How do you deter an enemy who is willing to kill himself in order to kill you? You strike at something more important to him than his own life. Defining that will be easy for me. The next question is can America be as ruthless as our enemies?
The time has come to end the fruitless and unsustainable effort to search and destroy every cave in Afghanistan and bomb every campground in bordering Pakistan. It’s counterproductive anyway.
What will put the fear of America into terrorist masterminds and those who would follow their orders is simple and radical revenge. Masterminds have families: Cousins, brothers and fathers. Eliminate them. All at once, or one at a time, it works just as well. The ones who survive an initial “hunt” will go into hiding. Having some adult male relatives killed and the rest hiding out in caves will demoralize masterminds and their loved ones. You cannot work and support your women like that. You can’t make more baby masterminds that way. You cannot continue the blood line. The women and children will pressure them to stop their plotting and bombing.
People want to leave a familial legacy, and they can’t do that under those circumstances over the long term.
Should America do that? Yes. Do we have the “intestinal fortitude” and sustainable motivation? I don’t think so. But we should, and it shouldn’t take another terrorist attack to get us there.
For the last seven years the CIA has been kidnapping people from other nations and torturing them. Why not just go in there and quietly shoot them to death?
Frankly, by not killing women or children the way those terrorists routinely do, we can even claim the moral high ground.
We need to give credit where credit is deserved: NAME this economic crisis after the man most responsible for it's creation.
$10 trillion deficit is what we had at the end of the Bush administration. In eight years, Bush more than DOUBLED all the indebtedness America had accrued in more than 200 years.
This is more than a talking point, this is a necessary reminder that should be made every day, so that the notoriously SHORT memories of Americans shall be stimulated on a regular basis.
Senator Dodd went rogue and inserted some crazy stuff into the new law, so the President will need to be creative. Perhaps we are looking for HEROES to run our troubled banks. A lot of wealthy patriots have made great financial sacrifices to serve in the Obama Administration. Like-minded people who don’t want to go through the vetting process and insane pubic humiliation of being outed on every little tax related or other embarrassment can now serve their country without becoming federal employees but while still consenting to be paid wages not all that far above that.
I see nothing different Obama has said or done since 2004 and today -- perhaps Gregg's understanding of it morphed overnight between the time he was begging for the job and yesterday, when it came time to vote on the stimulus plan. Gregg seems to claim otherwise.
Obama should have known Gregg either hasn't the courage of his convictions or , far more likely, hasn't got any deeply held beliefs other than politics. We demand omniscience! How DARE the President not realize a man like Gregg would say anything to further his own personal ambitions?
There's something wrong with a vetting process that cannot discern that a politically savvy adult who somehow got himself repeatedly elected to the US Senate would claim to have turned his back on Petty Partisan Politics but actually lack the moral fortitude to stand by his decision.
I have always thought it was funny that the world of con artists calls a small plan (with score) a 'little' con, while a really big operation (like in the movie 'The Sting') the con is called a 'long' con. Why is the little con not called a short con? Or the big one called that? Just musing, as I let my anger toward these Republicans cool a bit. The media is continuing to stir things up, and they are getting plenty of help from their right wing brethren. Condi is mad. I don't know why, as she is headed back into the protected arms of Stanford University, she is complaining. Well, that is not true. I do. She is taking an aggressive stance against what she knows has to be coming. You do not fill the shoes she filled all those years and not know what is going on. Hell, she was part of what was made to be going on. And Hell is coming to breakfast. As I have continued to state in these blogs, this economic nightmare is not over and it is not going to end with the sort of hopeful scam the government has no choice but to perpetrate (wherein the public pays itself to bail itself out...yes, exactly like pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps...or puffing away at the sail from your place on the boat). Condi knows that Hell is coming and she is taking an attack stand. It was not her. She did nothing wrong. She made a few small mistakes, some mistakes in judgement which she would have made differently if she could. The 'if I had hindsight' defense. It did not work at Nuremburg in Germany after that terrible war, but it may work here. The media likes that defense. The pro-torture people have already laid full claim to it.
