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Well, that'd be nice, I suppose, if there was such a thing as "the people of Gaza" who are/were shooting at Israel. There is not. There is a few hundred, a few thousand at most, Hamas militants engaged in doing so. The rest of the people of Gaza *already* had no appetite for shooting at Israel, and all that being bombed and killed does to them is make their survivors have an *increased* appetite for shooting at Israel.
The way to deal with criminals is to take out the criminals. Not some random CARE worker and his six children. Not some U.N. compound full of women and children. All that happens when you take out non-criminals is that it motivates the survivors to decide that you're evil and need to yourself be taken out. That's not only common sense, that's what Israel's entire history demonstrates -- every time Israel has decided to do "collective punishment" of entire populations, what has happened is the radicalization of those populations. Where once there were only hundreds of criminals, suddenly there are thousands willing to take up arms against what they view as evil incarnate.
Killing innocents never turns out well. Given that IDF's current statistics indicate that over 90% of the Palestinians killed by Israeli action have no connection to Hamas, it seems clear that the end result of the action in Gaza will be to create nine new terrorists for every terrorist killed -- the nine new terrorists being the survivors of innocent people killed by Israel. But hey, Ehud Barack gets a big boost in the race for Israeli Prime Minister, so that's all that counts, eh?
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Obama says he always thought Bush was a "good guy"
WTF?
On Friday night, he told CNN's John King that he has "always thought" Bush was a "good guy." "I mean, I think personally he is a good man who loves his family and loves his country," said Obama.
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Mukasey worried about using the term "torture" - says it puts "good guy" Bush and the torturers at risk for criminal prosecution: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123214439576391669.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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Another middle finger on his way out the door
The U.S. Interior Department, acting in Bush's final days in office, proposed on Friday opening up 130 million acres off of California's coast to drilling for oil and natural gas, including areas off Humboldt and Mendocino counties and from San Luis Obispo south to San Diego. - sfgate
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Why George Bush belongs on Mt. Rushmore: http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2009/01/president-bushs-legacy-one-of-our.html
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That surge in gun sales that was reported right after Obama's election appears not to be waning.
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Here's a great metaphor Chris Matthews came up with when discussing the Bush legacy:
I found it interesting that the president, who admitted he was wrong about WMDs as a justification for war, called it a "disappointment." If a police officer in the line of duty in the middle of the night shoots a fellow because he thinks he's got a gun, it turns out he's got a wallet, your reaction if you're a police officer is not that you're disappointed he didn't have a gun, it's shame that even if it was a technical mistake that you've made, that you've killed a guy without reason. Why does the president use the word "disappointment" when he says they didn't have the WMD to justify us going in? I think it's an odd use of the word.
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As Bush goes out the door, he's attempting to flush embarrassing bits on the way:
Just five days before the end of his term, Bush's DOJ has dropped all charges against Andy Card's cousin - Susan Lindauer - whom they had accused of being an unregistered agent for Saddam Hussein's Iraq. By dropping the charges at this time, the Administration:
- Prevents Lindauer from proving at a trial that she was an intelligence asset working on behalf of the United States (though she says she'll sue for damages)
- Declines to try to prove that she was working on behalf of Saddam -and not the US - when she warned against invading Iraq
- Succeeds in preventing embarrassing information (both because of the link to Card, and because it included solid warnings against Iraq) from coming out while Bush was still in office
Basically, this appears to be a story about an intelligence op that got too embarrassing, so the Administration first accused Lindauer of working for Saddam, and then, when she talked about her ties to US intelligence, they accused her of being crazy and got her committed. And now, they are attempting to avoid a public trial in which she could prove her case.
You should really go read the letter she sent. No wonder they were embarrassed - she not only predicted 9/11 right down to the year and the season, she predicted just about every horrible consequence of invading Iraq, and was saying she could negotiate just about every concession from Iraq that their little hearts desired. But they didn't want concessions. They wanted war. So they threw the woman into prison for psychiatric evaluation for seven months, and did their level best to pretend she was the delusional one.
It's nice to see her determined to bring this to trial. Reacting to the news charges had been dropped, she said, "They think that they have defeated me by denying my day in court. It could not be more wrong. If we can't have a criminal trial, we're going to have a civil trial for damages."
This should get fun.
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They keep expanding this warning, and you should take it seriously: don't eat anything with peanut butter in it.
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Remember these "military analystists" that would go on the tube to spread Pentagon propaganda without disclosing that they were actually being briefed by the Pentagon?
Well as it turns out, the Pentagon investigated itself said there was "insufficient evidence to conclude that OASD(PA) conceived of or undertook the type of disciplined public relations effort" alleged by the program's critics. The report concluded that the program "was not a secret or covert effort," and thus not propaganda, which it defined as activities that "are covert, that is, the communications do not reveal to the target audience the government's role in sponsoring the material."
Alrighty then.
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Olbermann: Eight years in eight minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtnE4C9Gv5U&eurl=http://maruthecrankpot.blogspot.com/
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According to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, combining land and ocean surface temperatures, 2008 was the eighth warmest year since 1880.
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Joseph Galloway, McClatchy:
He's leaving the same way he arrived eight years ago: Clueless and somehow unable to discern up from down, right from left and right from wrong.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/59890.html
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It has to be difficult, when you've put so much energy into a man like George W. Bush for the last eight years, casting him as a patriot, a great leader, a war hero, a flyboy with a codpiece, a cowboy, and all the rest of the Village People, as OMG The Greatest Preznit Ever, to see him slink off into the darkness with an approval rating of 22%. That's worse than Nixon. That's worse even than Jimmy Carter. This isn't "intelligent people of goodwill can disagree". We're talking epic fail here, kids.
Of course it shouldn't surprise anyone who knew anything about George W. Bush's history. Before he became governor of Texas, a singularly powerless post, his history was one of drilling dry holes and squandering other people's money. Why anyone thought his presidency would be different will always be a head-scratcher to me. I suspect that if he had heeded the many warnings he received of an impending terrorist attack, and the 9/11 attacks had not occured, the talk that existed prior to that day of his presidency being over almost as soon as it began, after a Navy submarine being handled by Bush campaign contributors as a "reward" for their support collided with a Japanese fishing boat, killing four high school students and five other people, less than a month after Bush took office, would have continued.
But Bush DID ignore warnings, and the attacks occurred, and it presented this most cynical of Administrations with the perfect opportunity to implement the PNAC agenda in the middle east, and at least begin the march of this country towards an executive branch-centralized form of American totalitarianism. And indeed, if they'd been able to keep the economy held together with scotch tape and Elmer's glue long enough to get the election out of the way, the Bushian dream might have continued under John McCain and the lunatic Christofascist Zombie Sarah Palin.
And so George W. Bush will exit stage right on Tuesday, after having all but exited after November 4. He and his shills will no doubt continue their attempts to patch together some kind of legacy, no doubt spinning any Obama accomplishments that occur as being really THEIRS while simultaneously spinning any mistakes Obama makes as being his alone. But as we watch the country celebrate its "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" moment, juxtaposed against images from Kogelo of African drumming and dancing celebrations that are inspiring and fascinating if you are on my side of the fence and terrifying if you are not, we should not forget that the dark forces which brought George W. Bush to power are still out there and they do not intend to be thwarted for long. Because they, like Dick Cheney, don't care about polls. Because for them it's never about what the American people want. It's THEIR country, it's their due. They just allow us to live in it. For now.
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