"You can't beat something with nothing, and the other side has something. I don't like it, but they have it, and we have to be respectful and mindful of that," Mr. Bush said.
The former president's brother, often mentioned as a potential candidate in 2012, said President Obama's message of hope and change during the 2008 campaign clearly resonated with Americans.
"So our ideas need to be forward looking and relevant. I felt like there was a lot of nostalgia and the good old days in the [Republican] messaging. I mean, it's great, but it doesn't draw people toward your cause," Mr. Bush said.
It is definitely time to leave the Bushes behind. No more Bushes!
Will we never be rid of the Bushes!
I don't know many people (including conservative Republicans) who would EVER vote for another Bush for President. EVER. They would stay home.
What does Jeb want us to do, join the communist party?
Oh, and one more note about that Moonie Times article - this will give you an idea of how interested the public is in the Republican Party at this point:
The Florida governor joined former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and House Republican Whip Eric Cantor on Saturday at a small pizza parlor in Arlington for the inaugural event of the National Council for a New America (NCNA).
These events are going to make the paltry attendance at the Teabagger Parties look like freakin' Woodstock.
The parking lot out front, even with the heavily Republican crowd inside, was dotted with Obama bumper stickers. Northern Virginia has shifted solidly Democratic in recent elections, and surrogates for John McCain's campaign made a series of statements late in the race that acknowledged the party had all but conceded the area.Hmm, pizzeria with clueless insiders, angry crowd outside, lots of grudges...But the handful of peaceful protesters out front weren't Democrats — they were conservatives upset over the new group's agenda and leadership. They brandished signs criticizing McCain, calling the NCNA "RINOs" — Republicans in Name Only — and urging them to push for stricter immigration enforcement.
McCain is prominently featured in materials for the new group.
Health care, education and small business growth were all major topics of discussion Saturday — but immigration was one entry on a long list of potentially divisive social issues that went unmentioned.
Keep reading: http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2009/05/so-many-must-sacrifice-for-so-few.html
A Mission Viejo high school history teacher violated the First Amendment by disparaging Christians during a classroom lecture, a federal judge ruled today.
James Corbett, a 20-year teacher at Capistrano Valley High School, was found guilty of referring to Creationism as "religious, superstitious nonsense" during a 2007 classroom lecture, denigrating his former Advanced Placement European history student, Chad Farnan.
I'm not holding my breath until this Orange County, CA judge issues subpoenas for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and the thousands of other republican "leaders" across the country who have spent the last seven-plus years denigrating American Muslims by calling their religion "Islamo-Fascism."
As they used to teach in journalism school, the First Amendment is a leaky rowboat in the middle of the ocean; to save ourselves at one end of the boat, we have to save the idiots at the other end. For journalists, the idiots at the other end were rags like the National Enquirer. But it applies to everyone who uses the First Amendment to express points of view we despise. Take away someone else's right to free speech, press, religion, assembly or petition, and you take away your own.
So let's not hear anything disrespectful about atheism, socialism or environmentalism, unless you want to lose a lawsuit for denigrating me.
PZ Myers explains the factual ludicrousness of the decision.
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Former M16 chief says Britain was 'dragged' into Iraq war
But... But... but BushCo and the Rushpublics say that the intel from al-l-l-l those other countries was the same as ours, and they all pointed to bad, bad things like imminent threats and WMD. Now Nigel had to go and open his big mouth and ruin everything:
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The Bushies started the process of taking wolves off the endangered species protected list, and Obama agrees and will let the protections expire today. The Western hunters who opt for shooting anything that moves seemed to have won the day, for now, at least. From the AP
Thanks, Obama. By tomorrow morning all the douchebags will be sharing photos like these over coffee:
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Dubai sounds like a real paradise
It's no wonder Halliburton moved to this dreamy location. For all of the bankster types who don't want to be regulated by anyone and work without hassle, they will surely want to take advantage of such a lovely working climate where anything goes. Their families will find this a great place as well. The Guardian:
The wealthy Gulf prince at the centre of a "torture tape" scandal has been accused of attacking at least 25 other people in incidents that have also been caught on film, it has been claimed.
Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan is now under investigation in the United Arab Emirates after the shocking tape showed him beating a man with a nailed plank, setting him on fire, attacking him with a cattle prod and running him over.
But now lawyers for American businessman Bassam Nabulsi, who smuggled the tape out of the UAE, have written to the justice minister of Abu Dhabi - the most powerful of the emirates that make up the UAE - claiming to have considerably more evidence against Issa.
Maybe, just maybe, it doesn't make sense to share nuclear technology with Dubai. Call me old fashioned, but maybe it's time to go retro and move beyond being a country of torturers and supporter of torturers. Building a future with brutal thugs like the prince doesn't sound very progressive.
