Thursday, June 4, 2009

Headlines - Thursday

 
###
 
Is Bill O'Reilly responsible for the murder of an abortion doctor?

Salon reported 29 counts of O'Reilly fomenting hate against Dr. George Tiller, who was shot to death in church last week by a "pro-lifer." The irony of that statement can be lost on no one.

Owens played a clip of O'Reilly claiming that Tiller would "kill a baby for anyone for $5,000," which was not the case of a doctor who delivered babies and saved the lives of mothers in threatening situations in acts protected by law.
 
###
 
"So Sotomayor is clearly a Latina woman. What affect will that have on her opposition? [on screen: South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham asking, 'My question is, does she really understand what America is about?']. Excellent question for the American-born judge." - Jon Stewart
 
###
 
 
###
 
When homophobes get outed.
 
###
 
Mr. President, Help Us Free Gaza
An Open Letter to President Obama From the Free Gaza Movement:
 
###
 
Cleaning up Bush's mess ..... sort of: Katrina victims get trailers for $5:
 
###
 
Guantanamo prisoner dies of apparent suicide 

Guantanamo has been the site of long running hunger strikes for many prisoners who think only death will provide them escape from the camp. Today, one of the hunger strikers found a way to leave the camp forever when he was found dead in his cell of an apparent suicide. As the prisoners who are participating in the hunger strike have been force feed with a tube through their nose in some cases for years, so there is some question of how he finally succeeded in committing suicide.

Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih would be the fifth prisoner to take his life at the detention center since the Pentagon began holding terrorism suspects there more than seven years ago.

When the Guantanamo prisoners first started their hunger strike, the US officials complained about how the prisoners were just trying to get attention. In 2006, when three other prisoners committed suicide, this is how the news was reported.

[Rear Adm. Harry] Harris said Saturday that every prisoner at Guantanamo is considered "dangerous."

"They are smart. They are creative. They are committed. They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own," Harris said. "I believe this was not an act of desperation, but rather an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

Asymmetrical warfare is when one side uses unorthodox or surprise tactics to attack the weak points of its stronger opponent.

...Also last month, 75 prisoners staged a hunger strike to protest conditions at the jail, Reuters reported.

Harris said the men who killed themselves Saturday were "committed hunger strikers" and had participated in the May hunger strike.

Even while Harris was blaming the dead for trying to embarrass the Americans and lying by saying that only terrorists were held at the camp, David Rose wrote the following in the Guardian.

[Former British prisoner Shafiq] Rasul said: 'I was shocked by what happened, though not surprised, because I saw it almost happen so often. It was always scary: I would see people deteriorating mentally in front of my eyes until they tried to take their own lives, and you always thought: "That could be me". There were even times when I thought about it myself, but I wanted to be strong for my family. When I did, believe me, it wasn't because I was trying to hurt the United States, but on days when I'd just been told I'd never see England again, and that I was a terrorist, and when I denied it they wouldn't listen.'

The first hunger strikes started in Guantanamo just after it opened in 2002 and there have been regular and ongoing strikes since that time. As TIME reported in 2006, the prisoners that go too far are force fed and even told "Dying is not permitted."

At Gitmo, however, dead prisoners are something the U.S. military wishes devoutly to avoid. So force-feeding has been standard policy at the camp ever since hunger strikes began in early 2002. The facility's top physicians have also told TIME that prisoners who resist are subjected to especially harsh methods. In one case, according to medical records obtained by TIME, a 20-year old named Yusuf al-Shehri, jailed since he was 16, was regularly strapped into a specially designed feeding chair that immobilizes the body at the legs, arms, shoulders and head. Then a plastic tube that is 50% larger, and more painful to insert, than the commonly used variety was inserted up through his nose and down his throat, carrying a nutritional formula into his stomach.

Thousands of people, of course, endure some form of voluntary intra-nasal feeding every day in hospital settings. But when force-feeding is involuntary and the recipient is in a state of high anxiety, the muscles tense up and the procedure can trigger nausea, bleeding, diarrhea and vomiting. "We are humane and compassionate,"; Guantanamo commander Harris told TIME, "but if we tell a detainee to do something, we expect the detainee to do it." As a note scrawled in al-Shehri's medical records put it: "[The prisoner] was informed that dying is not permitted."

One thing to note is how similar the forced feeding was to that experienced by Vladimir Bukovsky who was tortured in Stalin's prison camps.

It is time to stop this insanity, shut Guantanamo down and provide some real justice to the prisoners who are still there.

### 
 
If torture worked so well, how are we getting by without it?

