Q: What's the goal of terrorists?
A: To terrify.
Q: What was Dick Cheney's response to the failed Christmas Day attack?
A: To claim that Americans should be terrified.
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In Republicans Ruined Intelligence Community, Steven D quantifies how the ill-conceived counter-terrorism actions of the Bush Administration have made us less able to detect impending assaults.
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Jordan: CIA attacker was pissed about civilian deaths.
I'm sure they're going to love these stories too:
Afghan war kills three children per day.
Anger over civilian killings continues to grow in Afghanistan.
Two Blackwater guards arrested by FBI for murder of Afghans.
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Attaturk: And keep burning those fossil fuels and wishing for a cancer cure
I know you wish to start out your morning with the news of some political story of stupidity or betrayal (hey thank goodness Citibank was able to use that taxpayer money to sponsor the football game last night), but in even bigger news — America, finally what you really need!
The debate over distracted drivers ramped up a notch on Thursday as Ford Motor Co. announced technology to let computers read their Twitter feeds to them while behind the wheel.
Well, at least it didn't involve bail out money…yet. And Ford was on top of why you should be glad:
"We take what people do — they talk on the phone, they fumble with mp3 players, they look at maps. We take these activities and make them safer," he said.
Yeah, uh-huh and when drivers discover ways to view porn while driving?
We better get Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich right on that one.
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Wow. They really are getting extreme: Utah's Bob Bennett is targeted for insufficient conservatism by the Club for Growth.
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Baby raccoons rescued from vending machine: http://www.theawl.com/2010/01/baby-raccoons-rescued-from-vending-machine
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Check out what ABC News broadcast this morning, in the very city where al Qaeda killed over 3,000 people.
That was Rudy Giuliani, pretending 9-11 never happened.
Butt Rudy, since 2001, every sentence out of your whore mouth has been about 9-11. Now you're pretending that didn't happen when Bush was president?
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Hands painted like animals.
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Hope has left the building.
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Scientists find footprints from 395 million years ago - creationists see another muddy mistake
Scientists have dated "hand" and "foot" prints in Poland that may be the oldest ever found of a four-legged creature. The prints were left in the early Middle Devonian period roughly 400 millions years ago. Of course, for creationists, who insist that the Bible shows that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, these are just muddy footprints and the scientists are off by 394,994,000 years in their calculations.
The prints were left by lizard-like creatures up to 2.5 metres long and found in a former quarry in the Holy Cross Mountains in south-eastern Poland.
The discovery shatters some theories on the transition from water to land and pushing back that time schedule by almost 20 million years.
For those Middle Devonian wannabes, here is a site on the period.
For the full story, click here.
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PZ Meyers: I feel sorry for this kid
His class was going to go on a field trip to a museum; his parents denied the trip and scrawled their reasons why on the note.
That's just sad. And it happens fairly often; a few years ago, our university theater group put on a play about tolerance for local schools, and the notes from parents refusing to allow their kids to see it flooded in. It's just not that often that one of those notes get scanned and put up on Failblog.
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Water drops at 2,000 frames per second: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5bsQ_YDYCI&feature=player_embedded
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Constitution & Rule of Law: Oh Well
George Bush was often referred to as the "opportunity lost" President, for after the trauma and unity of 9/11 the pipsqueak worst of all time, classically, hailed the nation in a mighty effort of shopping at Macy's and Target to allay the tragedy.
Reading Glenzilla over the last year one cannot but come to the same conclusion about the Obama Presidency, a complete and precious lost opportunity of great magnitude. Even with zero formal investigations we know Bush earned his worst of all time label very much by flouting the rule of law whenever he could and making a total mockery of the constitution. Obama's response: cool with us, no worries. That golden opportunity to show the country and the world the rule of the law is still a viable element of American Democracy? Oh well.
One of the cheapest, easiest grenades to toss at the Obamamatons is to refer to their man as "just like Bush." That is not at all what I'm doing here, Barack Obama is light years ahead of that Sarah Palin clone, no need to hop and froth. The plain stark truth, though, is that when it comes to the rule of law and constitutionality Obama is just like Bush, he let a once-in-a-century opportunity to rally the country around founding principles slip through his fingers.
I'm sorry your man often gets that amazing label, just like Bush. More than you could ever know, believe me. For the sake of charity and calm nerves let's just assume the label never, ever has a grain of truth. Fine, it's not a hard hurdle to get over, not hardly. Barrack Obama still has a lot of problems and is impressing very few across the entire political spectrum, for everyone's sake please accept it, God, it's blazingly obvious.
Not only did Obama fail to rally the country around the rule of law, it appears our constitutional law professor President needs to go back to class. Enemy combatants and these amazing dual tier military commission trials smack of a politician who has as much knowledge and respect for the rule of as, well, George Bush. Charge those persons as criminals in real courts of law that we all use or do nothing at all.
Well, learn to ignore that foul cretin Dick Cheney when he comes hissing out of the woodwork about how weak you are when you make that decision, that will be necessary, yes. It would have been just as easy to put him in prison to shut him up, whatever, just never let that foul criminal have one iota of influence in our public sphere ever again.
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Sarah Palin in full Tea Bagger regalia (uncredited photo)
With the mid-term elections looming, it is clear that the Tea Baggers' populist, anti-Obama energy is being channeled into the the formation of a new national political party. With funding from wealthy right-wing extremists, including the Koch brothers and others, political operatives like former House Majority Leader-turned lobbyist Dick Armey have masterfully astroturfed the Tea Baggers into a new power base comprised of the most easily duped and manipulated segment of American society: poorly educated, white Southerners and their counterparts in other regions.
