Monday, February 23, 2009

Headlines - Monday

UK agents 'colluded with torture in Pakistan'
 
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/12/19/fingers460.jpg
A photograph of Rangzieb Ahmed's hands taken in September 2007, one year after he said his fingernails were removed. Photograph: Greater Manchester police

Torture is so trendy these days. Anybody who is anybody does it:
 
A shocking new report alleges widespread complicity between British security agents and their Pakistani counterparts who have routinely engaged in the torture of suspects.
 
The new (ab)normal.
 
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I think you'll probably want to read this about the Recovery Rebate Credit: http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2009/02/22/tax-rebate-good-refund-anticipation-loans-bad/
 
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BooMan has put together a list ranking the top and bottom ten Democratic Congress Critters and Senators based on their lifetime progressive voting record relative to the political leanings of their voting districts.
 
Six out of ten worst performing Democrats are Rahm Emanuel recruits. Only one of the best performing Democrats is a possible Rahm recruit (Keith Ellison). Thanks a lot, Rahm, for recruiting crappy Democrats.

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(CNN) — A Seattle man has been charged with insurance fraud for allegedly sinking his own yacht because of "financial pressure and frustration with the maintenance" of the vessel, authorities said.

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Who's the bigger bigot, the senator from Utah, or the people that voted for him?

Clearly, Utah is not devoid of people who are not 100% heterosexual. Obviously, the Senator and his people don't have their blinders off or they would realize they actually know some wonderful gay people. It's that their bigotry blinds them to the fact that they are wrong. Don't let your religion get in the way of loving people because it teaches you to hate people who are different from you.

Chris Buttars anti-gay remix:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdeOYzX4Pm8&eurl=http://www.teambio.org/

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Across the country, curious bloggers are calling up their local Diebold offices, and no one is answering.

Utah is among the number of states that now use a partial or fully electronic election system, and Premier Election Solutions, a subsidiary of Diebold, is the company that sold the machines to the state. To convince Utah decision-makers that Diebold was a big company with a substantial presence, Kathy Dopp, founder of UtahCountVotes.org,
reported that a company representative told the decision-makers in 2006 that Diebold "has about 20 offices in Utah." When pressed further, the representative refused to give the locations of any of the offices. In fact, the White Pages lists 18 Diebold offices.

However, when calls were made to all of these offices, only one picked up the phone. And when the addresses of offices listed under Diebold in the White Pages were visited, the addresses turned out to belong to either a Wal-Mart, a Sam's Club, or no building at all. In the end, 16 of the 18 Diebold offices in Utah listed in the White Pages were false listings. One is in Salt Lake, and the other is in Bountiful.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Diebold_offices_listed_in_yellow_pages_0222.html

I guess the fact that Diebold machines stole two presidential elections for Bush was good enough for the red state of Utah to want to have their own.  

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rove-sm.jpg

In what I consider to be another major disappointment, constitutional scholar Barack Obama is now siding with the Bush administration and trying to kill the lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.

Story here.

This follows the decision of the Obama White House to try to force the Democrats in Congress "to compromise" with people like Karl Rove on the issue of compelled testimony.

The Obama Administration has also come up in favor of the position of the Bush Administration in seeking to block an avenue for prisoners to get DNA evidence to prove their innocence. In an Alaskan case, the Obama Administration will argue in support of the state's opposition of allowing prisoners to sue for such access, even when they are willing to pay for the tests. The case involves William Osborne who was convicted of sexual assault and kidnapping in the death of a prostitute in Anchorage in 1993. In post-conviction appeals, Alaska courts said he was not entitled to DNA evidence for testing but the 9th Circuit reversed.

For the full story, click here.

I voted for Hillary.

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Binyam Mohamed will return to Britain after being held at Guantanamo Bay with bruising, organ damage, stomach complaints, malnutrition, sores to feet and hands, severe damage to ligaments and profound emotional and psychological problems which have been exacerbated by the refusal of Guantánamo's guards to give him counselling.

The beatings allegedly took place AFTER President Obama announced Guantánamo's closure in January: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/22/binyam-mohamed-injuries 

Did I mention I voted for Hillary?

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If there was ever any doubt that the 'justice' process at Guantanamo was a flawed, kangaroo-esque, endeavor, this should assuage them:

Seven prosecutors have resigned from the military commissions process in protest. These aren't bleeding heat liberal hippies - they're prosecutors. And from this man's account, these prosecutions are so tainted by disorganization alone that it's nearly impossible to imagine that justice can be done.

For a JAG lawyer to resign, let alone seven of them, the moral outrage must be pretty high. I would like to  think Obama will put an end to this quickly. It is a bloody, festering sore on the ass of America.

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The Vatican has filed a formal complaint with the Israeli government about a private Israeli TV show that it claims blasphemed Jesus and Mary. On the program, the host challenges the idea that Mary was a virgin and Jesus walked on water as a "lesson" for Christians who deny the Holocaust. The host was upset about the Pope lifting the excommunication of a bishop who denied the holocaust. The Israeli government's response, however, is worse than both the program and the objection.

The host, Israeli comedian Lior Shlein, Mary is said to have become pregnant at 15, thanks to a schoolmate. It said Jesus could never have walked on water because "he was so fat he was ashamed to leave the house, let alone go to the Sea of Galilee with a bathing suit."

Obviously, these statements are neither funny nor productive. Yet, the show appeared on the private Channel 10, one of Israel's three main TV stations, and should not be censored as a matter of free speech. Yet, the Israeli government immediately conceded and said that it would interrupt the transmission and get the broadcaster to publicly apologize. The act by the government is far worse than the juvenile statements of this program host. The Israeli government has shredded free speech rights on the alter of religious sensibilities.

