The plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty used to say, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
Now it says, "Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here."
We got the Bush Regime, arguably the most incompetent, corrupt and outright-treasonous Administration in American history. A regime so reckless, savage and gleefully bestial that it made the career-Nixon-hating Hunter Thompson actually pine for the good old days of Tricky Dick: "I miss Nixon. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White House now, Richard Nixon was a flaming liberal."
And, like Nixon, it is more than likely that not a single one of the smirking traitors who nearly wrecked this country will ever spend a day in jail. Instead they remain lodged in our flesh like so many ricin pellets, oozing their poison into our national bloodstream, waddle from one fawning audience to another, worming their way into major media outlets, or dispatching their degenerate children and underlings out into the world the keep their poison pumping.
They soiled our good name, bankrupted the country, shredded the Constitution and kicked the crutches out from under the global economy on their way out the door, and while it is sometimes hard to focus on them through the flames of the world they set on fire, we must.
America could have had justice.
But America didn't get justice.
America got Hopey McChange, who said he wants to look forward, not backward. Who said there must be no "retribution", no "vengeance", no "payback", who said the era of "divisive partisanship" must end.
Anybody who ever reflected on the evidence for as much as a minute knows that Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all smoked pot. Obama admitted it, Bush never really denied it, and Clinton (ha ha!) "didn't inhale."
So if smoking pot doesn't mess you up too much to be President, then what's the problem with pot?
The problem is shameles and hypocritical politicians sucking up to tight-assed low-IQ no-info hoodoos in Alabama and South Dakota, who fear that their little Barbies and Kens will end up in the gutter if they sample the demon weed, although...
Since 1992, your chance of getting elected President without a whole lotta preliminary tokin' has been zero.
But while Obama is prancing around the Oval Office and laughing at the net-roots because they made legalizing marijuana and ending the "War on Drugs" #1 and #2 on Obama's own bullshit website Ideas for Change in America...
While Obama is prancing around the Oval Office and enforcing even the very few drug-laws that he promised not to enforce...
Meanwhile the "War on Drugs" continues to decimate black communities, as described in a excellent new book by legal scholar Michelle Alexander...
AMY GOODMAN: Nearly half of America's young black men are behind bars or have been labeled felons for life? That's an astounding figure. Also, what does it mean in terms of their rights for the rest of their lives?
MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Yes, thanks largely to the war on drugs, a war that has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies have consistently shown that people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites. The war on drugs waged in these ghetto communities has managed to brand as felons millions of people of color for relatively minor, nonviolent drug offenses. And once branded a felon, they're ushered into a permanent second-class status, not unlike the one we supposedly left behind. Those labeled felons may be denied the right to vote, are automatically excluded from juries, and my be legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, public benefits, much like their grandparents or great grandparents may have been discriminated against during the Jim Crow era.
In fact, in 2005, four out of five drug arrests were for possession. Only one out of five were for sales.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, I just wanted to bring it up to President Obama, because this piece you wrote, very interesting, at tomdispatch.com called "The Age of Obama as Racial Nightmare." Explain.
MICHELLE ALEXANDER: What is the system designed to do? The system is designed to send you right back to prison, which is, in fact, what happens to the vast majority of people who are released. About 70 percent of former prisoners are returned within three years. And the majority of those who are returned are returned within three months, because the obstacles, the legal barriers to just surviving on the outside, are so great. I'm often-you know, people often say to me, "Well, I know somebody who is a felon and who managed to get a job. You know, it's possible to get a job," they say.
Well, it may be possible, but what kind of job? Why is it that, you know, our young kids, young black and brown kids, are expected to be locked into low-wage jobs for life, if they're lucky enough to get them, but kids in other communities are given the opportunity to go on to college, to compete for a full range of job opportunities? During the Jim Crow era, the problem wasn't that black people couldn't get jobs; it was that they were locked permanently in a lower tier of jobs. And that's the reality.
Considering the shameless hypocrisy and downright idiocy of politics in America, maybe it isn't surprising that after 40 years of failure, the "War on Drugs" is still fully funded and still destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of black Americans...