Jeff Stein at CQ Politics asks a very good question of former Vice Pres. Dick Cheney.

Stein: What stopped terrorists from attacking for the past five years?

The CIA is said to have relinquished water boarding, roughing up, sleep deprivation and other tough interrogation techniques in 2004, according to most reports.

But between Sept. 11, 2001 and the end of 2004, Cheney claims, terrorist attacks were thwarted by physically abusing detainees in the CIA's secret prisons.

"Every senior official who has been briefed on these classified matters knows of specific attacks that were in the planning stages and were stopped by the programs we put in place," Cheney insisted.

But what stopped terrorists from attacking after the harsh interrogation techniques were aborted five years ago?

Hmmm. We scared the terrorists (many of whom are suicide bombers) so badly that they decided to quit? Not likely.

Besides, others say, we know the effort the Bush administration put into bolstering its positions and spinning its views with photo ops, selective leaks, coordinated backdrops of key slogans, and backdoor paid P.R. and "news." So why on earth would they have kept secret that they were not only effectively protecting us but that they could prove it?

…another former CIA official has come forward to dismiss the former vice president's claims, saying that if the Bush administration had evidence of "torture" stopping attacks, it would have surfaced long ago.

"I cannot imagine that the system would not have leaked such a story. It would have been leaked in a New York minute," says Milton Bearden, who was a CIA station chief in Pakistan among other assignments during his three decades in the spy agency.

####
 
 
###
 
Whom would Jesus shoot?
 
New Bethel Church, Valley Station, Kentucky.  "Reforming in Faith, Spirit-Filled in Practice"

In Celebration of July 4 and our rights as Americans, New Bethel Church will be hosting an OPEN CELEBRATION CHURCH service for all who support 1st and 2nd Amendment rights. It will be held on Saturday June 27th, the weekend before July 4th. It will begin at 5PM and picnic food will be served. We are asking responsible handgun owners to attend this service openly wearing their sidearm. This will be a Cold Range Carry meaning handguns must be unloaded and in a secure holster.

Area gun store/firing range owners will be invited to attend and tell about their services. There will be patriotic music and short presentation concerning responsible gun ownership and 2nd Amendment rights.

There will also be a raffle to win a handgun. All that is asked is that you bring a sidearm, a friend who has a sidearm and a canned good for local food bank.

###  
 
This political process has been closed 
 
If only someone would give right-wingers the vote.

Wait.

Did that.

Back in '76.

1776, or thereabouts, anyway.

Shit.

If only someone would ... wait, I know! Give right-wingers more votes than everybody else!

THEN everything would be fine!

Using the political system to stomp on radicalized fringes does not seem to be very effective in getting them to eschew violence.  In fact, it seems to be a very good way of getting more violence.  Possibly because those fringes have often turned to violence precisely because they feel that the political process has been closed off to them.

Lady, are you smoking crack? Seriously? Because last I checked, "not being able to convince somebody else that you're not a freaking lunatic and that your ideas about everything should be adopted by everybody" doesn't qualify as "the political process has been closed off" to you. That's not how this works, that's not how this has ever worked, and to coddle domestic terrorists by saying they were just pushed to it because they weren't handed everything they ever wanted is ... special. Some kind of special. Some kind of something, that's for sure. It's like all the stupid were set free from their stupid-farm for some kind of idiot rumspringa of 24 hours.

For eight years anybody to the left of Pinochet had to kick back and watch while sensible centrists and the Coalition of the Involuntarily Committable got together and raped the country and screwed up the whole world. For eight years we were told that marching in the streets with giant puppets was the most horrific form of treason imaginable, was demoralizing our troops and hurting the debate and making the baby Pope Benedict cry. Not once did I ever in that time hear Megan McArdle or any of her other sensible friends discuss how maybe, just maybe, President Bush and his administration had PUSHED us to the edge, where we HAD to make those puppets because we felt the political process was closed to us.

No, back then it was "elections have consequences" and "you lost" and "look upon my works, ye mighty, and bugger off," and anytime anybody had the temerity to say, "erm, dude, if you don't mind I'll be over here with this sign on a stick" they might as well have been plotting to shoe-bomb Air Force One the way the whiners in the nuttersphere howled and shrieked. There was none of this, "you just don't know how hard it is to be on the losing end of everything including your soul" back then. Just them, partying with Free Republic on the White House lawn, waving their big foam fingers in our faces going "nyah nyah nyah."

