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Saturday, March 21, 2009

Mr. Fair And Balanced Hume, done in by Joe the Plumber, Ahahahahahaha

Update
U.S. News reports that Hume "got outshone by another conservative darling -- Joe the Plumber" at the MRC's gala.
Absolutely pathetic Joe the Plumber

Last night, the conservative Media Research Center, which houses the ever on point NewsBusters blog, hosted its annual “DisHonors” media awards gala in Washington, D.C. Aside from the cornier “Media Messiah” and “Obamagasm” media honors the group bestowed to alleged “liberal” members of the press, MRC presented Fox News’s Brit Hume with its “William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence.” In his acceptance speech, Hume warned of the dangers of the rise of blogs and news being “presented from one political viewpoint”:

HUME: What are we getting?…We’re getting bloggers and websites and all sorts of individual entrepreneurs, and we have a vaster menu of choices today than we’ve ever had. But I think that we also have the danger that everything will be presented from one political viewpoint or the other, and that the media that confront us are going to be more partisan than ever — which means that the Media Research Center will have a mission for many years to come, and a good thing that is.

Hume’s warning is rather odd because in the very same speech, he thanked the MRC — an unabashedly conservative outfit — for feeding him information for his reports as anchor of Fox News’s Special Report: LinkHere

Friday, March 20, 2009

Palin Fires Back at Obama for Special Olympics Joke

Typical Palin Hypocracy
Sarah Palin uses her kids or anything else she can to advance herself, I watched her viciousness in the run up to the election and if you think that she even comes close to Obama, go back to LaLa land.
The Alaska governor tells The Daily Beast that she was none too pleased with the President’s gag line on The Tonight Show. LinkHere
Following the lead of the other 2012 GOP presidential contenders, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) announced today that she would reject nearly half the $930 million Alaska was set to receive from the economic stimulus package. Like Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC), Palin is set to further cripple the state’s education system:
The biggest single chunk of stimulus money that Palin is turning down is $160 million for education. There’s also $17 million in Department of Labor funds (vocational rehabilitation services, unemployment services, etc.), about $9 million for Health and Social Services and about $7 million for Public Safety.
During the press conference announcing her decision, Palin asked, “Will we chart our own course, or will Washington (D.C.) engineer it for us?” She also quoted Thomas Jefferson and complained about “the strings attached” to the stimulus funds. “What we think we need is kind of a time-out, where we back up, we pause, and we really think about what we’re doing here,” Palin said

Special Olympics Athlete Challenges Obama To Game: "He's Cool, But He Can't Beat Me"

I'd say your way cool too Kolan, good for you, time to invite this man to the White House Mr President for a play off.
UDPATE: Kolan McConiughey, a Special Olympics bowling champion with an average score of 266, is challenging President Obama to a game, TMZ reports:
Kolan -- who works at a grocery store in Ann Arbor, Mich. -- said he'd love to go to the White House to beat Barack on his own lane. Kolan said, "He's cool, but he can't beat me."

Obama Never Had A "Honeymoon": Media Matters (VIDEO)

What Honeymoon?
And it's only 48 days, Pity they didn't give as much attention to the last Administration while they were sucking the life blood out of the middle and poor classes with their corruption

The President's Message to the Iranian People

Obama On Tonight Show With Jay Leno: FULL TRANSCRIPT, VIDEO

Petraeus ‘Frustrated’ By Admirers Lindsey Graham And John McCain’s Opposition To Chris Hill

Earlier this month, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) announced their opposition to the nomination of Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. “While Mr. Hill is a talented diplomat who has served our country for many years, his selection for this post concerns us,” said the two senators in a statement. The McCain/Graham statement was the first shot fired by “a cadre of Senate Republicans” aiming to sink Hill’s nomination.
But the senators’ effort to derail Hill took a major hit today when Foreign Policy’s Laura Rozen reported that “Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus, top Iraq commander Gen. Raymond Odierno, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are frustrated by the delay in getting a U.S. ambassador confirmed and into place in Iraq.” Though Rozen’s initial report was based on anonymous sources, she later updated with an on the record statement from the Pentagon:
====

Former McCain aide Michael Goldfarb writes at the Weekly Standard that Petraeus and Odierno’s support for Hill deals “a serious blow to the campaign against his appointment.”