But how many people who voted for "Hope and Change" with Barack Obama foresaw that they were only electing a new Enforcer-in-Chief of the new Jim Crow?
Crossposted at Daily Kos. If you choose to recommend it there, the Rec Button may have been pushed to the bottom after the last diary comment made.
THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS
This weekly diary takes a look at the past week's important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.
When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:
1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?
2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?
3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?
The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist's message.
:: ::
Chris Britt, see reader comments in the State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)
Is President Obama sanctioning the assassinations of American citizens without due process just as George W, Bush did? It would appear that is exactly what he is doing.
President Obama has now extended Bush's "War on Terror" to Yemen. In today's Washington Post there is an article by Dana Priest where she writes:
U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people, among them six of 15 top leaders of a regional al-Qaeda affiliate, according to senior administration officials.
snip As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operations.
If accountability is off the table, so is Democracy.
In an age when the rich and powerful have more control over the creation of the law than ever we face the greatest threat to our Democracy we have ever known. We have met the enemy, and he is us.
If the rich and powerful can bribe lawmakers to do their bidding AND those lawmakers are not subject to the same laws they are supposed to uphold than there is no freedom, there is no equality, there is no justice. The biggest threat to our democracy is not a man with a bomb in his pants or a hijacker flying a plane, it is a man with unlimited power and no one that he must answer to. If that man is an American he is capable of doing more damage to America than any terrorist could ever dream of.
If you love freedom and Democracy please join me below the fold.
Update #2: It has been brought to my attention that my initial analysis on the subject of this diary, originally titled "SCOTUS legalizes TORTURE and creates legal 'unpersons'", and then edited to state 9th Circuit . . . is factually incorrect. I apologize for the confusion and will be writing a thorough dairy tomorrow based on the facts of the ruling by the 9th Circuit court.
I have left the full text of the original diary intact below the fold and will be glad to be further corrected. I seek to learn as well as to share what knowledge I have.
But I will ask this: When? When do we start to see accountability, for the super rich, for the Corporations and their CEO class, and for the crimes and other excesses of the politically powerful. When?
A couple of months ago, the British High Court ruled that a document containing information on the torture of Binyam Mohamed should be disclosed in full. The original document supposedly contains seven paragraphs which describe the brutal methods used to interrogate Mohamed, including waterboarding and slicing his genitals with a scalpel.
David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary who has been resisting the High Court's efforts to release the document, now describes the decision as irresponsible.
David Miliband accused the two senior judges of irresponsibly "charging in" to a diplomatically sensitive area over what happened to former terror detainee Binyam Mohamed while held by the Americans in Pakistan.
Jonathan Sumption QC, appearing for the Foreign Secretary, told the Court of Appeal the judges' stance was "both, in many respects, unnecessary and profoundly damaging to the interests of this country."
Mr Sumption added: "I would go so far as to say their views were irresponsible."
Can anybody explain why Bush/Cheney Accountability is NOT happening?
Jeremy Scahill blows the lid off "Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan" in an article just published in The Nation. This story brings together an amazing array of bad actors: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Stanley McChrystal and Blackwater. It should come as no surprise, then, that the outcome of this team working together is a jaw-dropping tale of war crimes that continue to be carried out.
I'd like to share with you all this comment that was placed in my diary yesterday by Dkos User lascaux, as I think it sums up what we as Progressive activists and the Democrtaic base MUST accomplish in order to effect REAL CHANGE we can believe in.
What I learned
What this reform fight has taught me:
it is not enough to elect a progressive president, we need to elect liberals and progressives in congress as well.
The frustrating inability of this Democratically controlled Congress is PROOF that our job did NOT END when Obama won the Presidential election in 2008. In fact, our work has just begun, and we must face it with the same dedication, intensity and enthusiasm that we did in 2008, or we WILL lose, because we simply don't have the money to compete with the special interests that control our Government.
But we DO have the people, and they can't beat that.
Perhaps some or even most in Docudharma land were aware of Vincent Bugliosi's book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, when it was published on May 27, 2008. This masterpiece was essentially ignored by the Corporate Mainstream News Media. Although Mr. Bugliosi tried valiantly to publicize the book, the MSM shunned him as if he were carrying the bubonic plague. Despite their shameful efforts, the book still sold 130,000 copies within the first three months of publication.
Mr. Bugliosi is perhaps best known as the assistant Los Angeles County District Attorney who successfully prosecuted Charles Manson for the 1969 murders of Sharon Tate and six others. He subsequently authored, in conjunction with Curt Gentry, a book chronicling the Manson trial, entitled Helter Skelter, which became the best selling true crime book in publishing history, with more than 7 million copies sold. Two additional true-crime books also reached #1 on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list: And the Sea Will Tell and Outrage.
Having placed three books at #1 on this bestseller list is an unprecedented achievement. No other American true-crime writer has had more than one book reach the coveted #1 ranking.
Mr. Bugliosi's 2007 book, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was also a New York Times bestseller. A made for television adaptation of the book will be aired as a ten-part HBO miniseries, produced by Tom Hanks.
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder is being made into a documentary, slated for release in February, 2010. Fundraising efforts are currently underway to cover marketing costs.
Since the MSM will likely maintain their silence upon the release of the film, you can fill this void by sending this information along to anyone and everyone you know who might be interested.
Here is the link for a lengthy and detailed trailer of the film...
I felt a correction was in order after the diary I wrote yesterday. Upon deeper introspection I have come to the conclusion that no matter how bad Obama might phuck up he couldn't possibly be worse at Presidenting than the last a$$clown who tried.
And upon being reminded what a phuck up the last guy was, I would like to invite you all to please join me in remembering the EPIC and Ongoing FAIL that was the George W. Bush legacy.
Former President George W. Bush told more than 11,000 people at the Fort Worth Convention Center that he was confident he made the right decisions as president, even if it hurt his popularity.
"Every single day I was honored to be your president by bringing honor and dignity to the office," Bush said Monday afternoon, during his first foray into motivational speaking, at the day-long "Get Motivated" seminar.
For those who will automatically balk at the Obama = Bush charge, I submit to you the fact that by Geneva Law, if Bush/Cheney is not held accountable for the War Crimes they have committed, than the Obama Administration is complicit in those crimes and guilty of covering them up.
The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration's expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush's cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama's cover-up.
It IS torture, hell I can't stand more than 20 seconds of it.
Of course, forcing people to listen to loud music for days on end is NOT the worst War Crime committed by Bush/Cheney, but it IS a War Crime nontheless by Geneva Standards.
Well, it looks like Rage Against The Machine, Pearl Jam and many other musicians are DEMANDING accountability on torture, as far as their artistic contribution to it is concerned.
Some of the more famous names in the music industry are formally lending their prestige to an effort being led by retired generals, progressive groups and a former member of Congress to shut GITMO down. The list includes Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne, Rise Against, Rosanne Cash, Billy Bragg and the Roots, all of whom are joining the broader National Campaign to Close Guantanamo which was launched earlier in the week.
Hoping to cast further light on the potential illegalities that took place at the detention facility, the group is also working to obtain records about why and how music was used (under laws authorized by the Bush administration) to effectively torture suspected terrorists. The musicians have officially endorsed a Freedom of Information Act request for the declassification of all secret government records pertaining to music utilized during interrogations. At least two members of the coalition, Reznor and Morello, have had their music linked to interrogations.
"Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured -- from water boarding, to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts -- playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums," said Morello, in a statement provided by the NCCG. "Guantanamo may be Dick Cheney's idea of America, but it's not mine. The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me -- we need to end torture and close Guantanamo now."
While former U.S. president George W. Bush talked about democracy inside a downtown Edmonton conference centre on Tuesday, hundreds of protesters were outside exercising their right to free speech with signs, songs and screams.
"Stop the killing, stop the war," the protesters chanted to the beat of a drum. They held signs that said "Bush is a war criminal;" "Bush lied, 1,000s died;" and "Canada is not Bush Country."
Several dozen police officers kept protesters away from the front of the Shaw Conference Centre and as the crowd grew, metal barricades went up between the police and the crowd.
Marilyn Gaa, who holds both American and Canadian citizenship, held a three-metre-tall black-clad Grim Reaper with a sign on his back that said: "GWB I am your biggest fan" and on the front, "Thanks for 8 great years."
Crossposted at Daily Kos. Look in the Comments Section of Daily Kos for more cartoons on the economy and sports. Somehow, I couldn't fit them in the main text of the diary.
THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS
This weekly diary takes a look at the past week's important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.
When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:
1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?
2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?
3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?
The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist's message.
In an hastily-arranged press conference which just ended at the National Press Club, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele condemned the Nobel Committee for awarding the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama of the United States.
Steele offered the following remarks
Hajo de Reijger, Politicalcartoons.com (The Netherlands)
:: ::
"The Nobel Committee has done a great injustice to all peace-loving people around the world by prematurely awarding this prestigious award to someone who is totally undeserving of it. In fact, the person who is a deserving recipient was the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush. Remember him? His vision, governing philosophy, and far-reaching efforts to promote peace and cooperation amongst various nations should have resulted in him, and not Barack Obama, being selected for this international honor."
More of Chairman Steele's expanded remarks below the fold.
More than eight months after President Barack Obama took office, one third of the country's U.S. Attorney offices are still run by prosecutors appointed during the administration of Republican George W. Bush, according to a review of data by Main Justice.
At this point in October 2001 - after Bush succeeded Democrat Bill Clinton - less than 9 percent of the slots were occupied by Clinton holdovers.
Change? Well, I guess if you consider taking a dollar and giving you back 67 cents change, you can count it as change, right?
In an Administration so dedicated to bipartisanshit that they are seemingly willing to take the blame for fuck ups caused by their predecessors and risk becoming complicit in the last administrations war crimes, nothing speaks to the ineptitude of this current administration to distance themselves from or even address the failures of the criminal Bush/Cheney Administration than the fact that the Bush US Attorney's who politicized the process of prosecuting matters of law is still more Bush than the Bush Administration was Clinton by this point in unpopularly elected, Supreme Court imposed Ex-President Bush's first term.
Between that and the Republiican dominated military appointments made by the Obama team since his election, the team of rivals is quickly starting to look like the team of people who undermine one another while appearing to not know what the fuck they are talking about.
But as president, Obama has moved cautiously to replace U.S. Attorneys. While Bill Clinton asked for the resignation of all U.S. Attorneys after taking office in 1993 - a move that was criticized at the time as disruptive - the Obama White House has consulted closely with Republican senators. At times, the White House has delayed moving forward when GOP senators objected to an intended nominee. At the same time, some Democratic senators and House members have been slow in forwarding their recommendations for U.S. Attorneys to the White House, c0ntributing to delays, say people familiar with the process.
Among the Bushie leftovers are Middle Alabama District US Attorney Leura Canary, who prosecuted Don Seigelman in a fradulent case, Bill Mercer of Montana, who managed to hold two jobs at once during his tenure and in New Mexico, Gregory J. Fouratt, who replaced US Attorney David Iglesias who refused to stage a witch hunt against ACORN, that evil group whi si guilty of the heinous crimes of registering minorities to vote and fighting Corporate America for a living wage for the proletariat.
The end story, Obama really isn't that different from Bush after all, or at least not as of now, almost a year since he won the election.
But you can still cheer for change if you want. Hell, 2/3rds of change is better than nothing, right?
Obama CAN NOT lose something that is already lost.
Short diary, but worth discussing.
I WANT TO KILL THIS MEME NOW!
Meme: Obama might lose Afghanistan without surge
NEW RULE: Idiots who were wrong about Iraq DON'T GET to give any more unvise about what the military should do.
Bush and Republicans LOST AFGHANISTAN the Minute they moved the debate to Iraq, like idiots.
Unvice = crappy advise from people who are always WRONG
.
Republicans, Joe Lieberman and the MIC want more war, and they want it bad. No strategy, no exit plan, just give us more troops and money or the Country is DOOMED, I say, DOOMED. And then the terrorists will win, they'll get WMD's, the Taliban will get stronger and al Qaeda will attack us again.
Blah, Blah, Blah, I've heard this bullshit before.
To which my answer to the Unxperts are: Didn't you say that about Iraq?
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
