Headlines - Saturday

Truly, a modest proposal

On March 14, 2010, when it comes time once again for Daylight Savings Time, let's try something different. Instead of moving the clocks forward one hour, let's just move them forward 30 minutes.

And then let's leave them there. No more of this "spring forward, fall back" crap, that'll just be the new standard time.

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Pumpkin dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4IC7qaNr7I&feature=player_embedded

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Costume idea:

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George Bush, motivational speaker

"So remember, if you're lucky enough to be born into a family with money, fame and political connections, you too, without even breaking a sweat, can completely fuck up the world"

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By Madeleine Begun Kane

Joe Lieberman's meanness runs deep.
He's a back-stabbing, Dem-screwing creep,
Who's determined to kill
The health reform bill.
But at least he will never be VEEP.

 

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al Qaeda outwitted Bush, neocons

 

Duh. It wasn't very hard for them to do, either, given that Bush/Cheney played right into their hands.

Robert Parry

 

As security worsens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is clear that al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies outwitted President George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers by tying down U.S. forces in Iraq for five years while the Islamic militants rebuilt their forces for the war on their "central front."

 

What might have been possible eight years ago – in rebuilding Afghanistan and winning the hearts and minds of many Afghans – has become almost impossible because of Bush's "muddling through" strategy regarding what became "the forgotten war."

 

Too bad Afghanistan doesn't have any oil. Then he'da had a 'strategy'. Yeesh.

Parry goes on to quote Captain Hoh at some length, whom I am sure we're all familiar as the first and hopefully not the last Foreign Service Officer to resign in order to publicly question the whole AfPak flusterpluck.

 

Yet while Capt. Hoh may have struggled to reach a painful personal decision, it is far from clear that senior U.S. officials and American opinion-makers have come to grips with an even more troubling realization: that President Bush and his neocon advisers committed the United States to two wars whose chances for success were crippled by ill-defined goals and ill-considered strategies.

Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of life in Washington today is how the neocons remain exceptionally influential. They keep their well-paid jobs at prestigious think tanks, write books for major publishing houses, and control key opinion columns in the Washington Post and, to a lesser degree, the New York Times.

Even now, as President Obama ponders what to do with the botched war in Afghanistan, the neocons bait him about alleged weakness and defeatism. Their allies in Congress, the likes of Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman, seem determined to undermine the Obama administration at every turn if the President doesn't take the neocons' advice and escalate the war.

It seems that Official Washington can't face up to its disastrous misjudgments over the past eight years.

Neither the pols nor the journos have a very good track record about admitting their colossal mistakes. Without that, nothing is going to change very quickly. When pigs fly.

I think we could make a good start by taking a few machine gun belts' worth of neocons out and shooting them. I volunteer to throttle the smarmy grin off Kristol's face myself to kick things off.

 

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Great news, everyone: America is now .0000000001% less insane and bigoted! Barack Obama signed a final administrative repeal today of the Jesse Helms-authored travel and immigration ban on persons with HIV/AIDS. It only took 22 years for our government to realize that the HIV virus is not the very contagious "gay flu." MORE »

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In case you missed it, Stewart rips Fox.

 

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People who should be severely flogged

 

I nominate Gore Vidal, for this comment about the Polanski matter:

Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?

"Misogynistic" doesn't even begin the cover the ground for that arrogant and hateful old fart.

Let's refresh, shall we: Polanski gave a 13 year old girl champagne, quaaludes and then proceeded to rape her. He committed forcible rape and sodomy on a child. For that, Gore Vidal is going to lionize him as some sort of persecuted darling?)

 

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Questions surround Lou Dobbs' 'the taco-eaters shot my wife' story

Racist television goblin Lou Dobbs revealed a very scary story earlier this week on his radio show (he's on the radio, too?). Three weeks earlier, he claimed, his New Jersey mansion was shot at while his wife was standing outside, and this came after "weeks and weeks of threatening phone calls." Never one to rush to judgment about anything, Lou Dobbs… immediately started freaking out about Mexicans and Mexican-supporting liberals again, adding, tastelessly, for ratings, "if anybody thinks that we're not engaged in the battle for the soul of this country right now, you're sorely mistaken." We don't really know how some douche or another hitting Lou Dobbs' mansion with a bullet is indicative of a "battle for the soul of this country," but we do know that "battle for the soul of this country" is not very tension-defusing rhetoric. Especially when there are still many, many questions about the nature of the incident! MORE »

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"George W. Bush was and is an idiot. A shallow, stupid man of crude appetites when younger, his life would  
have been of no consequence had not the Republican party chosen him as the public face of the Cheney government.  I doubt he has to this day any coherent idea of how he found himself in the White House or who made the  decisions while he lived there. He was only a pawn in their game.

Because Al Gore rolled over and played dead and did not misbehave or act out or fight for himself and his country,  
the Supreme Court short-circuited the system and gave us George Bush, his stupidity, his wars, his coddling of the rich and his courting of crazies in the far fringes of Christian American Medieval backwardness. 

