My Current Anthem
Sporadic posting over dialup on the weekend.
Pearl Jam covering Dylan below the fold.
Have a nice day.
August 22, 2008
August 21, 2008
He's Got His
So obviously no one else needs protection in Louisiana:
An anti-discrimination order put in place by former Governor Kathleen Blanco won't be renewed by Governor Bobby Jindal.
The order prohibited various sorts of harassment and discrimination at all state offices, including discrimination by race, sexual orientation and political affiliation. It expires Friday.
Nice little GOP pawn-thing going there, Bobby...
Are YOU a Threat Yet?
Because soon you could be:
A Justice Department plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion, Democratic lawmakers briefed on the details said Wednesday.
"Clear basis for suspicion" - They make it sound so...necessary and all that. Skin tone will probably be enough.
The plan, which could be made public next month, has already generated intense interest and speculation. Little is known about its precise language, but civil liberties advocates say they fear it could give the government even broader license to open terrorism investigations.
And they fear that because? Well, it's a plan to allow agents to open terrorism investigations even without a clear basis for suspicion.
Funny thing about threats - when you're looking for them you can find them darn near anywhere.
August 19, 2008
The End Result of No-To-Taxes Sentiments
Bast knows that taxes, being the price of civilized society, suck.
But once you go down the "lower-taxes" road a bit too far, you will end up like Cumberland County, Tennessee:
As Tennessee's children went back to school to learn and prepare themselves for the future, only one county was so far in debt that it literally couldn't afford to open schools.
As of this post, children in Cumberland County are still not in school, victims of a reported $5 million budget shortfall.
Not a single media outlet seems to focus on how Cumberland County found itself abandoning its children. Many dutifully reported county leaders blaming everyone but themselves. But a quick look at the state's comptroller website tells the story.
Take a look at the property tax rates of every county in the state. In 2007, the Cumberland County Commission passed a budget that prioritized cutting property taxes above educating their own children. Cumberland County lowered their property taxes in 2007 by 40 cents to its current rate of $1.24 per $100 of assessed property value. It's the lowest property tax for any county in the state of Tennessee.
Last night, the Cumberland County Commission had 10 opportunities before a crowd of angry parents to raise tax rates to pay for educating their children. Tens times the county commission said no.
Kids.
In Tennessee.
Not allowed to go to school.
Good luck with all that.
KO's Special Comment Last Night
Listening to the GOP in general and Grampa's campaign staff has annoyed me more and more lately. It's almost gotten to the point where Grampa is acting like he's entitled to the presidency.
Which is why I am anxiously awaiting the debates. It wouldn't really surprise me if the guy flips out and tries to get physical with Barack.
It seems to be annoying Keith, as well:
The finest wrapup since W gave up golf "for the troops," but without the seemingly possible effingheimer.
August 15, 2008
The Book of Lies, A PDF of Truth
It's OK to be delusional and paranoid as long as you keep yourself sequestered in that old shack in the mountains, as long as you don't do any package mailing.
Heck, you can be as crazy as you want to be as long as you don't hurt anyone.
Once in a while, you can even publish a book so full of lies that even the MSM notices:
The "author" I'm talking about is a man named Jerome Corsi. In a book published last year, "The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada," Corsi claimed that George W. Bush was at the heart of a secret conspiracy to subsume the United States into a post-national, one-worldish North American Union. Corsi's writings on far-right blogs have been even more paranoid and delusional. He has written that pedophilia, for which he used a more graphic term, "is OK with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press." He has referred to Muslims as "ragheads."
In other words, typical...
Of course:
Corsi's dirty work is more difficult this time because Obama has already written his life story in the autobiographical "Dreams From My Father." Since he can't reveal anything about Obama's past, Corsi is reduced to reinterpretation -- or, at times, invention.
