5.16.2009
Olbermann tackles Texas secession
FEMA has given texas $3 billion. Ike cost another $1 billion. Guess who has to pick up those costs in an independent Texas? NASA and Fort Hood provide $8 billion to the Texas economy.
The U.S. gave Texas students another $1 billion in Pell Grants in 06-07. Who's going to make that up? Or maybe that can let that go - appears to not be money well spent anyway.
Sure it looks dire. Still, it seems like a good idea. Can we send Alabama and Mississippi with them?
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
5.15.2009
Cheney used torture used to build a phony case for Iraq war
As more information leaks out, it appears that the Bush Administration was torturing detainees in order to build, then buttress, it's case that Saddam Hussein was an iminent danger to the U.S.
This is becoming a web of lies almost too big to fathom. We have the Vice-President of the United States authorizing torture in a bid to create a case for war because he knows that conventional means won't work.(CNN)
Finding a "smoking gun" linking Iraq and al Qaeda became the main purpose of the abusive interrogation program the Bush administration authorized in 2002, a former State Department official told CNN on Thursday.
The allegation was included in an online broadside aimed at former Vice President Dick Cheney by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it, Wilkerson wrote that the interrogation program began in April and May of 2002, and then-Vice President Cheney's office kept close tabs on the questioning.
"Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda," Wilkerson wrote in The Washington Note, an online political journal.
Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said his accusation is based on information from current and former officials. He said he has been "relentlessly digging" since 2004, when Powell asked him to look into the scandal surrounding the treatment of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
The argument that Iraq could have provided weapons of mass destruction to terrorists such as al Qaeda was a key element of the Bush administration's case for the March 2003 invasion. But after the invasion, Iraq was found to have dismantled its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, and the independent commission that investigated the 2001 attacks found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between the two entities.
Wilkerson wrote that in one case, the CIA told Cheney's office that a prisoner under its interrogation program was now "compliant," meaning agents recommended the use of "alternative" techniques should stop.
At that point, "The VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods," Wilkerson wrote.
"The detainee had not revealed any al Qaeda-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, 'revealed' such contacts."
Al-Libi's claim that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's government had trained al Qaeda operatives in producing chemical and biological weapons appeared in the October 2002 speech then-President Bush gave when pushing Congress to authorize military action against Iraq. It also was part of Powell's February 2003 presentation to the United Nations on the case for war, a speech Powell has called a "blot" on his record.
Al-Libi later recanted the claim, saying it was made under torture by Egyptian intelligence agents, a claim Egypt denies. He died last week in a Libyan prison, reportedly a suicide, Human Rights Watch reported.
Stacy Sullivan, a counterterrorism adviser for the U.S.-based group, called al-Libi's allegation "pivotal" to the Bush administration's case for war, as it connected Baghdad to the terrorist organization behind the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
He orders the torture ostensibly to protect American lives, and now demonizes the Obama Administration for not continuing the "advanced interrogations. Cheney accuses Obama of endangering American lives, leaving out a major part it: his own administration did not use advanced interrogation in it's second term. As Colin Powell's top aide says:(Josh Marshall via Sullivan)
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
"What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?" — Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, formerPlus, in a bid to demonize the Speaker of the House, the GOP are creating distractions about what she knew and when she knew it. Never mind that she was in the minority party that was being steamrolled, and painted as unpatriotic for opposing the buildup to war.
chief of staff of Colin Powell's Department of State
I've opposed the cries of "war crimes". Until now. I think we're approaching that arena.
Brewing storm over gay military dismissals, Obama refuses to intervene
A storm is brewing over President Obama's refusal to intercede on the behalf of Dan Choi, an Arabic translator and lieutenant in the U.S. Army who was just dismissed for being gay. Choi went on the "Rachel Maddow Show" last week and said he intends "to fight it tooth and nail," and that this kind of behavior "weakens the military." 54 Arabic translators (and hundreds more servicemen) have been dismissed from the Army due to their sexuality.
Jon Stewart excoriated President Bush for his policies and President Obama for flip-flopping on the issue, saying:
"So it was okay to waterboard a guy 80 times but God forbid the guy who could understand what that prick was saying has a boyfriend? Waterboarding may make a prisoner talk, but it ain't gonna make him talk English."He then introduced the following segment on the issue, in which John Oliver supported the Army's choice with the "he's gay" defense. He eventually screamed at Stewart saying, "I will not let you Cramer me."
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c |
| Dan Choi Is Gay | |
5.14.2009
GOP environmental double-douchebaggery
"Carbon dioxide is basically this. (Exhales.) Look at how much pollution I just put out." — Glenn Beck
#2
Congressman John Shadegg (R-AZ) said on Morning Joe today that "the evidence isn't in" on the manmade aspect of the climate crisis.
Name one conservative position in which all of the evidence supporting it is "in."
(Bob Cesca)
Bill O'Reilly flip-flops on gay marriage
Look, I couldn't care less, to tell you the truth.... You want to get married? Knock yourself out. Go to Vegas. Have a good time. If you can get that changed, I'm not going to jump up and down and say I think it's wrong, because I don't.This was the same interview in which O'Reilly referred to anti-gay activists as "fanatics" and "holy rollers" who were a bit "ridiculous."
