From Memorial Day 2005: A Hole in the World
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MADRID - Spanish judges are boldly declaring their authority to prosecute high-ranking government officials in the United States, China and Israel, among other places, delighting human rights activists but enraging officials in the countries they target and triggering a political backlash in a nation uncomfortable acting as the world's conscience.
Judges at Spain's National Court, acting on complaints filed by human rights groups, are pursuing 16 international investigations into suspected cases of torture, genocide and crimes against humanity, according to prosecutors. Among them are two probes of Bush administration officials for allegedly approving the use of torture on terrorism suspects, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/05/24-0
Go Spain!
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It wasn't long ago when the Dimmocrats were the minority in the Senate, and at the time they said theywouldn't filibuster any vile Repug legislation or nominee because they were afraid the mean Repug bullies would eliminate cloture rules.
Now that they are in the majority with a Dem President, they seem downright gleeful about joining their former bully oppressors to filibuster - check out the Dumbocrat Jackass du jour, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, threatening to filibuster any 'activist' (read: Pro Choice) Supreme Court nominee.
Could you imagine how things would have gone over the last 8 years if the Dumbocrats either had some balls, understood party unity or weren't just freaking Repugs in disguise?
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While Dick Cheney, a man who never had (and never will have) Barack Obama's job (and who doesn't have any job at all anymore) has been elevated to the status of Obama's rival, the man who did have Obama's job, and who was (ostensibly) Obama's new rival's boss, also gave a speech yesterday - and the speech did not get front-page headlines.
For obvious reasons:
ARTESIA, N.M. -- It was a humbling moment for the former commander in chief: President George W. Bush was walking former first dog Barney in his new Dallas neighborhood when it stopped in a neighbor's yard for relief.
"And there I was, former president of the United States of America, with a plastic bag on my hand," he told a group of graduating high school students in New Mexico on Thursday. "Life is returning back to normal."
The speaking appearance was at Artesia High School, near Roswell, New Mexico. Bush spoke at a ceremony for recipients of scholarship money from an oilman's foundation.
Yup - while Obama and Cheney were talking about life and death and terrorism, Bush was talking about dog crap.
Then again, maybe that's appropriate. It's increasingly obvious from Cheney's public pronouncements that Bush wasn't really president when he was president.
(The nuanced version of that is that Bush wasn't really president for some of the time when he was president. On Keith Olbermann's show last night, Lawrence Wilkerson said of Cheney, "I think the speech he gave today indicated clearly to me who was the president of the United States from 2001 to 2005" - not 2009, although he didn't say who he thought was president after '05. David Brooks says today that we had a "Bush-Cheney period" until about 2005, but then "Cheney lost to Bush" - "Gradually, in fits and starts, a series of Bush administration officials - including Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Jack Goldsmith and John Bellinger - tried to rein in the excesses of the Bush-Cheney period." Presumably, though, that 2005 end date was just in certain areas of policy; Robert Draper's recent GQ article makes clear that, at Defense, Donald Rumsfeld pretty much did whatever the hell he wanted well into 2006, on issues both foreign and domestic.)
In any case, it occurs to me that certain Republicans undermined, and declared illegitimate, everyone we've elected president in the past generation. They abandoned Poppy Bush, particularly in the run-up to the '92 election. They fought mercilessly to delegitimize, disempower, and ultimately dislodge Clinton, although they fell short of that final goal. Then they undermined both winners in 2000 - first they manipulated the electoral process to ensure a sleazy Bush victory, then Cheney seized the reins from Bush and ran the place. (In that case, the president's loss of power appears to have been voluntary.) And now they're trying to strangle the Obama presidency in its crib - and I have very little confidence that anyone's going to get their hands off its neck in time.
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Testing Faith and God's Mercy: FAIL
As you most likely know, a court in Wisconsin found Leilani Neumann guilty of second-degree reckless homicide in the death of her 11-year old daughter, Kara, whose diabetes went untreated. Instead the girl's parents, relatives and friends prayed for her as her health deteriorated and she finally went into a coma. Neumann's husband, Dale, will be tried separately on similar charges in July.Actually, what I really wish was that people who had to test their own faith, or "God's mercy" would use themselves as the crash-test dummies and leave their kids (and everybody else) out of it.
