Just Foreign Policy Iraqi Death Estimator    

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Bush An "Appeaser," Says Egyptian Press

A front page editorial in Al-Gomhouria, another Egyptian state-owned daily, described Mr. Bush as "a failed president who delivers nothing but a lousy speech."
Akhbar Al-Youm also on Saturday published a picture of Mr. Bush hugging Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and captioned it "lovers."
The paper also ran a front page cartoon showing an Egyptian peasant consoling President Hosni Mubarak for having to meet with "this burdensome guy who will be leaving soon," in reference to Mr. Bush.

LinkHere

Friday, May 16, 2008

Obama hits back at Bush over 'appeasement' inference

Senator Barack Obama hit back at President Bush today during a speech in Watertown, South Dakota for "dishonest and divisive" comments made by the president in Israel, which inferred that the presumed Democratic presidential nominee's calls for talks with Iranian officials resembled appeasement with the enemy.
"The president did something that presidents don't do," Obama said, charging that Bush's words targeted other Democrats, as well. "He said that we were appeasers no different than those that appeased Adolf Hitler."
"That's exactly the kind of appalling attack that's divided our country and alienates us from the rest of the world," Obama added, before taking aim at McCain also for also "embracing Bush's comments."
Obama said, "That's the kind of hypocrisy that we've been seeing in our foreign policy, the kind of fear-peddling, fear mongering that has prevented us from actually making us safer," adding that McCain had a "naive and irresponsible belief that tough talk from Washington will somehow cause Iran to give up it's nuclear program and support for terrorism.
Obama also blasted McCain for linking him to Hamas, and noted that he has never called for talks with Hamas leaders, while the Republican presidential candidate once had. The Illinois senator challenged Bush and McCain to take him on anytime on the question of patriotism, and noted the Iraq war's effect on the global war on terror.
"If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate on protecting America, that's a debate I'll be glad to have happen," Obama said. >>>cont

This video is from CNN's Newsroom, broadcast May 16, 2008.
LinkHere

THE MORON DIDN'T SHUT THE HELL UP, WHEN HE SHOULD HAVE.

Obama to respond (directly) to Bush remarks

Source: CNN has confirmed that Barack Obama will respond directly to President Bush’s apparent criticism of his foreign policy vision, which includes a willingness to consider dialogue with Iran and other nations hostile to the United States. The Illinois senator’s response will come at a campaign event later Friday in South Dakota.
The news was first revealed by senior Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice on NBC Friday morning.
In an address before the Israeli Knesset Thursday, President Bush compared leaders who advocated dialogue with nations like Iran to politicians who appeased Nazi aggression in the years leading up to the Second World War.
LinkHere

Chris Matthews Eviscerates Right-Wing Host Kevin James Over Obama "Appeasement" Claims

Bottom line, Lieberman is a fine tuned hate machine. Righteous genocide would be his political campaign and legacy.

Lieberman On Bush Comparing Democrats To Nazi-Appeasers: "˜The President Got It Exactly Right'
The entire planet knows Lieberman is an archetypal betrayer, but how much do his loyalties to the Israeli lunatic fringe right wing also make him a traitor to America? Indeed, nearly ALL of Bush's advisor's have been answering to Likud Party types for the last eight years and look at our dying and bankrupt country. From the year 2000 on, the CORE CONTROL of America has been where Lieberman's loyalties lie.
THE GREAT APPEASER??
Two years ago, in an interview with James Rubin for Sky News, Sen. John McCain expressed a willingness to negotiate with the terrorist group Hamas -- the very group that McCain has been relentlessly using to smear Sen. Barack Obama over the last several weeks. Rubin has written an op-ed in Friday's Washington Post about his exchange with McCain...

Thursday, May 15, 2008

All the President's Nazis (real and imagined): An Open Letter to Bush

Dear Mr. Bush,
Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery. Worse still, your exploitation of the Holocaust in a country carved out of the wounds of that very crime, in order to strike a low blow at American citizens whose politics differs from your own is unforgivable and unpardonable. Let me remind you, Mr. Bush,
of your words today:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.
"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Well Mr. Bush, the only thing this comment lacked was a mirror and some historical facts. You want to discuss the crimes of Nazis against my family and millions of other families in Europe during World War II? Let me revive a favorite phrase of yours: Bring. It. On!The All-American Nazi
Your family's fortune is built on the bones of the very people butchered by the Nazis, my family and the families of those in the Knesset who applauded you today:
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.
Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp. (search), a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Fritz Thyssen was an early financial supporter of Hitler, whose Nazi party Thyssen believed was preferable to communism.
--snip--
Both Harrimans and Bush were partners in the New York investment firm of Brown Brothers, Harriman and Co., which handled the financial transactions of the bank as well as other financial dealings with several other companies linked to Bank voor Handel that were confiscated by the U.S. government during World War II.
Union Banking was seized by the government in October 1942 under the Trading with the
Enemy Act.
Oh, but there is much more too:
The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war, Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".
I cannot think of one Democrat who can boast this kind of lineage. Can you? No, I don't think so. But you can lie brazenly and attack a sitting US Senator on foreign soil by comparing him to Nazi sympathizers? Let us continue down memory lane to help those who applaud you understand just what it is they are celebrating.
The All American Traitor
You family did not stop with supporting fascists and Nazis abroad, did they Mr. Bush? Surely you must know of your grandfather's role in the treasonous plot of 1933 to overthrow democracy in America? Let me remind you.
Grandpa Bush - that is to say, your grandfather - wanted fascism imported into the United States, or as you now call this type of transformation, "exporting democracy." Prescott went so far as to subsidize a coup attempt in order to achieve his dream of a fascist America (see
BBC report below):
Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush's Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American
In other words, not only was your grandfather a self-professed fascist, he was a Nazi sympathizer and a war profiteer who should have stood trial at the Hague instead of buying his way into the US Senate. He was also a traitor, twice over.
Now clearly the crimes of Prescott Bush are not your fault, Mr. George W. Bush. Let us therefore judge your actions and words on their own merit.