I find the first example of the "author's" idiocy especially telling:
A LITTLE RESEARCH DISPROVES EVEN CORSI’S MOST BASIC CLAIMS
LIE: “The year 1995 was a banner one for Obama. He had just married Michelle and the couple bought a Hyde Park condo, the first home Obama ever owned.”[p 145]
REALITY: OBAMAS MARRIED IN 1992 AND BOUGHT A CONDO IN 1993
10/3/92 Obama And Michelle Robinson Were Married. [Chicago Sun-Times, 10/3/07]
1993 Obama Bought a Condo for $277,550. [Chicago Sun-Times, 1/22/06]
You can download the pdf of truth here.
I've love to see this guy disappear from MSM coverage, but we all know he won't....fast enough.
August 13, 2008
Mukasey Quote
Attorney General Mukasey, what does constitute a crime?
“Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime,”
Huh? Let us go to Wikipedia:
Crime is the breach of a rule or law for which some governing authority or force may ultimately prescribe a punishment.
So...Not every violation (breach) of the law is a crime except for in reality and by definition, according the top lawyer in these United States.
This would be depending on the definition of is-level parsing, of course.
August 12, 2008
Tom Tomorrow ROCKS
August 11, 2008
Submit Your Question
Go to the candidate's outdated website here.
Submit a question.
Here's mine:
Contribution Question
So who do I talk to about a refund of my previous contributions, which were made in good faith that the candidate was being truthful with the nation?
The fact is that if John had gotten the nomination and then this came out the GOP would have had a bigger field day than they already are.
This is multi-leveled betrayal of high order.
Probably useless, but I feel better.
Got Outrage?
This is wrong:
WHAT is the secretary of Veterans Affairs thinking? On May 5, the department led by James B. Peake issued a directive that bans nonpartisan voter registration drives at federally financed nursing homes, rehabilitation centers and shelters for homeless veterans. As a result, too many of our most patriotic American citizens — our injured and ill military veterans — may not be able to vote this November.
So wrong that I can barely type from the sputtering.
Susan continues:
I have witnessed the enforcement of this policy. On June 30, I visited the Veterans Affairs Hospital in West Haven, Conn., to distribute information on the state’s new voting machines and to register veterans to vote. I was not allowed inside the hospital.
Outside on the sidewalk, I met Martin O’Nieal, a 92-year-old man who lost a leg while fighting the Nazis in the mountains of Northern Italy during the harsh winter of 1944. Mr. O’Nieal has been a resident of the hospital since 2007. He wanted to vote last year, but he told me that there was no information about how to register to vote at the hospital and the nurses could not answer his questions about how or where to cast a ballot.
I'm about to send an email to both of my senators and my representative-level wrongness.
As the current commercial exploitation of our armed forces continues, how would you think people who have actually seen what a cluster**** war is would vote?
Cokie Roberts has Knowledge
August 10, 2008
David Horsey Today
In order to archive the cartoons I select on a (nearly) daily basis, they will appear both as an entry and the regular spot in the right column.
August 09, 2008
Wrong Continues to Be Wrong
Some campaign tactics are abhorrent:
...to try and link him in a television ad to the Ku Klux Klan. The ad, which ran this week, juxtaposed an image of Mr. Cohen with that of a hooded Klansman. The issue the ad was trying to make was completely spurious.
And:
In the ad that followed the Klan garbage, the image of Mr. Cohen was displayed while viewers listened to the voice of a child praying, “Now I lay me down to sleep ...” The prayer is interspersed with the voice of a woman (clearly intended to sound African-American) who says:
“Who is the real Steve Cohen anyway? While he’s in our churches, clapping his hands and tapping his feet ...”
The emphasis on the word “our” is in the ad, which goes on to say, again spuriously, that Mr. Cohen voted against school prayer. The message is sick. It’s saying, in essence: Here’s this Jewish guy coming into “our” churches, tapping his feet and clapping his hands, when in reality he’s got a problem with letting “our” children pray.
AND:
The prayer ad came in an environment in which leaflets were being spread, apparently by an out-of-town minister, asking: “Why do Steve Cohen and the Jews hate Jesus?”
