those who accused Palin of putting her national political aspirations ahead of the state's interests, and admiration from others who say she has courage to turn down money that would expand government. The state Legislature will have an opportunity to override her decision.
Palin is not taking about $288 million of the $930.7 million that Alaska is due in the federal stimulus. Palin said she is accepting the federal stimulus money that would go for construction projects, but not funding directed at government operations.
"We are not requesting funds intended to just grow government," Palin said. "In essence we say no to operating funds for more positions in government."
Palin first told the news media that she's turning down nearly half the federal stimulus money -- but later conceded that does not count the Medicaid money she is accepting. That brings down what she's refusing to 31 percent of what the state government could get. Local governments and nonprofits could still compete for stimulus grants.
The biggest single chunk of money that Palin is turning down is about $170 million for education, including money that would go for programs to help economically disadvantaged and special needs students. Anchorage School Superintendent Carol Comeau said she is "shocked and very disappointed" that Palin would reject the schools money. She said it could be used for job preservation, teacher training, and helping kids who need it."
Gov. Palin has to do what she thinks is best for her political career and her state. But after pouncing on President Obama over his unfortunate comment, it appears a bit hypocritical for her to withhold money that would actually help and improve the lives of the children she felt she needed to defend.
Mr. Obama's remarks won't affect Alaska's special needs children as much as Gov. Palin's withholding of funds for the special needs kids in her state.
A GOVERNMENT OF MEN, NOT LAWS?
By David Sirota:
United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard likes to say that Washington policymakers "treat the people who take a shower after work much differently than they treat the people who shower before they go to work." In the 21st century Gilded Age, the blue-collar shower-after-work crowd is given the tough, while the white-collar shower-before-work gang gets the love, and never before this week was that doctrine made so clear.
Following news that government-owned American International Group (AIG) devoted $165 million of its $170 billion taxpayer bailout to employee bonuses, the White House insisted nothing could be done to halt the robbery. On ABC's Sunday chat show, Obama adviser Larry Summers couched his passive-aggressive defense of AIG's thieves in the saccharine argot of jurisprudence. "We are a country of law - there are contracts (and) the government cannot just abrogate contracts," he said.
The rhetoric echoed John Adams' two-century-old fairy tale about an impartial "government of laws, and not of men." Only now, the reassuring platitudes can't hide the uncomfortable truth.
Last month, the same government that says it "cannot just abrogate" executives' bonus contracts used its leverage to cancel unions' wage contracts. As the Wall Street Journal reported, federal loans to GM and Chrysler were made contingent on those manufacturers shredding their existing labor pacts and "extract(ing) financial concessions from workers." In other words, our government asks us to believe that it possesses total authority to adjust contracts at car companies it lends to, and yet has zero power to modify contracts at financial firms it owns. This, even though the latter set of covenants might be easily abolished.
According to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, these allegedly inviolate AIG agreements promised bonus money the company didn't have and were crafted by executives who knew the firm was collapsing, meaning there is a decent chance these pacts could be invalidated under "fraudulent conveyance" statutes. They also might be canceled via force majeure clauses allowing one party to rescind a pact in the event of extraordinary circumstances - like, perhaps, the collapse of the world economy. (Note: BusinessWeek reports that corporations are already citing the recession as reason to invoke such clauses and nix their business-to-business contracts.)
[snip]
Mind you, this double standard works the other way, too. Congressional Republicans have long supported the laws letting bankruptcy courts annul mortgage contracts for vacation homes. Those statutes help the shower-before-work clique at least retain their beachside villas, no matter how many of their speculative Ponzi schemes go bad. But for those who shower after work, it's Adams-esque bromides against "absolving borrowers of their personal responsibility," as the GOP announced it will oppose legislation permitting bankruptcy judges to revise mortgage contracts for primary residences.
Certainly, for all the connotations of fairness inherent in American politics' "country of law" catchphrases, most of us know that the selective application of legal principles is as old as the Republic. However, lots of us are only now discovering that inequality is so pronounced that the time of day we bathe determines the enforcement and reliability (or lack thereof) of even the most basic contracts. We are just realizing that for all the parroting of America's second president, we are ruled by a government of men, and not of laws.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
MORE ON TORTURE AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
My friend, Patrick over at Sane Political Discourse, doesn't understand why, while we're in a financial meltdown, I, or any other blogger, would waste our time talking about Bush and his administration. He labels my blogging on the Bush Administration and torture a "distraction," which implies that it is unimportant.
As he pointed out, Bush has been out of office for two months, and he was a lame duck for months before that. Why dwell on what happened in the past?
Because, Patrick, what was done was immoral and illegal. And it was done in our name--the American people.
Bush told the world that America doesn't torture, and then he tortured.