Fast forward to this week: "You would let everybody get married who want to get married. You want to marry a turtle, you can."
5.13.2009
Obama drug czar calls for end to "war on drugs"
The Obama administration's new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting "a war on drugs," a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.
In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation's drug issues.
"Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them," he said. "We're not at war with people in this country."
Gil Kerlikowske, the new White House drug czar, signaled Wednesday his openness to rethinking the government's approach to fighting drug use.
Mr. Kerlikowske's comments are a signal that the Obama administration is set to follow a more moderate -- and likely more controversial -- stance on the nation's drug problems. Prior administrations talked about pushing treatment and reducing demand while continuing to focus primarily on a tough criminal-justice approach.
The Obama administration is likely to deal with drugs as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice alone, with treatment's role growing relative to incarceration, Mr. Kerlikowske said.
(More...)
Democratic Senate screws average Americans for 2nd time in 2 weeks; this time it's credit cards
And by the way, you got screwed on health care last week.
(New York Times)
Despite complaints that banks and credit card companies are gouging customers by charging outrageous interest rates, the Senate on Wednesday easily turned back an effort to cap interest rates at 15 percent.
The effort by Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, drew only 33 votes and needed 60, with a bipartisan group of 60 senators opposing it as the Senate pushed its credit card overhaul toward the finish line. Some Democrats and consumer groups have said that an interest cap is needed to put real teeth into an otherwise solid bill. (More...)
See how your Senators voted here.
Government out of our lives! Except in the bedroom.... get in there and stop the spread of the gay.
Typical double-speak from the party of the teabaggers, who want the government out of their private lives but want the government IN the lives of those with whom they disagree.
You cannot have it both ways. If you want the government to be libertarian - out of our private lives - then it has to be that way across the board.
But this is the Republican party.... they're not interested in logic, or consistency. They're interested in dogma and domination. Watch.
Colbert on image branding; Stewart on ASU and Obama
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c |
| Stephen's Sound Advice - How to Re-Brand the GOP | |
"Daily Show" correspondent Jason Jones and his team of producers traveled to Tempe, Arizona where Dawn helped them figure out why the "Harvard of date rape" had refused a degree to the president.
Jones found a student body more concerned with recreation than academics, but one that hated the idea of giving a man who had "accomplished so little" a degree. These people don't speak for the alumni, who were deeply embarrassed by the school's decision, but they certainly made the current student body look like a bunch of idiots.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c |
| Arizona State Snubs Obama | |
5.12.2009
Jon Stewart on Wanda Sykes controversy; bad jokes worse than torture
Stewart looked at the reactions to Sykes' performance last night and determined that "bad jokes and gay marriage are destroying this country, but torture can save it." John Oliver followed up with a similarly-themed segment, using the language of torture defenders to defend Sykes.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c |
| Wanda Sykes' Jokes | |
Torture drives detainee to suicide
And so Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was first captured by the US and tortured by CIA surrogates in an Egyptian cell. Apparently, they beat him and put him in a coffin for 17 hours as a mock-burial. To end the severe mental and physical suffering, he confessed that Saddam had trained al Qaeda terrorists in deploying WMDs. This evidence was then cited by Colin Powell as part of the rationale for going to war in Iraq. Bingo! And we wonder why torture is such a temptation.
Bob Cesca comments:
Al-Libi was found dead in his Libyan cell yesterday. Apparent suicide. What they did to this man went far beyond any bullshit debate about "caterpillars" and "frat hazing." I want to hear from Scarborough and others about how this wasn't torture.
And whether or not his death was part of a conspiracy to silence him, I have no idea. However, it's becoming increasingly clear that the real conspiracy surrounding al-Libi is how the Bush administration used torture as means to justify invading Iraq.
As more information pours out, I grow more and more certain (as Sullivan does, too) that torture was absolutely authorized as an integral tool in building the case for war.
It might also explain why Cheney and other like-minded officials are so desperate to obfuscate and skew the issue into this Möbius loop about "keeping us safe" and "waterboarding is/isn't torture." It's all beginning to sound like a desperate attempt to keep our attention diverted away from talking about the Why? I mean, he's enlisted his daughter in this bastardization of the law!
Put another way, this is looking more and more like an effort by Cheney to cover his ass, knowing that torture was almost entirely about fabricating a pretext for war. Torture, after all, is one thing, but proving that Cheney et al authorized torture as a means to falsify a justification for war would make this one of the biggest criminal conspiracies in American history.
Stupid, superficial beauty queens; also David Shuster
"Hey, can I vomit right now?"
However, what he missed was Carrie Prejean's ridiculous comment that she was exercising her Constitutional right to free speech and was persecuted for it.
No, she wasn't. The Constitution guarantees no GOVERNMENT restriction on speech. It doesn't say anything about private restriction and it CERTAINLY doesn't say a damn thing about being held responsible by others for the content of your speech. After all, aren't her detractors also using their right to speak freely?
And I am SOOOO sick of these appeals to freedom and soldiers to defend utter horseshit like a beauty pageant..
5.11.2009
Teabagger FAIL!
WE DON'T WANT ANYTHING FROM THE GOVERNMENT!
Right....
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