November 21, 2009 archive

InhoFAIL insults Boxer: “Get a Life”, then celebrates his own ignorance

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Call it “Pollution denying”, or “Reality Denying”, it’s all the same to the Professional Liars who are Senate Republicans.

    In a touchdown celebration of “told you so” that is the equivalent of blowing your ACL while dancing after a homerun that went foul, Inhofe proceeds to insult the esteemed Senator from California, Barbara Boxer, by saying “We Won, You Lost, Get a Life.”

    This is what a stupid dick does, he gloats. The fact that he is dead wrong and corrupt just makes it worse.

    Except climate change is FACT, you didn’t win and you’re a stupid towel, James InhoFAIL.

    A transcript and more below the fold.

We’re Not So Different, You and I

I am not a good person. I’ve known this for a long time now, but for some reason people insist on disbelieving me. It’s true, though-I’m a bad man, and I work in an evil business, full of bitchy little plastic people with humorless agendas and fearful, envious hearts. It absolutely sucks, and yet conversely I feel right at home being a judgmental jerk among my peers and colleagues. Admitting that took a little while, but I’ve always felt inherently bad-or at least “not good”-and I think that is one of the reasons why I’ve lasted so long in this wretched industry. I’ve dispensed with the illusion that I’m a well-intentioned, vaguely friendly person full of good will toward all humanity.

Grayson on: Secret Bailouts, Fed Audit, and Rewarding Failure

If you DON’T Study, DON’T play by the Rules, and DON’T CARE who is hurt by your careless actions — would you expect an “all expenses paid” Scholarship?  … or record Bonuses?  … or more free Mad Money than you know what to do with?

Hardly!

Yet that is exactly what the reckless Wall Street Bankers got — HUGE Rewards — FOR BEHAVING BADLY!

In some circles, this is call Co-dependency and “Enabling” …

In America we call it “Too Big to Fail”.

Well Alan Grayson and Ron Paul, are about expose this Trillion Dollar “reward for failure” system, for what it is …

Rep. Alan Grayson on the Fed Bailing Out Big Banks:

“You Don’t Give Scholarships to Kids Who Fail”




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

Now with World and U.S. News.  34 Story Final.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Sri Lanka ‘to free all war-displaced civilians’

by Ishara Kodikara, AFP

Sat Nov 21, 10:40 am ET

VAVUNIYA, Sri Lanka (AFP) – Sri Lanka said Saturday it would grant free movement to the remaining war-displaced civilians held in internment camps, meeting a key demand of the international community.

The government also reiterated it would complete the resettlement of civilians by the end of January.

“We will allow complete freedom of movement,” senior presidential adviser Basil Rajapakse told inmates of the Manik Farm complex, the main facility housing displaced civilians.

Feeding America: The Class War Comes Home

“The” Economy is recovering….they tell us.

But our economy is not.

While the Fat Cats and Banksters and Vampire Squids are back to harvesting huge salaries and bonuses for producing absolutely nothing and acting as a parasite on our nation and the world….ordinary Americans are starving.

Not just “poor” Americans, or Lower Class Americans, or Ghetto Americans, but a shocking number of regular, formerly Middle Class, Americans have been added to those who have always had to wonder where their next meal is going to come from.

We have, over the years, grown callous to the needs of the poor. They have always been excused away by the American Calvinist ethic that God made them poor and so poor they shall stay. Foundations and Institutes study them, spend money studying them, but the problem never seems to go away. It never seems to go away because in the American system of Capitalism, it is accepted that there will be a Lower Class…and even a class below the Lower Class. They are considered the “collateral damage” of Capitalism. For there to be “haves” there have to be “have nots.” And as soon as belts get tightened, it is the have nots that get thrown under the “collateral damage” bus with nary a thought.

Take Timely Action Against the Afghanistan War

I will not stand still for a surge in Afghanistan. I am going to take action against it. Americans hardly remember they are at war. I am going to be there to remind them. I invite you to do something similar in your hometown.