Then, because John Kerry was an inept fool who ran a campaign that largely ran away from everything honorable  
he had once done and believed in, we were blessed with a second term of Cheney and his wooden-headed puppet." 

Read the entire thing.

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Join the Facebook group Joe Lieberman is a Douchebag.

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Inhofe: unhinged and proud of it

 
 "I'ma Okie monkey!"

 Link

Excerpt:
It must be very lonely being the last flat-earther. Inhofe stands alone. 

Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, committed climate-change denier, found himself in a position Tuesday as the 
Senate environment committee, on which he is the ranking Republican, took up legislation on global warming. 
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Gay.) was in talks with Democrats over a compromise bill -- the traitor! And as Inhofe listened, fellow Republicans on the committee -- turncoats! -- made it clear that they no longer share, if they ever did, Inhofe's view that man-made global warming is the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." 

"Eleven academies in industrialized countries say that climate change is real; humans have caused most of the recent warming," - Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Flannel.).

"I want to get us beyond high-carbon fuels and focus on conservation, nuclear, natural gas and new technologies like electric cars."  -  oil-state senator, David Vitter (R-Diapers)

"Climate change is a serious and complex issue that deserves our full attention." - industrial-state senator, George Voinovich (R-Crook) 

...and then there's poor Pissquik Inhofe. "Science is not settled! Everyone knows it's not settled!" 

Inhofe called for more oil drilling. His aides sent out an e-mail --  'We should fear a deep temperature drop -- not catastrophic global warming.' "   

You can't reason with insane people like Inhofe.
Like Reagan, he knows what he knows and no evidence will change his stubborn mind.

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"Obama can switch Lieberman's vote. It was Obama, after all, who campaigned for Lieberman when everyone else  
deserted him, and it was Obama who intervened to save Lieberman's position in the Democratic caucus last December. Lieberman owes Obama. Currently, Lieberman is making a mockery of Obama by letting Obama save him, and then knifing the president every step of the way.  It's time for the President to call in his chits with Lieberman, or destroy Lieberman - Obama has the power to do both." - John Aravosis, Link 

 Yes, Obama should do that - but he won't.

 If I understand what I read, Obama dumped the public option and spineless Harry Reid forced Obama to take it back.
 How much trouble are we in when spineless Harry Reid is pushing the president around?

 Obama wants to make nice-nice with his enemies and he can't muster the will to use force.

 This is a serious mistake on Obama's part.
 
 When will he learn that some people are going to attack - no matter what?

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The opposite of progress is the Republican congress

An item in The Onion has been making the rounds in lefty circles. "Obama's Declaration Of Swine Flu Emergency Prompts Pro-Swine-Flu Republican Response" has the GOP taking the H1N1 advocate position, because the president is against it. "Thousands of Americans -- hardworking ordinary Americans like you and me -- already have H1N1," RNC chairman Michael Steele says. "Now Obama wants to take that away from us. Ask yourself: Do you want the federal government making these kinds of health care decisions for you and your family." Bobby Jindal urges Louisianans to stop washing their hands and Rush Limbaugh "made a point of dying of the virus during his show on Wednesday."

 

Keep reading: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2009/10/opposite-of-progress-is-republican.html

 

 

Headlines - Friday

With the dumbing down of America nearly complete ...    

Jon - Kate = Jon + Octomom.

 

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Backpfeifengesicht (băkfī'fəngĕzēsht) n. a face badly in need of a fist. [When you look at Joe Lieberman's rubbery mug, only one word does it justice: Backpfeifengesicht.]

 

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Barack Obama: cheap bastard

The Washington Times, the only messiah-owned newspaper with the courage to hire a pro-slavery editor, reports that Barack "Erik Gruber" Obama is one cheap bastard:

During his first nine months in office, President Obama has quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings.

Invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings? What a piker. My president, George Walker Bush, gave big donors a more memorable experience. He put them on nuclear submarines and sent them out to sink Japanese fishing boats. By God, if you were like Helen Culver and contributed a load of money to W, you got to play Red October for a day. That's a hell of a lot better use of time than spending 45 minutes listening to Obama talk about health care or some such shit.

 

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Gross: Somali man marries 6th wife - he's 112 and she's 17. 

 

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The NYTimes says that the recession is over because the Q3 numbers show that the Gross Domestic Product increased by 3.5%!

And later on, pesky things like unemployment are mentioned, and oh, that 3.5 percent might be related to the Cash for Clunkers (now expired) and an $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers (soon to expire?) might have something to do with it.

So what does it all mean? If the government spends piles of money that it doesn't have, and if the dollar is also depressed enough to make international export attractive (of items we no longer make), then we basically don't need 20% of the active workforce to have the jobs they don't have! But other than that! Wheeeeeeeee! 

