Thursday, May 19, 2011

Headlines - Thursday May 19

Watch this video.
 
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Morford: Hi! In three days you will all be dead
 
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Mario: See Newt Run. See Newt Spin. See Newt Implode.
 
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"In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier's full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means." CIA director Leon Panetta in a private letter to Senator McCain

Several things here. First, of course Panetta and McCain are both correct. Second, good job to Greg Sargent on the above scoop. Third, no one has stepped forward on my open challenge and supplied the name, quote and position of any non-political intelligence or military official who says waterboarding or torture is more effective and expedient than traditional methods of interrogation.

If the whole idea of torture is to provide a rapid resolution to a "ticking time bomb," wouldn't the Bushies have found Bin Laden while torturing KSM or any of the others?

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"Michelle Bachmann is the candidate for those who find Sarah Palin to be too intellectual."-- Bill Maher on Tweety's show
 
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A Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis finds that the 48 senators who sided with Big Oil received over $21 million in career oil contributions, while 52 senators who sided with the American people received only $5.4 million in contributions. Each senator who voted for Big Oil received on average more than four times as much oil cash as those who voted to end the subsidies.

It's not much of a shocker, but it's worth recalling while watching your paycheck dwindle and your taxes funneled to subsidies for Big Oil crime bosses. The above numbers are exactly why it happens.

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All that glitters is not gold - Serial adulterer and blow-job aficionado, Little Newtie sparkled yesterday when a gay rights protester dumped glitter on him. "Feel the rainbow, Newt," the protestor said, as he poured a box of glitter over the former speaker's head. "Stop the hate. Stop anti-gay politics. It's dividing our country, and it's not fixing our economy."

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After hearing that coffee cuts the risk of prostate cancer, he was taking no chances.
 
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Republicans for small government

Small enough to fit into your bedroom.

The Massachusetts legislature is conducting hearings Wednesday on a bill that would bar divorcing couples with children from carrying on a sexual relationship while in their own home.

The bill would prevent parents from "conducting a dating or sexual relationship within the home" until the divorce is final.

Although seemingly written to spare children the pain of seeing their parents become involved with other people, the bill's language is so broad it can easily be interpreted as forbidding sex entirely.

Parents that wish to have sex would need to get a judge's approval.

The next logical conclusion in the world of family-values Republicans would obviously be obtaining a judge's approval for the use of contraception or perhaps even social lubricants such as beer and wine.

The bill was sponsored by State Sen. Richard Ross, a Republican representing the Bristol, Norfolk & Middlesex District. Richard Ross became a state senator in May 2010 after winning a special election to succeed Scott Brown.

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The blind leading the stupid

Ladies and Gentlemen, Sarah Palin's ethics advisor:

The Alaska Supreme Court has suspended the law license of former U.S. Attorney Wevley Shea, finding "clear and convincing evidence" that he violated professional rules of conduct.

The high court on Wednesday adopted the recommendations of a disciplinary board, which called for Shea's Alaska license to be suspended for 25 months. The board also said Shea must demonstrate that he is "mentally fit" to return to practicing law before applying for reinstatement of his license.

Beyond spoof, this woman.

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Arguably the mot dangerous country in the world
 
That would be Pakistan. Although a relatively impoverished nation, the Pakistanis are ramping up their nuclear weapons program faster than any other nation in the world. They may soon be at the point where they could produce a nuclear weapon each week.

India is their big boogieman. The
Pakistanis have diverted much of the anti-terrorism money that we have given them to buy weapons for use against India. The Bush Administration connived at that.

Abu Muqawama wondered several days ago why there is such reverence in Pakistan for their military. That is a good question. Pakistan has lost every war that it fought with India. The Pakistani military is, like most third-world militaries, used mainly to stifle civil unrest and dissent.

Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism, they have supported Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the Mumbai Massacre in 2008 and the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001. That has been a foolish thing for them to do, for funding and training true-believer militants and then hoping that they will only aim their guns outside of the borders has proven to be a really dumb idea, as
that militancy has spread inside Pakistan.

It doesn't take much study to conclude that the greater threat to Pakistan comes from its own policies of supporting the religious extremists than from any risk of an Indian attack. And because of Pakistan's focus on producing large amounts of nuclear weapons, they threaten the rest of the globe.
 
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Studies released by a reproductive rights research group on Thursday show that unintended pregnancies cost U.S. taxpayers about $11 billion a year.

