Headlines - Thursday

Aren't they over there fighting for our freedoms? 

 

Stars and Stripes, the newspaper that receives U.S. military funding to help it cover and get distributed free to American forces in war zones, complained Tuesday of censorship by military authorities in Iraq. 

 

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Mitt Romney is feeling more and more pressure to cheat on his wife, lest he find himself isolated and uncompetitive in the 2012 race for the Republican presidential nomination.

 

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Nice job of being concerned about our national security

Former US National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft has confirmed that the US government has spies on the ground in Iran.

Hey, Douchebag! The proper answer is "I can neither confirm nor deny that the US Government has spies on the ground in Iran." A simple "I cannot talk about that" or "that's classified" also works.

 

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As they did with another naughty Republican (Mark Foley), Fox News put a "D" where an "R" should have been:  

As you know, Sanford disappeared to Argentina to see his girlfriend. And while there is plenty being said about that, precious little to nothing is being said with regard to the effects his policies and positions have on real people. Nothing about how he rejects stimulus money and does other things that push the lowest third of the South Carolina (not to mention US population) into even more extreme economic conditions… conditions that put HUGE stress on marriages and families. This man broke up many marriages before he got that email from Argentina. He ruined the prospects of, I dare say, tens if not hundreds of thousands of struggling people who are more decent than he is and has been as evidence by his parroting right wing bullshit in pursuit of narrow ambition.

He is no more than a rich, powerful man who sought comfort for stress and so forth in an adulterous relationship. That, by itself, is his business. But this whole 'seeking forgiveness thing' needs to be cast in a larger, more meaningful context.

In all the 'did he stand up like a man and admit his sin" and 'did he get forgiveness from Christians with regard to breaking one of God's absolute laws', I predict we will see far too little about how this sinning Christian takes positions that do actual damage to other human beings who, to him, are mere abstractions. That is a bigger sin than adultery … a bigger transgression of 'god's absolute laws'. He has cast vile, evil and dire consequences on 'the least among us"…. but where were the media then, where are they now on this horrendous sin?

Instead, it'll be a mainstream media –and even blogsphere — side show about family values and political prospects. This is a man who has zero compassion for other human beings except those he knows personally and whom he has personally hurt. If he wants forgiveness, then he should immediately quit the Governorship, put on rags and go serve the needy whose numbers he has increased.

If he did that, then, I'd say, reasonable people among us could respect him. Now? He is just another rich, spoiled sanctimonious asshole who got caught. And, the media, who know that nothing sells like sex, will play this for all it's worth in terms of advertising, traffic and so on… without anymore thought to the helpless, needy and less fortunate. Worse, I fear the so-called progressive blogosphere will not perform much better…… although, of course, I hope I'm wrong on both counts.

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Flashback: 

 

"The bottom line, though, is I am sure there will be a lot of legalistic explanations pointing out that the president lied under oath. His situation was not under oath. The bottom line, though, is he still lied. He lied under a different oath, and that is the oath to his wife. So it's got to be taken very, very seriously." [Sanford CNN, 12/18/98]

 

"We ought to ask questions…rather than circle the wagons for one of our tribe." [Sanford on how the GOP reacts to affairs, New York Post, 12/20/98]

 

"I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally (to resign). I come from the business side. If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he'd be gone." [Sanford on Clinton, The Post and Courier, 9/12/98]

 

"The issue of lying is probably the biggest harm, if you will, to the system of Democratic government, representatives government, because it undermines trust. And if you undermine trust in our system, you undermine everything." [Sanford on Clinton, CNN, 2/16/99]

Also, not only did Gov. Mark Sanford's (R) family and staff seemingly not know that he had taken off to Argentina for the past week, but ABC News reports that the U.S. embassy in Argentina didn't know either. According to a U.S. embassy official in Buenos Aires, they had "absolutely no idea" that Sanford was in the country and added that the news comes "from out of left field — it would be extremely odd that a US governor would not check in with the embassy."

And FYI - adultery is against the law in the state that the fornicator governs: 

Any man or woman who shall be guilty of the crime of adultery or fornication shall be liable to indictment and, on conviction, shall be severally punished by a fine of not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars or imprisonment for not less than six months nor more than one year or by both fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court.

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FBI arrests white supremacist blogger Hal Turner for threatening to kill federal judges:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/24/hal-turner-arrest/

 

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It's just shocking to me that the same country that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers and was allowed to fly out of this country unquestioned right after 9/11 would have connections to al Qaeda.

 

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4,314 soldiers killed in Iraq; 712 in Afghanistan.

A bomb concealed under a vegetable cart exploded yesterday in a crowded market in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, killing at least 75 and injuring over 100 others. 

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h/t Dick

Krugman: Obama messes up on health care, big time

Really bad news on the health care front. After making the case for a public option, and doing it very well, Obama said this:

"We have not drawn lines in the sand other than that reform has to control costs and that it has to provide relief to people who don't have health insurance or are underinsured," Mr. Obama said. "Those are the broad parameters that we've discussed."

There he goes again, gratuitously making a big gift to the other side.

My big fear about Obama has always been not that he doesn't understand the issues, but that his urge to compromise — his vision of himself as a politician who transcends the old partisan divisions — will lead him to negotiate with himself, and give away far too much. He did that on the stimulus bill, where he offered an inadequate plan in order to win bipartisan support, then got nothing in return — and was forced to reduce the plan further so that Susan Collins could claim her pound of flesh.

And now he's done it on a key component of health care reform. What was the point of signaling, right at this crucial moment, that he's willing to give away the public plan? Let alone doing it at the very moment that he was making such a good case for it?

Maybe there's a way to recover from this. But it's up to the health reform activists to stiffen the administration's spine. Obama may be satisfied with "broad parameters" — but the rest of us aren't, and have to make that known. 

(Note from Dick: Frankly, I don't give a shit anymore. The Dems, with very few exceptions, have been a huge disappointment.  We handed them the world on a silver platter and they have managed to totally eff up every issue; and there is no evidence anything will change in the foreseeable future.  If double-digit unemployment persists into 2012 as I believe it will, Mr. Obama will be joining W and Company on the lecture circuit.)