So...Time for the punchline. This noxious campaign was for:
Nikki Tinker, a black woman who challenged a Jewish congressman, Steve Cohen, in a Democratic primary in Memphis.
Ms. Tinker was a candidate with nothing substantive to offer. A corporate lawyer, she was not particularly knowledgeable about Iraq or the economy or other important issues of the day. The raison d’être of her campaign seemed to be that she was an African-American running in a district in which the majority of the voters were also African-American.
So, that's a disappointment.
There is a silver lining to this cloud, however:
The primary vote was Thursday. And in that Ninth Congressional District of Memphis, a district that is predominantly black in a city that has had its share of racial trouble — the city in which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed — Mr. Cohen won an astonishing 80 percent of the vote, sweeping all demographic categories and destroying the disgusting (yes, stomach-turning) campaign of Nikki Tinker.
If Tennessee can ignore idiotic campaigns, there may be reason for hope, after all.
August 08, 2008
Inflation?
Pharmaceutical companies make some amazing drugs for today's medical industry. Honestly, they do.
They also charge some amazing prices for those drugs:
Drug companies are quietly pushing through price hikes of 100% — or even more than 1,000% — for a very small but growing number of prescription drugs, helping to drive up costs for insurers, patients and government programs.The number of brand-name drugs with increases of 100% or more could double this year from four years ago, researchers from the University of Minnesota say. Many of the drugs are older products that treat fairly rare, but often serious or even life-threatening, conditions.
A couple of quotes later in the article:
"This does drive up the price of health care," says Alan Goldbloom, president of Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. "Hospitals are either eating the cost or passing it along to insurers, so you and I are paying it in increased premiums."
Just so you know that it is affecting you, personally.
"There's no simple explanation," says Stephen Schondelmeyer, director of the PRIME Institute at the University of Minnesota, which studies drug industry economics. "Some companies seem to figure no one is watching so they can get away with it."
Well, Stephen, I think you summed up the simplest explanation right there.
Just a reminder that, regardless of what Gordon Gekko said 21 years ago, greed is NOT good.
Lighter forms of it with different names are fine, but greed?
No.
August 05, 2008
Believe It?
If it concerns the current administration, I no longer know what not to believe:
A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.
Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.
OK, a backdated forgery. I can believe that.
The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”
No need to believe this since it's a fact in my mind that intelligence was cherry-picked and/or ignored at will.
The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’”
This administration planting stories in the foreign press. Stories that can then be discussed via this internet? Yep.
"Over the next few days, the Habbush letter continued to be featured prominently in the United States and across the globe," Suskind writes. "Fox's Bill O'Reilly trumpeted the story Sunday night on 'The O'Reilly Factor,' talking breathlessly about details of the story and exhorting, 'Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda—Saddam.'"
Bill-o blowing propaganda out of his >>bleep<<? Another known.
The White House plans to push back hard. Fratto added: "Ron Suskind makes a living from gutter journalism. He is about selling books and making wild allegations that no one can verify, including the numerous bipartisan commissions that have reported on pre-war intelligence."
Thou dost protest too much, methinks.
Even the Bard knows it and he's been paraphrased for a few hundred years...
August 04, 2008
What's a Pension?
In this day and age, just another contract to ignore, apparently:
At a time when scores of companies are freezing pensions for their workers, some are quietly converting their pension plans into resources to finance their executives' retirement benefits and pay.
In recent years, companies from Intel Corp. to CenturyTel Inc. collectively have moved hundreds of millions of dollars of obligations for executive benefits into rank-and-file pension plans. This lets companies capture tax breaks intended for pensions of regular workers and use them to pay for executives' supplemental benefits and compensation.
The practice has drawn scant notice. A close examination by The Wall Street Journal shows how it works and reveals that the maneuver, besides being a dubious use of tax law, risks harming regular workers. It can drain assets from pension plans and make them more likely to fail.
Seriously, do they want a class war? Or are we supposed to keep ignoring this?
Don't forget your torch & pitchfork at the door, kids...