Iraq is your Poland
Your reminiscence today about the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany should have been seen as your own condemnation of your own abhorrent actions against Iraq. The morbid irony of what you said will likely never register with your or your speechwriter. To truly grasp the grotesqueness of what you said requires that you have both a conscience and some understanding of history. We know you possess neither.
I will therefore make your history lesson brief, but to the point. The unprovoked attack on Poland by Germany was a war crime just as your attack against Iraq - based on lies - is a war crime. This is not my opinion. This is not a political attack. This is a fact. Consider the words of the esteemed former chief prosecutor in the Nuremburg trials, Benjamin Ferencz, regarding your
war of aggression against Iraq:
"...Prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."
Moreover, your reckless verbiage and partisan pandering using something as tragic and criminal as Germany's war of aggression against Poland is an insult to all victims of those atrocities.
My grandfather's sister and parents were having supper in their Warsaw home when a German bomb erased them from this planet. Your evoking the German atrocities against Poland in order to play dirty politics against Democrats is as offensive to me as if you had pinned a swastika onto your lapel.
Even your own words appear to be penned by Hitler's ghost all the while you imply that Democrats are Nazis and/or terrorists - something you have done over and over. Your lies and Hitler's lies even have the same purpose.
When you, Mr. Bush, said "see in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," were you aware of Adolph Hitler's eerily similar statement? Hitler said "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed."
Yet if words alone were your only weapon and words strung together into lies your only crime, you might be seen as simply the loathsome, unethical dilettante and despot that you are. Unfortunately, your crimes are many and so similar to those of the Nazi regime that at times one wonders if you are not yourself reenacting that very history you used today as an insult against a political opponent.
Your very own concentration camps
You ordered the creation of secret camps all over the world and on US territory where you also authorized the torture of countless men, women and children is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, international law, and domestic law. In other words, you authorized war crimes.
We don't know the number of people you have had disappeared, tortured, and possibly murdered. Although we have some idea of what these numbers may be, I doubt the full truth of it all will ever be known.
In 2005, I had a CENTCOM document leaked to me illustrating that since the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, more than 70,000 men, women, and children have been detained at one of your various camps Mr. Bush. We don't know what happened to them, if they were tortured, raped, or murdered. What we do know is that less than 2% of those 70,000 had any sort of charge brought against them in a court of law. None of those alleged crimes, by the way, were acts of terrorism. We don't know if that 70,000 figure was the actual and full count of detainees in US custody around the world in 2005. But it is safe to say that in the last 3 years since this document was published, the number of detainees has likely grown.
What we also now know, in great horror, is that at least one of your camps had a crematorium in it, which some of the US soldiers stationed there suspected was used for burning bodies:
"We had some kind of incinerator at the end of our building," Specialist Megan Ambuhl said. "It was this huge circular thing. We just didn't know what was incinerated in there. It could have been people, for all we knew--bodies." Sergeant Davis was not in doubt. "It had bones in it," he said, and he called it the crematorium. "But hey, you're at war," he said. "Suck it up or drive on." What we also now know is that Dick Cheney and senior members of your administration carried out a plan of torture and abuse that violated international and domestic law with regard to human rights, down to the type of torture tactics that would be used against prisoners in our custody. This plan, we now know, was approved by you.
Has the mirror cracked yet from this much fact or are you still peering into the political sphere hoping to ascribe your own crimes to others? It won't work. It never has and it certainly won't work now. We know far too much about you and yours.
I could continue listing the litany of your crimes, both against the United States and against foreign nations. I won't. We know what you are and what you have done. Having roughly 1,000,000 dead Iraqis under your belt should have shamed you into the parasitic hole you came out of, attaching yourself to the blood of this nation and sucking it dry. Instead, you parade around, the globe-trotting horror show and anti-Semite that you are.
Yes, you are an anti-Semite
Would you say no, you are not an anti-Semite? Consider your own words when you thought no one was keeping score:
You know what I'm gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don't you Herman?" a then Governor George W. Bush allegedly asked a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman.
When the journalist, Ken Herman, replied that he did not know, Bush reportedly delivered the punch line: "I'm telling 'em they're all going to hell."
Only an anti-Semite would think this type of humor is acceptable. Did you tell the Jews of Israel they were going to hell? No, instead, you told them that American Democrats are Nazi sympathizers and in an act of sheer indecency, the right wing Likud party orchestrated the greatest applause you ever got. For shame!
What this blind adoration finally proves to me is that the right-wing regime that has overtaken Israel cares nothing for its people, its heritage, and the tragic history that they now honor by applauding a man whose family-fortune was built on the bodies of their loved ones. Like their Republican (and Lieberman) counterparts in the United States, Likud does not represent its people, rather, it represents its owners. Likud has traded Israel, its Jews, their heritage and history for the same golden calf purchased and sold by the far-right wing in the United States.
I am ashamed of you Mr. Bush. I am ashamed of those who applauded your political porn played out against the hallowed backdrop of the Holocaust. I am ashamed of those reporters with you, who between them could not muster the moral courage to call you out on your ugly rhetoric and ask you about your own family Nazi ties. You are, sir, the most abhorrent human being of my lifetime. I dare say, in the lifetime of this nation.
LinkHere

Of Kings and Arrogance



Some say the new King George has forgotten what America is about. The fact is, he hasn't forgotten -
He never believed it in the first place.

This King George has decided that the Constitution is no longer worth protecting. He has systematically subverted the letter and spirit of the laws and rights set forth in our most important founding document. He has established "free speech zones" for protesters trying to exercise their first amendment rights at events that he attends. He has attempted to take control of the courts and the justice system by threats and purges of those whom he does not consider to be sufficiently loyal to him. His appointees have been chosen for their politics without regard to their competence. Everything is secondary to his endless quest for expanded executive power.
He has no qualms about doing anything, no matter how base or unlawful, and with no consideration of the consequences. He sees planning as a hindrance, and exit strategies as an expectation of failure. He takes credit for victories he had no part in accomplishing, and accepts no responsibility for failures that result directly from his mistakes and flawed judgement. He is "The Decider," and he claims there can be only one.
Once again the people have pleaded for the King to hear them. He has refused to give them an audience. So the people have raised their voices, loudly demanding to be heard. Still, he refuses. The people are now in the beginnings of acts of civil disobedience, their patience and forbearance nearing the point of exhaustion, and if they continue to be ignored they will once again be forced into utilizing the only option left to them - a revolution against an arrogant tyrant who will not listen.

