Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Headlines - Wednesday

 
I am certain that there will be no shortage of conservative bloggers who are chortling today as they type their nasty-ass entries. On one level, I understand that, for I would probably feel much the same way if the news were about the passing of Jeff Sessions.[1]

On the other hand, they can go fuck themselves. Ted Kennedy, unlike the members of a prominent Republican family I can name, did not spend his days working to ensure that his wealthy buddies got even richer. Ted Kennedy did not spend his political life destroying the programs that help the poor while providing larger and larger tax breaks for the wealthy. Ted Kennedy worked for the people of his state and, yes, for the rest of the nation, not just those who made over $300,000 a year and who could afford to give large campaign contributions.

To the Democrats in the Senate who have gleefully shat all over Ted Kennedy's dream of making routine health care available to all Americans: Go fuck yourselves. No doubt you are now mouthing platitudes to the stenographers reporters about "how great a senator he was." Save it. You guys are pre-paid whores to the health insurance companies and you know it. You're nothing more than backstabbers and weasels in expensive suits.

To the Republicans who are now offering condolences and tributes: Stuff it. You're not fooling anyone.
 
[1]Sessions is in the Senate, which is why I named him.
 
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Time for the Ted Kennedy memorial health care reform bill: http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=25975 
 
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Happy daze are here again

Well. I'm feeling so much better about our torture policy now that Obama is in charge of it instead of Dick Cheney. Change is happening. Change you can believe in.

For example, that evil rendition policy where we send (likely innocent) detainees to other countries to be tortured for real, not that namby-pamby waterboarding stuff that's like a dip in your 5-Star hotel pool but the Real Thing - electricity through testicles, thumbscrews, Iron Maidens, racks, you know - is going to be totally dumped in favor of a new rendition policy where we send them to the same countries but now we're going to monitor the interrogators to make sure they don't do anything bad.

The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration's practice of sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but pledges to closely monitor their treatment to ensure that they are not tortured, administration officials said Monday.

Yessir, some fine American is going to sit right there in some Syrian prison and if those interrogators get out of line one inch, s/he's going to write a very stern letter to...well, somebody in authority somewhere and they in turn will write a somewhat stern letter to some functionary in Syria who will pass it on to another functionary who will lose it when it becomes convenient. But we'll be watching, that's the point.

And that inch I mentioned? That would be an inch outside quasi-legal guidelines developed by David Addington and John Yoo et al which Eric Holder is going to make goddamn sure nobody goes and violates, not one teeny bit. And he's very definite about that.

Attorney General Eric Holder today confirmed what has been suspected for many weeks:  he has ordered what he calls "a preliminary review into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations."  Holder's decision does not amount to the appointment of a Special Prosecutor, since a preliminary review is used, as he emphasized, "to gather information to determine whether there is sufficient predication to warrant a full investigation of a matter."  More important, the scope of the "review" is limited at the outset to those who failed to "act in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance" - meaning only those interrogators and other officials who exceeded the torture limits which John Yoo and Jay Bybee approved.  Those who, with good faith, tortured within the limits of the OLC memos will "be protected from legal jeopardy" (the full Holder statement is here).

(emphasis in the original)

So I know there won't be any monkeying around. Yoo and Addington were fine Americans who set plausible and reasonable limits on torture so it's not really torture, not the way we do it. So I'm sure we'll once again have the world on our side as soon as they understand that our torture isn't real torture and that it's legal and that we're going to make sure dictatorships in Third World countries behave themselves.

Just think what would have happened if George Bush was still president. Aren't you glad he isn't? Things are so much different now!

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"It's very frustrating to watch you try and compromise with a lot of these people who aren't willing to compromise with you." - radio caller talking about Obama, Link  

Is Obama going to compromise himself out of a second term and give the GOP a majority to terrorize us for another eight years? Why is he unable to change this losing course?
 
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George Bush: "We do not torture" (but we will kill your children. And stick a power drill in your eyes. And cut off your genitals with a dremel. And your legs with a chainsaw. After we shoot that guy in the next cell)
 
Deaths, Missing Detainees Still Blacked Out in New CIA Report
 
Inspector General Reportedly Discovered Three Died, Many Unaccounted For by CIA:
 
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Cheney spin on CIA memos befuddles Politico
 
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Photobucket
 
Glenn Beck, the super patriot who loves his country so much he constantly cries for it, has lost 16 more ad sponsors.
 
Oh, and it's not just Glenn Beck's hate-show that's feeling the purple-dyed finger of freedom up the pooper - UPS has temporarily dropped ALL Fox 'News' advertising.
Oh, and AP hack? It's not a libcommies-hate-freedom-of-speech thing:
 
"The reason for the backlash is not liberal/progressive vs. conservative, its about responsible rhetoric vs. irresponsible rhetoric… Folks like Beck, Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs are not problems because they represent a conservative point of view, they are problems because they use misinformation and outright lies."
 
