Americans have come to believe that spending government revenues on U.S. citizens here at home is usually a bad thing and should be viewed wth suspicion, but spending billions on vast social engineering projects overseas is the hallmark of patriotism and should never be questioned. This position makes no sense, but it is hard to think of a prominent U.S. leader who is making an explicit case for doing somewhat less abroad so that we can afford to build a better future here at home.Walt doesn't ask a question, but I'll answer it anyway:
Because money spent abroad - regardless of its original purpose - always ends up killing yellow, brown and black people who hate baby jeebus. And money spent at home ends up helping yellow, brown and black people who hate baby jeebus.
Better to spend a hundred billion dollars killing one Taliban darkie than one dollar helping a colored girl in the projects feed her baby.
That this president, elected in a landslide with super-majorities in Congress, cannot makes the case "for doing somewhat less abroad so that we can afford to build a better future here at home" is inexcusable.
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"There has to be a middle ground between white cops who are stupidly seeking golf tips, and the world's best golfer who is merely guilty of driving while blacked out."
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MOSCOW: Good news for vodka lovers as you can consume your favourite drink just like any other solid food, without the hassle of carrying heavy glass bottles - it comes in a pill! http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Now-vodka-that-comes-in-a-pill/articleshow/5282435.cms
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War Criminal Cheney Thinks the President is a pussy He sat down with a couple of stenographers from the right-wing organ Politico last night to criticize the President in wartime. Help us out here...we seem to recall that there was a time, not so very long ago, in fact, when such criticisms of the Commander in Chief during wartime was tantamount to treason. We believe that time covered the years 2001-2008. We aren't misremembering, are we?
Bonus: Cheney, asked if he bears any responsibility for the Afghanistan clusterfuck because he instead diverted resources to Iraq, replied "I basically don't."
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Catholics buy Rape Insurance
Excerpt:
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $660 million to settle lawsuits from hundreds of sex-abuse victims.
About $250 million will be cash; $60 million will come from other religious orders and another $123 million from litigation with orders that chose to sit out the deal. Insurance companies will pay the remaining $227 million.
Hold on—can churches buy insurance for sex abuse?
Yes. Like any business, religious organizations purchase insurance to protect themselves from lawsuits, like discrimination claims or negligence charges against officers. Since the spike in sex-abuse lawsuits in the mid-1980s, churches have also had the option to take out extra liability policies for damages related to sexual misconduct. These policies don't come cheap, and they protect just the institutions, for the most part. Insurers will mount a legal defense for accused individuals, but the support extends only so far: Perpetrators are on their own if they're found guilty or choose to settle out of court.
So the question becomes: What insurance company is crazy enough to bet against priest rapes?
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Another Teabagger in dire need of a straightjacket:
Fitzpatrick is one of those alternate-reality Americans who believe that Barack Obama is actually one Barry Soetoro, a man who is not an American citizen and thus ineligible to serve as president. Fitzpatrick claims that since March, he has been trying to get federal prosecutors in Tennessee to bring treason charges against the president. All that effort earned him, however, was a visit from the Secret Service. Tea-party style activism has taken some nutty turns before—the Hitler references, the Holocaust pictures. But Walter Fitzpatrick III may be about to push anti-Obama activism to new heights. On Tuesday, he plans to walk into the Monroe County courthouse in tiny Madisonville, Tennessee, and attempt to convince a local grand jury to indict the president on treason and fraud charges.
I'm suprised he's not suing Obama for being black.
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Rush Limbaugh is getting married . . . for the fourth time.
Some women have absolutely NO self-esteem.
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In the Graveyard of Empires
Afghanistan is well-known as the "graveyard of empires," an impossible terrain in a difficult to reach region of the world. It's nation of mountain ranges with mile after mile of natural fortresses. Fighting a war on two fronts is a classic military mistake and Bush made it by deciding to invade Iraq -- for no good reason. Iraq became the "central front on the war on terror," with Afghanistan becoming a nearly forgotten adventure that popped up in the news occasionally. We were fighting a war in what very well may be the most dangerous region of the world and doing it halfheartedly. Combine this with installing a corrupt puppet government and you could only screw things up worse if you tried.
Let's not kid ourselves here:
"This is a war that we have to win. I will send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan...We need more troops, more helicopters, more satellites, more Predator drones in the Afghan border region." - Then-candidate Barack Obama in his last big speech about Afghanistan, July 15, 2008.
"I think I was right in terms of the need to put more troops into Afghanistan. I said that a year and a half ago. John McCain disagreed. Recently he now wants to put more troops in, and I think that's a good thing, because I think anybody who talks to folks in Afghanistan will concur that we need more support." - Obama to Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News, July 24, 2008.
"Those 30,000 troops could have also been in Afghanistan during this time, and we might have done a much better job of going after al-Qaeda and the Taliban and stabilizing the situation there than we are right now. And that is part of the calculation that has to be made when we're having this broader debate about how to keep America safe." - from the same interview.
"I will finally have a comprehensive strategy to finish the job in Afghanistan, with more troops..." - Obama at a campaign news conference in Ohio, September 9, 2008.