Madoff Employee Breaks Silence

Source: Daily Beast
Madoff Employee Breaks Silence
by Lucinda Franks

In a Daily Beast exclusive, one of the fraudster’s employees tells Lucinda Franks that the supposedly legitimate brokerage operations were in fact just money-losing fronts for the fraudster's scheme. Plus, what Madoff’s sons told staff the day after Bernie’s arrest, trips to the company’s secretive 17th floor, Bernie’s obsession with the color black and employee neatness, the roles of other family members, and visits to the founder’s Montauk home.

An employee who worked in Madoff’s legitimate brokerage operations, described by the fraudster in his plea agreement as being “successful and profitable,” has told The Daily Beast that they were in fact money losers that acted as a front for his Ponzi scheme.

He said that the legitimate businesses, the proprietary and market making arms on the eighteenth and nineteenth floors of Madoff Securities were designed to lure investors in, especially highly-placed figures in society, and to fool the SEC into thinking that he had a large and impressive galaxy of businesses.

But behind the façade, these so-called legitimate businesses were a shambles. They were excessively staffed with grossly overpaid people, and run with marked inefficiency, he said.
LinkHere

Thursday, March 19, 2009

UNFRIKINGBELIEVABLE

A.I.G. Sues U.S. for Return of $306 Million in Tax Payments


Source: NY Times
While the American International Group comes under fire from Congress over executive bonuses, it is quietly fighting the federal government for the return of $306 million in tax payments, some related to deals that were conducted through offshore tax havens.

A.I.G. sued the government last month in a bid to force it to return the payments, which stemmed in large part from its use of aggressive tax deals, some involving entities controlled by the company’s financial products unit in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, the Dutch Antilles and other offshore havens.

A.I.G. is effectively suing its majority owner, the government, which has an 80 percent stake and has poured nearly $200 billion into the insurer in a bid to avert its collapse and avoid troubling the global financial markets. The company is in effect asking for even more money, in the form of tax refunds. The suit also suggests that A.I.G. is spending taxpayer money to pursue its case, something it is legally entitled to do. Its initial claim was denied by the Internal Revenue Service last year. LinkHere

Obama's Leno Appearance: Says Geithner Doing 'Outstanding' Job

Now Obama your the Man, but Geithner is definitely debatable at this moment, I think


Is There an Antidote to the Republican Amnesia?

Memory eventually fails us all, but apparently the decline strikes one party far more than the other.
In recent weeks, my friends across the aisle have expended a lot of breath proclaiming that the Democrats caused the present financial crisis by failing to pass legislation to regulate financial services companies in the years 1995 through 2006.
There is only small one problem with this story -- throughout this entire period the Republicans were in complete charge of the House and for the most critical years they controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency.
Maddow: Eight go from White House to 'big house'
Do you know how many former Bush administration officials have been sentenced with jail time? The answer is a whopping eight, as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow pointed out Wednesday night.

Now Wasn't it Gov. Schwarzenegger at the Republican Convention that call Obama a GIRLY MAN, and told him he had to do some weight lifting?

proudloudlib
Arnold had better watch it, or they will toss him right out of the GOP. Welcome to the Democratic Party, dude.



"torpedoing their party's own agenda."

Via Media Monitor Saba K-W, Rachel Maddow spent some time last night documenting the phenomenon of "conservadems," a small group of Democratic lawmakers (apparently led by Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana), whose general aim, as Maddow puts it, is "torpedoing their party's own agenda."

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report two years ago that the Bush administration's treatment of prisoners "constituted torture" in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The findings were based on interviews with prisoners once held in the CIA's secret black sites. Author and journalist Mark Danner broke the story when he published extensive excerpts of the report in the New York Review of Books. The Red Cross said the fourteen prisoners held in the CIA prisons gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included
beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding.

Public Outcry Forces Lawmakers to Say They’ll Recoup Millions in AIG Bonuses, But Why Not the Billions in Taxpayer Bailout Funds?

AIG: Is the Risk Systemic?

Former Bush admin. official says many innocent men at Gitmo, terrorists number only 2 dozen

Source: Seattle Times

Former Bush admin. official says many innocent men at Gitmo, terrorists number only 2 dozen

Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday.