I just heard the 'prosecutor' in the Illiniois State Senate give his speech to the assembled senators of that august body. It was pretty funny. Blog made his case, unlikable and weird-haired as he is, which was a good case. He really has been convicted of nothing. He has been tried, by the one nasty Federal Prosecutor named Fitzgeral, in the media alone, and accused all over the place. Yet, here he is, about to be discharged for tape recordings of things he talked about doing. Maybe doing. It is almost as funny to listen to this clown senate prosecutor prosecuting him as it was Fitzgerald. He gave the classic Mark Anthony introduction! You will recall that from schooling days: "I came here to bury Caesar not to honor him." Of course, in a speech that has continued to travel around and around the world, Mark honored Caesar to the point where leadership was changed on the spot. This guy, in the senate, started out with how Blog, who had just completed his speech to the senate, was a great speaker and that he, a lowly appointed prosecutor could not hope to be as great a speech giver. A hoot! He goes on to state that he was merely a lawyer and not an exalted politician. By this time, listening from up here in my loft, I was laughing out loud. The senate was not, of course. They were all waiting to cast their votes, to pull the lever on that guillotine. They could not laugh or smile, as that would interrupt the righteous flow of drool flowing from the sides of their two-sided mouths. I will not be sorry to see Blago go. I always thought it was idiotic that they let him put his name up above the freeway signs we have to drive under. As if he alone had built and paid for the Ipass system all by himself. Those will be gone by Monday! But I do not like it when the phenomenal world rises up and directly contradicts the real one right in my face. The real world is supposed to allow for innocence until proven guilt is in and certified. We are not going to get that here. Glad I am up here in Wisconsin. We have not impeached our governor. Well, not yet. But, as I keep saying, this is not over yet and, by the time it is, no person in a position of authority when it began (and even back before) will be spared the public's ire.
You can run (as Ali used to say) but you can't hide Condi.
from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com
BLOG January 29, 2009. The historical impeachment trial is underway in Illinois’ State Senate. 47 minutes of closing arguments were made by BLAGO calling the whole procedure “a shame”. However, the senators will either “quit” or “acquit”.
Blago earnestly presented himself as “the man of the people” and he says this is what led to his being overwhelming nominated in 2000 and 2006 “by the people”. We learn Blago’s lead attorney asked him not to do a media blitz and consequently the attorney quit his representation.
Blago wasn’t under oath today, however, he presented himself as an anti tax guy, pro healthcare and an advocate of veterans, poor and the mentally ill. Depending on whom you listen to Blago seems to be milking the press, stroking what is left of a huge ego, and possibly connecting to those individuals he has helped in the past, who may eventually be called upon for jury duty. In all of his conversation selling Obama’s senate seat never came up.
We learn previous allies are distancing themselves for Blago and have asked Blago to simply resign, save him and the state more embarrassment but up to now Blago refuses to step down. It also came up that Andy Stern, President of the SEIU, met with Blago November 3rd. Blago had been an ally of the union. Stern agrees Blago came into public office with definitive comfortability and states that he wonders what caused Blago to start calling in “financial deals” and wonders what will happen and be said in a criminal court. News commentators speculate the reason he was making these deals is because Blago only had two years left in office. And he and his wife were shoring up “new opportunities” to keep them financially secure and in the political and power mix in Illinois.
It is believed Blago’s goals were always to be President of the United States. If he simply resigned and then work on rebuilding his credibility, over time, but Blago refuses to do this also. Instead Blago seemed to emphasize that he isn’t being given the opportunity to hear all of the Federal Prosecutors allegations. He seems to be confusing the procedures of a court of law which would allow him the opportunity to defend himself and then work through that court to determine his guilt or innocence. However, the senatorial process acts as a grand jury and isn’t based on due process of law. It is based on a hearing of enough charges to indicate that an excessive amount of behavior has been proven. The current procedure however, does have a clause that they can insist that he no longer enter political office ever again.
