July 21, 2009 archive

Four at Four

  1. McClatchy reports a Judge accuses CIA officials of fraud, unseals secret files.

    A federal district judge ruled Monday that the CIA repeatedly misled him in asserting that state secrets were involved in a 15-year-old lawsuit involving allegedly illegal wiretapping.

    U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth also ordered former CIA director George Tenet and five other CIA officials to explain their actions or face potential sanctions.

    Lamberth also questioned the credibility of current CIA Director Leon Panetta, saying that Panetta’s testimony in the case contained significant discrepancies, and rejected an Obama administration request that the case continue to be kept secret. He released hundreds of previously secret filings.

    “The court does not give the government a high degree of deference because of its prior misrepresentations regarding the stated secrets privilege in this case,” Lamberth wrote. “Although this case has been sealed since its inception to protect sensitive information, it is clear . . . that many of the issues are unclassified.”

Four at Four continues with an update from Afghanistan, Wall Street and the NY Fed, and India says no to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Breaking,” This is THEIR Waterloo…in the Class War

Simulposted at Daily Kos

“If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

Yeah, that is true. IF you the Republicans and Blue Dogs and the Insurance and Big Pharma Industries are indeed able to stop Obama from giving the 75% of Americans what they want and desperately need…

It will break him. Just as it broke Clinton and forced him in to the middle to please republicans….who then paid him back for compromising by impeaching him. This IS Obama’s issue. If he loses, if WE lose, Health Care it will damage his Presidency and the rest of his agenda severely, just as it did with Clinton.

But, um……what if he, what if WE, win?

They are throwing absolutely everything they have onto the battlefield to stop Health Care.

RNC memo: ‘[E]ngage in every activity we can to slow down’ health care.

GOP Healthcare Plan: Delay, Obstruct, Lie, Rinse, Repeat

DFA, Netroots Nation And The Dog

Well, it is all your fault. That’s right your support for the Dog has resulted in the great folks at Democracy for America awarding the old hound a Netroots Nation Scholarship!

For those who don’t know, Democracy for America is Dr. Dean’s social activism group. DFA provides all kinds of great things; it provides a place to get hooked in with other progressives from your area, it provides training in candidacy, campaign management and activism and this year along with last, it provides scholarships to the Netroots Nation.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

NYTimes Feb 27, 1881: Trial by Torture

Simulposted at Daily Kos

   

     The so-called confessions of tortured criminals are usually worthless, especially when others than themselves are inculpated.

~snip~

    It were better that children never came into the world if they are born under a government which mistakenly inculcates falsehood as a means to escape punishment and suffering.

~snip~      

    And the founder of the Christian faith has said: ” It were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than he should offend one of these little ones. ”

NYTimes Feb 27, 1881

    Please, contact The White House, Attorney General Eric Holder and Congress and demand justice for these crimes.

    In a New York Times article from Feb 27 1881 the New York Times expounded on the family oriented torture and corporal punishment inflicted on children and how it was entirely unacceptable.

    Often we are told by the faithful that we are all “Gods children”

    128 years ago, this was common sense.

    Today, not so much

    The article centers around the practice of many 19th Century families who, when accusing their own children of wrong doing, after that child has plead their innocence, have beaten that child until a confession is given.

    Such practices as solitary confinement, withholding of meals and other forms of torment, then seen as uncivilized and barbaric in 1881, were all justified and made legalish by the Bush/Cheney Administration.

    The article uses several examples of lynchings to illustrate the opinion that torture is, effectively, lynch mob behavior. One such story tells the tale of the practice in a Northern California county of hanging a man from a tree who was accused of a crime. When the man was half dead they would lower him down and demand the names of his co-conspirators. This would happen two or three times, and then, when the crowd was satisfied they would hang the man until he died. Then they would round up those whom the first hanged man had accused and hang them as well.

   The only difference between this and what happened under Bush/Cheney is that the assumed guilty usually aren’t killed. Usually.

Health Care

health care

I think Obama will get what he wants this year when it comes to a vote on health care, with some sort of public option.  I think the time is right, and that’s why I think this will happen.

My own feelings on this — well, I wish we had more aggressive leadership, I wish we were able to push for single-payer, I think this could have been done smarter and without the bogus push for “bipartisanship.”  I am not interested in the theories of Obama’s “long view,” because no matter what kind of changes he makes, they’ll only exist so long as he is in power.  Even if we end up with another Democrat in the Oval Office, they’ll change things to suit their own tastes.

But I think now is the time for change — even when it comes to the entrenched interests that drive our wretched health care system.

URGENT: Single Payer Day – UHC and Single Payer – Today is the day, folks

Woke up to an e-mail from change.org. A petition request to protest UHC. United Health Care for those who have not had the misfortune to cross paths with them. They asked for a personal comment and here is mine:


It’s no coincidence that your e-mail arrived in my inbox this morning. It is raining today and I’ a small-plot organic farmer so I have some inside time today. This Tue morn is dedicated to doing battle with UHC and the idiots who make its policies.

Those policies are designed to cheat the members who pay big money for their premiums. We get our UHC through my wife’s employment at Home Depot. I am disabled and we get by on her $22k a year but mostly we need that job just for the health insurance.

UHC are masters at mis-billing, avoidance of contract fulfillment and general outright fraud. I have friends who are doctors and their side of the story is even worse than mine as a poor patient.

I will lose an otherwise productive inside day spending it on the phone, delving the depths of incomprehensible automated telephone voice mail menus, only to find myself at the wrong department.

If by some stroke of luck I find a human being, I may be transferred to the right department – and disconnected while waiting five minutes on hold. Then I will start all over again until I get through.