By ANDREW O. SELSKY

Associated Press Writer
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico —

Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday.

"There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."

Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.

"It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather "sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified." LinkHere

NY Cuomo: Tainted deals included Carlyle Group

How will President George W. Bush personally make millions (if not billions) from the War on Terror and Iraq? The old fashioned way. He'll inherit it. Meet The Carlyle Group Former World Leaders and Washington Insiders Making Billions in the War on Terrorism

The Axis of Corporate Evil


NY Cuomo: Tainted deals included Carlyle Group

By: Reuters 19 Mar 2009 02:01 PM ET
Text Size

NEW YORK - More than 20 investment deals made by New York state's pension fund were "tainted" by a kickback scheme, and five of the investments involved The Carlyle Group, a giant private equity fund, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday.

Cuomo charged the kickbacks were paid to Henry Morris, the chief fund-raiser for former state comptroller Alan Hevesi and the pension fund's chief investment officer. Both men are accused of having received fees from companies seeking to invest the pension fund money as part of a 123 count-indictment. LinkHere

13 firms receiving federal bailout owe back taxes

Source: AP via Google NewsWASHINGTON (AP) — At least 13 firms receiving billions of dollars in bailout money owe a total of more than $220 million in unpaid federal taxes, a key lawmaker said Thursday. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., chairman of a House subcommittee overseeing the federal bailout, said two firms owe more than $100 million apiece. "This is shameful. It is a disgrace," said Lewis. "We are going to get to the bottom of what is going on here."The House Ways and Means subcommittee on oversight discovered the unpaid taxes in a review of tax records from 23 of the firms receiving the most money, Lewis said as he opened a hearing on the issue.The committee said it could not legally release the names of the companies owing taxes. It said one recipient had almost $113 million in unpaid federal income taxes from 2005 and 2006. A second recipient owed almost $102 million dating to before 2004. Another was behind $1.1 million in federal income taxes and $223,000 in federal employment taxes."If we looked at all 470 recipients, how much would they owe?" Lewis asked.
LinkHere

Bush admin. 'contemplated' AIG bonuses in 2008

March 19 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush’s administration “specifically contemplated” paying bonuses to American International Group Inc. employees in its November agreement to provide federal bailout funds to the insurance giant, the inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said today.
LinkHere

The New White Face of Crime

Interview With a Vampire

Breaking News:HOUSE PASSES BILL TO TAX AIG BONUSES BY 90 PERCENT

Pity they did'nt do that for the last eight years, Hey Kyl Obama has only been in the White House for 2 months trying to fix up the mess you lot left him after eight years of anything goes in the White House.
Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and other Republicans on the Hill are upset with Obama's choice to appear on the Tonight Show during his trip to California. Instead, says Kyl, Obama should stay in Washington to face the big issues, namely the AIG bonus shakeup.
"My suggestion is that he come back -- since he's taken the full responsibility -- to get his people together and say 'I want to know exactly what happened, who did what when and how are we going to prevent this from ever happening in the future, and how can we manage these taxpayer assets in a way to solve the banking and financial institution crisis," Kyl said. Link Here


Uhhhhh Hell they've been listening to Rush the voice of the GOP

CRACK UP: GOP DIVIDING OVER AIG BONUSES

The Associated Press reports that House GOP leadership has decided to oppose the bill:

Media Matters notes that conservative commentators are out of step with the Republican party on the whole affair. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity are defending the AIG executives while GOP leaders in Congress denounce them. As Greg Sargent noted:

House Passes Bill Taxing AIG Bonuses, Republicans Switch Votes In Droves

Lawrence O'Donnell Reduces Eric Cantor To Babbling (VIDEO)

House Passes Bill Taxing AIG Bonuses, Republicans Switch Votes In Droves
(In all, 243 Democrats and 85 Republicans voted "yes" on the bill. It was opposed by six Democrats and 87 Republicans.)

TARP inspector general says Bush administration specifically considered and approved AIG bonuses.

Judd Gregg’s evolving opinion of the budget reconciliation process.

Don't like it Gregg, sounds exactly like what the Rethugs did for the last eight years.

