Where to protest the 2016 Philly DNC

Where to protest the 2016 Philly DNC

PHILADELPHIA, PA- Depending on what you’re here to accomplish at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, pro-Bernie, anti-war, reformist, or disruption, here’s our shortlist of the event sites according to theme.

1. WELLS FARGO CENTER– Main site of DNC, for delegates only, surrounded by four miles of 8ft tall modular steel crowd control barriers.

2. CITY HALL– Most rallies and demonstrations are scheduled to converge here before a 4-mile march to DNC site.

3. INDEPENDENCE HALL– Sunday’s “Clean Energy” march ended here. Its lawn of is the backdrop for MSNBC live convention coverage and was the 2011 site of Occupy Philly.

4. CLINTONVILLE– Located 8 miles due North of DNC at America & Somerset, “Clintonville” is an urban campsite for the people’s movement, economic justice issues, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

5. MARCONI PLAZA– Less than a half mile from the DNC, Marconi Plaza is an ideal launching point to rally demonstrators against the DNC. Shade is sparse but this plaza appears to be the daily epicenter for Bernie Sanders supporters.

6. F.D.R. PARK– This park is immediately adjacent to the DNC and at the last minute was made available for overnight protest camping. There is ample shade but the many trees will prevent large centralized assemblies. It’s the place to be Monday afternoon and evening.

Cost to attend NYC climate march: $$. Landing an anti-capitalism message in a capitalist magazine: priceless.

climate-march-vogue-like-shot
NEW YORK, NEW YORK- A lot of people took our picture at Sunday’s People’s Climate March, our anti-capitalist banner expressed a popular undercurrent to the greener NGO themes, although many handmade posters singled out Capitalism as the root of climate change. As the 400,000 STRONG march dispersed on 11th Avenue, Vogue Magazine photographer Peter van Agtmael captured this approximate moment for a spread on Vogue.com. Occupiers tire of the admonition “wear a suit” but it proved fruitful this weekend: my suit was interviewed by MSNBC (twice), Washington Post, Irish Times, Salon, Slate, and more, with great photos on USA Today, Vice, and CNN.

NPR: women berserkers, oil whores, Goebbels Surge, presidential DNA

I accidentally listened to NPR today, what an earful of crap! No wonder Americans are so uninformed, none more than self-identifying progressives, waylaid by Corporate Public shysters. Here’s what I overheard:
 
The Defense Department is running short on recruits so they need to draft women into combat roles. Leon Panetta has righted a constitutional injustice apparently and will deploy women into battle. Because women want equality to torture, join kill squads, shoot children, get PTSD, join ranks of homeless or commit suicide. Greatest gender advance since Virginia Slims.
 
NPR interviewed oil workers who shrug off risk like Algerian massacre and speak fondly of their rape of Africa. According to them it’s “all about the Benjamins” to pay cash for sports cars and ATVs, and international travel for access to “cheap women”. Funny, the interviewees declined to reveal their full names. The energy industry promises jobs, but decent people need not apply.
 
General “All Up In My Snatch” Petraeus is being credited with inventing a counterinsurgency tactic called “the Surge”. Yeah, we’ve heard of it. Formally just a word, the “tactic” is not military, but public relations, attributable to Joseph Goebbels, to minimize an escalation or troop buildup by pretending it’s temporary.
 
The Benghazi Kerfuffle, now a DC sideshow instead of the foreign relations comeuppance where US intervention operatives in Libya got their just-desserts, is being amplified to be a vehicle to kick off Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. The ex Secretary of State was praised for her gravitas and standing, leading MSNBC to suggest that “diplomacy is in her DNA”. Spouses share DNA? Are talking heads confusing DNA with VD?

berserker

As Wikileaks threatens establishment, Apple wields sledgehammer FOR 1984

Remember when Apple pretended to be the defiant sledgehammer to 1984? Today as Julian Assange swings the hammer, Apple joins its big brothers on the giant screen as it removes the Wikileaks app for iPones and iPads. Did you think there were any heroes in the corporate firmament? Amazon, Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, now Apple, nobody wants YOU to get un-manipulated news. But here Steve Jobs has missed an innovation bigger than he has ever rolled out. For man’s innate curiosity about himself, Wikileaks has become the reason to get up in the morning. Every new day is a chance to learn or confirm something you intuited about the facade erected around you. Odd, but isn’t that what the NEWS used to do?