LinkHere
By HAMDAN A. YOUSUF and DANIA S. AHMED
The idea of America as a hegemonic power, exerting its influence all over the world, dominating and conquering at any cost is nothing new. The genocide of millions of Native Americans and the enslavement of the black race bears witness to the blood-drenched nature of our past. The most horrifying of crimes were justified with the obscene claim that the oppressors were acting in the best interests of those they oppressed. Continue
By Patrick Seale
Arab oil producers are awash in wealth. They have never been so rich. But the paradox is that, in spite of their great and growing wealth, their political weight in the world remains small, even derisory. They have not - or, at least, not yet - converted their wealth into political influence on a global scale.
Continue

Bush Compares Obama To Nazi Appeasers

It was only yesterday that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates argued that United States needed to engage with Iran:
President Bush has said repeatedly that he would not insert himself into the presidential race, but that stance changed dramatically today during his trip to Israel. After likening Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Osama bin Laden, Bush compared Barack Obama to Nazi appeasers:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Obama himself quickly responded to the comparison, calling it a false attack and listing past presidents who didn't think that diplomacy was such a bad idea:
"It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 6Oth anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel."
"Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power -- including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy -- to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel."

LinkHere

How the Bush family made its fortune from the Nazis





You Go Christy Girl

Christy Said!!!!!!!
Dear Republicans, It is too Late.
As a very liberal democrat, I just have to reach across the aisle a moment to my republican brothers and sisters. I hear you are looking at your poll numbers and realize you are facing a very real extinction in November.
Evidently, you are all involved in some panic planning in trying to unwrap your names from the feet of George W. Bush. I would like to stop laughing my ass off a minute to tell you republicans, it is too damn late for that now. Your attempts to push him away now, when you were in lockstep with him every day for 8 years, is not going to work.
It is too late.
If you need someone else to blame other than Georgie for your current predicament, go look in a mirror. How many more war criminals, torture justifiers, money launderers and sexual deviants can you possibly fit into one party? After we autopsy your remains in November, I am sure we will begin assessing those very issues so that it can be written down for all of history to remember about the corpse of you.
Of course, there will be many other things written in your obituary, not the least among them will be how you wholly advocated and enabled the unjustifiable killing of over a million Iraqi's for no reason at all. Followed closely by the reminder that our future was hocked to the Chinese, with your help, to fight wars simply for the pleasure of George W Bush and nothing more. Over 4 thousand of our own are dead on a battlefield, and the greatest sacrifice your leader could be expected to make is to give up golf.
Do you really not realize we understand most of the elite in this country has personally profited off a war that was based on lies? Do you really believe we, the US Taxpayer, are not going to come looking for TRILLIONS of dollars in stolen loot? No terrorist could have ever cost us more, than you, the war profiteering republicans have. We will come looking for that money, and don't think we will believe for a moment Bin Laden took it.
Our nation lays in ruins, and since it was republicans, in all their hubris, that made it so, your extinction could not come fast enough for a world that is eager to shake off your malicious incompetence and global crimes. Our economy is ruined, our infrastructure crumbling, our treasury looted and our social services are failing to even meet the most basic needs of our own people, our global reputation is worth less than trash, our dollar in a free fall, and as the final insult, we are paying 4 dollars a gallon for gas and food prices are surging by the day.
And all of this you republicans did for no other reason than George W. Bush told you to. You told everyone what a great idea it was, you vouched for him constantly. You believed him when he said he would keep you safe, if only you destroyed the very keystones of the US Constitution and crowned him with unlimited power. And so you did. You republicans stood by and let him shred our laws and defy tradition and protocol at every turn. Every time he said jump, you jumped, like Pavlovian dogs, you helped him do this to our people every time he rang the bell to summon you to it.
No matter how many times you were warned and told otherwise, on many occasions you backed Bush for nothing more than spite, just to appall those who were right all along. To torment those you held powerless in your grasp, you enabled and unleashed a MONSTER unto the world. A monster you foolishly thought would only destroy anyone who did not look like you or think like you or act like you. And now you cry because he threatens you, too.
And NOW, you want to 're brand' yourself. You are stealing ads for anti-depressants to try to re-make your image as something other than the lap dogs of George W. Bush...? Well dear republicans, it is too damn late for that. Like it or not it is time to play THE BLAME GAME.
Guess who will not be taking the blame? Those of us that dissented against you at every step. Those of us who were not involved in, and enabling WAR CRIMES, will not let you pretend somehow we are all to blame and therefore no one can be held responsible. You will be held responsible, whether you like it or not.
And do not think for a moment when the investigations are over and some of you get dragged off to prison that any of us will shed a single tear for you. At least we will not allow you to be water-boarded or beaten to death. We will not torture you, even though you all have advocated and justified torture all along. You should be grateful not everyone succumbs to your sick and low standards.
If you think November is an ending, dear republicans, think again. When the cracks that leaked out Abu Ghraib photos, and the Downing Street Memos, when those cracks are ripped open and sunlight falls upon the darkest corners of your crimes, you will not only be finished in politics, but your very name will be reviled by all our own for all time left to come. You will not just be run out of the halls of power, you will be harassed and hounded as you run the gauntlet through a hell of your own creation. You will be remembered as TRAITORS who constantly excused War Crimes and High Treason. Some of you will rot in prison, some of you may even be hanged for what you did in the name of George W. Bush.
And you have no one to blame but yourselves and George W. Bush. Do not think for a moment you will be able to throw away the albatross you willingly hung around your neck with a sense of perverted pride and fake bravado. He high-jacked your party and co-opted it into a murder machine. A machine you willingly helped him feed over a million people into.
At any time, you could have broke away from him, at any time you could have stood up to be counted among those trying to stop it, but you as a party never did. Not once. And only now, when it is obvious the American people are no longer willing to tolerate your presence, only now, when you are facing extinction in his name, only now when your own power is threatened because of him, only NOW are you willing to dis-associate yourselves with him. And the worst thing is, you are stupid enough to believe that we are stupid enough to buy it.
Dear republicans, there is only one thing left you can do to show any amount of honor at all. Resign. En Mass. Go home before you are run out in furious shame. Stand up by standing down. Dessert your post and let us get to the business of cleaning up your mess. It is the only thing left you can do that will not further harm our country or your own legacies. It is the only thing left you can do without going down in history as the thugs who enabled the worst president in American history. Leave DC, and never come back. One way or another, you will be leaving, you may as well make it look you wanted too.
And then after you are gone, you better run. Run hard, and fast, to the nearest church, drop down on your knees, and beg God to forgive what you have done. He is the only one left that might.
The rest of us will be too busy making sure you are extincted in politics, and being held personally responsible for what has happened here.