Some members of the Obama administration have suggested that they might use the budget reconciliation process to pass their health care and energy proposals, which would require only 51 votes in the Senate, instead of the usual 60. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) doesn’t like this idea, claiming that it is the equivalent of “running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River.” But The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn notes that Gregg wasn’t so opposed to pushing changes through budget reconciliation in 2005 when Republicans were in power:
=====
Matt Yglesias writes that “Gregg is being a hypocrite and deserves to be called on it; media outlets who quote him complaining without noting that he’s a hypocrite are being irresponsible.”
LinkHere

Rove Hypocritically Accuses Gibbs Of Sounding ‘Like Some Wise-Cracking Junior High Smart Mouth’

Unfrikingbelievable
Rove calls Gibbs names
Rove’s holier-than-thou attitude is particularly hypocritical. It is Rove who has launched characteristically sleazy ad hominem attacks on his opponents. It is Rove who is planning to “name names” and single out Bush critics in his new book. And it is Rove who makes “sarcastic flip comments” about his rivals that make him sound like a “junior high smart mouth”:

– Echoing a right-wing smear, Rove called Obama “almost Marxian.”
– Referred to then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) as a “big blowhard doofus.”
– Slandered critics of President Bush as “elite, effete snobs.”

Of course, when Rove called his political opponents “Marxian,” “doofus,” and “snobs,” he was talking about the “real issues.”
LinkHere

Baghdad's water still undrinkable 6 years after invasion

Source: McClatchy
By Matthew Schofield, McClatchy Newspapers Matthew Schofield, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Wed Mar 18, 4:38 pm ET
BAGHDAD — The stench of human waste is enough to tell Falah abu Hasan that his drinking water is bad. His infant daughter Fatma's continuous illnesses and his own constant nausea confirm it.
"We are the poor. No one cares if we get sick and die," he said. "But someone should do something about the water. It is dirty. It brings disease."
Everybody complains about the water in Baghdad , and few are willing to risk drinking it from the tap. Six years after the U.S. invaded Iraq , 36 percent of Baghdad's drinking water is unsafe, according to the Iraqi Environment Ministry — in a good month. In a bad month, it's 90 percent. Cholera broke out last summer, and officials fear another outbreak this year.
"Even if the water is good today, no one would trust it," grocer Hussein Jawad said. He said that about 40 percent of his business was selling bottled drinking water, crates of which he's stacked 7 feet high on the sidewalk. "We've learned to be afraid."
LinkHere

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Army Is Phasing Out Stop-Loss for Soldiers

WASHINGTON -- The Army plans to phase out its deeply unpopular stop-loss program, which forces soldiers to remain in the military after their enlistments end.
The first Army units will deploy overseas without stop-loss soldiers in August. Barring a national-security emergency, the Army hopes to effectively eliminate the practice in 2011.
Pentagon officials said the move was meant to reduce the strains on soldiers and their families, and to help lower the alarmingly high rates of military suicide and divorce.
The move could also help defuse the anger in military circles over the Obama administration's aborted plan to make veterans' private health insurers reimburse the government for the cost of treating combat-related injuries. Amid a political furor, the White House dropped the proposal Wednesday.
LinkHere

President Barack Obama speaks at town hall meeting in Costa Mesa, Cal.

Speaking prior to a town hall meeting in Costa Mesa, Cal. President Barack Obama defended his budget and predicted a strong economy in the long term.

The Next AIG Scandal?

