Sunday, April 12, 2009

Headlines - Sunday

 
                           Happy Easter!                                  
 
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You might be a hopelessly deluded wingnut if ...

Little Green Footballs mocks your antics at a "Tea Party" as "some really deranged stuff."

… Or Allahpundit questions Glenn Beck's sanity. 

… Or when four of your colleagues at the Washington Post use that very same paper to smack down your piece of sh*t column (George Will) as full of outright crap.

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Burger33

Extreme hamburgers. Yes, that's a pool of melted butter this one's soaking in. Time to start taxing people that eat unhealthy crap like this.

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Boat owners are abandoning ship.

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Greenwald: Obama and Habeas Corpus - Then and Now

It was once the case under the Bush administration that the U.S. would abduct people from around the world, accuse them of being Terrorists, ship them to Guantanamo, and then keep them there for as long as we wanted without offering them any real due process to contest the accusations against them.  That due-process-denying framework was legalized by the Military Commissions Act of 2006.  Many Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- claimed they were vehemently opposed to this denial of due process for detainees, and on June 12, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Boumediene v. Bush, ruled that the denial of habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees was unconstitutional and that all Guantanamo detainees have the right to a full hearing in which they can contest their accusations against them.

In the wake of the Boumediene ruling, the U.S. Government wanted to preserve the power to abduct people from around the world and bring them to American prisons without having to provide them any due process.  So, instead of bringing them to our Guantanamo prison camp (where, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, they were entitled to habeas hearings), the Bush administration would instead simply send them to our prison camp in Bagram, Afghanistan, and then argue that because they were flown to Bagram rather than Guantanamo, they had no rights of any kind and Boudemiene didn't apply to them.  The Bush DOJ treated the Boumediene ruling, grounded in our most basic constitutional guarantees, as though it was some sort of a silly game -- fly your abducted prisoners to Guantanamo and they have constitutional rights, but fly them instead to Bagram and you can disappear them forever with no judicial process.  Put another way, you just close Guantanamo, move it to Afghanistan, and -- presto -- all constitutional obligations disappear.

Keep reading: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/11-8 

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Barack Obama told us during the campaing how he was one of the only ones that had been against the Iraq war (even though most of us knew that he wasn't a senator then or able to vote on the resolution). Let's take a look at how he voted to fund the war he was against after he was in the senate and able to vote:

May 2005: Congress approved an $82 billion bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and international anti-terrorism efforts. Obama voted yes.

June 2006: Congress cleared a $94.5 billion bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as provide aid to hurricane victims. Obama voted yes.

September 2006: Congress cleared a $448 billion Pentagon funding bill that included $70 billion for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama voted yes.

April 2007: Congress cleared a $124 billion spending bill that provided $90 billion for war costs but mandated the withdrawal of U.S. troops within six months. Obama voted yes, but President George W. Bush vetoed the legislation.

January 2007, Obama announces he will run for president ...

May 2007: Congress approved a roughly $100 billion spending measure to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and domestic projects, including hurricane relief. Obama voted no.

December 2007: Congress cleared a $555 billion catchall spending bill that included $70 billion for U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama did not vote.

June 2008: Congress approved a measure to spend $162 billion for war costs as well as provide a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits and emergency relief for the flood-ravaged Midwest. Obama voted yes.

Source: AP News  

 
 
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Shocked Disbelief - Digby

These bankers amaze me. In spite of everything, they continue to flex their muscles and insist that the taxpayers should hand over money with no strings attached and do things their way.
 
Or else.

Remember when Alan Greenspan said this?
 
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Michelle Obama's garden must go or she needs to add some good American chemicals. That appears to be the view of chemical and agricultural companies who view her organic garden as a threat to the nation's agricultural industry. Lobbyists and corporate officials have been peering over the fence in worry and disgust as the First Lady plants a dangerous seed in the minds of Americans.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/first-ladys-organic-garden-concerns-chemical-companies-2009-04-09.html

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nour-s-hadid

Illinois police have been accused of violating religious sensitivities by forcing Nour Hadid, a 26-year-old woman accused of beating her 2-year-old niece Bhia Hadid to death over four days. She demanded to be photographed wearing her veil covering her face and her husband Alaeddin Hadid has announced an intention to sue the police for the "insult against our religion." Story here.

Personally, I find it more insulting that she allegedly beat a child for 4 days before she finally died, but that's just me.

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Compare and contrast

The Obama bow gets huge airplay.

Bush flying the bin Laden family out of the country after 9/11 during the time he forbade Americans to fly got zero attention.
 
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Hitler Youth Pope blocks Caroline Kennedy

I was under the impression that the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican represented the U.S. and not the Vatican, but apparently I'm confused!

Vatican sources told Il Giornale that their support for abortion disqualified Ms Kennedy and other Roman Catholics President Barack Obama had been seeking to appoint.

Mr Obama was reportedly seeking to reward John F Kennedy's daughter, who publicly gave her support to his election bid. She had been poised to replace Hillary Clinton as New York senator, but dropped out amid criticism that she lacked enough experience for the job.

The Italian paper said that the Vatican strongly disapproved of Mr Obama's support for abortion and stem cell research. The impasse over the ambassadorial appointment threatens to cloud his meeting with the Pope during a G8 summit in Itay in July.

Ms Kennedy, 53, has said that she supports abortion. Raymond Flynn, a former US ambassador to the Vatican, said earlier this week that Ms Kennedy would be a poor choice.

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It's all Bill Clinton's fault!

In a farewell address to the staff of Focus on the Family, James Dobson conceded that evangelical conservatives had lost most of the recent so-called "culture war" battles. Attributing the right's recent failures to the "internet" and the election of Bill Clinton, Dobson said, "Humanly speaking, we can say that we have lost." He added that the nation is now "absolutely awash in evil."

No news if Dobson considers it 'evil' that under Bush torturing people and starting illegal wars was cool, or whether he considers poverty, starvation, homelessness, or destruction of the planet to be 'humane.'

Fun fact: Focus on the Family, which describes its mission as "nurturing and defending families worldwide" spent $539,000 to support Prop 8 and another $83,000 in "non-monetary support." One of FOTF's board members, Elsa Prince (Blackwater), donated an additional $450,000 to the fight. 

In doing so, this 'family nurturing' organization dissolved 18,000 marriages.

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Beware 

Republican chair Michael Steele has sent out a fundraising email that warns of an insidious plot, "the Obama Democrats' misuse of power and plans to end free and fair elections." Evidently they plan to "falsify the U.S. Census and manipulate elections in their favor" and "create permanent liberal control of the federal government."

How will they do that? "President Obama's old friends from ACORN, the leftist, urban 'community' organization with a long history of promoting vote fraud, has been chosen by the Administration as a 'partner' with the Census Bureau to determine population counts in cities around the country. ... If the Democrats and their friends at ACORN have their way, the Census will only 'estimate' state populations and therefore be subject to political calculations. And surely their estimate will be far higher than the actual number of people, and voters, present."

"Our democracy, and the principle of 'One Person, One Vote' are in jeopardy."

So, you know, keep an eye out for that.
 
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A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that while Bush's AIDS initiative in Africa (PEPFAR) reduced the numbers of people dying from AIDS by 10% 2003-07 (compared to non-PEPFAR African countries), averting 1.2 million deaths, at a cost of $2,450 each. Hurrah. The bad news, however, is that it did nothing at all to decrease the number of people who became infected with HIV. So can we stop wasting 1/3 of the PEPFAR funds on worthless abstinence-only programs already?
 
 
 
 
 

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