Bush Uses Holy Land Pulpit to Launch Smear Campaign


George W. Bush is unworthy of the presidency. He is a disgrace to himself, our Nation, and the high office he holds.
In a speech to the Israeli Knesset on Thursday, Mr. Bush forfeited the last scraps of his moral authority, dishonoring himself by using one of the world's most important pulpits to launch a false and vicious political attack against Barack Obama.
I am such a strong supporter of Israel that when I worked in the White House some of my friends called me a "Likkud Democrat." It is especially appalling to supporters of Israel that Mr. Bush would stand on a hilltop in Jerusalem to invoke the Holocaust in order to make a cheap and deeply dishonest political point.
I am a person of faith, so it is especially galling that a man who calls himself a brother in faith would stand in the Holy Land and violate one of the Commandments God gave to Moses: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
This is what Mr. Bush said, according to the text released by the White House:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
His attack was disgraceful, demeaning and dishonest. Bush's own government has repeatedly conducted negotiations with terrorists and radicals, including:
Iran. Bush sent Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, then posted to Baghdad, to negotiate with Iran over security issues affecting Iraq. Bush's current Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, told ABC News, "We are willing to sit down with Iran face to face for talks on Iraqi security at the invitation of the Iraqi government. We've had three rounds of those talks and we've told them we are ready to again."
Libya. Although Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was behind the December, 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans, the Bush Administration conducted months of negotiations with the terrorists, culminating in a 2003 agreement to dismantle Libyan long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction;
North Korea. The Bush Administration, led by Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, has held numerous direct negotiations with the North Korean regime, a charter member of Mr. Bush's "axis of evil."
It should be noted that in each instance, the negotiations actually advanced America's security position. So even the Bush administration, by its actions, attests to the efficacy of negotiating with evildoers.
All this is to say George W. Bush is a hypocrite. So deep is his cynicism that he would go on foreign soil to invoke history's greatest crime to condemn conduct he himself has engaged in.
As an American I am ashamed that such a man represents me.
I say this as someone who has not supported Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries; someone who has reservations about Sen. Obama's plan to engage Iran in talks without any preconditions. But there comes a time when intra-party rivalries must yield, and all of us must stand together against the degradation of the Office of the Presidency.

LinkHere

Biden calls Bush comments 'bulls**t'
(CNN) — The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joe Biden, D-Delaware, called President Bush’s comments accusing Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats of wanting to appease terrorists "bulls**t” and said if the president disagrees so strongly with the idea of talking to Iran then he needs to fire his secretaries of State and Defense, both of whom Biden said have pushed to sit down with the Iranians.
“This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset…and make this kind of ridiculous statement,” Biden said angrily in a brief interview just off the Senate floor.
“He’s the guy who’s weakened us. He’s the guy that’s increased the number of terrorists in the world. His policies have produced this vulnerability the United States has. His intelligence community pointed that out not me. The NIE has pointed that out and what are you talking about, is he going to fire Condi Rice? Condi Rice has talked about the need to sit down. So his first two appeasers are Rice and Gates. I hope he comes home and does something.”
He quoted Gates saying Wednesday that we “need to figure

Olbermann To Bush: "This War Is Not About You...Shut The Hell Up!"

Tonight, Keith Olbermann unleashed what may well have been his angriest, most blistering Special Comment yet, aimed squarely at his favorite target: President Bush. Olbermann was responding to Bush's claim that he had given up golf in honor of the Iraq war — and his assertion that a Democratic president withdrawing from Iraq would "eventually lead to another attack on the United States" — a statement Olbermann called "ludicrous, infuriating, holier-than-thou and most importantly bone-headedly wrong." Olbermann continued in that vein for a full 12 minutes (or 2,000 words), frequently raising his voice and spitting out his words in disgust.
Watch the video here; the full transcript is below.

Countdown: Special Comment "Bush Shut The Hell Up" Pt.01

Countdown: Special Comment "Bush Shut The Hell Up" Pt.02

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Some Unsolicited Advice for Barack Obama

TO: Barack H. Obama, Presumptive Nominee, Democratic Party.
FROM: Ernest Partridge, Philosopher at Large, Incorrigible Gadfly.RE: The Campaign: How to Learn from the Past and Avoid Repeating It.

Serving the People vs. Clinging to Power


It's useful to compare the way China handled its national disaster with the way the Burmese handled the cyclone, and the way our Republican administration handled Katrina.
The Chinese premier immediately sent 50,000 troops with every conceivable type of disaster relief equipment to the affected area, and headed them up personally, climbing through the rubble and shouting to those trapped inside that help was on the way.
Since he couldn't put on a uniform and play soldier, Bush just sat on his duff and made speeches, calling on the people to help themselves.
The Burmese junta was willing to let tens of thousands of people die of hunger, thirst, exposure and disease rather than run the risk of letting a foreign 'agitator' into the country.
Odd that our 'democratic' leader barely did better than the Burmese junta, and much worse than the undemocratic Chinese.
Lincoln said our government was 'for the people', but this is not the motto of the Republican party, which views the American people as a rabble not to be trusted, and feels that information about what the government is doing should be withheld from anyone who can't afford to buy his girlfriend a hundred thousand dollar dress, or a three hundred thousand dollar watch that doesn't tell time. All others should be spied upon because you never can tell what unpleasant things they might be saying about their leaders.
It's easy to tell a democratic leader from a dictator. Democratic leaders are interested in the welfare of the people. Dictators are interested only in preserving their power.
The Republican attitude is closer to the Burmese leaders than to the Chinese, who seem to be inching toward becoming a little more open, while our Republican administration plunges toward ever-increasing secrecy and paranoia.
This Republican administration, for example, is as suspicious as the Burmese junta when it comes to disaster relief. This Republican administration regularly taps phone calls between Americans and relief groups like the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, in defiance of our own and international law. It makes hundreds of thousands of requests to libraries and other institutions for private information on reading habits of American citizens.