Exactly.
 
 
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You're not crazy, they are:
 
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The GOP's top chef starves a beast and poisons a debate: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/25/AR2009082503136.html
 
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Senator McCain says Senator Kennedy's absence is damaging to the prospect of health care reform. But Senator Kennedy's absence is not nearly as damaging as Senator McCain's presence. 
 
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Winking wanker jeans:
 
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"Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency." - Barack Obama 
 
For months, many Democrats and civil libertarians have complained about the disconnect between what President Obama says and what he does as President. One area of the greatest criticism has been the effort of the Obama Administration to block public review of embarrassing pictures, White House logs, controversial memoranda, or disclosure of governmental actions — despite his promise to guarantee transparency in government. One such person who appears to have lost patience with the Administration is Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska. Judge Preska has rejected efforts by the Obama Administration to withhold information on who received $2 trillion dollars in bailout funds. The Obama administration argued that the public has no right to know such information.
 
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obamaguy
 
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2 million Americans hospitalized for flu...a sobering thought
 
Think of how many of these Americans don't have insurance, or if they do, their insurance company will find some way not to cover their hospital stay, or they will be unable to afford their medications....healthcare is not only a necessity, but a matter of economic survival...not just for individual Americans, but the nation's.
 
Nearly 2 million Americans could be hospitalized during this winter's novel H1N1 influenza pandemic, with as many as 300,000 clogging intensive care units in heavily affected regions, according to a report released Monday by the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Overall, 20% to 40% of the population could develop symptoms of the strain commonly known as swine flu, and 30,000 to 90,000 could die, according to the report. During a normal flu season, the virus kills about 35,000 Americans. -
latte times
 
Can we really afford not to make every American able to get healthcare...not just health insurance? There is a big difference...and we need to fight for healthcare. We need to take the profit out of letting people die.

I still can't get the visual in my mind after listening to a mother describe her young son vomiting up bile and dying a slow painful death because the insurance company wouldn't cover a colonoscopy. How do these CEO's making $102,000/hour call themselves humans...how can they sleep at night?
 
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Major kudos to President Obama if this succeeds: The Guardian.
 
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Torture Nation
 
Andrew Sullivan compares the response of the American people to allegations that our government tortured prisoners to the response of the Iranian people to allegations that their government tortured people. Americans come up short: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/08/the-evidence-mounts-still-further.html
 
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America's favorite loon and future resident of Bedlam, the infamous baby mill operator and MN Member of Congress, Bachmann-the-Nut, is at it again to appall, entertain, and delight Scissorheads everywhere. She not only calls for fasting and prayers to defeat healthcare reform, but also praises Mooselini for her important work on Death Panels (which The Nut confirms exist in the legislation), but as an added frisson, we get a bit of information about how God speaks back to her.

Well, it comes as no surprise that The Nut talks to God, but did you know that God speaks to her? God must have a wicked sense of humor, when you consider that he also speaks through Senator Diaperman Vitter and of course Chimpy McStagger, who felt that God was telling him not only to run for office but start a buncha wars to defeat Gog and Magog.

Anyway, today's update comes to us from TPM and is from 2006 explaining how The Nut decided to run for office:

…And then in the midst of that calling, God then called me to run for the United States Congress. And I thought, 'what in the world would that be for?' And my husband said, 'You need to do this,' and I wasn't so sure. And we took three days and we fasted and we prayed, and we said, 'Lord is this what You want? Is this Your will?' And after the — along about the afternoon of day two, He made that calling sure. And it's been now 22 months that I've been running for United States Congress. Who in their right mind would spent two years to run for a job that lasts for two years? You'd have to be absolutely a fool to do that. You are now looking at a fool for Christ. This is a fool for Christ.

Truer words were never spoken. But I digress…

Now of course, Wingnuttia thinks that God is on their side, but few of them actually get called to duty. This is important, you see, because The Nut is talking about fasting a praying again with the goal of defeating Healthcare Reform:

That's really where this battle will be won — on our knees in prayer and fasting," said Bachmann. "Remember: faith without works is dead. So we're asking you to do all of it: pray, fast, believe, trust the Lord, but also act.

So there you have it: Bachmann-the-Nut on her knees and elbows in her office, starving, getting giddy and hearing voices.

 
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Walnuts says Obama understands the Constitution, and the audience does not care for this sentiment. YouTube
 
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A little-noticed YouTube video of a recent town hall meeting with Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley reveals the Senator gave a strikingly anemic reply to a man who compared Barack Obama to genocidal Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and made an implied threat against the president.

"The President of the United States," said Tom Eisenhower, who claimed to be a World War II veteran. "That's who you should be concerned about today … Because he's acting like a little Hitler."

He added that he would "take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me," according to a report in the Pocahontas, Iowa's newspaper The Messenger: 

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/25/gop-senator-brushed-off-assassination-threat/

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