One-Way Complaints
Leonard Pitts Jr. reminds us that there is injustice in loyalty justice:
This administration prizes ideological purity above ability. As a result, it has driven the presidency off a cliff, the country following close behind. These are not people who came to government to govern. No, these are true believers who came to government to institutionalize true belief, to make it permanent as a stain.
There is something Stepford, something robotic and chilling, in the glassy-eyed, ends-justifies-the-means faith of these young Bush aides in their own righteousness. Forget credibility. Forget competence. Just give us your answer, please: ``What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?''
It is a telling question. Apparently, these people have forgotten or never even knew: It wasn't George W. Bush they were supposed to serve.
Enjoying the breeze we find over the edge of this particular cliff?
Wealth Redistribution
Current GOP fearmongering:
In attempting to persuade voters that Obama is not American enough to be president, the right has renewed charges that he is a socialist in sheep’s clothing. Their newest claim that an Obama presidency would usher in an era of "wealth redistribution" seems a thinly veiled attempt to associate Obama with history’s socialist revolutionaries and communist dictators.
Actual GOP wealth redistribution:
The Pentagon said Friday it has notified Congress of proposed military sales to Iraq valued at more than nine billion dollars, including helicopters, tanks and armored vehicles.
Of course, there's the BuzzFlash way of looking at the same article:
Bush's Plan to End the Recession: "Iraq arms sales request worth over nine billion dollars." Of course, we -- the taxpayers -- will be paying for the American military-industrial complex weapons bought by the Iraqis, from which corporate contributors to the GOP will profit. What a criminal racket.
So...everything is going exactly according to plan.
August 01, 2008
The Progress Report Reports on Ethics
Rather, the lack of them in the case of Michele Bachmann (R-Complete Nutcaseland):
BACHMANN LIES: CLAIMS DEMOCRATS WON'T 'PASS THE TAX CREDIT FOR SOLAR AND WIND': During an interview with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) yesterday, right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham asserted that Congressional Democrats "are acting as the ultimate obstructionists" on energy policy. Bachmann agreed, saying that "this is mission accomplished for them" because they don't want to "increase American energy resources." Declaring that the Congressional Democrats are "so strange," Bachmann then claimed that they wouldn't "pass the tax credit for solar and wind," despite being "the big solar/wind people." But this claim is flatly false. On Wednesday, "for the fourth time this summer," Senate conservatives blocked action on legislation that would provide "tax credits to an array of renewable energy entrepreneurs." The blocked legislation would have extended "some $18 billion worth of renewable energy tax credits." In fact, when the House passed the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 in May, Bachmann voted against it, along with the majority of House Republicans. The bill was then filibustered by Senate Republicans in June. What's truly "so strange" is that Bachmann can act as an ex post facto advocate for legislation she actively opposed.
Not much I can add to that...
Boycott Wal-Mart
Seriously, it can be done. I was a junk fiend for most of my life and I understand the appeal of (cheap, for now) Chinese-made junk.
It's been three months since I darkened their door.
I'm still alive.
Today, this was reported:
In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if store workers unionize, the paper said.
About a dozen employees who attended meetings in seven states said executives argued employees would have to pay hefty union dues and get nothing in return, and might have to go on strike without compensation. They also warned that unionization could force the company to cut jobs as labor costs rise, the Journal reported.
The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who have run the meetings didn't tell those attending how to vote in the November elections, but made it clear that voting for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, would be tantamount to inviting unions in, the Journal said.
There's nothing quite like threatening a person's livlihood to make a person angry.
I'm pro-union and I approve this message.
July 31, 2008
Frustrated?
The rampant politicization of the Department of Justice has some people shaking their heads, obviously:
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) expressed dismay over the ease with which disgraced Justice Department officials were able to avoid punishment:
"They need only change jobs to avoid responsibility."
*
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) was frustrated with the fact that some of "the so-called Bushies" are still holding high-level positions with the department:
"It looks like they got away with it scot-free."
*
Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) was somewhat incredulous about the supposed lack of involvement of high-level officials.