And it’s a curious news model, it’s all old news, serialized because 250,000 revelations is too much transformitive revisionist history for anyone to handle.

Wikileaks is providing what the corporate news media will not. Into the vacuum, leaks. How can anyone dispute that Wikileaks has not single-handedly changed the accepted narrative of recent history? Although the Cablegate diplomatic cables represent the opinions of US personnel, they are unspun by the media propagandists, as it were, straight from the horsemen’s mouths.

Which lend themselves to government’s traditional role for “leaks,” disseminating lies which the media can get more excited about than their humdrum press releases. Cablegate has probably launched a new office within the state department to poison future databases with false cables.

Michael Moore had to defend his anti-US-healthcare documentary Sicko from the Wikileaked untruth that it had been banned in Cuba. The cable in question was a US diplomat’s idea of creating spin for the US insurance industry’s smear campaign against Moore.

(Did you see him trying to untangle that mess, and explain his support for Wikileaks’ Julian Assange to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night? They were broadcasting from New York’s 92Y to an audience strangely cool to Michael Moore. When Moore proclaimed his Christian values, asking if it was safe to use the word in present company, Maddow missed the gist of his “YMCA” joke, because the 92nd Street “Y” is actually a Jewish center, a Young Men’s Hebrew Association facility, and the NY audience last night were neither Wikileaks supporters nor fans of Moore’s criticism of America’s six ongoing wars.)

The Wikileaks v. Cuba scenario reminds me of the famous Alec Guinness spy farce Our Man in Havana where a clueless vacuum cleaner salesman is recruited by western intelligence services to be their eyes and ears in Cuba. Failing to chance upon serviceable info, he makes sketches of the latest futuristic vacuum, enlarged to industrial scale to suggest it’s a secret missile facility. In fact another recent cable which purported to document a Fidel Castro “crush on Obama” was based on nothing more than reading Castro’s regular “Reflections” as printed in the Cuban press. It used to be our government had a lock on what Americans could observe about Cuba, but today Fidel’s Reflections are available to all online.

Another unique aspect of Wikileaks as a news organization, is that it is beholden to no corporations, and no benevolent noblesse oblige, but to a 24 year-old military hero now held in solitary confinement.

Rap News and Wikileaks thumb noses at US junta and its News World Order

I’d say Juice Media’s Hugo Farrant and Wikileaks’ Julian Assange are showing up the powers that be. Catch today’s episode of Rap News:

Some may imagine kindred discontents at MSNBC and the Daily Show, but Jon Stewart’s chatting up Obama tonight couldn’t make the facade plainer. Developments this week with the Iran War Logs from Wikileaks and here, from fellow Aussies at Juice Media, show the next generation aims to derail US military state propaganda with impunity.

O’REILLY: The number of people in the Middle East
              opposed to Democracy has swiftly decreased.

RUMSFELT: Yeah, by a million at least!

Scam auction site Swipebids poses French celebrity Melissa Theuriau as generic newsperson all over the web

Scam auction site Swipebids poses French celebrity Melissa Theuriau as generic newsperson all over the web

Penny Auction Swipebids ads feature fake newsPenny auction scammers know their audience. Stupid Americans aren’t going to recognize one phony news reporter over another, even if it’s French anchorwoman Melissa Theuriau. Imagine if Lisa Hartman’s misnamed image popped up in embedded advertorials.

Not only are fake “penny auction” news pages posing the A-list celebrity as a generic TV spokesperson, but ads have been placed across the internet, on authentic media like MSNBC. Certainly the banner ad managers of MSM websites know that Theuriau is not shilling for penny auction scammers.

The Cairo Declaration

The Cairo Declaration

gaza-freedom-march-cairo-egypt
Ambitions for a greater Gaza Freedom March have been set aside for another decade, but the hopeful delegates thwarted in Cairo issued the following declaration:

End Israeli Apartheid?
Cairo Declaration
?January 1, 2010

We, international delegates meeting in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom March 2009 in collective response to an initiative from the South African delegation, state:

In view of:

* Israel’s ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the illegal occupation and siege of Gaza;?

* the illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and settlements;?

* the new Wall under construction by Egypt and the US which will tighten even further the siege of Gaza;?

* the contempt for Palestinian democracy shown by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the Palestinian elections of 2006;?

* the war crimes committed by Israel during the invasion of Gaza one year ago;?

* the continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within Israel;?

* and the continuing exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;?

* all of which oppressive acts are based ultimately on the Zionist ideology which underpins Israel;?

* in the knowledge that our own governments have given Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allowed it to behave with impunity;?

* and mindful of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (2007)

We reaffirm our commitment to:

Palestinian Self-Determination?Ending the Occupation?Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine?The full Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.

We therefore reaffirm our commitment to the United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to compel Israel to comply with international law.

To that end, we call for and wish to help initiate a global mass, democratic anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with Palestinian civil society to implement the Palestinian call for BDS.

Mindful of the many strong similarities between apartheid Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, we propose:

1) An international speaking tour in the first 6 months of 2010 by Palestinian and South African trade unionists and civil society activists, to be joined by trade unionists and activists committed to this programme within the countries toured, to take mass education on BDS directly to the trade union membership and wider public internationally;

2) Participation in the Israeli Apartheid Week in March 2010;

3) A systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products, involving consumers, workers and their unions in the retail, warehousing, and transportation sectors;

4) Developing the Academic, Cultural and Sports boycott;

5) Campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies directly implicated in the Occupation and/or the Israeli military industries;

6) Legal actions targeting the external recruitment of soldiers to serve in the Israeli military, and the prosecution of Israeli government war criminals; coordination of Citizen’s Arrest Bureaux to identify, campaign and seek to prosecute Israeli war criminals; support for the Goldstone Report and the implementation of its recommendations;

7) Campaigns against charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

We appeal to organisations and individuals committed to this declaration to sign it and work with us to make it a reality.

Signed by:

(* Affiliation for identification purposes only.)

1. Hedy Epstein, Holocaust Survivor/ Women in Black*, USA?
2. Nomthandazo Sikiti, Nehawu, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Affiliate International Officer*, South Africa?
3. Zico Tamela, Satawu, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) Affiliate International Officer*, South Africa?
4. Hlokoza Motau, Numsa, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) Affiliate International Officer*, South Africa?
5. George Mahlangu, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) Campaigns Coordinator*, South Africa?
6. Crystal Dicks, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) Education Secretary*, South Africa?
7. Savera Kalideen, SA Palestinian Solidarity Committee*, South Africa?
8. Suzanne Hotz, SA Palestinian Solidarity Group*, South Africa?
9. Shehnaaz Wadee, SA Palestinian Solidarity Alliance*, South Africa?
10. Haroon Wadee, SA Palestinian Solidarity Alliance*, South Africa?
11. Sayeed Dhansey, South Africa?
12. Faiza Desai, SA Palestinian Solidarity Alliance*, South Africa?
13. Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada*, USA?
14. Hilary Minch, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Committee*, Ireland?
15. Anthony Loewenstein, Australia?
16. Sam Perlo-Freeman, United Kingdom?
17. Julie Moentk, Pax Christi*, USA?
18. Ulf Fogelström, Sweden?
19. Ann Polivka, Chico Peace and Justice Center*, USA?
20. Mark Johnson, Fellowship of Reconciliation*, USA?
21. Elfi Padovan, Munich Peace Committee*/Die Linke*, Germany?
22. Elizabeth Barger, Peace Roots Alliance*/Plenty I*, USA?
23. Sarah Roche-Mahdi, CodePink*, USA?
24. Svetlana Gesheva-Anar, Bulgaria?
25. Cristina Ruiz Cortina, Al Quds-Malaga*, Spain?
26. Rachel Wyon, Boston Gaza Freedom March*, USA?
27. Mary Hughes-Thompson, Women in Black*, USA?
28. David Letwin, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN)*, USA?
29. Jean Athey, Peace Action Montgomery*, USA?
30. Gael Murphy, Gaza Freedom March*/CodePink*, USA?
31. Thomas McAfee, Journalist/PC*, USA?
32. Jean Louis Faure, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN)*, France?
33. Timothy A King, Christians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East*, USA?
34. Gail Chalbi, Palestine/Israel Justice Project of the Minnesota United Methodist Church*, USA?
35. Ouahib Chalbi, Palestine/Israel Justice Project of the Minnesota United Methodist Church*, USA?
36. Greg Dropkin, Liverpool Friends of Palestine*, England?
37. Felice Gelman, Wespac Peace and Justice New York*/Gaza Freedom March*, USA?
38. Ron Witton, Australian Academic Union*, Australia?
39. Hayley Wallace, Palestine Solidarity Committee*, USA?
40. Norma Turner, Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign*, England?
41. Paula Abrams-Hourani, Women in Black (Vienna)*/ Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East*, Austria?
42. Mateo Bernal, Industrial Workers of the World*, USA?
43. Mary Mattieu, Collectif Urgence Palestine*, Switzerland?
44. Agneta Zuppinger, Collectif Urgence Palestine*, Switzerland?
45. Ashley Annis, People for Peace*, Canada?
46. Peige Desgarlois, People for Peace*, Canada?
47. Hannah Carter, Canadian Friends of Sabeel*, Canada?
48. Laura Ashfield, Canadian Friends of Sabeel*, Canada?
49. Iman Ghazal, People for Peace*, Canada?
50. Filsam Farah, People for Peace*, Canada?
51. Awa Allin, People for Peace*, Canada?
52. Cleopatra McGovern, USA?
53. Miranda Collet, Spain?
54. Alison Phillips, Scotland?
55. Nicholas Abramson, Middle East Crisis Response Network*/Jews Say No*, USA?
56. Tarak Kauff, Middle East Crisis Response Network*/Veterans for Peace*, USA?
57. Jesse Meisler-Abramson, USA?
58. Hope Mariposa, USA?
59. Ivesa Lübben. Bremer Netzwerk fur Gerechten Frieden in Nahost*, Germany?
60. Sheila Finan, Mid-Hudson Council MERC*, USA?
61. Joanne Lingle, Christians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East (CPJME)*, USA?
62. Barbara Lubin, Middle East Children’s Alliance*, USA?
63. Josie Shields-Stromsness, Middle East Children’s Alliance*, USA?
64. Anna Keuchen, Germany?
65. Judith Mahoney Pasternak, WRL* and Indypendent*, USA?
66. Ellen Davidson, New York City Indymedia*, WRL*, Indypendent*, USA?
67. Ina Kelleher, USA?
68. Lee Gargagliano, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (Chicago)*, USA?
69. Brad Taylor, OUT-FM*, USA?
70. Helga Mankovitz, SPHR (Queen’s University)*, Canada?
71. Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign*, Scotland?
72. Agnes Kueng, Paso Basel*, Switzerland?
73. Anne Paxton, Voices of Palestine*, USA?
74. Leila El Abtah, The Netherlands?
75. Richard, Van der Wouden, The Netherlands?
76. Rafiq A. Firis, P.K.R.*/Isra*, The Netherlands?
77. Sandra Tamari, USA?
78. Alice Azzouzi, Way to Jerusalem*, USA?
79. J’Ann Schoonmaker Allen, USA?
80. Ruth F. Hooke, Episcopalian Peace Fellowship*, USA?
81. Jean E. Lee, Holy Land Awareness Action Task Group of United Church of Canada*, Canada?
82. Delphine de Boutray, Association Thèâtre Cine*, France?
83. Sylvia Schwarz, USA?
84. Alexandra Safi, Germany?
85. Abdullah Anar, Green Party – Turkey*, Turkey?
86. Ted Auerbach, USA?
87. Martha Hennessy, Catholic Worker*, USA?
88. Father Louis Vitale, Interfaile Pace e Bene*, USA?
89. Leila Zand, Fellowship of Reconciliation*, USA?
90. Emma Grigore, CodePink*, USA?
91. Sammer Abdelela, New York Community of Muslim Progressives*, USA?
92. Sharat G. Lin, San Jose Peace and Justice Center*, USA?
93. Katherine E. Sheetz, Free Gaza*, USA?
94. Steve Greaves, Free Gaza*, USA?
95. Trevor Baumgartner, Free Gaza*, USA?
96. Hanan Tabbara, USA?
97. Marina Barakatt, CodePink*, USA?
98. Keren Bariyov, USA?
99. Ursula Sagmeister, Women in Black – Vienna*, Austria?
100. Ann Cunningham, Australia?
101. Bill Perry, Delaware Valley Veterans for Peace*, USA?
102. Terry Perry, Delaware Valley Veterans for Peace*, USA?
103. Athena Viscusi, USA?
104. Marco Viscusi, USA?
105. Paki Wieland, Northampton Committee*, USA?
106. Manijeh Saba, New York / New Jersey, USA?
107. Ellen Graves, USA?
108. Zoë Lawlor, Ireland – Palestine Solidarity Campaign*, Ireland?
109. Miguel García Grassot, Al Quds – Málaga*, Spain?
110. Ana Mamora Romero, ASPA-Asociacion Andaluza Solidaridad y Paz*, Spain?
111. Ehab Lotayef, CJPP Canada*, Canada?
112. David Heap, London Anti-War*, Canada?
113. Adie Mormech, Free Gaza* / Action Palestine*, England?
114. Aimee Shalan, UK?
115. Liliane Cordova, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN)*, Spain?
116. Priscilla Lynch, USA?
117. Jenna Bitar, USA?
118. Deborah Mardon, USA?
119. Becky Thompson, USA?
120. Diane Hereford, USA?
121. David Heap, People for Peace London*, Canada?
122. Donah Abdulla, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights*, Canada?
123. Wendy Goldsmith, People for Peace London*, Canada?
124. Abdu Mihirig, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights-UBC*, Canada?
125. Saldibastami, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights-UBC*, Canada?
126. Abdenahmane Bouaffad, CMF*, France?
127. Feroze Mithiborwala, Awami Bharat*, India?
128. John Dear, Pax Christi*, USA?
129. Ziyaad Lunat, Portugal?
130. Michael Letwin, New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)?
131. Labor For Palestine

Olbermann offers Obama an out

Olbermann offers Obama an out

obama barack hype bondKeith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Afghanistan is being summarized as telling President Obama to Get Out Now. Olbermann’s words stir our enthusiasm, but he leaves damning loopholes as far as I am concerned. The MSNBC newsman conditions his advice to the president with “unless you are right,” then at the end, showing a tact far too reckless, he tells Obama to “listen to yourself.”

No. That’s not why we elected Barack Obama.

The inexperienced senator had no record. Our hope didn’t spring from a demonstration of ability. Obama was elected for the hope he offered because he appeared to be listening to the American people. It would probably have been inconceivable to imagine then that Obama could not but respond to the unprecedented surge of electoral participation prompted by George W. Bush’s wars.

Listen to the people Mr. Obama, and no one else. To ask Obama to listen to himself is to offer him entirely too much slack. Give an authoritarian leader too much rope, that’s more rope he has to hang you.

And then there is no “unless you are right.”

What is that but a straight man’s setup? That line is for the President to show America how sure he is of his decision. The people want a leader who’s offering supreme confidence, so Olbermann is holding the door. He goes on to frame the challenges posed by Afghanistan, as surmountable by a qualified prez. Olbermann invites the President to be “precisely right.” Isn’t that exactly what will sooth the viewers, after Obama has famously taken so much time to arrive at a decision?

But there is no “unless you are right.” Unless Olbermann meant it with an implied irony. But he didn’t. He didn’t say unless black is white, or up is down. Olbermann allowed for the possibility that an escalation could be right.

“If not, Mr. President, this way lies Vietnam.”

IF NOT Olbermann says. Doesn’t he mean no if and or buts?

When Walter Cronkite finally spoke out about Vietnam, and declared the war un-winnable, it was not because it had become un-winnable. It had not transformed into a quagmire, the chance for victory had not escaped us. The illegal and immoral subjugation of the Vietnamese people was never a winnable strategy. Like Iraq and Afghanistan, it was a predictable calamity, a crime. Moral observers knew it from the beginning.

America did not LOSE Vietnam, and we will not LOSE Iraq and Afghanistan. We DESTROYED those landscapes and millions of lives, and we continue to “finish the job.” It’s an immeasurable, apocalyptic tragedy.

If Barack Obama escalates in the footsteps of Lyndon Johnson, it will similarly be no mistake. The travesty is that the American people have once again been waylaid in their determination to find a leader to represent their desire for peace.

Here is the text of Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment:

SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, ‘Countdown’
Mon., Nov . 30, 2009

Mr. President, it now falls to you to be both former Republican Senator George Aiken and the man to whom he spoke, Lyndon Johnson. You must declare victory, and get out.??

You should survey the dismal array of options in front of you — even the orders given out last night — sort them into the unacceptable, the unsuccessful, and the merely un-palatable, and then put your arm down on the table and wipe the entire assortment of them off your desk — off this nation’s desk — and into the scrap heap of history. ??

Unless you are utterly convinced — willing to bet American lives on it — that the military understands the clock is running, and that the check is not blank, and that the Pentagon will go to sleep when you tell it to, even though the Pentagon is a bunch of perpetually 12-year old boys desperate to stay up as late as possible by any means necessary — get out now. ??

We are, at present, fighting, in no particular order, the Taliban; a series of sleazy political-slash-military adventurers, not the least of whom is this mountebank election-fixer Karzai, and what National Security Advisor Jones estimated in October was around eight dozen al-Qaida in the neighborhood.??

But poll after poll, and anecdote after anecdote, of the reality of public opinion inside Afghanistan is that its residents believe we are fighting Afghanistan. That we, Sir, have become an occupying force. Yes: if we leave, Afghanistan certainly will have an occupying force, whether it’s from Pakistan, or consisting of foreign fighters who will try to ally themselves with the Taliban.??

Can you prevent that? Can you convince the Afghans that you can prevent that? Can you convince Americans that it is the only way to un-do Bush and Cheney policy catastrophes dating back to Cheney’s days as Secretary of Defense in the ’90s? If not, Mr. President, this way lies Vietnam. If you liked Iraq, you’ll love Afghanistan with 35,000 more troops, complete with the new wrinkle, straight from the minder-binder lingo of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.”??

President Obama will be presenting an exit strategy for Afghanistan. The exit strategy that begins by entering still further. Lose to win, sink to swim, escalate to disengage. And even this disconnect of fundamental logic is predicated on the assumption that once the extra troops go in, when the President says “okay, time for adult swim, Generals, time to get out of the pool and bring the troops with you,” that the Pentagon is just going to say “Yeppers.”??

The Pentagon, often to our eternal relief, but just as often to our eternal regret is in the War business. You were right, Mr. President, to slow the process down, once a series of exit strategies was offered to you by men whose power and in some case livelihoods are predicated on making sure all exit strategies, everywhere, forever, don’t really result in any service-man or woman actually exiting.??

These men are still in the belly of what President Eisenhower so rightly, so prophetically, christened the military-industrial complex. Now and later as the civilian gray eminences with “retired” next to their names, formally lobbying the House and Senate and informally lobbying the nation through television and the printed word, to “engage” here, or “serve” there, or “invest” everywhere, they are, in many cases, just glorified hardware salesmen. ??

It was political and operational brilliance, Sir, to retain Mr. Bush’s last Secretary of Defense Mr. Gates. It was transitional and bipartisan insight, Sir, to maintain General Stanley McChrystal as a key leader in the field. ??

And it was a subtle but powerful reminder to the authoritarian minded War-hawks like John McCain, and the blithering idiots like former Governor Palin, of the Civilian authority of the Constitution it was a picture drawn in crayon for ease of digestion by the Right, to tell our employees at the Pentagon, to take their loaded options and go away and come back with some real ones.??

You reminded them, Mr. President, that Mr. Gates works for the people of the United States of America, not the other way around. You reminded them, Mr. President, that General McChrystal is our employee, not our dictator. You’ve reminded them Mr. President. Now, tonight, remind yourself. Stanley McChrystal.??

General McChrystal has doubtless served his country bravely and honorably and at great risk, but to date his lasting legacy will be as the great facilitator of the obscenity that was transmuting the greatest symbol of this nation’s true patriotism, of its actual willingness to sacrifice, into a distorted circus fun-house mirror version of such selflessness.??

Friendly fire killed Pat Tillman. Mr. McChrystal killed the truth about Pat Tillman. And that willingness to stand truth on its head on behalf of “selling” a war or the generic idea of America being at war to turn a dead hero into a meaningless recruiting poster, should ring essentially relevant right now.??

From the very center of a part of our nation that could lie to the public, could lie to his mother, about what really happened to Pat Tillman, from the very man who was at the operational center of that plan, comes the entire series of plans to help us supposedly find the way out of Afghanistan? We are supposed to believe General McChrystal isn’t lying about Afghanistan???

Didn’t he blow his credibility by lying, so obviously and so painfully, about Pat Tillman? Why are we believing the McChrystals? Their reasons might sound better than the ones they helped George Bush and Dick Cheney fabricate for Iraq, but surely they are just as transparently oblivious of the forest. ??

Half of them insist we must stay in Afghanistan out of fear of not repeating Iraq, while the other half, believing Bush failed in Iraq by having too few troops, insist we must stay in Afghanistan out of fear of repeating Iraq. And they are suddenly sounding frighteningly similar to what the Soviet Generals were telling the Soviet Politicos in the 1980s about Afghanistan.??

Sure it’s not going well, sure we need to get out, we all see that. But first let’s make sure it’s stabilized and then we get out. The Afghans will be impressed by our commitment and will then take over the cost of policing themselves, even though the cost would be several times their gross national product. Just send in those extra troops, just for awhile. Just 350,000.

I’m sorry, did I say 350,000? I meant 35,000. Must be a coffee stain on the paper. Mr. President, last fall, you were elected. Not General McChrystal, not Secretary Gates, not another Bushian Drone of a politician. You. On the Change Ticket. On the pitch that all politicians are not created equal.??

And upon arrival you were greeted by a Three Mile Island of an economy, so bad that in the most paranoid recesses of the mind one could wonder if the Republicans didn’t plan it that way, to leave you in the position of having to prove the ultimate negative, that you staved off worldwide financial collapse, that if you had not done what you so swiftly did, that this “economic cloudy day” would have otherwise been the “biblical flood of finance.”??

So, much of the change for which you were elected, Sir, has thus far been understandably, if begrudgingly, tabled, delayed, made more open-ended. But patience ebbs, Mr. President. And while the first one thousand key decisions of your presidency were already made about the economy, the first public, easy-to-discern, mouse-or-elephant kind of decision comes tomorrow night at West Point at eight o’clock.

You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our economy than the cost of supply for 35,000 new troops. Nothing will do more to slow economic recovery. You might as well shoot the revivified auto industry or embrace John Boehner Health Care Reform and Spray-Tan Reimbursement.

You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our status in the world than for us to re-up as occupiers of Afghanistan and for you to look like you were unable to extricate yourself from a Military Chinese Finger Puzzle left for you by Bush and Cheney and the rest of Halliburton’s hench-men.

And most of all, and those of us who have watched these first nine months trust both your judgment and the fact you know this, Mr. President: unless you are exactly right, we cannot afford this war. For if all else is even, and everything from the opinion of the generals to the opinion of the public is even, we cannot afford to send these troops back into that quagmire for second tours, or thirds, or fourths, or fifths.

We cannot afford this ethically, Sir. The country has, for eight shameful years, forgotten its moral compass and its world purpose. And here is your chance to reassert that there is, in fact, American Exceptionalism. We are better. We know when to stop making our troops suffer, in order to make our generals happy.

