Headlines - Thursday September 9

 

Here's a little history on how he got kicked out of a church he founded in Germany for preaching hate.

This guy isn't Fred Phelps. Fred Phelps is a joke, and has no followers outside his family. This guy can, apparently, build a flock, control those people and spread his message of hate. Hell, the number of people listening to this creepy fucker mushroomed from about fifty to fifty million - perhaps a couple of billion, given the international attention he has attracted - by taking a radical position he knew would spark outrage and get a lot of attention.

He is preaching hate and doing the most vile, disgusting thing that he could think of for the television cameras because he has an end-times delusion. He thinks he can hasten the second coming and bring about armageddon. Appeals to this man to please stop this madness because it will increase violence and cause a bunch of people to get killed. To this guy and other apocalyptic fetishists like him, that's a feature not a bug.

My hope is that the local authorities stop this nonsense on the grounds that the burn permit was denied. As soon as he breaks out the blue-tips and the lighter fluid, they ought to bust out the handcuffs and stuff him and any followers who get froggy in a paddy wagon.

If what he has planned isn't Disturbing the Peace, on every level imaginable, I don't know what is.

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If you aren't rich, and you vote for republicans You are a f**king imbecile. When republicans rule, the rich get the goldmine and you get the shaft. When Democrats govern, the gap between rich and poor narrows.

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Bob Gates will bring the traditional 9/11 cake

 

Obama To Celebrate 9/11 At America's Lamest Ground Zero

Whew, it looks like Obama won't have to stay home and watch Loose Change on YouTube this year on 9/11. After hearing Obama had nowhere to go to spend this most sacred of holidays, the nice generals invited him to their little gathering at the Pentagon. Fortunately, he lives just a 10-minute drive away, so he won't have to stay overnight or make awkward small talk after the party's over.

Everyone agrees that the Pentagon is the worst place to celebrate 9/11. That's because much of the damage done there was repaired less than a year after the attack — a direct insult to modern America's "can't-do" spirit. The proper response to a terrorist attack is to leave, for most of the following decade, a festering hole in the city fabric where people can come and get pissed off and scream about bullshit. There's no place for "moving on" in America's death-grievance cult.

Anyway, Obama had a low-key 9/11 at the Pentagon last year too, so it's becoming a bit of a tradition. Michelle will be off in Pennsylvania doing "first lady stuff" (make-outs) with Laura Bush, and Joe Biden will be in Lower Manhattan getting into drunken brawls with angry teabaggers. The President, meanwhile, will just smile awkwardly for some photo ops, grab a bite at the Ground Zero Cafe, say a few Muslim prayers, and then head home. [NBC] 

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A whistleblower who worked for a company that holds contracts worth over a billion dollars to supply translators to the military in Afghanistan has come forward and spilled the beans: over 1/4 of the translators the company has provided can't speak the Afghan languages, but were sent to the battlefield anyway.

For the entirety of the war in Afghanistan, civilians have done the bulk of the translating. I know what you're going to say...Don't we have DLI (the Defense Languages Institute) for that? Well, we're supposed to. But apparently during the Bush regime, someone saw an opportunity for a friend or relative to get in on the war-profiteer bucks that seemed to flow non-stop, even as troops in iraq had to up-armor their own Humvees with scrap metal and bulletproof glass that they scavenged from landfills and Rummy told them to fuck off, they were the army we had, not the army he wished he had.

A good interpreter is as important as a weapon that doesn't jam and sturdy body armor. Without a capable interpreter, soldiers can't glean information that might keep them alive. The whistleblower relates instances of messages being passed off to soldiers as they make their way through a settlement or village that there is an ambush waiting for them up the road that they walked right into because their interpreter couldn't interpret.

That is outrageous. It is inexcusable. And it is exactly the sort of war profiteering that is costing you and me, as taxpayers, billions of dollars. Maybe the deficit hysterics ought to look at the military contracts that have been bleeding the treasury dry for the entire duration of the wars.

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Can we do this ...

To George Bush when he goes somewhere?

Sounds like Blair can't run away from his own history. First he was pelted with eggs and shoes in Dublin then he canceled an book signing event in London. Now that protesters discovered he was preparing for a party at the posh Tate Modern in London, he canceled his showing there as well.

...

If we can't get the war criminals to The Hague, maybe we can keep them under "house arrest". At the very least, give them something to think about before they leave the house.

 

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...free speech allows us to condemn the actions of the Dove World Outreach Center and all the people supporting International Burn a Koran Day. It allows us to call them f**ktarded. It allows, say, the Rude Pundit to start a Facebook group. One that's called, for the sake of argument, and for shits and giggles, "Burn a Bible on Christmas." It's a stupid and childish response to a stupid and childish action. God or Allah or Whoever or Nobody bless the First Amendment for allowing us to "nyaah" in response to their "nyaah." And, perhaps, it might drive a few fundamentalists over at the Dove Center a little nutsy.

So join up. Shit, it's Facebook. No one's gonna check to see if you actually burn a Bible. But it's saying back to Pastor Yosemite Sam, "Yeah, we got your free speech right here." And the cool part? We do.

(By the way, as far as General Petraeus saying that Pastor Yosemite Sam shouldn't exercise his right to free speech because it might endanger our troops in Afghanistan, oh, sweet General, what endangers our troops in Afghanistan is having troops in Afghanistan.)

 

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Take a moment and learn about hands-only CPR. One thing the video doesn't mention: the recommended rate of 100 compressions per minute is approximately the same rhythm as "Staying Alive".

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John Cole: We could probably use those jobs

NY Times is full of great news tonight:

Now, Changsha and two adjacent cities are emerging as a center of clean energy manufacturing. They are churning out solar panels for the American and European markets, developing new equipment to manufacture the panels and branching into turbines that generate electricity from wind. By contrast, clean energy companies in the United States and Europe are struggling. Some have started cutting jobs and moving operations to China in ventures with local partners.