"How was this allowed to continue in an agency that has such a long history of excellence and non-partisanship?"
And that's all well and good, of course.
Personally, I like The Daily Show's take on the situation:
July 26, 2008
Believe Half of What You See
Especially when it's on Fox.
...at least he's got an OH-SO-COOL Facebook pic. He's probably talking to Jack Bauer right there...
Goodness Gracious!
At Sadly, No! we find that if a demmycrat is popular, he must have one hell of a body count:
This isn’t one of those snarky jokes we’re so often accused of making. It’s real, and it’s likely coming soon to an inbox near you (replete with nine-hundred AOL and Hotmail addresses in the ‘cc’ column).
You’ve heard of the Clinton Body Count, and now it’s time for…
The Obama Death List
And, again, Wheeee!
July 18, 2008
WTF of the Day
Here's how to save social security - MEANS TESTING.
John McCain, married to hundred-millionaire Cindy Budweiser (Who is making a killing off the selling of A~B) is taking his social security.
You know, the safety net for the old and infirmed.
I guess he fits that description.
Not nice, I know, but why should he even be taking it?
GWoT News
Because we're funding this stuff, as well:
The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.
*
Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.
The effort has been slowed, however, by congressional resistance to using counterterrorism funds for the project and by lengthy internal deliberations about a series of demands for modifications by Air Force generals. One request was that the color of the leather for the seats and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another was that the color of the table's wood be darkened.
Changing the seat color and pockets alone was estimated in a March 12 internal document to cost at least $68,240.
Kind of like $3,000 ashtrays...
To be honest, when I first read the term "comfort capsule" the presidential emergency egg from Escape from New York flashed in my head.
Now that I've read the story, I want senior officials and civilian leaders to fly commercial.
In coach.
Between a colicky baby and conversational brake lining salesmen from Cleveland.
Contractors in Iraq
An email update from Eric Alterman got my blood pressure up a bit yesterday:
Things I learned reading "Iraq Case Sheds Light On Secret Contractors" ($)
I've read enough about the funding outlays for shoddy work and criminal acts of the contractors in Iraq to barely be surprised by reading these things.
It still pisses me off, though, especially when they're killing our soldiers, as well:
Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal Army documents.
During just one six-month period — August 2006 through January 2007 — at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.
And while the Pentagon has previously reported that 13 Americans have been electrocuted in Iraq, many more have been injured, some seriously, by shocks, according to the documents. A log compiled earlier this year at one building complex in Baghdad disclosed that soldiers complained of receiving electrical shocks in their living quarters on an almost daily basis.
Emphasis added for your own head'splodin' pleasure.
Oh, did I mention the company? KBR
I'm sure they have an explanation:
Heather Browne, a KBR spokeswoman, would not comment about a company safety study or the reports of electrical fires or shocks, but she said KBR had found no evidence of a link between its work and the electrocutions. She added, “KBR’s commitment to the safety of all employees and those the company serves remains unwavering.”
>>ahem<<
Or not...
July 14, 2008
It Certainly Doesn't Help With the BDS*
*Bush Derangement Syndrome, that is, but I'm going to try and throw this song at you on at least a weekly basis...
July 13, 2008
A Rich Sunday
I look forward to reading Frank Rich every Sunday. You should realize that by now.
This week's column ends on a particular note, to say this least:
In last Sunday’s Washington Post, the national security expert Daniel Benjamin sounded an alarm about the “chronic” indecisiveness and poor execution of Bush national security policy as well as the continuing inadequacies of the Department of Homeland Security.
Keep reading and feel the dread.
July 03, 2008
More Email from Kirk
More and more every day, believe me.
And it's good stuff that I wish I had time to digest so I could throw out some words around here, but it's an extremely busy time of the year around here.
This one, however, I will post:
SIGN OUR PETITION TO THE INSPECTOR GENERAL OF THE VALast week VoteVets.org and CREW exposed an email from a Temple, Texas VA administrator urging psychologists to diagnose veterans with "adjustment disorder" over PTSD, as a cost-cutting measure.