The 6th Amendment right Blago keeps referring to may seem confusing to the layperson listening to his claims. And the 6th Amendment is based on a criminal case. The senatorial procedure is not considered a criminal case, however some of the evidence found may be used in the case. So other pundits believe that Blago’s “running the mouth” is to denounce “a few open minds” or “cause a shadow of doubt” to any possible listening juror that may be called on when he goes to a criminal trial. Although Blago seems to be quite astute of law, some pundits believe that he is deliberately doing the media blitz to cause the future juror to believe he was treated unfairly. The Senatorial procedure is also reviewed by legislative officials, as a group of his peers, that are held to a much higher standard and ethic. The four incrimination tapes and the media blitz this week also doesn’t necessary waiver truth in Blago’s claims. Being a governor is not a right, but it is a responsibility and privilege which jurors must understand.
Blago’s name dropping by mentioning Oprah for senator and discussions with Edward M. Kennedy, Barack Obama and John McCain as well as releasing photographs and short videos with respected Democrats and Republicans is believed to not save him in a court of criminal law. An FBI representative read a series of allegations before the senate. David Ellis rebutted the allegations by the FBI and Blago. The Chief Justice of Illinois presided over the procedure. The question still remains will they deliver a “death sentence” which is an expression which means “a sentence to no longer run for any political office” to Blago. For a person who was desirous of running for President of the US this must be a major blow. The question is want antics will Blago bring up when he does answer criminal charges. Will he throw in the towel? The other question is Pat Quinn. Pat Quinn is the political outsider and stands to be the next presumptive Governor of Illinois. He has been the thorn in the side of the Democrats for many years and the question is “will he come out and play fairly as the new governor?”
(Can I say 'circa' if it's in the future?)
Democrats won't be controlling the Senate after 2010.
They rushed like lemmings to declare they'd never accept Blago's appointee.
A little time and forethought should have enabled them to reason that in order to create the illusion of innocence Blagojevich would be likely to find someone eminently qualified, of stellar reputation and far removed from the (alleged) illegal activities.
That would only be in his own best interests. And if there is one thing we have learned about Blago, it is that his own best interests are his first and last consideration in decision-making.
Senate Democrats have now pitted themselves against the Chicago Democratic Machine. Despite that Dick Durbin has lost touch with reality and thrown in with them, this is a battle Senate Democrats cannot and will not win. In this, there is no winning, only degrees of losing.
Should he be denied, Burris can run against any Illinois Democrat, including Durbin, and win.
As for that silly mausoleum? All politicians are narcissists. He's just 'concrete' about it.
Remember Republican Senator Ted Stevens who actually looked jurors in the eyes and told them he didn't notice people stuffing hundreds of thousands of dollars into his pockets. I dare say Bill Gates would notice if you stuffed a few hundred thousand dollars into his pockets. Ted Stevens,... now THAT'S a big ego!
It is also necessary to remember that this is the same US Senate that gave a seven-time convicted federal felon -- Ted Stevens -- a two-minute standing ovation, and two hours of praise-filled testimonials. And they are claiming to be observing their PRINCIPLES???
Republican and Democratic Senators must think we are stupid, stupid, stupid.
Imagine what would happen if the immediate and long-term success, and even viability, of the Republican Party depended on Barack Obama failing to pull America back into PROSPERITY. Oh, wait, we don't have to IMAGINE that because it happens to be the current condition.
While refusing to offer any better ideas, Republicans stand in adamant opposition to everything the President-Elect suggests, even without knowing any details. I have to admit, he's been somewhat vague.
History suggests that America's realization of a sense of success by spring of 2012 will mean the GOP will be broadly out of power for one to two generations.
Every month that another 600,000 Americans lose their jobs is the direct result of Republicans acting on what they see is their own best political interests. While one of their many changing SLOGANS last year was "America First", in truth it is plain that they hold the Republican Party's interests above those of America and our people.