Bush and the torturing sheik on casual Friday
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It's clear that Jebbie is running in 2012: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/05/its-clear-that-jebbie-is-running-in.html
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John Edwards' scandal: it was worse than we knew.
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Arlen Sphincters new rules; another rat, same ship: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/05/arlen-specters-new-rules-another-rat.html
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This is what the Bush Administration said, publicly, at the same time that the CIA, on the orders of the Bush Administration, was torturing people:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
June 26, 2003
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States declares its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world. Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.
Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. ...
Notorious human rights abusers, including, among others, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Zimbabwe, have long sought to shield their abuses from the eyes of the world by staging elaborate deceptions and denying access to international human rights monitors. ...
The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I [George W.Bush] call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy.
We ought to take these words of former President George W. Bush to heart and carry them out. President Obama prohibited the use to torture. We now ought to follow the second and third parts of George Bush's call and investigate and prosecute those acts of torture that were carried out under the direct orders of former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney.
It seems, now, that the CIA saw the ground shifting beneath its feet and, while the forces of darkness, led by Dick Cheney, continued to argue for using torture, the CIA had stopped torturing people.
Or so they tell us. The possibility exists that various former members of the Bush Administration are doing their best "it weren't me" act to push the blame off on others. Emptywheel thinks that the story in the NYT was planted by Porter Goss.
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Last week it was students from Stanford, this week it was a 4th grader
During a Q&A session at an elementary school in Washington, DC, a 4th grader named Misha Lerner asked Rice about "the things President Obama's administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration had used to get information from detainees":
"Let me just say that President Bush was very clear that he wanted to do everything he could to protect the country. After September 11, we wanted to protect the country," she said. "But he was also very clear that we would do nothing, nothing, that was against the law or against our obligations internationally. So the president was only willing to authorize policies that were legal in order to protect the country."
She added: "I hope you understand that it was a very difficult time. We were all so terrified of another attack on the country. September 11 was the worst day of my life in government, watching 3,000 Americans die. . . . Even under those most difficult circumstances, the president was not prepared to do something illegal, and I hope people understand that we were trying to protect the country."
According to Misha's mother, he originally planned to ask a tougher question — "If you would work for Obama's administration, would you push for torture?" — but he was asked to change it. "They wanted him to soften it and take out the word 'torture.' But the essence of it was the same," Inna Lerner said.
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Tom Ridge, who raised the bogus terror alerts almost as often as George Bush lied, is considering a run for the Republican Senate nomination in his home state of Pennsylvania.
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Life in Gaza is still dismal three months after Israel stopped their bloody assault, but as the Deutsche Press reported yesterday, they'd better get ready for more:
Israeli forces on Saturday opened fire at Palestinian farmers near the security fence in south-east Gaza Strip … The farmers were working their land in the Faraheen area in the east of Khan Younis city in the southern Gaza Strip when they came under machine gun fire from the Israeli army posts on the border, the witnesses said.
While no casualties were reported, the attack coincided with an Israeli incursion of Gaza:
… three Israeli bulldozers, backed by two tanks, rolled for a few hundreds of meters into Beit Lahiya town, an agricultural community in the northern Gaza Strip. Residents said the bulldozers leveled some groves and withdrew later in the morning.
These attacks are all too reminiscent of events back in November - small scale Israeli attacks designed to provoke reactions from Gazan militant groups creating a justification for wider Israeli attacks. Sure enough, yesterday, "the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC)" responded by launching mortar attacks on the Israeli forces--and now Israel has renewed its air strikes on the Gaza-Egptian border at Rafa, hitting four tunnels and killing two Palestinians.
At the same time, the Israeli blockade of Gaza continues to prevent essential humanitarian aid from reaching the civilian population. As Human Rights Watch noted in response:
"Washington should disassociate itself from unlawful Israeli policies that directly harm civilians," Whitson said. "Failure to do so suggests US support for a policy that violates international law."
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Oil $53 per barrel today: price here at the pump $2.35
Last summer $150 per barrel = $4.49
1 comment:
Missouri's legislators have just passed a vague law that says pharmacists don't have to fill prescriptions for things that they don't like, especially nothing that might look sorta like an abortifacient. This is a bad law that removes standards of professional conduct from licensed pharmacies, and further removes all liability from pharmacists who disregard the doctor's prescriptions for their patients. No, no they didn't. A bit of wingnut grandstanding took place, and someone who knows nothing of Missouri politics freaked out over it - after it had already been killed in the Senate.
This reactionary stupidity has been dispensed with.
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