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Latest Articles: Editorial
Holiday Family Help
Post Date: 2006-12-19 21:07:49 by tom007
2 Comments
Not So Curious George
Post Date: 2006-12-19 18:38:28 by Zipporah
0 Comments
Not-so-curious GeorgeThursday, Dec. 14 2006 This has been a remarkable week in the history of the American presidency: The formidable apparatus of the White House Communications Office was rolled out for the signal purpose of ballyhooing that the President of the United States is actually listening to other people.Has there been any other time in American history where the president's staff felt obliged to stress that the boss was so engaged? Did John Hay ever have to load President Lincoln into a buggy for a trip to Foggy Bottom so the public would know he was talking with Secretary of State William Seward? Did Franklin Roosevelt's "brain trust" have to arrange the ...
Addendum to Clausewitz (Straight talk to the troops)
Post Date: 2006-12-18 01:28:22 by Burkeman1
11 Comments
It's all but official: The war in Iraq is lost. Report after leaked report says so. Everybody in Washington knows it except that draft-dodging ferret in the White House. Politicians scurry to avoid the blame. One day soon people will ask aloud: How did we let 3000 GIs die for the weak ego of a pampered liar and his desperate need to prove he's half the man his father was? The troops from now on will die for a war that they already know is over. They are dying for politicians. They are dying for nothing. By now they must know it. It happened to us, too, long ago. The talk among pols now is about finding an "exit strategy." This means a way of pulling out without risking ...
Condi, 'ho boots, and rent-boy Gannon: sex and power in Washington
Post Date: 2006-12-18 00:20:57 by Ferret Mike
7 Comments
I'll get to how this relates to "Jeff Gannon" in a minute... Washington Post Staff Writer Robin Givhan has written a mind-blowing fashion piece on "Condoleezza Rice's Commanding Clothes". It's sexist on one level because, aside from Dick Cheney's infamous parka faux pas you don't see political leaders get this extensive a workover. (By the way, Givhan also covered that event as well). The more curious aspect of the article to me, since this is the "Fashion and Beauty" section, after all, is what this says about how powerbrokers in DC perceive and tie sex to power. According to Brian Lamb on C-SPAN this AM (where I first heard about ...
A Surge of Insanity
Post Date: 2006-12-17 23:55:51 by Brian S
4 Comments
Harry Reid started off well on This Week with George Stephanopoulos this morning, answering a question about Iraq by saying, "We have to change course in Iraq, that was determined on November 7th and the people feel even more strongly today than they did on November 7th. By the first quarter of 2008, American troops should be out of there." But then the segment, to borrow from a recent but already dead report, became grave and deteriorating. Stephanopoulos asked what Reid would do if the president -- as he's expected to -- calls for even more troops to be sent to Iraq. "If it's part of a program to get us out of there as indicated by this time next year, then sure ...
Iran Revolution Ends The Holocult...
Post Date: 2006-12-17 19:09:58 by Brian S
2 Comments
The Iranians may not even be aware of it, but their hosting of the recent Holocaust conference may prove to be the most important milestone in their history since the Islamic Revolution under Khomeini. Western politicians and media certainly grasped the significance of the event, with Germany's premier Merkel standing shoulder to shoulder with prime minister Olmert of the "only-democracy-in-the-middle-east-that-is-not-a-democracy" - the apartheid state of Israel - and with BBC television news presenting the bizarre spectacle of discussing, rather than reporting on, an alleged anti-Semitic conference whilst the images in the background showed traditionally clad Orthodox Jews ...
A war in which no one wins and everyone loses
Post Date: 2006-12-17 09:20:00 by angle
6 Comments
Jim Wright is a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. PO Box 1413 Fort Worth, TX 76101 President Bush's position vis-À-vis Iraq grows daily more untenable as the war grows increasingly unpopular at home and abroad. Seven out of 10 Americans polled last week disapprove of the war. Retiring U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan chides the U.S. president for his go-it-alone strategy. Even Bush-blessed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki calls for a Middle Eastern conference of nations (which Bush dismisses) to discuss the region's future. The president often has tersely reiterated that U.S. troops will persist in Iraq until they have "completed the ...
The Incredibly, Unbelievably, Stupendously, Incurious George Bush
Post Date: 2006-12-16 22:47:18 by Indrid Cold
12 Comments
Never has there been a public official more unequipped to be President of the United States of America than George W. Bush. The man is simply not up to the job. Even if he really wanted to be or cared to be an effective president, he ... could ... not ... do ... it. He can't do it on a boat, he can't do it with a (pet) goat. He can't do it in the Green Zone, he can't do it back at home. This man cannot be a good president, Sam-I-Am. He flat out does not have the intellectual capacity to carry out the requirements of the job. This is not some mean-spirited speculation as to the level of his intelligence. The facts are in. There is nothing left to speculate on. And today we ...