Cindy McCain Sells Sudan-Related Investments

WASHINGTON — Cindy McCain, whose husband has been a critic of the violence in Sudan, sold off more than $2 million in mutual funds whose holdings include companies that do business in the African nation.
The sale on Wednesday came after The Associated Press questioned the investments in light of calls by John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, for international financial sanctions against the Sudanese leadership.
McCain, who was campaigning in Ohio, said neither he nor his wife were aware of the Sudan-related holdings.
Last year, at least four presidential candidates divested themselves of similar holdings involving companies doing business in Sudan.
According to McCain's personal financial disclosure, Cindy McCain's investments include two mutual funds _ American Funds Europacific Growth fund and American Funds Capital World Growth and Income fund _ that are listed by the Sudan Divestment Task Force as targets for divestment.
"Those have been sold as of today," said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers. Both funds have holdings in Oil & Natural Gas Corp., an India-based company that does business in Sudan. The American Funds Capital World Growth & Income Fund also has holdings in Petrochina, a Chinese government-owned oil company with vast investments in Sudan.
Last year, in a speech on energy policy to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, McCain cited China's investments in Sudan as an example of regimes that survive off free-flowing petro dollars.

The Corporation

I believe this is one of the best and most important documentary films to be made in many year

A Must Watch Video Documentary

After viewing this film, it becomes all too evident that these large corporations have too much power, whose mandate is not the common good of the people, and who will go to any lengths, legally and otherwise, in the pursuit of profit and the bottom line.

LinkHere
The Century of the Self
How politicians and business learned to create and manipulate mass-consumer society.

A Must watch - Video Documentary By Adam Curtis

The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

Sound-Bite Politics - Shallow Analysis and the Sinking of Senator Obama

Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III for Truthout: "There are deep issues with this process and the manner in which mainstream media outlets are using distortions to distract the American electorate. These distractions are causing real problems for Obama. Television networks ABC, NBC, CNN and others, as well as newspaper sources such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, are deliberately distracting Americans with sound bites and shallow analysis."
LinkHere

World Carbon Dioxide Levels Highest for 650,000 Years, Says US Report

David Adam, of The Guardian UK, reports: "The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to the latest figures, renewing fears that climate change could begin to slide out of control. Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years."
LinkHere

McCain and the "Unitary Executive"

Robert Parry writes for The Consortium News: "If John McCain wins the presidency and gets to appoint one or more US Supreme Court justices Americas 220-year experiment as a democratic Republic living under the principle that no man is above the law may come to an end. To put the matter differently, if a President McCain replaces one of the moderate justices with another Samuel Alito as McCain has vowed to do then Justice Department lawyer John Yoos extreme vision of an all-powerful Executive could well become the new law of the land."
McCain Touts Wind Energy, but He Opposed Key Legislation
Sam Stein, of The Huffington Post:
"Over the past few years, Sen. John McCain has earned maverick stripes by taking a stance on climate change that few of his Republican colleagues share. But back in 2005, when McCain had the chance to vote for a bill that would have included the largest expansion of financial incentives to produce clean wind energy, he didn't."

The John McCain Land Rush

Writing for Truthout, Michael Winship says, "Hell hath no fury like a convert. Or so it seemed back in the early nineties, when the political career of Arizona Senator John McCain almost went down in flames during the savings and loan scandal."
LinkHere

Rove Refuses to Testify

By Ben Evans The Associated Press
Tuesday 13 May 2008
Washington - A House Judiciary Committee deadline passed Monday with former White House adviser Karl Rove standing by his refusal to testify about allegations that he pushed the Justice Department to prosecute former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman.
In his latest offer to settle the matter, Rove sent the panel a letter offering to respond to questions in writing, according to his attorney. But he reiterated that he would not testify publicly and under oath.
Committee leaders did not immediately answer questions about how they will respond. Earlier this month, they threatened to subpoena Rove if he did not agree to appear voluntarily by Monday.
The dispute is the latest in a standoff between President Bush and Congress over testimony from current and former White House staffers on a variety of issues.
The White House has balked at requests for staff testimony, arguing that the administration has no obligation to respond to congressional demands for the details of internal deliberations.
Democrats say Bush is taking the most expansive view of executive privilege since Watergate and that the executive branch cannot ignore Congress' demands for information. The panel is suing to get documents and testimony from former White House counsel Harriet Miers and Bush's chief of staff, Josh Bolten.
Rove had previously offered to discuss the Siegelman matter with committee members privately, without a transcript and not under oath.
Judiciary Democrats balked, saying it would not create a clear record and would not be sworn.
Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said Monday the latest offer for written responses was intended to address concerns about establishing a clear record.
The committee is investigating whether Rove and Republican appointees at the Justice Department influenced Siegelman's prosecution to kill his chances for re-election. It is part of a broader inquiry into whether U.S. attorneys were fired for not aggressively pursuing case

against Democrats.
LinkHere

Tar baby?

In a 20-page memo on GOP electoral woes, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) repeatedly misspells Barack Obama’s name – it’s one R, congressman, not two -- and then manages to use the racially charged term “tar baby” in a paragraph about Obama and immigration. “Remember,” Davis writes, “Hispanic voters are a swing group in this election and future elections. John McCain, being from a border state, may be out of sync with many Republicans but he has standing among Hispanics. Barrack Obama has not made the sale to Hispanic voters. Thus, this issue is a tar baby for anyone who touches it, with land mines everywhere.”
LinkHere

Mosul under Attack.

Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
From 8 months ago, I've been saying it over and over, watch out for Mosul, something is being planned there. Not only that, when I listened to some of the testimonies of American war vets, one of them said that his platoon was charged of "forcibly removing and displacing Sunnis from the Nineveh province and bring in Shia families instead." You can still hear these testimonies, they are available on the Web. And if you insist, I will have to dig out the link for you. But I much rather you do your own research as I really have no time to keep giving you proof after proof, to no avail... And here come the latest news from Mosul, stuff you will not read in your mainstream media, nor in the Iraqi government media concerning operation "Lion's roars."... continua / continued

Sources: U.S. cuts off Iraqi politician Chalabi

Once a neocon favorite, he had 'unauthorized' contacts with Iran
Sources in Baghdad tell NBC News that as of this week American military and civilian officials have cut off all contact with controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, the former favorite of Washington's once powerful neoconservatives.
The reason, the sources say, is "unauthorized" contacts with Iran's government, an allegation Chalabi denies. Iran has been accused of arming and training rebel Shiite forces in Iraq.
Chalabi had been making a remarkable comeback in Iraq, but that may now be in question, American officials tell NBC News on condition of anonymity.

CNN: Edwards to endorse Obama

CNN) — CNN has confirmed that former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards will endorse Barack Obama shortly at a Michigan campaign event.
The endorsement could help Obama reach out to white, blue-collar voters — a demographic group that Obama has failed to capture, most notably in the recent Pennsylvania and West Virginia primaries.
Edwards received 7 percent of the vote in Tuesday's West Virginia contest.
The former North Carolina senator had campaigned on the message that he was standing up for the little guy, the people who are not traditionally given a voice in Washington, and that he would do more to fight special interests.
After dropping out of the race on January 30, Edwards asked both Clinton and Obama to make poverty a central issue of the general election and a future Democratic administration, something both agreed to do.
Full story

Christian Broadcast Network endorses Obama.

Obama and the Cross

May 14, 2008
I have been telling Brody File readers for months that if Barack Obama becomes the Democratic nominee he will make a pitch to win over independent/moderate Evangelicals. Well, we now have evidence.
Look at the flyer below:

In Kentucky, he is making a direct appeal to Evangelicals with flyers that mention his conversion experience and they highlight a big old cross. Remember Mike Huckabee’s supposed subliminal cross in his Christmas campaign ad? Well, the Obama campaign ditches the subliminal and goes for the in your face cross. Look at the flyer here.
The Obama campaign has consistently believed that their candidate can compete for the “religious vote”. A lot has been made about how Obama hasn’t done as well with Catholics compared to Clinton. But let’s remember one thing: Obama has a story to tell about how Jesus came into his life. You can bet we will be hearing more details about it on the stump in the fall. (if Obama is the nominee)
Meanwhile, John McCain won’t be partaking in the “Evangelical speak” or handing out these types of flyers in the south which makes you wonder if Huckabee could help McCain shore up the Evangelical base and at the same time play to the Independent middle with his populist streak.
I know the conservative policy purists will say that Obama is liberal and therefore Evangelicals won’t buy his “Evangelical speak”. Not so fast. Remember, many people vote based on an emotional connection to a candidate or if they can relate to that person. Obama may need to work on this perception that he is “elite” but when he talks about Jesus and the Bible and the fact that he’s a sinner, it makes him more real and in the process, more electable too.

LinkHere

Congress: Money for War, But No Money for the Troops?

When it comes to hypocritical "Support the Troops" rhetoric, I thought I'd seen it all. But I was wrong. This week, a small group of Democrats are using back door dealings to torpedo the widely-supported new GI Bill. For anyone new to the issue, here's the bottom line up front:
In 1944, FDR signed the original GI Bill, which gave every veteran a chance to go to college. It paid for tuition, fees, and books, and gave veterans a living stipend. The GI Bill helped the "Greatest Generation" readjust to civilian life, it helped pull us out of a post-war recession, and it helped build the middle class. Every dollar spent on educational benefits under the original GI Bill added at least seven dollars to the national economy.
Today, 1.7 million troops have come home from Iraq and Afghanistan, but the GI Bill no longer covers anything like the cost of college. So a bipartisan coalition of veterans now serving in the Senate introduced a new GI Bill, modeled on the World War II legislation. This bill recently got added to the war funding bill currently in Congress.
======
Our government has been paying for basically the entire war "off-budget"--the equivalent of racking up billions in credit card debt. Everyone thinks this is a bad way of doing business. But it's not the whole supplemental that these Congressmen are threatening to vote against; it's just the GI Bill. For those of you playing along at home, here's what that looks like:

LinkHere

BREAKING CLINTON LOSES FIRST PLEDGED DELEGATE

Source: Washington Post
Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson, a Democratic convention delegate pledged to support Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, said yesterday that he thinks Sen. Barack Obama has "in a real sense" won the Democratic nomination and that he now plans to support Obama at the August convention.
Johnson, who endorsed Clinton nine days before Maryland's February primary, said he will urge Gov. Martin O'Malley and Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, who co-chair Clinton's Maryland campaign, to bring all of her delegates to Obama's camp for the sake of party unity.
"I cannot in good conscience go to the convention and not support Barack," Johnson said in an interview. "She ran a great campaign, but she fell short of the line."
"The freedom to change your mind or change your vote does exist," Paulson said. "They're not like superdelegates, but they do have this flexibility."
Obama swamped Clinton in Maryland, capturing 61 percent of the vote statewide and 79 percent of the vote in Prince George's County. Given the results in Maryland and elsewhere, Johnson said, the Maryland party would be unenthusiastic about the November election if Obama were not the nominee.
A decision by O'Malley or Mikulski to release all of Maryland's Clinton delegates could be the start of a national wave to unify behind Obama, Johnson said.