The firm's problems may extend to its 'healthy' insurance side.
Outrageous. It's the preferred adjective used by Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke to describe AIG, the crippled giant that has turned into a national money pit. AIG has swallowed at least $170 billion in taxpayer money so far while funneling $165 million of it onward in bonuses to its incompetent executives, along with tens of billions more to equally privileged "counterparties" like Goldman Sachs.
But I suspect that—with apologies to a famous American patriot—we have not yet begun to get outraged. At least if some of the insurance experts I've been talking to are correct.
Thomas Gober, a former Mississippi state insurance examiner who has tracked fraud in the industry for 23 years and served previously as a consultant to the FBI and the Department of Justice, says he believes AIG's supposedly solvent insurance business may be at least as troubled as its reckless financial-products unit. Far from being "healthy," as state insurance regulators, ratings agencies and other experts have repeatedly described the insurance side, Gober calls it "a house of cards." Citing numerous documents he has obtained from state insurance regulators and obscure data buried in AIG's own 300-page annual reports, Gober argues that AIG's 71 interlocking domestic U.S. insurance subsidiaries are in hock to each other to an astonishing degree.
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Most of this as-yet-undiscovered problem, Gober says, lies in the area of reinsurance, whereby one insurance company insures the liabilities of another so that the latter doesn't have to carry all the risk on its books. Most major insurance companies use outside firms to reinsure, but the vast majority of AIG's reinsurance contracts are negotiated internally among its affiliates, Gober says, and these internal balance sheets don't add up. The annual report of one major AIG subsidiary, American Home Assurance, shows that it owes $25 billion to another AIG affiliate, National Union Fire, Gober maintains. But American has only $22 billion of total invested assets on its balance sheet, he says, and it has issued another $22 billion in guarantees to the other companies. "The American Home assets and liquidity raise serious questions about their ability to make good on their promise to National Union Fire," says Gober, who has a consulting business devoted to protecting policyholders. Gober says there are numerous other examples of "cooked books" between AIG subsidiaries. Based on the state insurance regulators' own reports detailing unanswered questions, the tally in losses could be hundreds of billions of dollars more than AIG is now acknowledging.

OMG AIG!!!!!!!


"Ridiculous"

Think Progress:
Last night on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, Maddow asked former Sen. Chuck Hagel about former Vice President Cheney's recent claims that President Obama is making the American people "less safe" by raising the "risk to the American people of another [terrorist] attack." Hagel called Cheney's comments "ridiculous" and "folly," concluding "I'm sorry the Vice President said that":


LinkHere

"Worst Person In The World"



Perp Walks Instead of Bonuses

There must be a criminal investigation of the AIG debacle, and it looks as if New York's top lawman is on the case. The collusion to save this toxic company in order to salvage the rogue financiers who conspired to enrich themselves by impoverishing millions is being revealed as the greatest financial scandal in U.S. history. Instead of taking bonuses, the culprits should be taking perp walks.
I'm not just referring to the swindlers in the Financial Products Subsidiary of AIG who devised and sold those insurance policies on derivatives that brought the world economy to its knees. They do seem deserving of a special place in hell, and presumably the same divine power that according to Scripture labeled usury a high moral crime and threw the money-changers out of the temple will consider that outcome.
LinkHere


It is a rather curious spectacle to see congressional Republicans express outrage at the exorbitant bonuses being handed out by bailed-out companies and blame the Obama administration for failing to curb the practice with AIG. Because when the first installment of the Troubled Asset Relief Program was passed it was the Bush administration and GOPers in Congress who were insisting that caps on executive compensation not be part of the legislation.
As the New York Times reported at the time that TARP was being crafted, "Congress and the administration remained at odds over the demands of some lawmakers, including limits on the pay of top executives whose firms seek help."
Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said that while he was upset with the levels of salary afforded to top executives, any cap on such would dissuade companies from participating in the TARP.
"If we design it so it's punitive and so institutions aren't going to participate, this won't work the way we need it to work," he told Fox News Sunday on September 21.
Senator Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, told CBS news that: "It should be up to the board of directors of a private corporation to set the compensation of an executive; it shouldn't be Congress's role."
Senator Mel Martinez told CNBC that: "While it is very appealing to think about executive compensation as being a part of this, one of the drawbacks to that is perhaps that we would have fewer entities participate in what is essentially a voluntary act."
And House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, "outraged" over AIG's issuance of $165 million in bonuses, said he was not in favor of "the federal government be[ing] able to set salaries across the board," when the issue of executive compensation arose in September 2008.
The issue extended to when the Obama administration was tasked with writing its own version of the TARP. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, likewise dismayed over AIG's bonuses this past week, said back in early February that while he was "appalled" at some of the perks executives had received, he did want "the government to take over these businesses and start telling them everything about what they can do."
That said, the Obama administration too was pushing back against overly-strict caps on executive earning albeit still favoring some form of limitation.
Of course, a distinction could be made between executive compensation and issuance of bonuses. One being salary, the other being rewards. But in this and other cases, money is fungible. And back when the Troubled Asset Relief Program was being debated, it was the leadership of the GOP and the past administration that asked that the issue not be touched for fear that it would derail the legislation.