Apache Flyby (Don't Try This At Home)
Post Date: 2006-12-15 22:10:05 by tom007
1 Comments
Rummy formally left today as SecDef. (Good time to take a stroll down the Freaker Memory hole)
Post Date: 2006-12-15 17:31:33 by Burkeman1
8 Comments
Rummy's formal departure ceremoney was held today at the Pentagon. I thought it might be interesting to take a stroll down Freeperville lane, to better days- when Freepers were in awe of his manly man stink: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/878708/posts
Kurdish "Thank You" Republican Stunt?
Post Date: 2006-12-15 16:17:24 by Burkeman1
6 Comments
Kurdish officials toured the United States last week to launch a massive advertising and public relations campaign thanking the United States for overthrowing Saddam Hussein and urging U.S. companies to invest in the region. The campaign looks suspicious to some observers, however, since it is run by an A-list Republican public relations firm that refuses to divulge how much money it is spending. "The Kurds of northern Iraq just want to say 'thank you for helping us win our freedom,'" says the voice-over in one of the commercials currently showing nationally on the MSNBC and Fox television channels and in Washington, D.C., Portland, and the San Francisco Bay area. On ...
`Iraqization' Idea Has Familiar Ring
Post Date: 2006-12-15 11:53:05 by Brian S
0 Comments
December 14, 2006 Haven't we been here before? Bogged down in a war that has come to seem impossible to win, unable to control the use of neighboring countries as sanctuaries by enemy forces, public support for the whole enterprise gone, and then a new plan. The last time, the plan was Vietnamization, the Nixon-Kissinger strategy of building the capacity of South Vietnamese forces while withdrawing U.S. troops. This time it is what? Iraqization? To put it starkly, the proposals put forward by the bipartisan commission led by James Baker III and Lee Hamilton call on the U.S military to train Iraqi security forces to do what American troops haven't been able to do: secure the ...
The Pernicious Price of Petroleum (The Cost In Lives and Hidden $$$$)
Post Date: 2006-12-15 02:00:33 by tom007
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By John Gartner| Also by this reporter 02:00 AM Dec, 13, 2006 Our love of driving is killing us. While we think of car crashes as causing fatalities, the production and transportation of fuel also significantly undermines public health. In his book Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction, Terry Tamminen outlines the direct and indirect impact that petroleum consumption has on millions of Americans every year. Tamminen, a former secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, spoke with Wired News about how we got into this mess, who is to blame, and his state's current efforts to hold energy providers and the auto industry responsible for their environmental ...
2006 Foot-in-Mouth Awards (“There – it's – you know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.” -George W. Bush, Washington D.C., Sept. 6, 2006, Interview With Katie Couric)
Post Date: 2006-12-15 01:47:05 by tom007
0 Comments
http://blog.wired.com/furthermore/2006/12/2006_footinmout.html
Bushido, Class, and Governance
Post Date: 2006-12-14 12:06:12 by christine
2 Comments
Japan has a complex and turbulent history. It is one of the oldest civilization lines on earth. Ten thousand years BC, tools and pottery were being made there. For various periods during the last 2,000 years it was ruled by emperors beneath which there existed the rough equivalent of barons, called diamyo, who exercised enormous power over tracts of land which were in fact kingdoms. There were periods when the diamyo had more power than the emperors, whose god-like positions separated them from descending into direct management of the nation. As one might suspect, the diamyo varied in quality or intention. Like the kings of Europe, they occasionally contested each other over power and ...
Our path to 'victory' [in Iraq] ends in defeat
Post Date: 2006-12-13 23:24:46 by Morgana le Fay
2 Comments
The good news is, we're all back in harmony. All back on the same page. No more divisiveness and no more silly bickering and no more nasty and indignant red state/blue state rock throwing because we're finally all back in cozy let's-hug-it-out agreement: The "war" in Iraq is over. And what's more, we lost. Very, very badly. Sure, you sort of sensed from the beginning that we couldn't possibly win a bogus war launched by a nasty slew of corrupt pseudo cowboys against both a bitterly contorted Islamic nation and a vague and ill-defined concept that has no center and no boundaries and that feeds on the very thing that tries to destroy it. It was sort of obvious, ...
The NRA's new cause célèbre. (author blames drug raid death of Atlanta woman on NRA )
Post Date: 2006-12-13 20:04:04 by SmokinOPs
9 Comments
On November 21, at around 7 p.m., narcotics officers in vests that said police (but not full uniforms) served a no-knock warrant to 933 Neal Street in Northwest Atlanta. The resident, Kathryn Johnston--88 years old by some accounts, 92 years old by others--pulled a pistol on the intruders. The police fired on their assailant. When it was over, three officers were wounded and Johnston lay dead. The warrant, alleging drug activity at her address, appears to have been issued in error. And, although the FBI is investigating, the Fulton County Assistant District Attorney defended his cops: "This seems like another tragedy involving drugs." Actually, it seems like another tragedy ...