Help yourself to a nice refreshing glass of comical Chuck Norris stupid: Outlawing Opinion
Chuck was silent when people were signing loyalty oaths to attend Bush events and the rest were banished to "free speech zones" blocks or miles away, but now that the Hate Crimes Prevention Act has passed, he must fight for the right to spew hateful rhetoric.
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Marketwatch: Morgan Stanley plans to raise the base salaries of its top executives to reduce its emphasis on bonuses and create a pay program balanced among fixed, short-term and long-term compensation.
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The revelation this month in GQ Magazine that Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary embellished top-secret wartime memos with quotations from the Bible prompts a question. Why did he believe he could influence President Bush by that means?
The answer may lie in an alarming story about George Bush's Christian millenarian beliefs that has yet to come to light.
In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France's President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.
In the same year, Bush had reportedly said to the Palestinian foreign minister that he was on "a mission from God" in launching the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and was receiving commands from the Lord.
Fun fact: George Bush Senior's nickname from the Skull & Bones? "Magog".
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Was Dick Cheney hunting in Madrid?
Getty Images
Naw, it was a protest against bullfighting and a sun tanning extravaganza!
MADRID, SPAIN - MAY 24: Anti-bullfighting demonstrators lay covered in fake blood at the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas on May 24, 2009 in Madrid, Spain. An estimated of 300 demonstrators protested for the abolition of bullfighting.
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To the surprise of well, no one, the conservatives of the Senate have announced their standardsfor a good Supreme Court Justice:
Sen. Jon Kyl made clear he would use the procedural delay if Obama follows through on his pledge to nominate someone who takes into account human suffering and employs empathy from the bench.
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Ben Nelson (D-NE) doesn't think Gitmo prisoners should come to US
Will Rogers famously said that he wasn't a part of an organized group, he was a Democrat. Sadly, when it comes to Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), that's even more true. I understand that Nelson is a conservative Democrat and comes from a historically conservative state, but there's no excuse for his abject stupidity in discussing Guantanamo and how to deal with the detainees there.
What's so odd about Nelson's NIMBY attitude is that he himself points out the flaws in his logic: we have and are successfully housing some really dangerous men (including both foreign and domestic terrorists, like Moussaoui and Eric Rudolph) in prisons on American soil without incident. Nelson just doesn't want them here.
Well, Sen. Nelson, I'd prefer that we have a country that wasn't full of criminals and people who wish us harm too. But unfortunately, that isn't reality. I live within 30 miles of San Quentin prison and Bay Area residents (for as liberal and hippy as our reputation is) do not seem to be all that concerned about our collective safety. The fear that these people will be on American soil so that we deal with them as befitting our justice system forgets that they will also be under heavy lock and guard as well.
And then in another annoyingly wrong nod to bipartisanship, Nelson lends credit to the Republican meme of Jack Bauer/the-ends-justify-the-means issue of keeping American safe is somehow the moral equivalent of respecting the rule of law: http://crooksandliars.com/node/28400
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World condemns North Korea nuclear test: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/24/north-korea-may-have-cond_n_207241.html
Thanks, Commander Codpiece, for making this possible.
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Why I hate Komodo Dragons - Volume 439,754
Komodo Dragon attacks in Indonesia terrorizing villages: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/24/komodo-dragon-attacks-in-_n_207183.html
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California, it has long been claimed, is where the future happens first. But is that still true? If it is, God help America.
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h/t Dick
As job losses rise, growing numbers of American homeowners with once solid credit are falling behind on their mortgages, amplifying a wave of foreclosures.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/business/economy/25foreclose.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
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h/t Dick
The Republican Party needs to broaden its base rather than move farther to the political right to make gains against President Barack Obama's Democrats, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE54N23Y20090524?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
" .....And that's how you win ... the party's intraparty battle of ideas," Rove said.
I'm with Dick, in challenging anyone to name a single one.
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