Every day that our children continue to suffer from a declining educational system in which mediocrity is celebrated; every day that more taxpayers lose high wage jobs only to go on welfare food stamps and unemployment; every day that more and more Americans are forced to sign up to work at the country's largest employer WalMart whose own accidentally leaked internally study said 43% of their full-time employees are on welfare and food stamps; every day that we lose what little remains of our manufacturing base so that when we next need to really go to war like in WW2 we won't have car factories to swiftly convert to making fighter jets and tanks so we'll have to order them from CHINA which the most likely enemy in a real war; remember that Republicans see that as MERELY another day closer to the time when they regain power over the White House, Senate and House -- which if not for the horrendous disaster they have created over the last eight years might not be so terrifying.
America stopped keeping up with the demands for maintenance of our infrastructure with the Reagan administration. We were told that things like that "the free market" would take care of things like that, but tell that now to New Orleans and their crumbling levees, or Minnesota with their collapsed interstate bridge, or Kentucky with their billion gallons of toxic sludge that spilled out of a mine containment area.
America's best defense against precisely the current financial system collapse, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, enacted not coincidentally in the wake of the financial collapse of 1929, was REPEALED on the demands of deregulating Republicans -- with help from Bill Clinton in 1999. That law alone prevented financial institutions from becoming "too big to fail". That is, it kept each of the insurance, banking and real estate conglomerates within their own area. They could still become behemoths, but it's when they get into all three of those industries and start making up new ones that are totally unregulated like 'derivatives' that the failure of one company can bring down the American economy, even the world economic system.
The only thing the President-Elect can do to get us out of this disaster is to go back the way we came in, by resurrecting modern-day Glass-Steagall style regulations and stimulating the middle class segment of the system while taking back the giveaway tax cuts from the wealthiest 1% that over the last eight years gave money to people who already had more money than they knew how to spend. They squirreled it away someplace, or bought yachts built in Greece. Republicans love to claim that tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy leads to the creation of small businesses. In reality, it's Steve Jobs and Bill Gates when they had nothing who created small businesses that became leading world companies. Billionaires DON'T start small businesses, they BUY huge corporations then fire 50,000 or 100,000 employees to increase productivity and thus profits for themselves and large bonuses for the three to five top executives of each company. Oh, and they CUT wages of the few employees they do have to keep on.
That doesn't grow anything but unemployment and declining wages. Less taxpayers and more people surviving on public assistance.
If we don't stand up to these self-serving Republicans very few of us will have jobs in 2012, and they will be at WalMart. There won't be any real taxpayers to support the public assistance people need to get back into good paying jobs.
I'll get to the CRAZY DEMOCRATS on another post. I'll give you a hint that after 2012 Democrats will no longer be in control of the Senate.
There is nothing in the United States Constitution that allows the U. S. Senate the clear-cut capacity to deny Roland Burris the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama. Indeed, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich seemed to be thumbing his nose at all of Illinois, if not all of the United States, by appointing Burris. As best we can tell, Burris has a clean political record and has done nothing wrong. Yet Blagojevich seems well on his way to being convicted of attempting to sell Barack Obama’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder.
After Burris was denied access to the Senate chambers on Tuesday January 6, 2009, black pundits of every ilk came out of the woodwork to claim that denying Burris his Senate seat was a blatant attempt to prevent an African-American from becoming a member of the United States Senate. I watched former Georgia State Senator, a founder of SNCC, and former chair of the NAACP Julian Bond attempt to make a case for racism. This was one of his least convincing arguments. For a moment, I wanted to cry.
Bond likened the blockade of Burris to the U. S. Senate to the one Bond received in the state of Georgia back in 1966. I was in kindergarten when a very young and dashing Julian Bond was denied admittance and acceptance to the Georgia State Senate because he had dared to speak out against the Vietnam War. He was bold, defiant; and he was right. Later in 1966 the Supreme Court ruled that the Georgia House of Representatives had denied Bond his right to freedom of speech, and further ordered Georgia’s House of Representatives to seat him. He took his seat in Georgia's House of Representatives in early 1967. Everyone in the state of Georgia and America were the better for it. Today Bond suggested that House Democrats surely must have considered that it might look racist to deny Burris entry to the Senate. I wanted to scream.
There is no evidence that Roland Burris is anything other than an upstanding and highly experienced public servant. What no one, including Julian Bond, seems to want to ask is why Burris would accept an appointment from a governor that has so clearly and blatantly violated the public trust? Why would Burris accept such an appointment from a governor who has refused to step down when propriety and decency demands that the people of Illinois would be best served if he did so? Burris cannot be ignorant of the evidence stacked against Blagojevich, even if Blagojevich has yet to be tried and convicted of his crimes.
It appears that some compromise between Burris and House Democrats has been reached. It appears he will be seated. However, he was not initially denied entry to the Senate because he is black; he was chosen by Blagojevich precisely because he was black and a member of a dying breed of black politician. In vulgar arrogance, Blagojevich knew he could count on old-guard black politicians to yell racism should Burris’ appointment be questioned; this is why he chose a 71-year-old Burris, rather than a younger, less-Illinois-politics-tethered individual to fill Obama’s vacant Senate seat. Many members of the black old-guard are proud of Obama. Yet far too many of them are scrambling for political capital and social relevancy as many of them erroneously hitched their political wagons to a Clinton nomination and presidency in the mistaken belief that a person with African ancestry could never occupy the highest office in the land. The old guard clings to an era that has passed and arguments that have long since lost any semblance of validity.
I fondly remember a young Julian Bond winning election to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965. He was finally seated in 1966. I was proud of his actions then. Racism was blatant and visceral then; it is real, visceral, but often more inconspicuous now. An Obama presidency will not eliminate racism; he cannot make racism less severe. Yet Obama’s election will make confronting issues of race, racism, and race-baiting more complex; this is precisely why it is important to remember the lessons of the mid-1960s without confusing them with the lessons of 2009.
Copyright © 2009 by Leslye J Allen
“A President must be able to do more than one thing at a time,” said then-candidate and now President-Elect Barack Obama, a few months ago when McCain was trying to weasel out of the big debate.
Evidently, President-Elect Obama CAN do far more than one thing at a time. He and his family are MOVING three times in three weeks! This, the weekend of 4 January 2009, he moves from his Chicago home to DC’s Hay-Adams Hotel. On the 15th, they move to Blair House, then on the 20th, they move into the White House. Yes he can! For most of us, the dreaded process of a single relocation is more stressful than death and taxes. But Superman is tripling-down on it.
At the same time, the President-Elect Obama is interviewing and hiring a government, from cabinet members, agency administrators, secretaries and ambassadors. He’s working feverishly on the economic crisis, the transition and inauguration, as well as homeland security and two wars. Throw in taxes, healthcare, unemployment, social security, Medicare and the crisis of the Big 3 automakers, plus Iran, Cuba, Russia, China, the Palestinians and Israel, plus all those special interest groups here at home, such as the disabled, veterans, senior citizens and gays, and you’ve got an enormous inbox.
After those daily national security briefings in which the President-Elect Obama is beginning to learn just how badly Bush has screwed things up for us around the world, it’s a wonder the President-Elect Obama can sleep at night. He needs all the rest he can get.
Enjoy your vacation, sir, you need all the recharging your batteries can get.
A new war for a new year. Go for it Jews! Nobody else is hogging the spotlight right now so we need new news. Our press has given up on Iraq and abandoned Baghdad to itinerant bloggers. Bloggers, We all know how accurate their (our) reports are! But then, whom are we writing to out there anyway? I wrote, this morning, about the fact that it is Monday the Thirtieth. Well, it is Tuesday, but my readership either got the joke or simply did not notice, or care. My attempt at geek humor. Failed, most probably. Maybe I will do better at the party tonight. The Jews are busting heads and kicking butt over there to beat the Jesus out of the Arabs. This time it is Hamas on the Gaza strip. Because they shot rockets into Israel. Now when have any of those countries, over there, not to mention, regions, tribes, communes or whatever, ever shot rockets at each other? When have they not shot rockets at each other? The neighbors of Israel are never ever going to get along with the Israelis. You see, with our, and other's, help following WWII, we took a chunk of that region and gave it to the Jews. We, and other's including the Catholic Church, felt guilty because we knew what the German's were doing to the Jews during the war and we didn't do anything about it. After the war we hung few Germans, but then also accepted a lot of them into this country because they had secrets and skills we needed. Guilt. So we did the right thing. We gave them somebody else's property. Yeah, the land was not unowned or unoccupied. We gave them property that other's still claim, and will always claim until there is not another breathing soul of the respective owner families alive. And so we have rockets, and now another war. "All is going well on the Oceanic Front." Will the Jews ever give fair compensation to try to settle the situation? No. They don't have to. They have nuclear weapons, for all the good that has done them. You think the Palestinian's are ever going to get over the loss of their property? Consider the feelings of the Native American's here. Or the Irish over there in Ireland. The Afghans. Even the Iraqi people. They want their land. And they make no bones about it....or a lot of bones.
Isn't Governor Rod doing great? It is like he is following the advice on my blogs. His new appointment. Terrific. What can they do? Deny him a seat? A black guy? In this current environment? A laughing dancing Negro that the Republican's love to hate? You go governor! "Make my day," the hair-dropped whacked-out Blago whispers to himself. He is not even aware that he is fighting for state's rights. He is fighting for opposition to the overwhelming dominance that Federal Prosecutors have had in this country for the last fifty years. Fitzgerald is now trying to release some of the Governor Rod tapes to his political opponents so they can impeach. He has already released them to the media, back on the first day. Attack back, Governor Rod. Go after that righteous man, meddling in the politics of Illinois for his very own personal benefit. Yeah, he wants to be the only person of integrity left standing. The best way to be that man is to tear everyone else down who might hold the crown. And he is doing it all using this screwed up system of justice that has wormed it's way right into the heart of our culture. Being legal is not necessarily being right. Or honest. Or caring. Or any of it. The hard financial times are coming, however, and they are bringing change. Obama is not bringing change there, he is merely the leader who is going to make us feel better while we go through it. And these changes coming, a lot of them will reduce righteous people back into the schoolyard bullies they came out of being, and set us free.
Maybe I will wear all of one color tonight, and keep my mouth shut. Or fairly shut. I am trying to fit in here, really. I don't even give this blog address out to local people. They might read it. And believe me. What good could that possibly do? I mean, if the big astroid is really coming on 12/21/12, and it is, then what good does it do to know that? Someone once said to me "your predictions are uncannily accurate and it is amazing that you can find out so much, but, why do all of your predictions have to be bad?" They aren't. But readers really only remember bad ones. It is how we are conditioned to survive. Hyper-vigilance never lost a tribe to the nomadic raiders of old. But the warriors who were hyper-vigilant died from stress and worry at young ages. But then, that is the lot of the warrior. I sometimes wonder, being one that has grown older, whether we don't spend those waning years, months, weeks, and days thinking about how we should really be among the fallen too. What are we doing here, still? Getting dressed in a yellow outfit (I am told it is yellow), getting ready to go out and alienate a bunch more people who live right in my back yard. Oh Israel...oh me....oh bother....
There are only two reasonable choices.
To evoke the vision of the world economy rising from the ashes of the torched-earth strategy of the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration, BHO should open the Bible to the gospel account of Jesus’ rising from death. Not only will it give us hope, but it will reinforce our knowledge of BHO’s Christianity, helping put aside the invocation guy.
There are always those who make their fortunes playing to the fears and insecurities of people frustrated with their own lives who need someone to blame, someone to hate, and it's easy for them to agree on certain groups to focus on.
Obama is moving America toward the point where those people will realize that if they don't have a good job, they have too little money, too much debt, their kids are in and out of jail and/or on drugs, or failing in school, it's not the fault of some group of "OTHERS". Not the gays, the jews, the blacks, or even those pesky illegal aliens, to name just a few.
