November 30, 2009
Is Osama bin Laden dead?
Excerpt:
As President Obama prepares to escalate the war in Afganistan, staff members for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Democratic majority prepared a report at the request of the chairman, Sen. John Kerry.
The only thing in the report that has ever been replicated in the media and other intelligence reports is that Osama bin Laden was cornered at Tora Bora in Dec. 2001. The rest is speculation.
The report, however, seems to overlook the fact that bin Laden was suffering from diabetes, Hepatitus C, and an “untreated lung complication” and would have had to have “walked unmolested” out of the rugged mountains of Afghanistan under the surveillance of “thousands” of special operations troops with at least one kidney dialysis machine in tow.
The latest report also ignores numerous reports in both mainstream U.S. media and international media that bin Laden is probably dead. In Jan. 2002, Pakistani president Gen. Pervez Mushharraf said in an interview with CNN, “I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a … kidney patient.” The BBC reported on July 18, 2002 that the FBI’s counter-terrorism chief, Dale Watson, says he thinks Osama bin Laden is “probably” dead. Afghan president Harmad Karzai concurred when he said on CNN’s Late Edition on Oct. 8, 2002, “I would come to believe that [bin Laden] probably is dead.” Before Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, she also said bin Laden is dead.
With our economy in shambles, our deficit and national debt skyrocketing, our infrastructure crumbling and our military stretched to the limits, Americans must ask themselves: Is this one man really worth it? Especially considering the real possibility that he may already be dead?
One thing is certain, if Osama bin Laden’s intent was to destroy this nation, he did a nice job of it – thanks to shortsighted leaders in this country that failed, and continue to fail to see the long term implications of a perpetual war chasing what may amount to be nothing more than a long-dead boogeyman.
Read more here: http://www.examiner.com/x-23316-Madison-Independent-Examiner~y2009m11d30-Is-Osama-bin-Laden-dead
Many, many links to articles from 2001-2002 in this one. I did a lot of digging!
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November 29, 2009
November 28, 2009
November 27, 2009
Tom Coburn’s Shame
If this lunatic has any capacity for shame, that is…
“Thirteen major military and veterans groups have joined forces to try to force one senator — Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — to release a hold that he has placed on a major veterans benefits bill.
Coburn has been identified by Senate aides as the lawmaker preventing consideration of S 1963, the Veterans’ Caregiver and Omnibus Health Benefits Act of 2009, by using an informal but legal practice of putting a hold on a bill.”
– Rick Maze, “Coburn Named As Senator Holding Up Vets Bill,” Marine Corps Times, Nov. 3, 2009.Finally, sanity prevailed in spite of the embarrassing Coburn…
“The U.S. Senate unanimously approved legislation Thursday to provide financial aid to caregivers of disabled veterans, ending a stand-off with Sen. Tom Coburn that drew national attention.” […]
“Coburn had objected for weeks to passing the bill using the Senate’s fast-track process, holding out for the opportunity to offer amendments.”
– Chris Casteel, “U.S. Senate Approves Veterans Bill,” The Daily Oklahoman, Nov. 20, 2009.
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November 26, 2009
9/11 text messages: Wikileaks releases pager messages from government officials
Excerpt:
The whistle blowing web site, Wikileaks.org, published over 550,000 text pager messages that were sent and intercepted from government officials and others on Sept. 11, 2001. The messages were published in the order they were sent beginning at 3:00 am (EST) on November 25. The messages are likely to create a stir among the numerous organizations demanding a new investigation of the attacks on 9/11.
The messages are likely to create a stir because many reference explosions and bombs in the buildings, in addition to planes hitting the buildings. For example, one sent by the NYPD reads: 8:53:44 AM “NYPD Ops Div” <|1 PCT WORLD TRADE CENTER|— 1 PCT – WORLD TRADE CENTER – POSSIBLE EXPLOSION WORLD TRADE CENTER BUILDING. LEVEL 3 MOBILIZATION TO CHURCH AND VESSY. Another sent by a city official reads: 9:31:51 AM N.Y.C. TKT#191100488 – WTC HAS BEEN HIT BY AN AIRPLANE AND A BOMB. CURRENTLY B6 IS BEING EVACUATED. NCC HAS RECEIVED MULTIPLE ALARMS OPTICAL / ENVIORNMENTAL. UPDATES WILL FOLLOW. RYAN P/L NCC 800-824-8049
Most of the messages, however, reveal the chaos and confusion that occured at the WTC site and the Pentagon immediately after the attacks.
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The Tattlesnake – Some Things Not to Be Thankful For Edition
Or, What a Curmudgeon Does on Thanksgiving
Major minor aggravations that ‘wear on the mind and make you old before your time.’