LinkHere
May 13, 2008 10:45 AMMichael Elmore-->
ABC News' Teddy Davis, Sunlen Miller, and Mike Elmore Report: Roy Romer, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and former governor of Colorado, said Tuesday that he is supporting Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., for president. In announcing his decision, Romer urged other superdelegates to do the same, saying that "it's important" for Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., "to know where we are so she is not misled."
"My reasons are that the party needs to get on right now with a lot of business, including figuring out what to do with Michigan and Florida," Romer told ABC News. "It's important to make known right now not only my vote but as many superdelegates as possible."
Romer said his support for Obama is based on the delegate math as well as Obama's strength in the interior Mountain West: the Illinois Democrat carried Colorado over Clinton by a two-to-one margin: Obama 67%, Clinton 32%.
After previewing his announcement with ABC News, Romer joined Obama campaign manager David Plouffe on a conference call with reporters.

Ain't that the truth

Lincoln Chafee Calls Bush Worst President in History
by David Swanson Page 1 of 1 page(s)
http://www.opednews.com
Former Republican Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee on Tuesday evening called George W. Bush the worst president in U.S. history and the occupation of Iraq the worst foreign tragedy in U.S. history. Chafee said Bush deserved to be impeached.Chafee served in the U.S. Senate from 1999 to 2006 and credits his defeat in 2006 - as do most analysts - to his membership in the party of Bush and Cheney. In 2003 Chafee was the only Republican senator to vote against authorization to attack Iraq. Chafee and John McCain had been the only two Republican senators to vote against the first round of Bush tax cuts.
While Chafee is supporting Barack Obama for president, he said on Tuesday that the Democrats as well as the Republicans have moved too far to the right. Without any apparent bitterness, Chafee remarked that while voters got a new Senate and House in 2006, they didn't get any changes in policies out of it.Chafee made his remarks on a radio show I hosted, the audio of which can be found at http://www.davidswanson.org

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Unfrikingbelievable, the slimy, sleazy, WANKER.



Why George Bush gave up golf


From correspondents in Washington
May 14, 2008 01:23pm
US President George W. Bush says he stopped playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of Americans killed in the war in Iraq.
"I don't want some mum whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf," Mr Bush said in an interview with Yahoo and Politico.com.
"I feel I owe it to the families to be as - to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal," he said.
Mr Bush said his last round of golf was in August 2003 when he was informed that a truck bomb had wrecked the UN headquarters in Baghdad, killing 22 people, including UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.
"They pulled me off the golf course and I said 'it's just not worth it any more to do'," Mr Bush said.
EXCLUSIVE: Fmr. Military Intelligence Officer Reveals US Listed Palestine Hotel in Baghdad as Target Prior to Killing of Two Journalists in 2003
Last month marked the fifth anniversary of the US military shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. The attack killed two journalists: Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish television network Telecinco. The Pentagon has called the killings accidental, but in this broadcast exclusive Army Sgt. Adrienne Kinne (Ret.) reveals she saw secret US military documents that listed the hotel as a possible target. Kinne also discloses that she was personally ordered to eavesdrop on Americans working for news organizations and NGOs in Iraq. [includes rush transcript]

I think they misremember a lot.

It’s Feith’s memory, not Americans’, that is faulty here. In January, a Center for Public Integrity study documented the more than 930 false statements made by the Bush Administration in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Feith has shut his eyes to the evidence for months, laughably claiming that the administration never said the war would be easy, even though the White House frequently — and famouslypeddled just that notion.

LinkHere

Charges Dropped Against ‘Dangerous’ Detainee Who Was Tortured At Guantanamo

The AP reports today that the Pentagon has “dropped charges” against Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 who was alleged to have been the so-called “20th hijacker” on 9/11.
Known as
Detainee 063, Qahtani was the subject of a 2002 meeting at Guantanamo that included former Bush lawyer Alberto Gonzales, Cheney’s lawyer David Addington, and former Rumsfeld lawyer Jim Haynes. The trio approved the interrogations at Guantanamo, with Donald Rumsfeld then authorizing the “First Special Interrogation Plan” specifically for Qahtani. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) noted that these methods included:
[F]orty-eight days of severe sleep deprivation and 20-hour interrogations, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, physical force, prolonged stress positions and prolonged sensory overstimulation, and threats with military dogs. The aggressive techniques, standing alone and in combination, resulted in severe physical and mental pain and suffering.
“This is a very dangerous individual who has provided us with
valuable intelligence,” claimed former White House press secretary Scott McClellan in 2005. But as Marcy Wheeler notes, the dismissal raises questions about the credibility of torture-based evidence.
Renowned international lawyer Philippe Sands, who has extensively studied Qahtani, talked to PBS’s Bill Moyers about the interrogations of Qahtani on Friday. “And the bottom line of it was, contrary to what the administration
said, they got nothing out of him,” Sands explained. Watch it:
Phillippe Sands on Torture, With Bill Moyers

White People! May I have your Attention Please?!

(Ed note: Today's blog head comes to us from Christy. Christy's article delicately begins a discussion about race and racism. It's a sensitive topic to approach, but is also quite necessary.)