That's the trouble with running a government like a business. Cost-cutting breaks people more often than not...
Please click here and sign the petition.
July 01, 2008
KOSC - FISA & Barack
Keith's at it again...
June 30, 2008
Understatement of the Day
It's somewhere in this quote:
A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.
The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism.
I know, I know...the whole article is a shocker, but there is a sentence fragment in there that should make you do the full-forehead slap...
The Goal IS Confusion
Jim Peterman IS a very good and proud American:
FINDLAY, Ohio -- On his corner of College Street, Jim Peterman stares at the four American flags planted in his front lawn and rubs his forehead. Peterman, 74, is a retired worker at Cooper Tire, a father of two, an Air Force veteran and a self-described patriot. He took one trip to Washington in 1989 -- best vacation of his life -- and bought a statue of the Washington Monument that he still displays in a glass case in his living room.
He believes a smart vote is an American's greatest responsibility.
So far, so good, right?
Then we get to the second sentence of the short paragraph and start to sense trouble:
Which is why his confusion about Barack Obama continues to eat at him.
On the television in his living room, Peterman has watched enough news and campaign advertisements to hear the truth: Sen. Barack Obama, born in Hawaii, is a Christian family man with a track record of public service. But on the Internet, in his grocery store, at his neighbor's house, at his son's auto shop, Peterman has also absorbed another version of the Democratic candidate's background, one that is entirely false: Barack Obama, born in Africa, is a possibly gay Muslim racist who refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
"It's like you're hearing about two different men with nothing in common," Peterman said. "It makes it impossible to figure out what's true, or what you can believe."
Our president once referred to this method:
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."—Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005
Unfortunately, repetition works for the truth and non-truth, as well as complete and utter bullshit.
Unfortunately.
June 26, 2008
There Is Evil In America
Today's example is named Varsha Mahender Sabhnani of Muttontown, N.Y.:
She was convicted:
Varsha Sabhnani, 46, was convicted with her husband in December on a 12-count federal indictmentinvoluntary servitude and harboring aliens. that included forced labor, conspiracy,
The trial provided a glimpse into a growing U.S. problem of domestic workers exploited in slave-like conditions.
The victims testified that they were beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, and forced to climb stairs and take freezing showers as punishment. One victim was forced to eat dozens of chili peppers against her will, and then was forced to eat her own vomit when she couldn't keep the peppers down, prosecutors said.
And, should you wonder if the "victims" are making this stuff up, let's take a look at their compensation package for their labor in these United States:
The women, whose relatives in Indonesia were paid about $100 a month — the women themselves received no cash — said they were tortured and beaten for misdeeds that included sleeping late or stealing food from trash bins because they were poorly fed. Both women also said they were forced to sleep on mats in the kitchen.
Of course, Varsha was innocent until proven guilty, of modern slavery. I'd say she deserves some prison time.
June 20, 2008
This Is Dedicated to the CM-IC*
*Congressional Military-Industrial Complex, that is...
June 19, 2008
Nice Little Olbermann Report
I'd like to ask you to take 9 minutes to learn a little bit about the energy situation we're in:
As I've said, it's all going according to plan...
June 17, 2008
What He Said
The Rude One opines:
While, like so many reports and investigations do these days, this only confirms what we already knew, we now can say that, in our American name, innocent people were held in cells, separated from their families, lives, and communities, interrogated, often being beaten and tortured, and they had no legitimate way of saying, "Yo, not a killer over here."
When conservatives go ballistic over last week's Supreme Court decision saying that detainees actually can challenge their detention, when John McCain calls it "one of the worst decisions in history," they are saying that America should not be any better than its enemies, that innocence is a technicality, and that the powerless deserve their fates.
It's hard being the good guys. We should try harder.
Here's Your Legacy, Mr. President
...and may god have mercy on your soul for it:
In a home movie, 1st Sgt. Jeff McKinney sings softly to his new son while his wife, Chrissi, gives the baby a bath. McKinney teases tiny Jeremy about this, his first nude video.