Now that they're out of power, natch, what choice do they have but to go shoot up church lobbies in the hopes of bagging abortion doctors for their trophy wall of American apostates? Really, what else could they do? It's not like they could vote, or convince other people to listen to them, or organize, or do any of the damn things I feel like we've been doing since before there was dirt in order to get a not-entirely-crazy in-another-life-he'd-be-a-moderate-Republican dude finally elected so a third of the country could act like Satan just put his feet up on their mother's white-clothed dinner table. It's not like they could do anything else, right? They had to start shooting.

Right?

####

It's official. New Hampshire has become the 6th state to allow same-sex marriage.

###

Massive job losses continue: http://blog.badtux.net/2009/06/massive-job-losses-continue.html

###

A military investigation has concluded that American personnel made significant errors in carrying out some of the airstrikes in western Afghanistan on May 4 that killed dozens of Afghan civilians, according to a senior American military official.

###

The man who wrecked the economy

According to Paul Krugman, when it comes time to walk back the cat on who set in motion the destructive forces that brought about the Great Recession (provided it doesn't get a lot worse), the trail leads back to Ronald Reagan.

I do not doubt that there is some truth to this. Anyone who has paid attention to the rantings of the GOP over the years knows full well that it is an article of faith that everything that was put in place by FDR has to be rolled back. The GOP and their spineless and gutless allies in the Democratic Party were able to roll back almost all of the financial regulations and what it brought us was the drawn out collapse of the banking system. Only the existence of the FDIC prevented large-scale bank runs and a wholesale collapse.

The Party of Hoover got its wish, at least when it came to financial institutions. And the result was almost the same as it was the last time the banks were largely unregulated. But the Hooverites cannot buy a clue, because this is a matter of their True Faith.

If our economy is going to avoid a third trip down this road, we need to bring back competent adult supervision of those greedy fucks in the financial industry.
 
###
 
The asswipe that stalked Dr. Tiller and killed him inside of a house of worship will not face the death penalty.
 
Instead, if convicted, he will face a mandatory life sentence and would not be eligible for parole for at least 25 years.
 
Why do they bother calling it a life sentence if he can get out in 25 years?
 
###
 
 
Israel accused Obama yesterday of "failing to acknowledge what they called clear understandings with the Bush administration that allowed Israel to build West Bank settlement housing within certain guidelines while still publicly claiming to honor a settlement 'freeze.'" In 2003, Israel agreed to freeze "all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)."
 
###
 
A federal judge threw out more than three dozen lawsuits yesterday claiming that the nation's major telecom companies had illegally assisted in President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. The judge said that while the cases raised important constitutional issues, Congress had left no doubt about its "unequivocal intention" when it granted retroactive immunity to participants in the program.
 
###
 
Cheney

Dick Cheney: al Qaeda recruitment lifetime achievement award winner.
 
Vice President Cheney personally oversaw at least four secret briefings with senior members of Congress in 2005 in an effort to forcefully defend the Bush administration's torture program. The briefings "came at some of the most critical moments for the program, as congressional oversight committees were threatening to investigate or even terminate the techniques."
 
Dick Cheney has been the primary moving force behind the United States' use of torture. Torture is the primary recruiting tool for new terrorists. The next attack here will be Cheney's fault.
 
###
 
Poupon!

Mattress-soiling troglotards are still choleric that Pres Obama spent $100,000 going to NYC - all the while blithely ignoring the fact that his predecessor, Smirky McLaZBoy, spent over $17 million on trips just to Crawford alone. Stef at dKos does the math:

At a bare minimum, for the flights alone, Bush's 77 vacation trips to Crawford cost us $226,072 per trip. That's $17,407,544 so he could ride his bicycle in the woods and clear brush for the cameras.

###

Wingnut heads explode when our long suspected closet muslim and socialist magic negro overlord and re-education camp counselor, the Carebear, says "thank you" in muslimese to the King of our Oil, in Riyadh!

It seems there is some legitimate confusion on just what languages Obama speaks, and as far as Arabic, the only real hint has came from Nick Kristof, who heard Obama recite the Muslim call to prayer in Arabic and with a "first-rate accent" back in 2007. With even the White House now smearing Obama as a Muslim, one wonders if the president hasn't been concealing some greater fluency with the language of the Koran.

– The Daily Standard

The "language of the Koran" ?!!!

###

CAIRO (AP) -- Quoting from the Quran for emphasis, President Barack Obama called for a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims" Thursday and said together, they could confront violent extremism across the globe and advance the timeless search for peace in the Middle East.

"This cycle of suspicion and discord must end," Obama said in a widely anticipated speech in one of the world's largest Muslim countries, an address designed to reframe relations after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Transcript and video here.  

 

 


 

No comments: