June 2, 2008 archive

The ongoing melodrama featuring MSNBC and Fox News is heating up again and reaffirming Fox’s status as the scum suckers of news.

Two weeks ago, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post gave readers an insiders view of the conflict that centers around the blood feud between Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly. The battle lines have extended all the way up to News Corp. executive offices, including Rupert Murdoch’s. In the Kurtz column he quoted Fox chief Roger Ailes threatening his counterpart, Jeff Zucker, at NBC:

“Ailes warned that if Olbermann didn’t stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O’Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.”

Them’s fightin’ words, but that was just the first volley…..

1. Arghhh!

   The Associated Press reports Bush weighs in against Senate climate bill.

   Bush weighed in Monday against a Senate bill that would require dramatic cuts in climate-changing greenhouse pollution, cautioning senators “to be very careful about running up enormous costs for future generations of Americans.”

   Unlike Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined with his tax cuts to the wealthiest few. Unlike letting climate change and dependence on oil and other fossil fuels will not be “enormous costs” to current and future Americans.

   Bush, during a White House event that focused on keeping taxes low, said the Senate bill “would impose roughly $6 trillion in new costs on the American economy.” The president in the past has expressed opposition to mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other pollution linked to global warming…

   Bush did not say how the $6 trillion figure he cited was arrived at.

   His damned war in Iraq has cost us many lives and an estimated $3 trillion in debt and we got squat from it. Now he pulls a number from the “air” and worries about future costs? What are the costs of not addressing climate change? Famine? Water shortages? Mass migration? Wars?

   The members of Congress have sat on their hands for the past 7½ years, they may as well wait 6½ months for a new administration too. Compromising on climate change policy with Bush will accomplish nothing good.

Four at Four continues with microgeneration rivaling nuclear power, the Gaza Fulbright grants, and Bill Clinton’s political mastery.

The first round votes have been counted and we are down to the final five!  

Thousands and thousands of people cast first round votes in “Serve with the General” – the contest that will send General Wes Clark to one lucky Congressional District to participate in a community service project.  The race to get into the final round was extremely close!

Now it is time to pick from the final five districts: Washington’s 8th (Darcy Burner), California’s 4th (Charlie Brown), North Carolina’s 10th (Daniel Johnson), Colorado’s 4th (Betsy Markey), or Minnesota’s 3rd (Ashwin Madia).

Click here to cast your final round vote!

(Every district starts back at zero votes for the final round, so make sure you cast a final round vote.)

You get to decide where Democrats will roll up their sleeves at a community service event with General Clark this summer.  

So cast your vote today!  The final round of voting ends this Friday, June 6th, at 12:00 midnight eastern time.  

Thank you for your participation and for putting your Democratic values into action.  Spread the word!

Booman elevates the debate about the future facing America’s electorate with another incisive analysis of the major issues of the day.  

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My own ideas are always welcome as long as I don’t make the purveyors of truth, light and joy seem anything but divine.

Dem’s peering into a former President’s pants? Would never, ever happen. Dems are better than that. Only Republicans would fixate on the sexual apparatus of a former President.

Did you hear McCain actually wants to prolong the Iraq war 100 years?

Meanwhile Booman reminds us that only a Republican could ever be caught on camera engaging in a two-minute racist hate session.

Don’t Forget To Stand During the National Anthem.

Any egregious lie, mis-truth and mis-representation of any Rethuglian position is welcome! The more outrageous and rage-inducing the better!

See ya!

I don’t know about any of you, but once again, my outrage meter broke over stories brought to us here by:

Valtin on U.S. Secret Prison Ships Hold Untold Number of Detainees

GreyHawk on With Liberty And Justice For All: US Secret Prisons, Then and Now: 2001-2005, 2008

LithiumCola on Coming in July: Bush and Maliki’s Tag-Team Swindle

tahoebasha3 on Come to the Iraq Energy Expo and Conference!

And the question always comes…what can I do about it?

My tendency is to want to examine the bigger picture in order to get a sense of the lay of the land and my particular place in it all. So here’s what I see.

I know i’ve been kinda MIA these past few days…weeks…and like i said last week, im finally into the home stretch of the end-of-school-year wind-down.  After this week, both ‘things’ will be finished school, and since thing 1’s rehab vs. summer school dilemma isnt settled yet….and thing2’s audition for the orchestral institute workshop isnt until tonight, im not even sure what’s in store yet….

The United States Constitution

Continues To Weep

Monday’s Headlines:  Immigration Prosecutions Hit New High    Australia ends operations in Iraq   Turkish star faces jail for criticising army    Murdered by Mugabe’s mob    Department for International Development has diplomacy in Africa   Yves Saint Laurent, fashion designer, dies at 71   Italy grapples with Iranian leader’s visit    After China’s quake, disarray for kids    Singapore opposition leader sentenced to jail for contempt   Chavez party picks candidates in primary

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

· Report says 17 boats used

· MPs seek details of UK role

· Europe attacks 42-day plan

Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor

The Guardian,

Monday June 2 2008

The United States is operating “floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Taliban Leader Flaunts Power Inside Pakistan

By JANE PERLEZ

Published: June 2, 2008

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – With great fanfare, the Pakistani Army flew journalists to a rugged corner of the nation’s lawless tribal areas in May to show how decisively it had destroyed the lairs of the Taliban, including a school for suicide bombers, in fighting early this year. Then, just days later, the usually reclusive leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, held a news conference of his own, in the same region, to show just who was in charge.

He rolled up in an expensive-looking Toyota pickup packed with heavily armed Taliban fighters, according to the Pakistani journalists invited to attend.

USA

Clinton rolls to Puerto Rico win

By Susan Milligan

Globe Staff / June 2, 2008

SAN JUAN – Senator Hillary Clinton scored a lopsided victory in the Puerto Rico primary yesterday, boosting both her spirits and her popular vote count, but offering little hope that she can catch rival Senator Barack Obama by the end of the Democratic presidential primary season tomorrow.

Even in defeat, Obama crept closer to the nomination, picking up 17 of Puerto Rico’s 55 pledged delegates. Obama is now 47 delegates short of the 2,118 needed to sew up a clear majority, according to the latest Associated Press tally, and Obama’s advisers believe they will get a slew of superdelegate endorsements after tomorrow’s primaries to make it official.

Crossposted from ePluribus Media.

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My country ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing…

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What happens when the checks and balances of our government are compromised, and justice is undermined?

What happens when the most criminally corrupt group of criminals rule with nearly complete control of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government for nearly two full Administrations, and the media fails to oppose, to challenge and to expose them?

Criminal malfeasance. Negligence. Dereliction of duty. Failure — multiple failures: failure to uphold the law, failure to act, failure to uphold the duty and responsibility of office.

Actively undermining the just due process of the law and Constitution. Actively interfering with the proper operation of government.

War crimes.

Eight years of crimes, unaccountable to anyone and protected by the entire Republican party — and Joe Lieberman.

The UK Guardian is reporting the United States is holding hundreds of detainees from its international wars on at least 17 “floating prisons” in different harbors around the world. The detainees are interrogated, and then many of them sent via extraordinary rendition to other countries for further interrogation and torture.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as “floating prisons” since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.