– These people who leave comments on various websites claiming they’ve been to teabag rallies and never once saw anyone who was a racist. Really? Not even a single racist? This is just as incredible as those who say there’s not a Republican in the land who hates Obama because he’s black — nope, it’s all about his policies, and that’s why we’re waving this here Confederate flag.
– The Obama/Hitler, Obama/Stalin comparisons. Seriously, think about this for a minute, paranoid teabaggers: If Obama were really anything like Hitler or Stalin, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, et al, would all be off the air. For that matter, you wouldn’t be listening to crazy Michele Bachmann at a teabag rally, because government troops would have closed down the event long before she had a chance to speak. In fact, there wouldn’t be any teabag rallies and Bachmann and her GOP ilk would be in jail for treason by now, if not executed. Of all the Obama smears invented by the fringe right, this is, along with the Birther nonsense, the most ludicrous and easiest to disprove.
– Then there are the good Christopublicans praying for Obama’s death or bodily harm. Saved by Jesus were you, you hateful little twit? Did you ever bother to read what the man you worship is quoted as saying about those who judge others, engage in hypocrisy, and misuse his name for spite and revenge or their own advantage? Hint: It’s all in the first four books of the New Testament.
November 25, 2009
November 24, 2009
The new GOP purity test: Who’d fail?
Excerpt:
According to The New York Times, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has developed an ingenious method of determining the “purity’ of GOP politicians. Invoking the wisdom of Ronald Reagan whom, according to the resolution, once said “that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent,” the RNC is circulating a memo that provides a ten-point litmus test that can be applied to candidates in order to determine their eligibility for RNC support.
Any Republican candidate who breaks with the party on three or more of these issues in votes cast, public statements made or answering a questionnaire would be penalized by being denied party funds or the party endorsement.
It is ironic to note some who would have failed the test. George W. Bush would have failed and been deemed ineligible for support from the Republican National Committee. He increased the size of government, ran enormous deficits, endorsed cap and trade, allowed North Korea and Iran to become more serious security threats, rejected the right’s line on immigration and had guns seized in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina.
The most notable Republican that would fail, ironically, is Ronald Reagan. Reagan presided over the biggest increase in government spending and the deficit before Bush, he increased the size of government, he increased taxes, he supported amnesty for illegal immigrants, he withdrew troops from Beirut, he sold weapons to Iran, he opposed California’s anti-gay marriage proposition six, and he signed the Brady bill which placed restrictions on gun ownership.
As Keith Olbermann said on Countdown yesterday, “Welcome back to the Democratic party, sir.”
Read more here: http://www.examiner.com/x-23316-Madison-Independent-Examiner~y2009m11d24-The-new-GOP-purity-test-Whod-fail
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November 23, 2009
November 22, 2009
November 21, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Frank Luntz is a Scum-Sucking Pig Edition
(With apologies to our porcine friends who also happen to suck scum, but don’t have much influence on the electorate.}
While some readers may chastise me for gross understatement in the title, and I take their point, I decided to keep this clean, or as clean as you can when describing the contents of the sole working Port-O-Potty on free chili and beer night at a baseball game.
“[A]sk a question in the way that you get the right answer.”
– Frank Luntz on his ‘fair and balanced’ polling methods.
What makes Republican word-whacker Frank Luntz my target is that he is an intentional and dedicated deceiver of the public, smart enough to know full well what he’s doing, but blithely willing to trot out his wares — borrowed from the misuse of modern psychological techniques to sell the gullible what they don’t need joined with a carnival conman’s shell game pitch — for the temporary benefit of his bank account, while his country slides into a wreckage of divisiveness and debt. If you’d like to find the home base for the decimation of our public speech into ignorant, inflamed, fearful, flag-draped hatred; the revision of our history into a reeking bonanza of selfish suicidal capitalism, evangelical Christian crapola and nasty neoconservative warhawk bilge; and the reduction of our political discourse into so much overheated, oversimplified, covertly racist, sound-bite slag, you can point to three names: the late Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and the lesser-known, but every bit as important, Frank Luntz as the authors of the meltdown in progress.
“Luntz is glibly amoral, worrying only about whether language has the right effect, not whether it’s true.”
– Steven Poole, commenting on Luntz’s book “Words That Work” in The Guardian (UK), July 21, 2007.
It was Frank’s notion to rename a bill allowing more pollution as the ‘Clean Air Act’; it was Luntz who told the GOP to re-label estate taxes as ‘death taxes’ so that the wealthy paid less while the rest of us took up the slack; it was his demented mind that connected Iraq to 9/11 and instructed Republican pols to always preface any mention of the failed Iraq incursion with ’9/11 changed everything’; behind nearly every current and past GOP talking point, endlessly repeated in the Right-Wing Echo Chamber, you’ll find Frank’s pasty round face, tirelessly choosing just the right words to convince a malleable faction of the American public to eat corporate Republican turds and think it’s prime rib.