On the day after Thanksgiving, I am going to go to downtown Chicago, probably around Macy’s, and hold an good-size antiwar sign so all the shoppers can see it. One side will be a big, visible peace sign; the other side will just say “Stop Your Wars.”

I see this time in Obama’s administration as a crucial turning point in Americans’ perceptions of the president. Americans are about to see that Obama is oriented toward continuing the war. It is especially important during this time that Americans be allowed to see first-hand that there are citizens who, maybe just like them, disagree with Obama’s position toward escalating troops.

And it is true generally that most Americans tend to forget we are even at war at all. I think those of us who do remember have the responsibility of reminding everyone else who has forgotten. We cannot rely on the media to do it. So that really is all I want to do, remind Americans, as they enjoy their holidays with their own families, that they are still killing other people’s families. I just don’t feel it’s fair for Americans to be able to forget the kinds of activities they are involved in.

So I invite anyone who strongly opposes escalation in Afghanistan to seek out the shopping district in your area, find a visible location, and demonstrate against the US wars on the day after Thanksgiving. Lots of shoppers will be out, so lots of people will see you and think about our wars. This is a very useful time. I hope other people will join me and make the best of it.

If not you in your town, then who?

And if my way of doing things isn’t right for you, figure out another way to remind people we are at war. It is up to you. The media won’t do it.

Do it for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq.

KSM Falsely Confessed to Crimes He Didn’t Commit

There’s a great blog out there which is starting to get picked up in what you might call the “mainstream blogosphere” quite a bit.   Mainly in regards to its blogging about Wall Street.   In fact, if you just scroll down the front page right now, you’ll find a great many stories on Wall Street and the economy, and you’ll realize it’s really a fantastic compendium of information.

But what you also might not realize is that this very same blog is a great resource for information on the truth about 9/11.  

I did a quick search on the site and here’s a treasure trove of entries.

Let’s pick one, shall we?

How interesting, and how timely!   Here’s the headline:   Self-Confessed 9/11 “Mastermind” Also Falsely Confessed to Crimes He Didn’t Commit

But wait a minute, the Obama administration is telling me this guy is guilty as sin, no question!   The mainstream bullshit media is also telling me the same thing!   How can there be such a disconnect!?

The thing the Bullshit Media (BM) is not telling us about KSM is that he was waterboarded 183 times in ONE MONTH.

As the Washington Post writes of Guantanamo Bay detainee Abu Zubaida:

President George W. Bush had publicly described him as “al-Qaeda’s chief of operations,” and other top officials called him a “trusted associate” of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed.

Okay, maybe they got that one wrong.

But certainly Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confession that he was the mastermind of 9/11 proves his guilt, right?

Well, as the Telegraph notes today:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times in one month, and “confessed” to murdering the journalist Daniel Pearl, which he did not. There could hardly be more compelling evidence that such techniques are neither swift, nor efficient, nor reliable

If one of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s major confessions (Pearl murder) was false, why should we believe his confession about 9/11?

After all, tough-as-nails Navy Seals usually become hysterical when waterboarded once in training sessions. After 183 waterboarding sessions in a month, I wouldn’t be surprised if KSM also confessed to murdering Lincoln and Kennedy.

Open Road

Photobucket

Running out of cheeks to turn

When I was five, and my sister four, we were taken to see “A Christmas Carol”, which was playing at Radio City Music Hall. My sister came away from this experience absolutely petrified of the Ghost of Christmas Future. She had recurring nightmares about skeletal hands and hooded figures emerging from our closet.

I was not frightened of such things in my youth, and calmly explained to her that since the closet in the room we shared was closer to my bed, the Ghost of Christmas Future would probably try to get me first; whereupon in doughty eldest-sister-with-ADD fashion I promised to kick it’s bony ass. This did not, however, stop the nightmares. We hung a Charlie Brown laundry bag from the doorknob of the closet to ward off the fearsome spectre, but this did not assuage my sister.