Cheney's Mission Accomplished


The real question is whether anyone will have the gumption to put Cheney on trial for treason and crimes against humanity.

March 17, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- -Dick Cheney: "I guess my general sense of where we are with respect to Iraq and at the end of now, what, nearly six years, is that we've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do...."
What has Dick Cheney really accomplished in Iraq?
An estimated 4 million Iraqis, out of 27 million, have been displaced from their homes, that is, made homeless. Some 2.7 million are internally displaced inside Iraq. A couple hundred thousand are cooling their heels in Jordan. And perhaps a million are quickly running out of money and often living in squalid conditions in Syria. Cheney's war has left about 15% of Iraqis homeless inside the country or abroad. That would be like 45 million American thrown out of their homes.
It is controversial how many Iraqis died as a result of the 2003 invasion and its aftermath. But it seems to me that a million extra dead, beyond what you would have expected from a year 2000 baseline, is entirely plausible. The toll is certainly in the hundreds of thousands. Cheney did not kill them all. The Lancet study suggested that the US was directly responsible for a third of all violent deaths since 2003. That would be as much as 300,000 that we killed. The rest, we only set in train their deaths by our invasion.
Baghdad has been turned from a mixed city, about half of its population Shiite and the other half Sunni in 2003, into a Shiite city where the Sunni population may be as little as ten to fifteen percent. From a Sunni point of view, Cheney's war has resulted in a Shiite (and Iranian) take-over of the Iraqi capital, long a symbol of pan-Arabism and anti-imperialism.
In the Iraqi elections, Shiite fundamentalist parties closely allied with Iran came to power. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the leading party in parliament, was formed by Iraqi expatriates at the behest of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1982 in Tehran. The Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party is the oldest ideological Shiite party working for an Islamic state. It helped form Hizbullah in Beirut in the early 1980s. It has supplied both prime ministers elected since 2005. Fundamentalist Shiites shaped the constitution, which forbids the civil legislature to pass legislation that contravenes Islamic law. Dissidents have accused the new Iraqi government of being an Iranian puppet.
Arab-Kurdish violence is spiking in the north, endangering the Obama withdrawal plan and, indeed, the whole of Iraq, not to mention Syria, Turkey and Iran.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women have been widowed by the war and its effects, leaving most without a means of support. Iraqi widows often lack access to clean water and electricity. Aljazeera English has video.
$32 billion were wasted on Iraq reconstruction, and most of it cannot even be traced. I repeat, Cheney gave away $32 bn. to anonymous cronies in such a way that we can't even be sure who stole it, exactly. And you are angry at AIG about $400 mn. in bonuses! We are talking about $32 billion given out in brown paper bags.
Political power is being fragmented in Iraq with big spikes in the murder rate in some provinces that may reflect faction-fighting and vendettas in which the Iraqi military is loathe to get involved.
The Iraqi economy is devastated, and the new government's bureaucracy and infighting have made it difficult to attract investors.
The Bush-Cheney invasion helped further destabilize the Eastern Mediterranean, setting in play Kurdish nationalism and terrifying Turkey.Cheney avoids mentioning all the human suffering he has caused, on a cosmic scale, and focuses on procedural matters like elections (which he confuses with democracy-- given 2000 in this country, you can understand why). Or he lies, as when he says that Iran's influence in Iraq has been blocked. Another lie is that there was that the US was fighting "al-Qaeda" in Iraq as opposed to just Iraqis. He and Bush even claim that they made Iraqi womens' lives better. LinkHere

ENOUGH!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

House Panel Probes Merrill Bonuses

MSNBC's Shuster Pushes Back On Obama/Madoff Insanity

FOX "Asks" If Obama Administration Is Bigger Scammer Than Madoff



On last night's This Is The Address Of The White House, David Shuster took up the issue of the kooky, ratcheted up rhetoric that has come along with the financial crisis. Barack Obama is worse than Bernie Madoff! Glenn Beck is going to be sent to live in a FEMA Camp, where no one will have compassion for him and his YouTubes! Shuster asks the question: "Isn't there a danger when the rhetoric goes off the charts?" Uhm, yes! There's the danger of MASSIVE RATINGS for Glenn Beck, as a nation of looky loos tunes in to get their minds blown.

