War is brutal and impersonal. It mocks the fantasy of individual heroism and the absurdity of utopian goals like democracy. In an instant, industrial warfare can kill dozens, even hundreds of people, who never see their attackers. The power of these industrial weapons is indiscriminate and staggering. They can take down apartment blocks in seconds, burying and crushing everyone inside. They can demolish villages and send tanks, planes and ships up in fiery blasts. The wounds, for those who survive, result in terrible burns, blindness, amputation and lifelong pain and trauma. No one returns the same from such warfare. And once these weapons are employed all talk of human rights is a farce.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/04-1
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Here's TeaParty.org founder Dale Robertson expressing himself at a rally. Not too surprising, is it? Bloodthirsty 'sport' is dying a slow death across Spain, as younger audiences turn away: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/catalonia-votes-to-ban-bullfighting-1855945.html
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Our priorities are FUBAR
Fun fact: the U.S. spends 10 times more on Afghanistan than airport security: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/04/us-spends-ten-times-more_n_410934.html
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Does this mean we'll turn our drones on Jordan now too?
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These are the people we should be afraid of.
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The Republican economy once again delivers:
The AP gathered data from the nation's 90 bankruptcy districts and found 1.43 million filings, an increase of 32 percent from 2008. There were 116,000 recorded bankruptcies in December, up 22 percent from the same month a year before.
While experts believe some of the increase is due to a natural recovery as consumers and attorneys become accustomed to a recent overhaul of bankruptcy laws, the numbers indicate clear correlations to recession-weary regions. Arizona saw the fastest increase, a jump of 77 percent from the year before, followed by Wyoming (60 percent), Nevada (59 percent) and California (58 percent).
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WaPo: Use of potentially harmful chemicals kept secret under law
Of the 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States -- from flame retardants in furniture to household cleaners -- nearly 20 percent are secret, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, their names and physical properties guarded from consumers and virtually all public officials under a little-known federal provision.
The policy was designed 33 years ago to protect trade secrets in a highly competitive industry. But critics -- including the Obama administration -- say the secrecy has grown out of control, making it impossible for regulators to control potential dangers or for consumers to know which toxic substances they might be exposed to.
If you're a corporation, you get to be treated as a "person" by the U.S. government and the legal system, are free from government regulation, and get bailed out when your financial decisions end poorly.
What I'm gonna do is turn myself into a corporation and a religious institution. Then I can do anything I want and I'll have a government and social safety net to protect me from myself. Sure beats being a regular guy who has to pay his bills, follow the law, and get ignored by his elected officials.
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According to Barry McCaffrey, former General, Drug Czar and frequent talking head, casualties in the Kabul Quagmire are expected to be in the range of 500 a month.
As for completing the training of the Afghan Army and National police, that should take 3-6 years if you are an optimist. Plenty of room for the young'uns he is teaching to get their tickets punched but we will surely need a restoration of the draft to make sure they have enough fodder.
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Imus calls BS on Hume
This morning, Hume's colleagues on the Fox Business network decided to do a little digging into his claims. The Don Imus show crew reported that Hume doesn't quite have his facts straight on Buddhism:
IMUS: Well, we checked this morning and unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately if you are a Buddhist, there is a path to recovery and redemption. Right? Well yes there is. The idea of redemption — nirvana under Buddhism — is achieving the state of being freed from greed, hate, and delusion..
What would Hume know about 'being freed from greed, hate, and delusion'? Disseminating those things is how he makes his living.
Man, that's good! I gotta congratulate Hume - if you can embarrass a screwup like Kristol and have a screwup like Imus call you on it, you are a world class screwup your own self! Heh.Appearing later in the show, Fox Business anchor Dagen McDowell began mocking Hume. "He might as well have just let out like an Ernest Angley-style 'be healed!' and 'to the Lord, for he is good! Put your hand on the TV!"
Imus noted that Hume's colleagues on the panel — including "the nut from wherever he's from — [Bill] Kristol" (who is not Christian) — appeared to be stunned into silence and "looking at their shoes" while Hume proselytized.
Keep sluggin' away at each other, F**sters. One of these days you might land one.
Welcome Back to the Bronze Age of Intelligence
...
In other words, we were punked by two Muslim Trojan horses within a week in spite of a $50 billion annual budget financing 16 intelligence agencies. Welcome back to the Bronze Age of intelligence gathering.
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Smelling a rat
This one really stinks:
In a new setback for a controversial wind farm proposed off Cape Cod, the NPS announced Monday that Nantucket Sound was eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, guaranteeing further delays for the project.