Someday, McKinney says, the family will show off the footage to Jeremy’s first girlfriend.
“Cause that’s how our parents did us,” McKinney sing-songs. “You’ll be 15, 16 years old, and you have your first date ... .”
It won’t ever play out that way, though. The McKinneys made the movie during his two weeks of home leave halfway through what was supposed to be a 15-month Iraq war deployment. He spent the break bonding with his new son and talking to his 18-year-old son, James, about going to college.
But everything changed July 11 in the bright sunshine of Adhamiyah, Iraq. That day, while out on a simple meet-and-greet patrol, McKinney stepped out of his Humvee and yelled.
“F--- this!”
He raised the barrel of his M4 to his chin and squeezed off one shot.
Read the rest here.
June 13, 2008
Olbermann's Special Comment
Because it is a good one.
June 12, 2008
Educational Progress
It would have been nice if he hadn't needed on-the-job training:
President Bush's slow and painful schooling in constitutional law continued today as the Supreme Court ruled for the third time in four years that he had violated a basic precept of the American legal system.
The court ruled 5-4 that Bush cannot deny prisoners at Guantanamo Bay the right to challenge their detentions in federal district court. Some of them have been held already -- without charges -- for more than six years.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, determined that the prisoners in the U.S.-run facility "have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus. . . ."
"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law," Kennedy wrote.
In other words:
"Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither."
Or:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
I'm not saying, I'm just saying...That this country was built as a beacon of hope and freedom. Every day we continue to deny that truth ourselves brings us down another peg.
Shhh! The Idiots are Thinking!
Speaking of oxymorons:
With the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate clinched, large sections of the white supremacist movement are adopting a surprising attitude: Electing America’s first black president would be a very good thing.
It’s not that the assortment of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anti-Semites and others who make up this country’s radical right have suddenly discovered that a man should be judged based on the content of his character, not his skin. On the contrary. A growing number of white supremacists, and even some of those who pass for intellectual leaders of their movement, think that a black man in the Oval Office would shock white America, possibly drive millions to their cause, and perhaps even set off a race war that, they hope, would ultimately end in Aryan victory.
As idiotic as that sounds you just know that these guys believe it. Just what the hell is an intellectual white supremacist anyhoo? The one that can tie his shoes without losing a finger?
I don't think I can say anymore without resorting to multisyllabic profanity, so good night...
June 11, 2008
Sometimes It's Best To Allow Others To Speak
Especially when you're too pissed off to type yourself.
Last night I went over to The Rude Pundit (Click here for uncensored version):
F***ed New Orleans (Part Whatever of a Neverending Series):
Whenever it gets so hot up here in the Northeast that the rats are bursting into flames and the streets smell of dog sh*t and ball sweat, the Rude Pundit thinks fondly of New Orleans, remembering the many nights spent with dancing bodies glistening with that perspiration sheen, of downing speed (back when we called it "speed") with bottles of Dixie beer in sh*tty Fat City bars where fights would inevitably break out because no amount of alcohol could make you feel fully human in that inhuman heat. Alas, alas, the pain of such memories, and not just because of busted knuckles and splintered chairs.
As I read it, I could feel just how true it was and that was pretty enraging in a lot of ways.
Then today, we get another dose regarding New Orleans, and this time I will direct you to jurassicpork at Welcome to Pottersville (Again, here):
How would you feel if you worked for a New Orleans-based charity only to find out that FEMA, after warehousing emergency supplies for two years, sold them off to other government organizations across 16 states (Louisiana wasn't among them. Apparently nobody ever asked Unity of Greater New Orleans charity if they wanted to pass, too.)?
Especially after hearing almost two and a half years ago of Katrina victims being denied emergency housing because the trailers got stuck in the mud in Arkansas? Especially after hearing during the actual crisis that emergency supplies were getting blocked and redirected by FEMA officials in a manner reminiscent of the military dictatorship ruling Burma?
Seriously, this is an incredible example of just how Kanye was right, it seems.