Some of today’s issues are interesting. My wife took family leave to tend to her dying mother last year. We paid all of our co-pays on time. But somehow I disappeared from the rolls for about two weeks during the transition back to full-time post-maternal-death. Instead of being charged $50 – $15- co-pays, I am being charged in the hundreds for procedures that should have been covered.

Your prayers for my patience are appreciated. The problem is not the underpaid, overworked employee on the other end of the phone who bears the brunt of the collective anger. Pray for them. They are ou. The problem is in the executive and upper managerial suites, the board, and the Street. All compensation flows to the top these days. All these greed-heads want is to make their quarterly numbers thereby triggering their bonuses. All else means nothing.

These people have no humanity. They are lying, extorting and bribing their asses off today to kill single payer health care. Please join in, call your congressman and help get this done right. It is NOW or NEVER on health care reform. Our time has come. Shame on us if we let it slip by.

God bless you all.

Open Ended Blahg



http://xkcd.com/610/

Support Single Payer NOW – Action Alert

There will be two more days of closed door debate on Weiner’s bill. Light up the pressure.

Remember 2 key points: 76% of Americans Vote, and will not vote again for those who do not represent them.

And we have access to how much money they get from Insurance & Pharma.

Dear Diane,

Wow!! Thanks to your calls and emails on Friday, Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s amendment to let states adopt single-payer healthcare passed  the House Education and Labor Committee by 25-19 .

Of course the insurance industry will try to kill the Kucinich amendment during future votes, so we will watch carefully and keep you posted.

Today the House Energy and Commerce Committee (E&C) will vote on Rep. Anthony Weiner’s amendment for an even better bill: universal (not state-by-state) single payer healthcare, Medicare for All ( H.R. 676 ).

Please call some of the Democrats on E&C right now and urge them to vote YES on Rep. Weiner’s single-payer amendment to the healthcare bill.

If you speak with a staffer, post their reply here:

http://www.democrats.com/weine…

You can also urge your Representatives to support a nationwide Single Payer Health Care plan (H.R. 676) by signing our petition:

http://www.democrats.com/singl…

And if you can be in DC on Thursday July 30, celebrate the 44th birthday of Medicare and rally/lobby for single-payer:

http://www.democrats.com/node/…

Thanks for all you do!

Bob Fertik

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Follow Bob Fertik:

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Numbers below!

Docudharma Times Tuesday July 21




Tuesday’s Headlines:

Calif. governor, lawmakers reach budget deal

U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving

Serbian warlord gets life for crimes against humanity

‘Defenders of Ataturk’ on trial for plotting to overthrow government

Gambling epidemic snares Burma’s poor

Mumbai gunman Ajmal Amir Kasab changes plea to guilty

Israeli settlers burn olive groves in ‘price tag’ retaliation attack

Khatami urges referendum on poll  

A State in Grip of Kidnappers and the Family of Hugo Chávez

Reports on U.S. Detention Policy Will Be Delayed



 By Peter Finn

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, July 21, 2009


The Obama administration is delaying completion of reports examining U.S. detention and interrogation policy, officials said Monday, in a sign of the formidable issues it faces in grappling with how to handle terrorism suspects as it prepares to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

The work of a Justice Department-led task force, which had been scheduled to send a report on detention policy to President Obama on Tuesday, will be extended for six months, according to senior administration officials. A second task force examining interrogation policy will get a two-month extension to complete its work, which had also been due Tuesday.

Han Chinese revenge attackers should be punished, says Beijing official  

 Uighur assaults in Xinjiang were covered extensively in the press but witnesses report attacks on Uighurs days later

Tania Branigan in Beijing  guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 July 2009 08.54 BST  

Han Chinese who took part in violent riots in China’s north western region of Xinjiang should be punished, a senior official in Beijing said today.

While state media have extensively covered the events of 5 July, when Uighurs launched indiscriminate assaults on Han, they did not report Han revenge attacks on Uighurs two days later.

In all, at least 197 people died in the inter-ethnic conflict – including 137 Han and 46 Uighurs – and 1,700 were injured.

“After the 5 July incident, some people in Urumqi, out of indignation over the crimes committed by rioters or sorrow for the loss of their families, did take to the streets,” acknowledged Wu Shimin, vice minister in charge of the state ethnic affairs commission, when asked about the events of 7 July at a press conference in Beijing.

Recruitment!!

This is going to be short, but should get the notice it needs and the corrections in a system that is broken, in a military breaking, in many ways, because of the failed policies of the previous administration and those beating the drums of war but unwilling to serve!

Joshua Fry Was Recruited Out of Group Home for Mentally Disabled

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

2009 Poems


Extending a Flower

Hat in Hand

We are people

somewhat like you

but different

deserving of equality

no more

but no less

We shouldn’t

be required

to beg

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–April 10, 2009

AIPAC and the Sickness that is Washington

After I watched this I have to admit I hurled.  Not totally because of this, the beer and lack of food had something to do with it.  But overall, I don’t think I would have hurled if I hadn’t have watched this video.  

Pardon my french, but these fucking people are from outer space.  I now believe David Icke that there really are lizard people because no humans should be able to act like this.  I should clarify that I am talking about every damn one of them, jews or not.  

This is such a sickening display of human depravity and political bullshit that I had to share.  I am amazed, not only that humans still wear ties, but that these fucking old people still knowingly and abrazenly spout bullshit they know is not true.  I haven’t yet uncovered the entire truth, i.e., who is really behind all this and what is their exact agenda, but this video makes clear that crazy people do exist.

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