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We totally sympathize. ""Had to monitor Fox for a story. Can't. Deal. With. The. Blathering," the tweet said, before being deleted almost immediately, according to the Huffington Post. ... "An employee with access to the Secret Service's Twitter account, who mistakenly believed they were on their personal account, posted an unapproved and inappropriate tweet," Secret Service Spokesman Edwin M. Donovan told CBS News. ... "The tweet contained no vulgarity, security or pertinent agency information," he continued. "The tweet did not reflect the views of the U.S. Secret Service and it was immediately removed. We apologize for this mistake, and the user no longer has access to our official account." ... The US Secret Service made its debut on Twitter on May 9, saying the account would provide information about security on presidential visits and other high-profile events."
 
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Seems like our president realizes that talking to the Taliban is integral to getting our asses out of Afghanistan.

The administration has accelerated direct talks with the Taliban, initiated several months ago, that U.S. officials say they hope will enable President Obama to report progress toward a settlement of the Afghanistan war when he announces troop withdrawals in July.

A senior Afghan official said a U.S. representative attended at least three meetings in Qatar and Germany, one as recently as "eight or nine days ago," with a Taliban official considered close to Mohammad Omar, the group's leader.

State Department spokesman Michael A. Hammer on Monday declined to comment on the Afghan official's assertion, saying the United States had a "broad range of contacts across Afghanistan and the region, at many levels. ... We're not going to get into the details of those contacts."

The talks have proceeded on several tracks, including through nongovernmental intermediaries and Arab and European governments. The Taliban has made clear its preference for direct negotiations with the Americans and has proposed establishing a formal political office, with Qatar under consideration as a venue, according to U.S. officials.

An attempt to open talks with the insurgent group failed late last year when an alleged Taliban leader, secretly flown by NATO to Kabul, turned out to be a fraud. "Nobody wants to do that again," a senior Obama administration official said.

Other earlier meetings between Afghan government representatives and Taliban delegates faltered when the self-professed insurgents could not establish their bona fides as genuine representatives of the group's leadership.

But the Obama administration is "getting more sure" that the contacts currently underway are with those who have a direct line to Omar and influence in the Pakistan-based Quetta Shura, or ruling council, he heads, according to one of several senior U.S. officials who discussed the closely held initiative only on the condition of anonymity.

The officials cautioned that the discussions were preliminary. But they said "exploratory" conversations, first reported in February by the New Yorker magazine, have advanced significantly in terms of the substance and the willingness of both sides to engage.

Of course this has led to a torent of criticism from all the usual suspects -- but I haven't heard the "Obama's war now" crowd weigh in.

I realize that there is a contingent over there to my left that will never be happy until Presiident Obama puts on his Superman underoos and personally plucks every last American Soldier, Sailor, Airman and Marine out of that landlocked hellhole and flies him or her home to the waiting embrace of a loving family, and nothing short of that will ever do.

But a little intellectual honesty -- you know, an honest assessment of the facts as they are, not as we wish they were, and realistic evaluation of what is genuinely, inconveniently involved in getting out of there -- would be nice. Even the devil occasionally get's his due, afterall.

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Osama bin Laden Death Photos Look Strangely Like Rob Lowe

Ann Perkins?

Wonkette operative "Matt" sends us this screengrab from SFGate.com. Is the reason the U.S. government doesn't want us to see the bin Laden photos is that he's too handsome? Americans aren't going to be grossed out by them. They're going to join up with Al Qaeda to gawk at all the pretty, ageless gentlemen.

Feinstein said she didn't need photo proof that he was dead, and she hadn't intended to see the pictures. But when colleagues and others continued to press her, she made the trip.

Peer pressure wins out again! Next thing you know these Congress teenz are going to be smoking pot and having oral sex with each other! [SFGate]

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A suicide of Guantanamo Bay detainee Wednesday marks the 8th death at the prison camp. The detainee who committed suicide was an Afghan known as Inayatullah, who while being an admitted Al Qaeda member never had any charges filed against him.

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President Obama's reelection campaign is selling T-shirts and mugs touting that Obama was "made in America," and featuring the president's long-form birth certificate on its back. Joking about the birther conspiracy, ABC News' Jake Tapper Tweeted about the shirts, "Obama campaign refuses to release long-sleeve birth certificate shirt."
 
 

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