This follows a trend of treating criticism of religion as a form of prohibiting discrimination. The Vatican was joined by Hezbollah in condemning the program.

Western countries have been yielding to demands to criminalize criticism of religion, a trend that threatens the foundations of free speech (here). This includes efforts to define criticism of religion as a form of discrimination, here.

For the full story, click here.

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In the nation's largest county, 20% (2.2 Million) are now receiving public assistance

The Bush economy lives on for the 10 million residents of Los Angeles County:

One in five Los Angeles County residents — nearly 2.2 million people — are receiving public assistance payments or benefits, a level county officials say will rise significantly over the coming months as the fallout from the recession continues.

The percentage of people on county aid already equals the figure at the height of the 2001-03 recession and far exceeds the one in seven who needed help during the economic downturn in the early 1990s and the one in nine assisted in the collapse of the early 1980s.

Unemployment stands at 9.5 percent, which means that one in 10 county residents are out of work. This is about the same level the county experienced during the first Bush recession in the early 1990s.

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The state that got rid of Gray Davis is feeling rather dismal about Arnold too.

Republicans are furious with Schwarzenegger for reneging on his campaign promise never to raise taxes - by raising them $12.5 billion. 

Jon Fleischman, a vice chairman of the California Republican Party said, "Arnold Schwarzenegger is like passing a kidney stone, and we've got another year to go."

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People should prepare for a climate-changed world, say engineers. A report by the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers will next month call for governments to accept that climate change is now inevitable. Strategies must be put in place now to protect our infrastructure from its worst effects, alongside existing efforts to reduce emissions, it will argue. - New Scientist

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Steven D:

Conservatives, to protest the imminent descent of our nation into unmitigated socialism, should immediately reject and return immediately to the federal government all federal benefits they receive or have received, on principle. That is, all benefits received under social security, medicare, student loans, small business loans, FHA loans, etc. And to be fair they should take their kids out of all public schools and any colleges or universities which receive federal funding in any way, shape or form. And any conservative church receiving federal aid should do likewise. The Lord will provide, I'm sure, if those congregations just pray hard enough and show enough faith in Jesus.

Oh, and let's not forget unemployment benefits. After all, any real conservative worth his or her salt would be ashamed to take them. Right?

There. I just think I've solved the Federal Government's deficit problem.

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Yesterday we got to see Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama buy into the e-mail smears about Barack Obama's citizenship. Now we hear about Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning's death wish for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg:
U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning predicted over the weekend that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would likely be dead from pancreatic cancer within nine months.

During a wide-ranging 30-minute speech on Saturday at the Hardin County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner, Bunning said he supports conservative judges "and that's going to be in place very shortly because Ruth Bader Ginsburg … has cancer."

"Bad cancer. The kind that you don't get better from," he told a crowd of about 100 at the old State Theater.

"Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer," he said.

How nice of him. This is how the Republicans operate, isn't it? Everything is about their power - getting it, keeping it, regaining it. It's party über alles for these guys, and it doesn't matter whom they have to stomp into the ground or how far into the gutter they have to go. Whether it's elevating the lies of racist kooks into mainstream discourse or invoking the long-dead Cold War or saying that if you aren't marching in lockstep with the Republicans you're a terrorist, I think over the last eight years and even into today, we've seen what these people are made of. And it isn't compassion, it isn't humanity. This party, and the people who are attracted to it, are about the worst of human nature - about meanness, petty grudges, lust for power, greed, and for all their talk about morality, the leaders of this party are about utter lack of accountability. It is the Republican Party that is all about id - the unfettered id of the infant, screaming for its wants and not at all understanding the word "no" or even the word "later." Republicanism is like being a two-year-old in a supermarket, wanting not just one colorful box of cereal, but all of them - and wanting it now, and making everyone's lives miserable until they get it.

I hope this country can handle having adults in charge and isn't it in a hurry to give it back to the two-year-old throwing the tantrum in Aisle Seven.
 
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Really interesting:

It's a kitchen degreaser. It's a window cleaner. It kills athlete's foot. Oh, and you can drink it.

Sounds like the old "Saturday Night Live" gag for Shimmer, the faux floor polish plugged by Gilda Radner. But the elixir is real. It has been approved by U.S. regulators. And it's starting to replace the toxic chemicals Americans use at home and on the job.

The stuff is a simple mixture of table salt and tap water whose ions have been scrambled with an electric current. Researchers have dubbed it electrolyzed water — hardly as catchy as Mr. Clean. But at the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica, some hotel workers are calling it el liquido milagroso — the miracle liquid.

That's as good a name as any for a substance that scientists say is powerful enough to kill anthrax spores without harming people or the environment.

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As the number of widows in Iraq has swelled during six years of war, "their presence on city streets begging for food or as potential recruits by insurgents" has begun to symbolize the breakdown of Iraqi self-sufficiency. Government and social service organizations "say the women's needs have come to exceed available help, posing a threat to the stability of the country's tenuous social structures."
 
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Last night, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for "Milk":

"When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas, to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life; it gave me the hope that one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married. […]

Most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he'd want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told they are less than by their churches, or by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value. And that no matter what everyone tells you, God does love you, and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours."

Sean Penn

Sean Penn's acceptance speech:

"…For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect, and anticipate their great shame, and the shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support. We've got to have equal rights for everyone." 

 

 

 

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