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Futures lost, love vanished

Of Obama's pre-dawn visit to Dover Air Force Base, Robert Gibbs said he was "overwhelmed" by "the genuine anguish" he saw in families' faces. What did he expect to see? Obama said it was "a sobering reminder" of sacrifices he thinks about "each and every day." He damn well better. With his decision on troops looming, let's hope he also hears the growing chorus of those who say Afghanistan cannot be "won." And let him read the scathing, heartfelt  resignation letter of Matthew Hoh.

On his loss of faith in "the strategic purposes of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan": "The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can be made."

The Rude Pundit weighs in as well:

"...Or, to put it simply, the images of Obama at Dover show a young president nutting up to all responsibilities he has been given. That's called, you know, leadership."

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Demolishing hope for peace: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/10/29-2 

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It may be reconciliation - or we're Liebermanned

 

The House version of healthcare reform is being unveiled as I write. Apparently, it doesn't contain a "robust" public option. They're still rolling it out, so there aren't any links available at this very moment, but something will probably come out before I'm finished. As far as the public option goes, the Chicago Tribune explains: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2009/10/it-may-be-reconciliation-or-were.html

 

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Alan Grayson - stories of the dead.

 

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Matt Browner-Hamlin at SEIU does a great job explaining what "cloture" is in the Senate, also known as breaking a filibuster.

 

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"Consider the source of the most recent attention-getting lies – those who would sell their body for money reflect a desperate need for attention and are likely to say and do anything for even more attention." – Miss Wasilla, Alaska 1984, Sarah Palin.

Palin was reacting to ex-future-son-in-law Levi Johnston's assertion that, "There are some things that I have that are huge," by which the recently contracted Playgirl centerfold meant not what you're thinking, but rather that he knows facts about Sarah Palin that would hurt her politically.

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CBO says House health care bill is deficit reducer in the near and long term: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/cbo-says-house-health-care-bill-is-a-deficit-reducer-in-the-near-and-long-term.php?ref=fpa

 

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With change just around the corner, the White House agreed to a deal that keeps prescription drug prices artificially and ridiculously high.

 

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Shorter David Brooks: The military brass are worried that Barack Obama may not throw American kids into a meatgrinder indefinitely, the way that codpiece guy who made a thrill go up their leg did.

 

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Because God forbid anyone should hear the Palestinian's side of the story ...

 

Daily Show under fire for covering Israeli-Palestinian conflict: http://rawstory.com/2009/10/daily-show-israelipalestinian-conflict/

 

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Dennis Kucinich on the health care bill: is this the best we can do?

 

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Mitch McConnell (minority LEADER) says the public option 'may cost you your life.'

 

Unemployed? Mitch says 'tough shit': http://www.theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/4077/unemployed-mitch-mcconnell-says-tough-shit

 

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What do you call a basement full of farmers? A whine cellar.

 

Eating their seed corn, the idiots.  "Farm state senators and others soon will get a taste of what their colleagues from Missouri already have piled high on their desks: thousands of letters from farmers urging them to vote against the climate and energy bill .... Farm lobby groups and senators who agree with them argue that imposing limits on the nation's emissions of heat-trapping gases from coal, oil and natural gas would raise the cost of farming necessities such as fuel, electricity and natural gas-based fertilizer. A government report, however, warns of a dire outlook for farms if rising emissions drive more rapid climate shifts in the decades ahead."

 

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Someone accidentally left a document detailing ongoing Congressional ethics violations investigations on a public computer network. The Word paperclip would have advised against this. Washington Post

 

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CBN warns the kiddies not to celebrate Halloween It's not only demonic, but candy is "soul-molesting."

 

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Opponents of public option flunk math

Scarecrow at Firedoglake explains:

CBO estimated that a Public Option available only to the uninsured, self-insured and small businesses (less than 20 employees) would have saved the federal budget $110 billion over ten years, if the PO paid health care providers at Medicare rates plus 5 percent. The savings would be only $25 billion if the PO were required to negotiate rates with providers. If Congress chooses negotiated rates, it raises budget costs by $85 billion for the limited access exchanges.

These saving would have arisen because with lower prices for public option insurance, and pressure on private insurers to lower their premiums or lose market share, there would have been less need for federal subsidies to achieve the same level of "affordability." So the switch from Medicare+5% rates to negotiated rates means that premiums for everyone in the exchanges, both public and private plans, will be higher, whether you get a subsidy or not, and on top of that we'll need $85 billion more in subsidies.

SNIP

In other words, if the fiscal-deficit scolds were genuinely serious about reducing the cost of the reform bill, they would expand eligibility to public health care to a lot more people and forget about shielding private insurers from competition.

But then they'd be accused of creating a powerful argument for Medicare for all, and we can't have that. Because as Joe Lieberman reminds us, those government entitlement programs just increase the deficits - uh, except when they lower them.

Read the whole thing.

And always remember that when Blue Dogs like Benny Boy Chandler talk about "fiscal responsibility," they're really talking about enriching their corporate donors at the expense of working families.

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h/t Dick

So scientology gets nailed for fraud ...and the Catholic and Mormon Churches continue to skate?

Justice is indeed blind.