It's time for a new era of Personal Responsibility in which we all take charge of our own lives while working together for all of us to achieve the American dream while making government do what it can to enable us.
Rick Warren is just an updated version of the same old Ministry Of Hatred represented by Falwell and Robertson (and so many others).
The coming of that new era is a direct threat to Rick Warren, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and all the other leaders of the Ministry of Hate. Just like the Republicans did during the long two year campaign, they will go down kicking and screaming all the way.
The President who told at least a dozen lies to get us to go to war in Iraq has conjured up more than a dozen lies to set up President Obama for failure? The most miserable failure of an excuse for a President is leaving directions for the next President?
If it weren’t so serious, it would be funny! If your memory is longer than that of 99% of Americans you know that’s not a line I made up, and you may even know who did. Details.
I’m just saying, George Bush should be planning out where he’s going to hide to keep from being arrested and delivered to the Hague for trial in the World Court for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.
We didn’t let Hitler’s assistants off the hook, and neither can we afford to let Bush’s (the New Hitler’s) people go Scot-free.
We all know that all these recent attempts by Bush to rewrite history are mere hopes that America doesn’t do what’s right. If we intend to restore any sense of moral authority or regain any worldwide respect, we must follow our own laws and those international laws we largely wrote and have been demanding everyone else follow for decades until “W” took office.
If we don’t want our soldiers tortured when they in the future are captured, we must deliver to justice George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, their generals and other high officers who ordered torture and passed on those illegal and immoral orders.
America is a chief signatory to the Geneva Conventions. In fact, before 2001, we liked to claim we largely WROTE it. What good is international law if those who claim to have written it are the worst violators?
America has long had laws against torture of prisoners of war. We cannot allow one power-mad egomaniac (or moron, depending on who is providing the facts, and there are plenty on both sides) to cause us to abandon our Constitution, or it won’t be worth anything, ever.
To put it simply, we cannot defeat terrorism by becoming the worst terrorists on earth. Long before we got to that point, any real President would have caught himself and found a better way. Why? Because Bush’s route could be seen even by people as unworldly as me to be a fool’s plot.
It started with Bush’s WAR-PRAYER-MEETING, right after 9/11. That was disturbing to me THEN, because, as a Christian and an American I wondered if Jesus would say that we should “turn the other cheek”.
What? “Turn the other cheek”. I know. I certainly wasn’t in the mood for that. But that’s what Jesus would have us do – according to the Bible. Those so-called religious Republicans have still never mentioned that, and they would castrate me for mentioning it if they could. (They don’t have the balls for it, so they’ll try to get you to do it, just like the Romans, according to the Bible, were forced to murder Jesus. Just reading it objectively and making no assumptions. NO benefit to me which side you take).
Strange, but when you think about the things that really were surprises, you can’t find any that Bush created that much cohesion to in that short a time. Can you? I can’t.
Almost makes you wonder WHEN Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush KNEW 9/11 was going to happen, doesn’t it? Naaaaaaah. Certainly not. I don’t really know. Do I???
It WAS amazing that five seconds after the first jet crashed into the World Trade Center, Bush’s officials declared they knew it was Osama Bin Laden! Before the first tower collapsed, the Bush administration told us who to blame. I wondered why they didn’t PREVENT it since they obviously knew so much about it in advance.
Worse yet is the fact that for all of 2000, Bush campaigned claiming “America’s military is not ready!” Yet, during all of 2001, he did NOTHING to get our military ready. Why would you TELL our enemies that our military isn’t ready? Then, once in power, why would you fail to GET it ready/ Bush should spend the rest of his days in Guantanamo for that alone.
I always think you can know who caused something to happen by figuring out who BENEFITTED from whatever happened.
Wall Street Journal: Toyota will delay production at its new $300 million plant in Mississippi, citing a steep decline in the auto market. The company says jobs in the state are "secure."
This is the beginning of proof of what I've been saying all along.
The most important detail not understood by southern voters and conservative Republicans is that they, too, will suffer by causing the collapse of the Detroit auto industry.