Known as Cape Wind, the project is the nation's first planned offshore wind farm and would cover 24 square miles in the sound, an area roughly the size of Manhattan. The park service decision came in response to a request from two Massachusetts Indian tribes, who said the 130 proposed wind turbines would thwart their spiritual ritual of greeting the sunrise, which requires unobstructed views across the sound, and disturb ancestral burial grounds.
The tribes — the Mashpee Wampanoag of Cape Cod and the Aquinnah Wampanoag of Martha's Vineyard — sought the listing last fall, shortly before a final federal decision on the project was expected.
Yeah and anyone care to suppose that the lawyers for the two tribes were not paid for by all of the rich folk in Hyannis who have been opposing the wind farm? And while you argue that point, I suppose you'll next argue that unicorns really exist and that George W. Bush wasn't the most retarded president in American history.
I call bullshit on this one. Arguing "well, our ancestors could have buried there dead out there ten thousand years ago" is an argument that could be used to stop any project anywhere. The next time some rich f**ker wants to build a mansion on Cape Cod, why not argue that some wandering Indian might have buried his uncle there in 7,500 BC?
If we are going to have energy sources other than fossil fuels, then the wind farms and solar plants and all of those projects have to go somewhere. You can bet your ass that a lot of the people who are against the Cape Wind project also are in favor of alternative energy. But it seems that the old rule still applies: They'll go where the wealthy don't have to look at them.
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Retriever saves 11-year-old boy from cougar attack: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Retriever+saves+year+from+cougar+attack+Boston/2401815/story.html
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Remember when Malkin published the addresses of those college kids - and some of them had to drop out of college because they were getting death threats in their dorm rooms? Well, she's done it again.
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That maverick-y quitting thing is catching on!
Raw Story tells us…
Parker Griffith, the Democratic House representative from northern Alabama who last week announced he was jumping ship to the Republicans, has lost his entire staff.
Saying her old boss had made a "mistake," Griffith's now-former chief of staff, Sharon Wheeler, announced Monday that the House representative's entire congressional staff — from press secretary to interns — had resigned in protest of their boss's new political leanings.
The 2010 midterm elections are only a few years or months away, and everyone is so excited to meet the latest batch of monsters preparing to ennoble our next Congress with their presence! Expect nine million posts just like this in the coming months. Who do we meet today? Well, a certain South Carolina county commissioner is considering a run for the House. His name is Paul Thurmond. Paul THURMOND. That's right. The father was a notorious spawner, and now his tadpoles will all take over the country and restore the Dixiecrats to prominence. Politico
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Single, comical, failed underpants bomber rewrites entire government agenda
Now hopefully you all didn't forget that in America, we only address domestic issues such as energy, transportation, health care, jobs, etc. when there is either a real or imagined lull in NATIONAL TERROR AND WAR issues about which we can do nothing to fully protect ourselves, did you? Because now the lull is over, so stop whining about your personal bankruptcy problems! This one retarded Nigerian crispy penis airplane man who may or may not have been involved with a sub-division of Al Qaeda has officially freaked out an entire nation and rewritten the Obama Adminstration's agenda, forever. It's a good thing Terrorists never expect a whiny titty baby nation to comically overrreact to every attempted plot they pretend to undertake, right?
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Via Crooks and Liars and Intoxination, a little story about the new mayor of Newark, New Jersey:
As the snow piled up on New Year's Eve, Jersey resident Ravie Rave didn't call a snow plow service to take care of her 65-year-old father's walk - she tweeted at Newark Mayor Cory Booker.Booker, who has more than a million Twitter followers, is a regular man-about-town when it comes to the microblogging service (remember that whole thing with Conan?), but this level of responsiveness is extreme, even for the sometimes to-good-to-be-true politician.
Booker, elected in 2008 to run one of the most economically-devastated cities in the nation, didn't make excuses about city services, didn't pass it to an underling, didn't blow it off.
He showed up before noon with shovels and salt and did it himself.
Now that's what I call a public servant!
Read the Twitter exchange here.
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Blue Girl : Something wicked this way comes
Allen Quist, a republican vying for the chance to run against Democratic incumbent Tim Walz in the Minnesota First delivered quite a Christmas message to the attendees of the Wabasha County Republican's Christmas Party in mid-December. The message? That the United States is in grave peril and faces a clear and present danger, but not from violenty extremists who want to kill us. We are in peril because Democrats are in the majority, and battling the radical extremists in the Democratic majority is more important, more vital to the survival iof the republic, than defeating al Qaeda.
Think about that. He would rather destroy my congressman, the very liberal Emanuel Cleaver, than Al Qaeda.
Keep reading: http://www.theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/4604/something-wicked-this-way-comes
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