February 2010 archive

Ever since Marjah became one of the most famous “cities” in the world, I have been scanning the internet for images of it, and although I found thousands of photos tagged “Marjah,” or “Marja,” almost none of them show anything that looks like so much as a village, much less a city where somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 people are supposed to dwell, and all that my many Google image searches turned up was a few tiny photos of almost nothing at all.

For example, the caption under this image from the Indian Express says…

US Marines walk in a column as they enter Marja in Helmand province on Saturday.

It’s like a joke! Entering Marjah! There’s about as much evidence of human habitation as in photos that come back from Mars!

But eventually a few TV reporters entered Marjah, and since TV reporters have to stand in front of something, the BBC found something in Marjah for their reporter to stand in front of.

And that’s “liberated” Marjah, insofar as I could find any representation of it on the internet.

A whole pile of people know that it is Obama and the Democrats that refuse to support medicare for all the public option, despite the fact that is what a most of the country wants.  If mandates, a middle class tax, fines, medicare cuts, and no public option is the best Obama and the Democrats can do with a mandate and a solid majority, they deserve to lose their jobs.  

They gave pharma and the insurance companies almost as good a deal as Wall Street got.  Free access to our money with no strings attached.  

Original article via World Socialist Web Site:

Some two million Greek workers participated in a general strike on Wednesday. The mass one-day action was called in response to austerity measures being imposed by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) government of Prime Minister George Papandreou.

In the WSJ, John Yoo, Dick Cheney’s legal architect for torture and war crimes, attempts to galvanize the collusion of Obama’s and Holder’s DOJ in war crimes, principally by daring them to do jack squat about his blatant guilt.  This Week in Tyranny shows us the game plan inherent in the war criminals’ efforts:

Dick Cheney is shameless and is eager to be publicly guilty. He has made his life an open, defiant challenge to the US government. Does anyone have the courage to take him down, and unleash the inevitable whirlwind? Or does the entire DC establishment prefer to live in quiet, peaceful acquiescence? Those are the only options at this point. Cheney wants to cast as wide a net of complicity as possible; he wants not just his White House implicated but future ones. Not just the White House, but the executive branch. Not just the executive branch but the legislative and judicial branches as well. He wants as much company as possible so he does not go down as a singular villain. It is working, and will continue as long as our leaders prefer to put their immediate comfort over their obligations.

Open Thread

On the topic of cutting deficits at the expense of the social safety net, Barack Obama is a genuine charmer:

Everybody’s going to have some skin in the game.

Digby nails the key problem with Obama’s channeling of Rahm Emanuel:

The problem, of course, is that the best case has millionaires “sacrificing” being able to buy a bigger airplane while the average retiree has to sacrifice eating protein. This “game” we’ve all got our skin in has some much more serious consequences for some of us than others: since certain of the wealthy players just crashed the financial system a whole lot of soon-to-be seniors lost their nest eggs in both the real estate and stock markets (and are being priced out of the health care market just when they need the coverage the most.) If there’s a worse time to require these particular people to sacrifice more I don’t know what it is.

It’s also true that often the people for whom “sacrifice” is nothing more than a minor inconvenience are prone to lecture those for whom it is quite painful. It’s irritating.  

It’s well beyond “irritating,” beyond the need for sensitivity training, even beyond infuriating, embittering, enraging, or making my blood boil.  This wanker is a total riot, a real side-splitter.  A tumultuous uproar.  A howling, boisterous romper stomper of high jinx and merry-making.  

Crossposted at Daily Kos

“Strike while the iron is hot.”

“Make hay while the sun shines.”

“Take time by the forelock.”

Or, as they say it in French, “Il faut battre le fer pendant qu’il est chaud.”

All are time-tested phrases in the English and French languages amounting to the same thing: the time to act and take advantage is now.  For timing is everything in peace, love, politics, and war.  Once the opportunity slips by, one may never get the chance again.  Simply put: use it or lose it.  

Patrick Corrigan, Toronto Star, Buy this cartoon

 

Why the urgency?  What is this terrific opportunity that’s been given to us and why must we act upon it right now?    

Go read this. Just go read it:

A Special Comment From My Father

by Keith Olbermann at Daily Kos