"We have seen Afghanistan worsen, deteriorate. We need more troops there. We need more resources there... I think we need more troops. I've been saying that for over a year now. And I think that we have to do it as quickly as possible because it's been acknowledged by the commanders on the ground the situation is getting worse, not better." - Obama at the September 26, 2009 debate with John McCain.
How many more quotes do you need on this? 'Cause there's probably a couple of hundred or so more, every single one of them with Barack Obama calling for an escalation in the number of troops in Afghanistan. Hell, it was an easy applause line.
His acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination? "When John McCain said we could just 'muddle through' in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11."
An early campaign speech from September 12, 2007? "When we end this war in Iraq, we can finally finish the fight in Afghanistan. That is why I propose stepping up our commitment there, with at least two additional combat brigades and a comprehensive program of aid and support to help Afghans help themselves."
So let's be grown-ups here as we get ready for President Obama to make his new, big Afghanistan speech and say that the man didn't lie to us. He told us for the last two years that he was gonna send more troops. In fact, about the only thing he's guilty for during this long period of contemplation and meetings is getting our hopes up that he might be changing his mind. Out here in Left Blogsylvania, we desperately read things like his delay in announcing a strategy and his trip to Dover Air Base as the signs of transformation. Nope. Turns out that he was just figuring out how much to up the number from two brigades.
Keep reading: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2009/12/we-need-to-stop-pretending-that-obama.html
Money quote/questions:
- Which is worse - a stupid person like George W. Bush starting a dumb occupation, or a smart person like Barack Obama following the lead of that stupid person, but actually escalating that occupation?
- The "we're going to escalate war to end war" refrain throughout the speech - have we heard that before somewhere? It sounds sorta like "we'll burn down the Vietnam villages to save them." Just curious if that's what we're talking about here - because, ya know, that worked out really well.
- Are we really expected to believe that massively escalating a war is the way to end a war? I mean, really? Like, is the public really looked at like we're that stupid? And a follow-up question: Are we really that stupid?
- If Obama's Afghan War strategy about escalating a war to end a war was a self-help strategy for, say, alcoholics, wouldn't it prescribe drinking more whiskey to stop drinking - and wouldn't we all laugh at that?
- How many pundits will insist that bowing down to the Military-Industrial complex and escalating this missionless war somehow shows "resolve" and "strength" and "toughness" and "leadership" and not embarrassing weakness?
- Would the Obamaphiles now telling us to "give President Obama a chance" with this decision and/or defending Obama's escalation - would these same people be saying we should "give President McCain a chance" and/or defending President McCain's escalation if he was the one in office making this decision?
Honorable mention: Dday.
You'd expect raving sobbing nutcase Glen Beck to support selling weapons to people on the terrorist watch list. But it's not just Mr. Crazy. It's the rest of the Republicans too, who are ranting left and right about how if we don't let terrorists buy all the weapons they want to buy, then freedom is dead in America because if terrorists can't buy guns then nobody can buy guns. Or something like that. Hey, it doesn't have to make sense if you're a Republican.
I'd say that I was suprised, but no, I'm not. These are the same morons who ignored a warning "bin Laden determined to strike in America", after all. The stupidity and insanity of today's right-wing Republicans cannot be overestimated, because it is literally greater than any sane person could ever imagine.
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This guy makes us look twice at our neighbors. "A former US marine has been charged with 11 murders after the remains of 10 bodies and a separate skull were found in his Ohio home. Anthony Sowell is also charged with kidnapping, rape and abusing a corpse, among other indictments. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the 50-year-old if he is found guilty. Mr Sowell has denied carrying out the attacks and killing the women in Cleveland. Mr Sowell is also alleged to have attacked a further three women on three separate occasions in 2008."
Senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.The article is loaded with errors, but those are sort of gunnie technical. One, though, is that CCW permits are "hard to get". If you're a regular schmo living in NYC, good luck with getting a carry permit, but they've always been readily available to the rich and well-connected.
It's going to be fun, though, when the folks at Goldman find out that pistols are noisy to shoot, will make their hands dirty and they have to be cleaned! As Amy Poehler noted, those birds won't even touch the handles of their car doors. I suspect that most of those pasty-faced bankers have never before held a handgun in their lives and now they are going to get competent with them to the point of being able to shoot them at someone? The safest place to be when one of those guys starts firing may be to stand right in front of the the intended target!
But where, though, have we seen this before? Oh, yes, it's coming to me: There were stories from the Great Depression about rich people buying machine guns to protect their mansions.
The folks at Goldman are fools and little shows it as well as this news story. From "doing God's work" to now arming themselves and letting the news leak out that they are really afraid of being held to account for their crimes all go to show an institution that is seriously out of touch.
Wingnut Christians have a powerful new ally in the War On Xmas: It's a website full of retailer ratings to let you know if maybe Jews or Atheists or (God forbid!) Muslims are making the Xmas Season less Christ-y! StandForChristmas.com reports and decides on which chain stores (WalMart) know the "reason for the season," and which homosexual shops (Best Buy, The Gap) are trying to make nice with anti-American forces such as Muslims, Jews and Atheists. Let's review the reviewers! MORE »
Dear President Obama,
Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/open-letter-president-obama-michael-moore
Apparently it is, Michael.
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