What I don't understand is how people are willing to dismiss this as not important, or even worse, that torturing is necessary to fight terrorism. What I don't understand is the number of Americans willing to overlook and excuse the debasement of this country, its Constitution and ideals. For what? How does torturing people protect us? Why would Americans believe that we should become as evil, base, and inhumane as our enemies in order to protect ourselves? What do we protect in doing so? What do we diminsh in the process?
Here is a recent AP story on the consequences of this reckless policy that punishes the innocent and encourages more people to hate us and wish us further harm.
We gained little and lost much.
By ANDREW O. SELSKY,
Associated Press
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. "There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."
Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.
"It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather "sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified."
Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to discriminate "who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation."
Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on Wilkerson's specific allegations but noted that the military has consistently said that dealing with foreign fighters from a wide variety of countries in a wartime setting was a complex process. The military has insisted that those held at Guantanamo were enemy combatants and posed a threat to the United States.
In his posting for The Washington Note blog, Wilkerson wrote that "U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released."
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney fought efforts to address the situation, Wilkerson said, because "to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership."
Wilkerson told the AP in a telephone interview that many detainees "clearly had no connection to al-Qaida and the Taliban and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pakistanis turned many over for $5,000 a head."
Some 800 men have been held at Guantanamo since the prison opened in January 2002, and 240 remain. Wilkerson said two dozen are terrorists, including confessed Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was transferred to Guantanamo from CIA custody in September 2006.
"We need to put those people in a high-security prison like the one in Colorado, forget them and throw away the key," Wilkerson said. "We can't try them because we tortured them and didn't keep an evidence trail."
But the rest of the detainees need to be released, he said.
Wilkerson, who flew combat missions as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and left the government in January 2005, said he did not speak out while in government because some of the information was classified. He said he feels compelled to do so now because Cheney has claimed in recent press interviews that President Barack Obama is making the U.S. less safe by reversing Bush administration policies toward terror suspects, including ordering Guantanamo closed.
The administration is now evaluating what to do with the prisoners who remain at the U.S. military base in Cuba.
"I'm very concerned about the kinds of things Cheney is saying to make it seem Obama is a danger to this republic," Wilkerson said. "To have a former vice president fearmongering like this is really, really dangerous."
As he pointed out, Bush has been out of office for two months, and he was a lame duck for months before that. Why dwell on what happened in the past?
Because, Patrick, what was done was immoral and illegal. And it was done in our name--the American people.
Bush told the world that America doesn't torture, and then he tortured.
What I don't understand is how people are willing to dismiss this as not important, or even worse, that torturing is necessary to fight terrorism. What I don't understand is the number of Americans willing to overlook and excuse the debasement of this country, its Constitution and ideals. For what? How does torturing people protect us? Why would Americans believe that we should become as evil, base, and inhumane as our enemies in order to protect ourselves? What do we protect in doing so? What do we diminsh in the process?
Here is a recent AP story on the consequences of this reckless policy that punishes the innocent and encourages more people to hate us and wish us further harm.
We gained little and lost much.
By ANDREW O. SELSKY,
Associated Press
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. "There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."
Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.
"It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather "sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified."
Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to discriminate "who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation."
Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on Wilkerson's specific allegations but noted that the military has consistently said that dealing with foreign fighters from a wide variety of countries in a wartime setting was a complex process. The military has insisted that those held at Guantanamo were enemy combatants and posed a threat to the United States.
In his posting for The Washington Note blog, Wilkerson wrote that "U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released."
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney fought efforts to address the situation, Wilkerson said, because "to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership."
Wilkerson told the AP in a telephone interview that many detainees "clearly had no connection to al-Qaida and the Taliban and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pakistanis turned many over for $5,000 a head."
Some 800 men have been held at Guantanamo since the prison opened in January 2002, and 240 remain. Wilkerson said two dozen are terrorists, including confessed Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was transferred to Guantanamo from CIA custody in September 2006.
"We need to put those people in a high-security prison like the one in Colorado, forget them and throw away the key," Wilkerson said. "We can't try them because we tortured them and didn't keep an evidence trail."
But the rest of the detainees need to be released, he said.
Wilkerson, who flew combat missions as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and left the government in January 2005, said he did not speak out while in government because some of the information was classified. He said he feels compelled to do so now because Cheney has claimed in recent press interviews that President Barack Obama is making the U.S. less safe by reversing Bush administration policies toward terror suspects, including ordering Guantanamo closed.
The administration is now evaluating what to do with the prisoners who remain at the U.S. military base in Cuba.
"I'm very concerned about the kinds of things Cheney is saying to make it seem Obama is a danger to this republic," Wilkerson said. "To have a former vice president fearmongering like this is really, really dangerous."
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