Headlines - Thursday

Morford: 10 amazing truths you already suspected - go ahead and pretend you didn't know.

 

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Iran locates weapons of mass destruction; demands compliance to world standards

Iran's Supreme Council reviewed secret maps detailing the location of dozens of facilities in the United States responsible for mass killings of its citizenry. Chief among them were the boardrooms of major health insurance companies, chemical manufacturers, auto manufacturers, tobacco farms, Wall Street and the US Congress.

They heard testimony that the terror group, Al Qaeda, had killed less than 1/1,000 as many US citizens as any one of the newly identified groups of lethal organizations.

Among their findings:

1) Despite a massive constant propaganda effort, most US Senators and Congressional representatives openly engaged in the practice of idol worship of the wealthiest 1% of Americans- multiplying their wealth - while defrauding 95% of the population out of its modest material holdings via an assortment of nefarious schemes. Among these: mandatory protection racket payments and exemptions that multiply the premium costs of the substance-addicted, labelling a pool of crooked business operators as 'Too Big To Fail' and enacting the greatest transfer of public treasury funds ever from millions struggling to stay afloat to the greatest financial swindlers in US history, and other, similarly dastardly schemes.

Despite the Supreme Council's condemnations, they also noted there were some exceptions, they reviewed the work of several of the lawmakers who worked to expose the propagandists as mealy-mouthed frauds, including one that was trying to recoup billions in losses caused by the financial chicanery.

2) They provided clear evidence that in the US, there are over 600,000 deaths due to heart disease, over 40,000 auto fatalities, over 20,000 flu deaths, and over 15,000 criminal murders, each year in the 8 year period under review. In these last 8 years, there have been just 3 people killed on American soil at the hands of terrorists, all the victims of domestic white supremacists. The report also cited half a dozen plots that were broken up by law enforcement and federal intelligence agencies that were tied to foreign terror organizations and noted that hundreds of Americans could have died had the plots succeeded.

Still, in a country of 305 million people, the likelihood of dying due to terrorist plots -even in the worst year of 2001 - was a tiny percentage of those killed by legally prescribed drugs and considerably smaller than deaths attributed to unsafe workplaces.

3) They singled out several processed food companies, Dow Chemical, several pharmaceutical companies, major financial and insurance companies, and the poor regulatory efforts of the FDA as some of the deadliest organizations in the US. They also cited Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve as the lead organizations masterminding these efforts. They declared several current reform efforts to be probable frauds that would not end the massive wealth transfers, would not reform anything significantly dysfunctional in the financial and healthcare systems, and would continue to impoverish the poorest by mandating unaffordable expenses with financial penalties that would impoverish them further.

The report concluded: "Taken as a whole, these clandestine US organizations cannot be fully exposed due to the massive amount of information each tries to keep secret. Many of them have caused as many deaths as some of the best known genocidal governments in world history, yet they're covered up and protected by their elected politicians, to the detriment of US citizens and countries across the globe."

As a remedy, they're requesting UN sanctions against the deadly organizations and, should that fail as a deterrent, the building of a global military coalition that would invade and destroy the weapons of mass destruction those organizations regularly employ.

Addendum: Jo Comerford adds another deadly component to the list. Deadly to life. Deadly to progress. Deadly to the budgets of the middle class and poor.

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Senator Lieberman palpates the president's back for the purpose of locating the best spot to insert the knife.

(Top 15 Lieberman betrayals: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/27/top-15-lieberman-betrayal_n_336024.html

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Colbert: "I don't believe it is a choice, I believe you're born thinking gays don't have the right to get married or even be joined in union. And folks, the gays have no right to out those people."

The Word: http://dailydumpbydave.blogspot.com/2009/10/colbert-glbt-and-word.html

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Jim Hightower: Healthcare Hypocrites.

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Tom Coburn (R-OK) has earned a permanent spot in the Misplaced Outrage Hall of Fame for this one:

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has sent a letter (PDF) to Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking why contractors under criminal investigation were able to obtain millions of dollars in work from the federal stimulus program.

Recall that earlier this month, Coburn became a corporate sponsor of rape when he, along with 29 of his fellow Republicans, voted no on the Franken Amendment, but now he's worried:

"If somebody fixed your garage door and they defrauded you—or, rather, you thought they defrauded you—would you give them more business? Nobody else in the country would do that."

Well, sure. But if a company allows someone to be drugged, gang-raped, and held prisoner in a barely-ventilated shipping container for days, it would be downright irresponsible to stop doing business with them. What are you people, some kind of freakin' morals police?

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Climate change, NOT TREEHUGGERS, are to blame for pine beetles: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/10/27/pm-climate-race-1/

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Too close to be humor?

The Onion:

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN— According to sources at the Pentagon, American quagmire-building efforts continued apace in Afghanistan this week, as the geographically rugged, politically unstable region remained ungovernable, death tolls continued to rise, and the grim military campaign persisted as hopelessly as ever.

In fact, many government officials now believe that the United States and its allies could be as little as six months away from their ultimate goal: the total quagmirification of Afghanistan.