The booming Chinese clean energy sector, now more than a million jobs strong, is quickly coming to dominate the production of technologies essential to slowing global warming and other forms of air pollution. Such technologies are needed to assure adequate energy as the world's population grows by nearly a third, to nine billion people by the middle of the century, while oil and coal reserves dwindle.

But much of China's clean energy success lies in aggressive government policies that help this crucial export industry in ways most other governments do not. These measures risk breaking international rules to which China and almost all other nations subscribe, according to some trade experts interviewed by The New York Times.

Can someone explain why we, the United States, feel free to act like a rogue nation in basically every other regard- we torture, we'll bomb and invade whoever we want, when we don't ignore the UN we are telling them what to do, etc., but we draw the line here?

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Mission Accomplished - the never ending series

We're Winning! We've won!! The last combat troops have left....except for a few more leaving in boxes.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday and nine were wounded in a firefight outside an Iraqi Army base north of Baghdad. They were the first casualties since President Obama announced the end of combat operations in Iraq last week. Two days earlier, U.S. soldiers helped Iraqi soldiers push back "a highly coordinated attack by insurgents" in Baghdad.

They died protecting our oil freedoms!

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Sarah Palin wishes you a very happy Jew Year!

Every Jew in America — nay, every Jew throughout the world, today and across all time — wants one thing on Rosh Hashanah: a message from Sarah Palin. Fortunately, thanks to the magic of Facebook and Palin's recent rediscovery of her Jewish heritage, this is now possible! And now that the fact that Sarah does not write her own Facebook ramblings is out in the open, this message isn't even all that word salad-y, which is good, because the Jews tend to be smart people who don't appreciate shapeless snowbilly prose. What magical words does Sarah have for the Chosen People — and how will her non-chosen fans react? READ MORE »

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Caribou Barbie goes out on a limb

Glad to see she waited to see which way the wind was blowing:

Dontcha love the militaristic language? "Stand down"? WTF?

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Wisco: A Fight Worth Having.

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Another incident of rewarding bad and illegal behgavior: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvsVZdO6FJU&feature=player_embedded#!

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I'm not sure how 9/11 became a Republican occasion, but I can think of about a thousand other occasions I'd rather be associated with than the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil ever. Nevertheless, the Republican fetish for 9/11 is now becoming an all out effort to brand it as a for-profit endeavor.

ThinkProgress has the rundown:

– This weekend, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are hosting a rally in Anchorage, Alaska to mark the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Ticket prices range from $73.75 per person (including taxes and fees) to a high of $225. As the Hill newspaper reports, "there was no indication as to whom or what the proceeds will go."

– Disgraced lobbyist Ralph Reed is using his consulting firm Century Strategies to host a "Faith and Freedom Conference and Strategy Briefing" with an assortment of conservatives, including Brent Bozell, Tony Perkins, Rich Lowry, Tucker Carlson, Grover Norquist, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA), Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), Erick Erickson, and others. The event is on September 10th-11th, and costs $95 for early registration.

– Newt Gingrich is using the September 11th anniversary to unveil a new movie called "America At Risk," which Gingrich says will drive the "national dialogue" about President Obama's failure to address the rise of "Radical Islam" and its attempt to impose Sharia law on the United States. Gingrich's website notes that the public can "pre-order your copy now for just $19.95 plus $4 shipping."

These people ought to be ashamed on themselves. Unless the proceeds are going to the families of the victims (who Glenn Beck hates), I can't think of anything more gratuitous and shameless -- other than, perhaps, a "genuine slivers of Ground Zero" mail order business.

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The Bush Tax Cuts

It appears the President is hanging tough on this one.

President Obama on Wednesday will make clear that he opposes any compromise that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy beyond this year, officials said, adding a populist twist to an election-season economic package that is otherwise designed to entice support from big businesses and their Republican allies.

Mr. Obama's opposition to allowing the high-end tax cuts to remain in place for even another year or two would be the signal many Congressional Democrats have been awaiting as they prepare for a showdown with Republicans on the issue and ends speculation that the White House might be open to an extension. Democrats say only the president can rally wavering lawmakers who, amid the party's weakened poll numbers, feel increasingly vulnerable to Republican attacks if they let the top rates lapse at the end of this year as scheduled.

…by proposing to extend the rates for the 98 percent of households with income below $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals — and insisting that federal income tax rates in 2011 go back to their pre-2001 levels for income above those cutoffs — he intends to cast the issue as a choice between supporting the middle class or giving breaks to the wealthy.

This should be a no-brainer.  Extending the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% adds 700 billion to the deficit so if Dems back down on this one, it'll be difficult to respect them in the morning.

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"I trust in the American people's capacity to get beyond all this nonsense and focus on is this somebody who cares about me and has a vision for the future?"- Obama, proving what a terrible politician he really is, Link

Barack, have you ever paid any attention to American politics?
Voters are total tools - they have no brains at all.

They vote for the guy they'd like to have a beer with.

In 95% of presidents, they voted for the taller dude for Christ's sake.

Between John Kerry and Monkey Bush, voters think Bush was the war hero.

Voters in Carolina this year thought they were voting for Al Green, the Gospel singer.

Bush won primaries in 2000 because voters thought they were voting for his dad.

Bush "won" Florida because the Jews there "voted" for goddamn Pat Buchanan.

One fourth of America thinks you are a MUSLIM FROM KENYA
and you claim voters are smart? Are you f-ing kidding me??

How can such a smart man be this naive?

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The Guardian: Rupert Murdoch's UK newspaper widely used phone tapping.

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