Hello? Hello! Thanks for coming! In the interest of full disclosure, I am also white. Or, I am at least white enough that white people automatically assume I am white, so really, that is all that matters.Our country was recently invited to open up a dialogue on racial issues. I would like to happily accept that invitation. So, you might ask... Why am I addressing other whites instead of blacks then? Good question. Simple answer, I am not black. Would you like me to explain that? Ok.
The discussion of race has long been viewed as something that must happen across racial lines, and that is the only thing that counts. The truth is, what people say to each other across racial lines in public, is never what they say in private at dinner. The most important discussions on race, will not happen across the racial divide, it is the conversation between members of the same race that shape the overall attitude the racial divide will be approached with by either group.As a white person, I simply do not feel threatened by the outburst of occasional racism by blacks, nor do I feel it is my place to dictate racial issues to those of another race. However, on the flip side, outbursts of racist behavior by other whites appalls me. It offends me, and taints the reputation of our race. A stigma that will be thrust upon the future of my white children the same way black racism taints the future of black children. If I am not responsible for it as a fellow white person, then who is responsible for stopping it?As a race, we have no right to tell blacks they have nothing to fear, because history shows repeatedly they should be afraid of these issues. That very real and justified fear has been devastating in their social evolution. Most of the time when blacks do try to reach across the racial divide with honest questions/observations about race, they are accused by whites of 'playing the race card', or being 'militant' or 'angry'. Black leaders that do press these matters have a bad habit of attracting bullets. As a white myself it is amazing to me they still try even after facing disappointment and danger at every turn and in every era.I can not speak to the private fears or concerns of blacks, but I do completely believe in their ability to have this same kind of discussion amongst their own. But it must be a discussion they can have openly with each other, without whites trying to set the goals or standards for them. It must be a discussion they can have without fear of white misunderstanding or impatience.There are many things we as whites can settle amongst ourselves to purge ourselves of tendencies that are destructive to the racial climate. Regardless and separate from blacks, we must modify our own behaviors to reflect progress.For example: If you have to insist you are not a racist, it is most likely because you said or exhibited behavior that was racist. Racism does not begin at birth, or with an act, it begins with words. Black people understand perfectly well someone who is not racist can say things that seem racist. When a black person points out your words may be racist, it is almost always met with a knee-jerk and defensive reaction. The proper reaction to being accused of racist words is to ask why they were perceived as racist, and then LISTEN to the response.When I have such discussions with my black friends and family, I am always surprised at how studied their perspective is, no knee jerk reactions on their part, they have learned not to take the discussion personally, I believe whites should learn to do the same. I am often left full of hope when when we have these talks, in spite of all our problems in this world, our common bonds and needs are stronger than ever. They are conversations that heal the mind and soul.Another example of how whites can facilitate a better approach to racial issues is to understand and accept that there are two radically different histories between our people, and both are equally true.For whites, we are the land of the free, the land of milk, and honey. Opportunity sprung from this land and all men were created equal. We built something fine and good here. For blacks, it is a history of oppression, slavery, and sub-human conditions. To this day, their men are 'boys' and no one is punished when they are gunned down 50 bullets at a time. Unemployment, prison and political manipulation is their reality. Both realities are true, and they are intimately linked.Unless both realities are treated equally, accepted equally, we can not broker an honest peace between our people. Until we accept this is the perspective they see our nation from, we are denying a history we all know occurred. We must do nothing less than marry the two histories into a single narrative that is honest about our entire history together.These issues as a whole are not just black and white. Hispanics, Asians, and yes, definitely Native Americans also all need to be approached in this way by whites, or else the same pitfalls will keep occurring in all racial discussions, and nothing can ever be settled.No matter what race you are, our willingness to moderate the behavior of our own self and people is what has been most clearly lacking on all sides, and it is the thing most needed to make a deep reconciliation a reality.And finally, and perhaps most importantly, white people, quit using the 'N' word. Do not use it, and do not allow other whites to use it in front of you. Not even family members at the dinner table. I do not care if black people use the word, that is for them to settle among themselves. But when other whites use it in front of you, it is not about blacks, it is to the detriment of white people that they do so. It sets an awful standard for our own race to use such rhetoric. No white using that language speaks for me, nor do they speak for a majority of whites who do want to settle our common future together alongside our brothers and sisters of all races.The days of racial division and hostility between blacks and white in this country are numbered. Just the fact I am writing these words is proof of the progress we have made as a nation and that we are all within reach of a new day where these things no longer worry and distract us from fulfilling a great destiny of reshaping our world into something better for all of us.

LinkHere

Finding Obama guilty of insufficient devotion to Israel

OBAMA: That does not mean that I would agree with every action of the state of Israel, because it's a government and it has politicians, and as a politician myself I am deeply mindful that we are imperfect creatures and don’t always act with justice uppermost on our minds.
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg conducted what he's calling an "interview" with Barack Obama regarding Israel, but it sounded much more like an inquisition. Goldberg repeatedly demanded that Obama swear his devotion to Israel and affirm prevailing orthodoxies ("I'm curious to hear you talk about the Zionist idea. Do you believe that it has justice on its side?"; "Go to the kishke question, the gut question: the idea that if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don't know you –- Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski –- then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it"; "Do you think that Israel is a drag on America's reputation overseas?"; "If you become President, will you denounce settlements publicly?"). Afterwards, Goldberg pronounced himself satisfied: "Obama expressed -- in twelve different ways -- his support for Israel to me."
Marty Peretz, after a telephone conversation with Obama devoted primarily to Israel,
similarly clears Obama of any suspicions of disloyalty, approvingly noting that Obama "recognizes" that Israeli settlements of the West Bank are not "the core problem" for the conflict with the Palestinians (to Peretz, such settlements "are very much a side-issue"). Peretz further decrees that Obama's "exhilarating experience with American Jews and with their bonds to the dream and realities of Israel" was evident in both Goldberg's interview and in Obama's call with Peretz.
Needless to say, Obama's vows of devotion to Israel were not enough for the right-wing polemicists who endlessly play on the fears of American Jews and exploit Israel-related issues for political gain. GOP leaders in the House -- such as House Minority John Boehner -- issued highly inflammatory statements regarding Obama's interview with Goldberg, condemning Obama for describing Israel as a "constant sore" when, in fact, Obama used that term to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict --
not Israel (that lie by Boehner and others was so severe that Goldberg, to his credit, embraced Andrew Sullivan's description of Boehner's statement as a "flat-out lie" and added that it was "mendacious, duplicitous, gross, and comically refutable").
But beyond the outright lying, right-wing condemnation of Obama's desperately pro-Israel remarks is highly revealing.
David Frum complained yesterday that while Obama embraced the notion that "the Zionist idea has justice on its side," he followed that up with a "disclaimer." What was the "disclaimer" that so upset Frum? This:
OBAMA: That does not mean that I would agree with every action of the state of Israel, because it's a government and it has politicians, and as a politician myself I am deeply mindful that we are imperfect creatures and don’t always act with justice uppermost on our minds.Hideous! We can't have an American President who reserves the right to do something other than "agree with every action of the state of Israel." Frum generously declares that Obama is not anti-semitic, but finds him guilty of being "cavalier with Israel's security" (
this blogger pronounces Frum correct and adds this "condemnation" of Obama: "I do not believe that the man hates Israel, but he doesn't love it either").
free hit counter