"Quagmirification." That's a word that sounds like something out of "Firefly".

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Troops in Afghanistan outnumber Taliban 12:1 and we still can't "win" - whatever that means: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/27/troops-in-afghanistan-out_0_n_336096.html

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Afghanistan - Losing the Village People - By Ron Beasley

While it makes little difference what the people think about the war in Afghanistan for some reason it does matter what the village pundits think.  It was not much of a surprise when George Will said it was time to get out - but Thomas Friedman has always been a war happy hegemonist but today he says it's time to reduce our footprint there not increase it.

It is crunch time on Afghanistan, so here's my vote: We need to be thinking about how to reduce our footprint and our goals there in a responsible way, not dig in deeper. We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interests to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan.

Note that he even has most of the right reasons.  He points out that progress in the middle east rarely involves the United States.  And this sounds about right:

What if we shrink our presence in Afghanistan? Won't Al Qaeda return, the Taliban be energized and Pakistan collapse? Maybe. Maybe not. This gets to my second principle: In the Middle East, all politics — everything that matters — happens the morning after the morning after. Be patient. Yes, the morning after we shrink down in Afghanistan, the Taliban will celebrate, Pakistan will quake and bin Laden will issue an exultant video.

And the morning after the morning after, the Taliban factions will start fighting each other, the Pakistani Army will have to destroy their Taliban, or be destroyed by them, Afghanistan's warlords will carve up the country, and, if bin Laden comes out of his cave, he'll get zapped by a drone.

And this is right on:

A weak America would be a disaster for us and the world. China, Russia and Al Qaeda all love the idea of America doing a long, slow bleed in Afghanistan. I don't.

That's the key, even Friedman realizes that our misadventures in The Middle East are destroying the United States

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h/t Dick:

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From the You gotta be f**king kidding me dept:

Rep. Tom Price (R-Gahh) today introduced — along with 75 other Republicans — a resolution to officially commemorate the 9/12 teabagger march on Washington. Other sponsors of H.R. 870 include Rep.. Michele Bachmann, Rep. Steve King, and Rep. Eric Cantor.

Causing the HypocrisyMeter^TM to immolate itself yet again, House Minority Leader John Boehner pcked the same day to send out an email blasting Dems for wasting time by noting the birthday of Confucius, "with millions of Americans looking for jobs and the nation's unemployment rate nearing 10 percent."

"Perhaps Mr. Boehner thinks that honoring teabagging will be a boon to the prostitution industry."

If by "prostitution" you mean "hate radio", then yeah.

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Obama pay czar increased pay salaries for Wall Street.

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1/3...

That's how big a percentage of our health care dollars are wasted:

In the wake of its shocking assessment that employer-provided health insurance now covers only 54.6% of the American people, Thomson Reuters released a disturbing assessment of wasteful spending in the U.S. health care system. Echoing the estimates of Obama OMB chief Peter Orszag and others, the analysis highlighted by Keith Olbermann[*] Tuesday concluded that the United States wastes up to $700 billion a year - a third of the nation's total $2 trillion health care spending.
...

And we're worried about what a 'public option' would do to the deficit? Big Healthcare is already bankrupting us, and then throwing 30% of what we pay them away. How is what we have now better? At least, with the government, you have someone to bitch to and threaten with our votes. The boards of directors of the HMOs don't give a shit.

 

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Barack Obama hates women.

 

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The Obama stimulus: too small, too late

Over $3 *TRILLION* in assets and spending disappeared from the economy last year. Clearly the Obama stimulus, at only $800B, was woefully insufficient. So what's the argument against more stimulus? The argument appears to be, "we can't keep doing this forever!"

But we don't need to do it forever. We need to do it until we create enough jobs building bridges and roads and highways to jumpstart the rest of the economy as those people go out and spend the money they're getting building bridges and roads and highways. As long as a) people are willing to buy U.S. government bonds (right now they're rushing to buy at effective 0% interest rates, so clearly we're nowhere near exhausting the demand for U.S. bonds), and b) people are willing to accept freshly-printed U.S. dollars in exchange for their goods (and since dollars are the default currency of oil clearly that will take a while), the U.S. government can effectively run unlimited deficits. I agree there is a limit at some point in the future, but given that over $3 TRILLION disappeared out of the economy as a result of the collapse of the real estate bubble, we know that the USG can print at LEAST $3T before people start looking askance at the dollars they're getting in exchange for their goods... ah yes, the printing press, that thing which the right wing appears to be unacquainted with!

One thing I *do* say is that right now would be a *very* good time for at least a one-time tax on the wealthy to fund the stimulus. Right now the wealthy are basically stashing their wealth under mattresses rather than use it to buy goods and services, thereby failing to employ people since they're not buying or investing in productive enterprises. I.e., they're buying those U.S. bonds at effectively 0% interest rather than using the money in ways that would create employment. The problem is that we have to re-pay those bonds at some point in the future. Taxing the wealthy right now would basically not change the current money flows -- the money would still be moving from the wealthy to the U.S. government just as it is today -- but would solve the future money flows problem where at some point in the future the USG is going to have to drastically hike interest rates in order to "roll over" the bonds currently being sold. That drastic hike in interest rates would hit just as inflation from printing all that money hit. Can anybody say "stagflation"? Yeah, I knew you could!