My mother came upon me logically trying to explain to my sister that the Ghost of Christmas Future wasn’t real and that she was being stupid for being afraid of it. Mom didn’t like this attitude much and so I was asked what I was afraid of. I was a very pragmatic child who feared no imaginary beasties, and so my reply was burglars. I was then asked what I would do if a burglar broke into the house, and answered that I would very calmly and rationally explain to the burglar that what they were doing was bad, naughty and wrong, and for them to please stop and go away. Surely the power of my precocious and towering five year old intellect would reach the most hardened criminal and cause them to see the error of their ways!

Children are wise in that they haven’t learned their wisdom through pain. They don’t lie until they learn to do so, they are born with an innate sense of right and wrong; they don’t operate from a place of fear or hatred by nature. These things are taught, and adults do not have this luxury. I am still afraid of burglars, but I am now a 47 year old woman. I own a gun and numerous sharp and pointy objects. I know how to use them all and would not hesitate to do so to defend me and mine. It would not be my first choice, but it is a choice. I would much rather deliver the five-year-old-version of me’s lecture on the burglar’s morally reprehensible behavior, but when you’re dealing with someone who is beyond reason – someone whose eyes are alight with the lust to do harm, it matters not whether they are driven by an addiction to heroin or an addiction to governmental power. They’re getting ready to do you in and take what all you’ve got. You’d best act now and lecture later, or you won’t get an opportunity in future to lecture at all.

I have spent a lifetime learning to control my temper. The really sad part of that is that the sheer level of my success can be determined by how very few people have actually seen me in a state of beserker rage. I’ve done a very good job. I find myself wondering if I’ve done too good a job.

We blog and blog, we preach to our choirs, and what actually gets done about the problems we address? I’ve lobbied Congress directly. I’ve marched in the peace marches. I’ve spent money that could have been used for food or car repairs on getting down to DC. I’ve spent time that could have been used to get my house all kinds of shiny magazine-ready on the peace movement. I am a patient woman who values peace, but I am really starting to chafe at the lack of viable change that I am seeing. Indeed, I see actions that move us three steps back for every deceitful article or pundit that comes forward and says we’re moving one step ahead.

I find myself wondering why I’m having a childish, naive argument with the burglar when more properly I should be tearing the gun out of his hand by any means necessary and putting him out of our collective misery.

When does the effort to resolve things in a peaceable manner become arrant cowardice? How long must we stand idly by while our fellow hard working and law abiding citizens are robbed, cheated, lied to; while they lose their homes and jobs by the thousands; while they face death by spreadsheet and death by corporate irresponsibility? A slick media and marketing machine works day and night to grind down the people’s knowledge of these horrors and turns them into not much more than domesticated animals waiting for the fleecing – or the slaughter. Our supposed governmental representatives blithely raise ignoring the will of their constituencies to an art form, while blatantly and openly continuing to accept payments from corporate interests. Journalists and IT workers and financial whistleblowers and biological scientists with integrity are thrown into the same unmarked grave as any tell-all sex workers who have serviced the corrupt organized criminals who are still running our nation and indeed entire parts of our world. Our military and innocent Middle Eastern people alike sacrificed by the thousands over almost a decade now on the bloody altar of a twisted military/industrial complex demon which makes the Ghost of Christmas Future look like a fucking boy scout.

This demon, unlike the one my sister feared, is all too real. My fellow citizens are not stupid to fear this demon, and I would be stupid to try to continue to have a rational conversation with it.

Five years old or forty seven years old, I still want to kick it’s ass.

Go ahead. Tell me why I shouldn’t.

Bob Dylan Christmas

and for sheer bizarreness!

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In The Water

lionfish

A Lionfish

Some bad news from underwater in the Caribbean.  Indo-Pacific Lionfish have apparently been spotted on the Mayan Riviera, the stretch of coast from Cancun in the north to Tulum in the south, of Quintana Roo, Mexico, and throughout much of the rest of the Caribbean.  These fish don’t belong there.  It’s not their natural habitat, and they’re predators to most other reef species.  They are voracious.  And to top it off, their spines are also toxic to humans.

Let’s go for a swim.

Nov. 20 1969, Forty Years Ago: “A clump of bodies”

My Lai photographer Ron Haeberle exposed a Vietnam massacre 40 years ago today in The Plain Dealer

November 20, 2009

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