LinkHere

Press Corps Defends Dick Cheney From Robert Gibbs

NOTE TO THE MEDIA:
You guys obviously haven't figured this out yet, but it's no longer necessary to worry about "having access" to Dick Cheney, so you can ease up on all the ass-kissing. Just thought you should know!
Aren't the silly games of media politesse a wonder to behold? Dick Cheney was on CNN this weekend, fearmongering his behind off, as if he wasn't going to be able to enjoy his golden years unless he inspired fear in somebody, and no one really even bats a lash. I mean, the man is doing everything short of leaping out at people at public bus stops and screeching, "OBAMA GONNA GET YOU KEEEEELED! MWAHAHAHA!" Maybe there are people out there who think this is okay, but surely...SURELY!...you wouldn't begrudge the White House the opportunity to defend itself from the accusation that they are going to get people killed, with their policies, especially coming from a guy WHO DID get lots of people killed, with his policies.
And so, yesterday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs did just that, with tone and rhetoric that perfectly fit the nonsensical debate Cheney had set up. That should have been the end of it. But, no! Your press corps decided at that moment to straight up GET THE VAPORS, as if their delicate sensitivities had been offended. HOW DARE anyone question the statements of our widely unpopular former vice-president!
Chip Reid, we could expect this from, since he thinks Democrats all have ugly heads except his paramour Kent Conrad. But Chuck Todd? Really, Chuck? You're gonna play it like this?
LinkHere

Monday, March 16, 2009

In e-mail blast, Ingraham calls Meghan McCain a ‘useful idiot.’

Meghan McCain: Kiss my ass!

In a message to her e-mail today titled “useful idiot watch,” right-wing talker Laura Ingraham sends a “Memo to Meghan McCain,” claiming that her “plus-sized” attack was just “one satirical line” that the left is now using “to malign outspoken conservatives.” Ingraham claims that “indignation” over her “off-the-cuff remark” is “manufactured and totally phony“:

Laura Ingraham attacks Meghan McCain's weight, calls her "plus-sized"

"just another Valley Girl gone awry."

I bet there is no mention of it!!!!!! Reputation for Bipartisanship? Wanker

Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq "1,311,696"
Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In U.S. War And Occupation Of Iraq 4,259
Cost of U.S. War and Occupation of Iraq
$605,311,222,508For more details, click here.
Last week, Politico reported that President Bush’s advisers have decided to downplay the Iraq war in presentations for his presidential library:
The president’s advisers are still chewing over what topics to emphasize. Iraq is unlikely to be one of them. Advisers say they have made a specific decision to leave that verdict to history and not try to defend it at a time when Iraq could still wind up as either a democracy or a disaster.
Not only will the Iraq war be de-emphasized, it may not show up much at all. TP reader Grumpy Demo points out that Bush’s official 483-word bio on the presidential library website doesn’t have a single mention of the Iraq war. In fact, the man who once declared “I’m a war president,” has just one short paragraph devoted to national security issues — with no mention of Iraq or Afghanistan. He instead devotes a long section to his domestic accomplishments:
LinkHere

A country awake, at last, I'd say that the only poll that counts.!!!!!!

President Obama's approval rating slips -- to double Bush's
"If there’s no improvement in the economy during the next 12 months, 54 percent said they will blame former President George W. Bush and his Republican Party; 32 percent would blame Obama and the Democrats."
LinkHere

Right On

Clinton warned Pakistan of aid cut if no deal
WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Pakistan's president and opposition leader over the weekend U.S. aid could be at risk unless they defused a crisis over a top judge, U.S. officials said on Monday.
In a surprise move, Pakistan's government announced on Monday it would reinstate Iftikhar Chaudhry as chief justice, aiming to defuse a crisis and end protests by lawyers and activists that threatened to turn violent.
The officials said Clinton telephoned on Saturday both President Asif Ali Zardari and his rival, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who had backed the anti-government lawyers.
The officials said Clinton, who coordinated with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, had exerted strong pressure for a deal.
Clinton told reporters the decision to reinstate Chaudhry was a first step for much-needed reconciliation and political compromise in Pakistan.
She avoided answering when asked if she had linked continued U.S. aid to a deal.
The stability of nuclear-armed Pakistan has emerged as a key worry in Washington, which also needs its help to combat a Taliban insurgency in neighboring AfghanistanAsked if the political turmoil was distracting Islamabad from taking on the militants, Clinton replied:
"They understand what is at stake."