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The Moonie Times down 17%.

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Transcripts of Defeat:

"There is no piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another. Nevertheless much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize.

"Our soldiers are not to blame. They've fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills." ...

"Without [more equipment], without a lot more men, this war will continue for a very, very long time" -- Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, Chief of the Soviet General Staff, November 13, 1986.

If one reads up a little on the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan, one can find comments about generals who, before the war started, advised caution, given the experiences of the British and Russian armies in Central Asia in the 1800s. They were told to shut up and do their jobs. One can imagine that similar conversations took place in Ft. Fumble in 2001.

And so, here we are.

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eBay does the right thing.

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CIA kept detainees alive to torture them. And when they deny this, remember that they lied to Congress five times since 2001.

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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell testified to the House Judiciary Committee today about "legal issues related to football head injuries." However, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) decided to use the hearing as an opportunity to defend Rush Limbaugh and quiz Goodell on why the hate radio host couldn't become an owner of a team, even while "offensive" musicians like Fergie and J-Lo (who have "alleged that the CIA are terrorists and liars" and "used…verbal pornography") can. "In fact I don't think that anything Rush Limbaugh said was offensive," added King. Although he requested that Goodell apologize to Limbaugh, the NFL commissioner never did so, repeating his belief that Limbaugh's comments about Donovan McNabb were offensive and inappropriate.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMYwM9m1JO0&feature=player_embedded

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Is AARP the GOP's ACORN? http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/is-aarp-the-gops-new-acorn.php

 

Headlines - Wednesday

Bernie Madoff, who had vast quantities of blow and topless waitresses at his New York headquarters -  and ruined thousands of people's lives - is now sharing a cell with a drug offender and eating pizza cooked by a child molester.

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Debating Burns' Thesis on National Parks' Value: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/27-2

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Link Excerpt

Lt. Junior Grade Pee Bush, 33, joined the Navy Reserve in 2007 as an intelligence officer. Seriously. That's what you can get when your uncle  is an unqualified Commander in Thief. The Navy recently 
told him that the two ongoing wars required him to go active-duty overseas, potentially in Iraq or Afghanistan. "They said that it's not a question of 'if,' it's a question of 'when,'" Bush told The Daily Beast. "It's just a matter of time."

Bush, who claims he was inspired by his grandfather H.W. Bush getting shot down at sea, as well as murdered NFL star Pat Tillman, signed up for an eight-year term in the Navy Reserve in 2007. When word got out about his enlistment, Pee told Politico that he was "disappointed" as he'd intended to keep it under wraps, saying, "I was hoping to keep this as confidential as possible. I'm not doing it for political purposes or anything along those lines," he said with a straight face. 

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Giving up a legislative snipe hunt

 

For healthcare reform, yesterday turned out to be a game-changer. Senate majority leader Harry Reid either found or borrowed a backbone, made a decision, and moved forward with a reform bill that includes the public option. Of course, as public options go this actually isn't one. It's a public health insurance plan, sure, but you can't actually choose it unless you're uninsured -- so the "option" part is a bit of false advertising. So much for competition. If you're willing to go glass-half-full, then take the news this way; that which exists can be improved -- you can't come back later and fix a "public option" that doesn't actually exist -- and this isn't the bill. The Senate bill will still need to be combined with a House bill. This whole thing's still a work in progress. Keep reading:

http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2009/10/giving-up-legislative-snipe-hunt.html

 

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Teaching Glenn Beck's most valued beliefs in school

Glenn Beck
Fact Engineer

Dear Brother Beck,

Although I can't fault the work you've done promoting the teaching of biblical science in our schools, you've done nothing to expose our nation's children to the Mormon science of the Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price. That's a shame. As one of America's most influential Mormons, you should be working hard to ensure that an LDS-based science curriculum receives the same consideration as intelligent design.

This year, millions of American children will be taught that Native Americans are descended from Asian people who migrated here over a land bridge. Not a single public school teacher will tell them the real truth: Native Americans, or as we call them, "Lamanites," are actually Jews who came here by boat in 600BC.

Nor will they be taught that God cursed the Lamanites by giving them dark skin. And who will tell them that the Book of Mormon promises Lamanites that they'll become "white and delightsome" again, after they've embraced the Gospel? Or that the Prophet, Spencer W Kimball, saw the delightsoming begining in the Sixties:

I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today.... The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos, five were darker but equally delightsome The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation.

At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl--sixteen--sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents--on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather....These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.

Our nation's children will never know about this wondrous miracle, because gentiles won't allow Mormon anthropology to be taught in our schools.