Anthropologist Defends Apocalypto
Post Date: 2006-12-13 11:05:21 by richard9151
3 Comments
Anthropologist Defends Apocalypto Scholar who worked on Gibson's film says he got it right Prison Planet Tuesday, December 12, 2006 We welcome Dr. Barbara MacLeod's passionate defense of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto based on sound research and evidence, rather than emotional hyperbole and the mental illness of the PC crowd. Alex Jones just considers himself somewhat of a buff on this subject and was questioned by some for defending the film as historically accurate. His argument is expertly supported by the following comments. We consider Dr. MacLeod's rebuttal an excellent counter to the ravings of Julia Guernsey, who, in an interview with the Austin-American Statesman, ...
They Only Look Dead (Ghoulish bloodsucking Neowhores, like the undead, are hard to keep dead)
Post Date: 2006-12-13 01:56:57 by Burkeman1
3 Comments
Republicans may have gotten “a thumpin’,” but the neocons appear to be suffering a full-fledged rout. The intellectual faction that had its origins in City College’s storied Alcove No.1 during the 1930s (home of the “anti-Stalinist” socialists) has become a household word, and not in a good way. Apolitical grandmothers write their children e-mails deriding “the neocons and their war.” Intellectuals who have logged years on the payroll of well-funded neoconservative institutions forward little ditties through cyberspace: (to the tune of “Thanks for the Memories”) But thanks to the neocons, For every war a shill, We’re driven from the ...
'Sock It to the Left!': The Rise of the Spite Right
Post Date: 2006-12-13 01:18:29 by Burkeman1
7 Comments
Of those not there, most who know of the incident probably do so from Jerome Tuccille's It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand. At the 1969 Young Americans for Freedom convention in St. Louis, one faction – the libertarians – opposed the U.S. government's orchestration of both the war in Vietnam and suppression here at home (including the nexus thereof: conscription). Their slogan: "Sock it to the State!" They were met (fiercely) by another faction – the "traditionalists" (with the actual tradition never identified) – who opposed that opposition. Their cry? "Sock it to the Left!" This political drama flashed in the warder of my brain when ...
Bush Has No Idea How Much Trouble He Is In.
Post Date: 2006-12-12 21:21:09 by ...
11 Comments
The violence rocking Mesopotamia, now threatening Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, threatens to destroy a long held but fragile quid pro quo between the United Sates and Saudi Arabia. We had a fairly screwed up Mid East policy, but it served us. Steady flow of oil, a contained Saddam, an emerging but fairly benign Iran and surrounding countries. We had troops stationed in the Mid East for emergency deployment, and oil was anywhere from $25 to $59 a barrel. Bush 41 was arguably one of the more adept politicians who held the White House. The first Persian Gulf War was a masterpiece of statesmanship and political and military competence. We even made money on it. This is not to say it was perfect. ...
Bush's Brain
Post Date: 2006-12-12 16:53:23 by Itisa1mosttoolate
0 Comments
Bush's Brain 1 hr 2 min 29 sec - Mar 20, 2004 http://bush2004.com A documentary at SXSW about Bush's Brain. The production company gets up on stage at the world premiere screening and talks about the film ... all » and the book it was based on. Click for Full Size Google video
Who Makes Foreign Policy?
Post Date: 2006-12-12 10:40:05 by boonie rat
2 Comments
December 12, 2006 Who Makes Foreign Policy? by Rep. Ron Paul The Iraq Study Group released its report [.pdf] last week, giving the president several recommendations to consider in prosecuting the war. Similarly, the incoming Democratic leaders in Congress promise to urge the president to take a new course in Iraq. Meanwhile, one newly elected member of Congress was asked on national television about the Iraq war. She responded by saying she had no real opinion, and that foreign policy was "up to the president." In each instance, it is assumed that the president will make Iraq policy. I'm not talking about the details of actual military operations in Iraq; I'm talking ...
Routine And Systematic Torture Is At The Heart Of America's War On Terror
Post Date: 2006-12-11 22:14:13 by Brian S
17 Comments
In the fight against cruelty, barbarism and extremism, America has embraced the very evils it claims to confront Tuesday December 12, 2006 After thousands of years of practice, you might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But you should never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators, we now discover, have found a new way of destroying a human being. Last week, defence lawyers acting for José Padilla, a US citizen detained as an "enemy combatant", released a video showing a mission fraught with deadly risk - taking him to the prison dentist. A group of masked guards in riot gear ...
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