Question? Are these Wankers trying behind the scenes to bring down the Obama Administration!!!!!!!

Obama Speaks On AIG: "How Do They Justify This Outrage?" (VIDEO)

Gibbs: Cheney Just Another Member Of The "Republican Cabal"

The White House has benefited from no shortage of partisan enemies to attack. On Monday, Dick Cheney played the punching bag role, with spokesman Robert Gibbs calling the former vice president the latest member of the "Republican cabal" to be "trotted out" by the Republican Party.

"I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy so they trotted out the next most popular member of the Republican cabal," said Gibbs.

"I think not taking economic advice from Dick Cheney may be the best possible outcome of yesterday's interview."

Cheney's Excuse For Economic Failures: 'Stuff Happens'

EXCUSES, EXCUSES, EXCUSES DON'T BLAME US
CNN poll
"If there’s no improvement in the economy during the next 12 months, 54 percent said they will blame former President George W. Bush and his Republican Party; 32 percent would blame Obama and the Democrats."
Jon Stewart's Jim Cramer interview was a pivotal moment -- not just for Stewart, Cramer, and CNBC but also for journalism. It was a bracing reminder of what great research and a journalist more committed to getting to the truth than to landing the big get -- and keeping the big get happy, and ensuring future big gets -- can accomplish.
Stewart kept popping into my head as I watched John King interview Dick Cheney on Sunday. Each time King let Cheney get away with spouting gross inaccuracies and revisionist history, I kept thinking how different things would have been had Stewart been asking the questions. Stewart without the comedy and without the outrage -- just armed with the facts and the willingness to ask tough questions.
King opened the interview by showing clips of President Obama saying that his administration had "inherited an economic crisis" and "inherited a big mess." He then asked Cheney: "Did you leave him a mess?"
"I don't think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of those circumstances," responded Cheney. "It's a global financial problem... So I think the notion that you can just sort of throw it off on the prior administration, that's interesting rhetoric but I don't think anybody really cares a lot about that."

Sunday, March 15, 2009

"On the one hand fairness isn't on the menu anymore. Fairness has left the building,"

No Responsibility



Cheney Shrugs At Economic Crisis: Don't Blame Us (VIDEO)

Don't blame him, he got all he wanted for the last eight years out of the White House.
HALLIBURTON

White House Set To Unleash Post-Rush Message Blitz

Beginning Sunday, the White House will harness every part of the Democratic Party’s machinery to defend President Obama’s budget and portray Republicans as reflexively political, according to party strategists.
A participant in the planning meetings described the push as a successor to Democrats’ message that Rush Limbaugh is the Republican Party leader. “We have exhausted the use of Rush as an attention-getter,” the official said.
David Plouffe, manager of Obama’s presidential race, helped design the strategy, which includes the most extensive activation since November of the campaign’s grassroots network. The database—which includes information for at least 10 million donors, supporters and volunteers—will now be used as a unique tool for governing, with former canvassers now being enlisted to mobilize support for the president’s legislative agenda.
Others involved in the planning included White House senior adviser David Axelrod; the DNC chairman, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine; and DNC Executive Director Jennifer O'Malley Dillon.
The plan follows the private complaints of some Democrats that Obama let the GOP get the better of him during the debate over pork in the budget bill he just signed, and growing concerns among some Democrats that charges of big spending could stick to the president.
REPUBLICAN BUDGET PLAN - "CRICKETS"
LinkHere

DC HIV/AIDS Rate Soars, Considered 'Severe' Epidemic

HIV/AIDS Rate in D.C. Hits 3%
Considered a 'Severe' Epidemic, Every Mode of Transmission Is Increasing, City Study Finds

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