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Mrs. Robinson has some standards
Iris Robinson is an MP in Northern Ireland who has been, umm, frolicking. She was 58; she had been having an adulterous affair with a 19 year old. Eh, that's a private matter between her and her husband, you're thinking, and we shouldn't care about it, as long as it doesn't affect her performance in her job.
Except…
She's been using her government connections to funnel money to her boy toy. Lots of money.
He [the young man] said Iris Robinson, now 60, gave him two checks for 25,000 pounds ($40,000) each, but she then asked him for 5,000 pounds ($8,000) back, possibly to donate to the evangelical Protestant church she attends.
Wow. Teen-aged lovers cost $80,000 now? Even with the 10% rebate, that's way out of my price range.
Keep reading. It gets better.
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The Rude Pundit: Obama does what Bush and Cheney would not
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Despite selling his only home in Massachusetts, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R) voted last month in the state's Republican primary to choose a candidate for Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat using his son's address and has already mailed in a ballot for the Jan. 19 special election.
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Morford: When scary Jesus makes the news
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Deepest condolences to the Biden family:
"My mother, Catherine Eugenia 'Jean' Finnegan Biden, passed away peacefully today at our home in Wilmington, Delaware, surrounded by her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren and many loved ones," the vice president said in a statement released by the White House. "At 92, she was the center of our family and taught all of her children that family is to be treasured, loyalty is paramount and faith will guide you through the tough times.
"She believed in us, and because of that, we believed in ourselves.
"Together with my father, her husband of 61 years who passed away in 2002, we learned the dignity of hard work and that you are defined by your sense of honor. Her strength, which was immeasurable, will live on in all of us."
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2010 could be the last year for 'change'
"The Obama administration has known for a long time that they will never, and I mean never, have 60 votes in the Senate again," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. "They will never, and I mean never, have a 40-seat majority in the House again. This is as good as it's ever going to get for them. They're going to get as much as they can get while they can get it."Yes, it's on FOX's site, but the source, Sabato, is for real. Democrats in Congress and the White House need to figure out how they're going to achieve their goals within this reality. So far we keep being told "gosh we just don't have those 60 votes." You're never going to have them. So either you don't keep your promises, or you figure out how to work in a system where everything isn't handed to you on a silver platter. Perhaps it's time to start fighting for something.
A Nation Governed By The Rule Of Law Unacceptable Consequences Fallacy
So yeah, it sucks that applying the most important and fundamental principle in our entire legal system would make us look bad and put some bad actors on the street (not that we know who they are). But what's the alternative? Do we start applying the law only when it doesn't embarrass someone?
Yeah. I guess we do.
This, by the way, explains why I don't have much hope for America. The fight it would take to restrain Addington's Constitutional extremism proved so unappetizing that opinion makers gave up and embraced it instead.
As much as I doubt that Obama will encourage the security services to torture anyone, I don't think that is the important question. Let's say that some seemingly sane Republican wins in 2012 or 2016, and let's say that he decides that some imminent danger, the time-worn alibi of dictators everywhere, necessitates a little rough stuff (a bonus for the torture crowd – some new tools have a potential for markless pain that would make Dick Cheney literally burn with envy). What will we do, arrest him? The consequences of such an extreme act are clearly unacceptable.
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Is there nothing this president won't sell us out on? http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/01/is-there-nothing-this-president-wont.html
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Christian group wants 'self-mutilating' Obama appointee fired
The conservative American Family Association is calling on President Barack Obama to fire Amanda Simpson, Obama's transgender appointee to the Commerce Department, because the appointment "puts the weight of the federal government behind the normalization of sexual deviancy."
"'Amanda' is a biological male in every cell of his body, and no amount of surgical mutilation is ever going to change that," AFA President Tim Wildmon said in a press release circulated Thursday. "It's a mistake for our president to appoint such a sexually confused individual to a position of public responsibility."
http://rawstory.com/2010/01/christian-groups-slams-selfmutilating-obama-appointee/
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"Barack Obama needs to conduct diplomatic relations with his enemies, including Dick Cheney," opines self-important shit-head.
"Oh really?" say disgusted posters at fark.com:
I agree, if by "conduct diplomatic relations" they mean "kick in the crotch repeatedly until pants are bloody."
I thought we didn't negotiate with terrorists?
I say invite him to the White House and then arrest him on suspicion of terrorist activity, and then waterboard the living hell out of him. I personally have seen Dick Cheney making pipe bombs and have heard him talking about blowing up the Sears Tower. That should be enough justification to warrant his arrest, right?
I don't think the President should be associating with war criminals.
No, Dick Cheney needs to STFU.. He had 8 years to prove he knew what he was doing, all Cheney proved is that he's too incompetent to lead.
Cheney had his time in office. It's time for him to retire. Second of all he is a private citizen now, not some exiled president-in-waiting. He no more or less rates this kind of treatment and special attention than I do or you do.
Obama should only talk to Cheney when the former VP is thoroughly medicated and strapped to a gurney. Or maybe wearing a half-face mask and strapped to a handtruck.
Why would Obama take any advice from that accomplished failure? I mean seriously, look at the wars, the economy, the constitution...all shit.
Really. What the fuck? OK, he gets bonus points for calling the guy a lying traitor, but come on. After eight years of sending the country down the fucking toilet, why should anyone care what Cheney thinks?
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