The same holds true for LDS astronomy and physics. You won't find a map of God's home solar system, the Kolob System, on a classroom wall. And no student will learn that God was able to create the earth in 6 days because he was on Kolob time (1 Kolob day equals 1000 Earth years).

But you have the ability to change all that. All you need to do is get on your TV show and demand that our fellow conservatives work as hard to promote the teaching of Mormon science as they do to promote biblical science instruction.

Once we've taken care of science, we can begin promoting an LDS-based history curricula. That'll be where the real fun begins. As I once told Brother Buttars:

Imagine if you will, the many hours of joy we could provide to our children if we taught true, Latter Day Saint history. Kids love to hear the story of the 2000 brave stripling warriors riding their heroic tapirs into battle against their iniquitous Nephite brethren. Why shouldn't they have the opportunity to learn about it in our schools.

Let me know if I can lend a hand.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

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Nancy Greggs: Jesus Wept.

 

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Asked whether he's still working to get Republican support for a healthcare bill, Harry Reid said that Republicans simply aren't willing to cooperate.

"You can't dance if your partner is unwilling to get off the chair," Reid told reporters. "It's like when I was in high school, I wanted to dance but she wouldn't get up. OK?"

The always nasty and clueless Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe today, "What's Harry Reid doing? My God, I feel that there's an election coming up in his future and that perhaps some of his actions have more to do with that."

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Connecticut: Thanks for Nothing

You fucking Nutmeggers just had to send that crypto-Republican Lieberman back to the Senate in 2006, didn't you? You couldn't send him off to retirement, to be another one of those conservative pundits on Fox who regularly give tug jobs to Republican politicians, no, you couldn't. You just had to send that drooling backstabbing little fuck back to Congress.

Well, he is at it again, lining up with his asswipe buddies in the GOP to protect the interests of the health insurers and, as is the pattern and practice of Republicans, giving a hearty "fuck you" to the working people.

So thanks for nothing, Connecticut. If you want to redeem yourselves, call that little fucktard's office at (202) 224-4041 or (860) 549-8463 and politely explain to the soulless troll who answers the line that you strongly disagree with the scaly old douchebag's senator's position on this issue.

If not, then go fuck yourselves.

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One thing I've become aware of during my lifetime is that while the federal government has been touting its "war on drugs" for the last four decades, there's also a curious evolution of what the particular drug problem is at any given time in this country. While we were in Vietnam, the government focused on marijuana, which grows easily in that country's hot, moist climate. During our proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the late 1970's to early 1980's, in which we armed the mujehadeen that later became Al-Qaeda, there was an uptick in heroin use. During our involvement in Central America during the Reagan years, we saw cocaine use rise. And ever since we've been back in Afghanistan, it's been heroin again.

Kind of a coinkydink, don't you think?

So why is it any surprise that Hamid Karzai's brother is simultaneously an opium trader AND working for the CIA?

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I only wish this were from the Onion

But it isn't:

A version of the anti-abortion initiative soundly defeated by Colorado voters in 2008 is making its way to the 2010 ballot, this time reworked as an "egg-as-a-person" initiative.

This new version would move the legal definition of a person further back into the reproductive cycle, granting cells the full spectrum of citizen rights. Opposition groups, including Colorado genetic and fertilization researchers, say the law would have spiraling consequences, that it would put women at risk and freeze current work in medicine and reproduction.

Colorado Right to Life and Personhood USA, the groups behind proposed Initiative 25, are undeterred by the fact that Coloradans voted against the test-run amendment last year by a margin of three to one. The new amendment is even farther reaching, moving the initial marker for the beginning of life from "fertilization" to "the beginning of the biological development of a human being."

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Think, don't react when you read Matt Taibbi's latest essay. And remember Molly Ivin's principle: don't listen to what they say, look at the record of what they do.

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Wormwood's Doxy shares a letter she sent to Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Heh.

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Insurance stocks plunged as Reid announced public option, spiked after Lieberman vowed to filibuster it: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/27/insurance-stocks-lieberman/

 

Headlines - Tuesday

 

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"I spend a lot of time thinking about Katrina, and whether I could have sent in the federal troops right away, even though it was against the law," - Bush, on why he let 8,000 Black people die - because he always obeys the law Link  

 
"Lookie me, Pickles, I'm obeying the law  
by letting those darkies drown..."
 

Butt George, if you were (in your words) willing to break the law, why did you let them drown for 5 days before taking any action? Besides, you said Brownie did "a heckuva job." That's when America finally realized you were a delusional liar. 

 

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Click here.

 

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Even Jesus' assassins need to eat

Dave Leach
Coerced Childbirth Enforcer

Dear Mr. Leach,

I'd like to bid on one of the items you're auctioning to raise funds for the pro-life warrior who executed Dr. Tiller. Specifically, I'm interested in the cookbook written by clinic bomber and Tiller wounder Shelley Shannon. Can you provide more information about the book?

Is there a chapter on the kinds of meals one should prepare before embarking on an OB/GYN hunt? Does one eat lightly before killing in the name of life? Is there a recipe for a doctor's heart casserole one might serve at a post-execution pro-life pot-luck celebration? How about headless gingerbreaddoctors? They'd be a hit at Christmas parties.