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Bill to audit Federal Reserve passed in Committee
Excerpt:
For the first time in history, the Federal Reserve Bank may be facing an audit. Yesterday, the House Finance Committee passed a bill (HR 1207) that authorizes the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the Fed’s secretive deals with foreign central banks and major U.S. financial institutions.
HR 1207 faced fierce last-minute opposition from centrist Democrats, including Rep. Barney Frank, who is the Chairman of the House Finance Committee and from Federal Reserve executives. The actions of Federal Reserve officials and the centrist “Blue Dog” democrats in their wallets should leave no doubt that there is something to hide from Congress and the American people.
Opponents of HR 1207 argue that it could be perceived as influencing monetary policy, which can have inflationary pressure. Reps. Paul and Alan Grayson (D-FL), however, made it clear that is not the intent by adding an amendment that expressly blocks Congress from interfering with the independence of monetary policy decision-making. Ron Paul made that very clear in a speech before the committee.
Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Fed, could (or would) not account for $500 billion of those funds when questioned earlier this year by Rep. Grayson. In essence, the Fed has been using taxpayer money to invest in foreign banks and large Wall Street firms that deal with derivatives on the world market, while at the same time neglecting to invest funds in smaller banks that could loan the money to consumers and small businesses. The end result is mega-profits for the big banks while the rest of the economy stagnates and unemployment continues to rise. Anger over the pillaging of America’s economic security by the financial elite is found on both ends of the political spectrum.
Glenn Greenwald, an investigative reporter writing for Salon.com, points out what may be the most significant aspect of the passage of HR 1207:
Our leading media outlets are capable of understanding political debates only by stuffing them into melodramatic, trite and often distracting “right v. left” storylines. While some debates fit comfortably into that framework, many do not. Anger over the Wall Street bailouts, the control by the banking industry of Congress, and the impenetrable secrecy with which the Fed conducts itself resonates across the political spectrum, as the truly bipartisan and trans-ideological vote yesterday reflects. Populist anger over elite-favoring economic policies has long been brewing on both the Right and Left (and in between), but neither political party can capitalize on it because they’re both dependent upon and subservient to the same elite interests which benefit from those policies.
While the passing of this bill in committee is a huge hurdle overcome, it must still come to a full vote in the House and a companion bill must be passed in the Senate, where there seem to be many more obstacles in getting any sort of populist legislation passed.
But a victorious Rep. Grayson said yesterday, “Today was Waterloo for Fed secrecy.”
Read more here: http://www.examiner.com/x-23316-Madison-Independent-Examiner~y2009m11d21-Bill-to-audit-Federal-Reserve-passed-in-Committee
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The Tattlesnake – The Tiger Woods Rumor Theater Edition
“The Tiger’s Fuzzy Tale”
A short one-act play featuring Tiger Woods and his wife Elin Woods.
ELIN WOODS: “So you’re telling me you haven’t talked to that woman in six months!”
TIGER WOODS: “Absolutely, babe, I broke it off completely.”
EW: “You filthy liar! I checked your cell phone and there are three calls to her just today!”
TW: “Ulp!” [Audible gulp] “Look, I’m getting out of here until you’re more rational. I can’t talk to you when you’re crazy like this.”
[Tiger exits room with EW in pursuit. As she leaves, EW grabs a golf club from a bag by the door.]
EW: [Enraged] “Don’t you walk out on me, you lousy bastard!”
TW: “What are you doing with that club?! [EW swings and hits TW's arm with the club.] “OWWWW! What the hell are you doing?!”
EW: “You’re not running out on me, you little creep!”
TW: [Getting into his black Escalade and starting it up] “I’m not running out on you – I’m just going out for a drive until you calm down. Oh, Jesus, my arm is numb – how do you expect me to play golf with a numb arm?!”
[TW quickly drives off. As a parting shot, EW hits the back window of the Escalade with the golf club, shattering the window.]
TW: [Yelling out the driver's side window] “You crazy bitch! Take a chill pill!”
[Moments later there is the sound of a car crashing at the end of the drive. EW runs to where the Escalade has hit a tree.]
EW: “Ha, ha – serves you right you steaming pile of crap!” [Mood changes to concern] “Wait, are you hurt, Tiger?”
TW: “My arm isn’t right where you HIT IT with the GODDAMN GOLF CLUB, but I’m okay otherwise, just a couple of scratches. Shit, just look at my friggin’ car!”
EW: “You’d better go to the hospital. I’ll call 911.”
TW: “Wait, wait! Don’t call yet. You realize if it comes out what we were fighting about you can kiss $20 million in endorsement deals good-bye. We need a good story to tell the cops first.”
EW: [Skeptical] “Yeah, sure, what kind of story could cover your arm and the shattered back window? I want to hear this.”
(more…)