It's not only northerners whose non-auto industry jobs will be lost in the fallout. Those millions of former taxpayers on welfare, food stamps and unemployment and those around the country, including even the south, who will be dragged down with them, WILL NOT be buying those Japanese cars and trucks being manufactured in those taxpayer-subsidized southern plants.
People won't have the money, won't be able to obtain credit, and won't have the consumer confidence that enable such major purchases.
So all those high-paid UAW people Republican conservatives want to destroy will be merely the BEGINNING of the calamity.
We cannot afford at this time to have high-wage people lose taxpaying jobs while America’s largest employer, Walmart, according to their own internal report, pays wages so low that 43% of their full-time workers are on welfare and food stamps.
Blagojevich? Emanuel? Is that anything?
The FBI tapes may end up proving that Emanuel’s talks with Blagojevich only related that the President-Elect would offer the governor nothing more than “appreciation” for nominating one of then-Senator Obama’s “acceptable” candidates. Unless Emanuel “went rogue”. All stay together, and all hang together -- that's how they play it in the big leagues. Over the weekend, Mr. Emanuel apparently sent out his personal operatives – his ‘emissaries' – to put out his own SPIN on his alleged contacts with governor Rod. That would seem to point out that he’s the “weak link” – the person who screws up, then tries to protect himself at the expense of the team. His refusal to go to work last week was suspicious enough.
Innocent people don’t have to BREAK RANKS with their fellow patriots, shun the office so they don’t have to look into the eyes of their colleagues, or hide from the press, rather than just smile at the cameras and say “the Team will have something to say at the appropriate time”.
In addition to that, I do not understand why – if news reports and his statements are true – Mr. Emanuel would be getting threatened, or by whom. Regardless whether he is honest or dishonest, I don’t understand that at all – it seems illogical. Was he lying when he said that? Was the reporter lying about him having said that? I’d like some information on that.
You may not appreciate my questions, especially regarding the alleged claim of alleged threats, but I am someone who has been paying attention. Also, I have a very long memory, especially of politics.
I was just a kid more or less during the 80’s, but right then I was asking why we were crazy enough to be capitulating to the Japanese automakers. I seemed to be the only one in the 80’s who articulated that it was absurd for American automakers to keep making rounds of layoffs of tens of thousands of American autoworkers and then wonder WHY their sales continued to fall. “Who do they think are buying their cars?”, I asked. “The workers who build the cars are their best customers” I argued, “With their wages, they are the ones best able to afford them.”
More than twenty years ago, I could see that you can’t keep putting tens of thousands of your best customers out of work and then wondering why your sales keep declining. If a mere kid could see that over twenty years ago, why can’t beyond-middle-aged voters understand that now? American voters in general have very short memories.
There’s a reason they used to say “what’s good for GM is good for America!” Those workers made good wages. They paid equally large TAXES. They bought only American cars. They spent money only at American businesses that sold only American-made goods and services. One dollar spent on an American-made car meant eight-teen dollars (give or take a dollar) spent in America, to other Americans who paid TAXES in America. It pumped up the economy and created jobs for many AMERICANS.
Right now, we are at best buying cars made at plants in the south owned by Japanese companies that pay LOW wages, sending ALL the money we spend to Japan. Those low-wage workers spend all their meager income at WalMart. That money goes straight to China, where it creates more jobs – in China. Those workers reportedly make 9 cents a month. Do we want to “catch up” with them?
WORSE, when all those high-paid Detroit autoworkers lose their jobs, they will go right onto welfare, unemployment and food stamps. The rest of us will be paying ALL the taxes to support them.
I am terrified at the prospects of MY income decreasing due to the lack of customers directly and indrirectly linked to the Detroit autoworker economy. I am horrified that I will make LESS money but have to PAY MORE to support the government assistance to those people who should have been able to keep their jobs and PAY TAXES alongside the rest of us.
Rather than CUT the wages of union workers, Republican politicians should be RAISING the wages of the rest of American taxpayers, and NOT putting Americans out of work.