Please get back to me soon. I'd hate to miss out on the bidding.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

(And where are they holding this auction? Ebay. So if you're an Ebay-er, perhaps it's time to rethink doing business with them.)

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The only class Michelle Malkin has ever had was in school We all remember her attacking the 12 year old whose life wasn't as wrecked as the car he was riding in because of S-Chip. Today she attacked David Axelrod's epileptic daughter.

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Boy, when a conservaturd whore like George Will is telling you to shut your piehole, you've pretty much lost whatever shred of credibility you may have thought you had.  

Too bad he couldn't have had this epiphany in '02 and '03 (considering the platform he has, it might have done some good), but then he would have been an un-American traitorous bastid. Today he's a straight shooter.

 

 

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She's baaaaaack...

 

What did Dick give Judy to go pro-torture? http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/10/25/what-did-dick-give-judy-to-go-pro-torture/

 

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People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: "Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world's resources. A vegetarian diet is better."

Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece

And this...

New culprit to blame for next power failure. "We all scream for flat screens, even in a flat economy. But the bigger picture, many say, is one of unnecessary stress on the nation's electricity supply for years to come .... Since 2000, "we've seen energy consumption from TVs jump from 3 percent (of residential electric use) to 8 percent and climbing," said Adam Gottlieb of the California Energy Commission. "If we sat on our hands and did nothing . . . we would need to build a $615 million power plant" just to feed all of the state's hungry flat-panels by 2020."

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AIG 2.0: http://susiemadrak.com/2009/10/27/07/26/a-i-g-2-0/

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"Unpopular" is not the word; try "unconstitutional," "illegal," "war crimes" and "treason."  "Former President George W. Bush told more than 11,000 people at the Fort Worth Convention Center that he was confident he made the right decisions as president, even if it hurt his popularity. "Every single day I was honored to be your president by bringing honor and dignity to the office," Bush said Monday afternoon, during his first foray into motivational speaking, at the day-long "Get Motivated" seminar." WARNING: Reading article at link is likely to cause projectile vomiting.

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Since Oct. 20, the Republican National Committee's Facebook page has had a picture of President Obama with a caption reading "Miscegenation is a crime against American values":

As Raw Story notes, the RNC finally took the photo down today, after readers at Democratic Underground first began discussing it on Sunday. While it's likely that the RNC "wasn't aware the racist photo was on their page and it wasn't produced or posted by anyone at the RNC," the group had attacked MoveOn.org for a similar incident in 2004. As Chris Harris at Media Matters Action Network notes, when "a web user posted a self-produced web video that compared President Bush to Hitler as part of a MoveOn.org video contest, the RNC acted as if the video had been produced by MoveOn itself." According to the National Journal:

"This is the worst and most vile form of political hate speech," Republican National Committee spokesman Ed Gillespie proclaimed. "MoveOn.org should apologize."

Boyd did just that, expressing "deep regret" that the ads made it through MoveOn's filtering process, and promising to scrutinize such material in the future. Pariser emphasized that MoveOn had not produced the ads, not aired them, not endorsed them in the voting, and had removed them from the Web site –adding that the RNC had put them on its Web site to score points. Still, the damage had been done.

Will the RNC now issue a public apology?

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Rep Paul Broun proposes bill that would privatize Medicare: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/26/broun-privatize-medicare/

 

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Hezbollah cooked up a two-ton bowl of hummus and then invited the entire Middle East to the grandest hummus party in recorded history, while Israel — who for obvious reasons was not invited — sat at home and sulked. Matt Yglesias

 

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Randall Terry orders, teaches everyone to burn Pelosi and Reid effigies 

 

Violent anti-abortion galoot Randall Terry, as manifested on You Tube by this classically trained thespian, would like everyone to do something this Halloween season: form little backyard parties to burn effigies of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (as well as any nearby pumpkins! Halloween theme!) Here is the preview of something like that, presumably inspired by the recent fantasy film Inglorious Basterds. Washington Independent

 

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Did Fux Noise lie about their ratings?

 

The White House's attack against the nutwork has sent Fox's ratings through the roof. And by 'through the roof' we mean 'down'.

Did Fox Nooze lie about White House being 'Nixonian'?

Remember the other day when the White House banned Faux Noise from an interview? When all the networks banded together and decided that none of their reporters would do the interview unless Fox was included? Yeah, well, about that…

Treasury spokesperson: "There was no plot to exclude Fox News - they had the same interview that their competitors did."

The network pool crew noticed Fox wasn't on theinterview list, was told that they hadn't asked and the crew said they needed to be included. Treasury called the White House and asked top Obama adviser Anita Dunn. Dunn said yes and Fox's Major Garrett was among the correspondents to interview Feinberg last night.

So in short, Fox fabricated a story to make themselves look like victims of a fabricated war on them being waged by the evil commie Obama. Now tell me, is that journalism?

 

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