You, Sir, called for change, for the better way, for the safety of our citizens including the citizens being wasted in war-for-the-sake-of-war, for a reasserting of our moral force. And we listened. And now you must listen. You must listen to yourself.

Virus H1N1 Pig Pork Ham Hog Swine Flu

Virus H1N1 Pig Pork Ham Hog Swine Flu

Melissa Francis and Contessa BrewerMSNBC- Apparently “some importers don’t understand … you can’t catch Swine Flu from eating pork.” The perky MSNBC duo ridiculed China for banning pork from the US and Canada, but their guest expert interjected another priority: the correct term was “H1N1 virus,” not Swine Flu. Everyone agreed the distinction could quell international hysteria against the falsely accused.

Interesting that Health Officials should “STRESS THAT YOU CAN’T GET SWINE FLU FROM EATING PORK.” We need Health Officials to STRESS how to avoid Swine Flu, not where to avoid avoiding it. Leave it to the pork industry which brewed the swill, up from which Swine Flu had wafted, to clear their pork by-product for public consumption.

The Contessa Brewer & Melissa Francis Sweet Valley Twins act lets MSNBC set up contrived incredulity which consultants can confirm within the context of otherwise false assumptions. “Swine Flu has nothing to do with pigs, right? I mean, pigs don’t catch it, right?”

Neither Brewer nor Francis can be as dumb as they pretend. One graduated Magna Cum Laud, the other is a Harvard alumni. You might welcome an everywoman chattiness on a daytime news presentation, but playing to a lower denominator means that corporate spokesmen can relay their talking points without scrutiny.

On this program, the twin debs were perplexed by the apparent overreaction of Hong Kong officials, who quarantined a hotel, a vestage, it was determined, from their difficult experience with SARS. The MSNBC guest expert offered a further helpful obfuscation: medical researchers still don’t understand how SARS spread between hotel guests.

Thus, international scrutiny of hog production was greeted with an incurious derision. This has nothing to do with the pigs, right?

And you don’t get malaria from pools of standing water. Mosquitoes spread malaria and dengue fever among many tropical diseases. We can probably guess that Brewer, Francis and guest know that malaria control efforts center on mosquito breeding grounds.

But the guest kept up the ridicule of swine-focused measures. Egypt was trying to slaughter pigs which it considered vulnerable to the pandemic, how unfair. The expert wasn’t addressing the probable unfairness of the farmers targeted by the Egyptian government, the expert was speaking up for the poor hogs who would be slaughtered in vain. I may have mistaken a lament for lost pork chops, sooner than empathy for the misjudged pigs, but the latter seemed illogical. The poor hogs otherwise what future exactly, beside imminent slaughter?

Obama’s coverups

obama koolaidObama is covering up for George Bush’s Administration use of torture as policy. He wants to have it both ways, first claiming that he is changing policy, then in engaging in the old policies of ‘rendition’ and coverup of torture of POWs held by the US military. But there is yet another coverup underway, and that is how Obama is covering up for George Bush’s illegal support for the illegal actions of Israel in Gaza and elsewhere (remember Lebanon?). He may want to repeat the same under his own Administration? From MSNBC:
Obama administration defending Bush secrets.

You see, Obama’s Administration is all about coverups and trying to put a new face on the same old policies of the Republican Party, whether it be with his domestic or his foreign policies. Pretending to leave Iraq yet staying there. Pretending to stop US government made torture, yet continuing to engage in all the activities that use it (occupations of Afghanistan, attacks on Pakistan, continued worship of the military-industrial complex’s God GWOT). Obama is clearly one of the most duplicitous presidents the US has ever had. He is continuing the Federal Government give away’s to the corporate world, too.

And Number One on Obama’s coverup foreign agenda is continued coverup of what the Israeli game plan is all about, simply because it is the US government game plan also. Obama is continuing Cheney’s and the neocon’s program of trying to restructure the entire Middle East into a more compliant region for continued US domination and control of the peoples and the natural resources of the region. Oil is still the name of the game and Israel is still the US bulldog enforcer.

Obama needs to cover for Israel’s crimes since he plans to use their crimes to help further the US government’s own crimes. The US under Barack Obama is firmly on the side of Israel’s ethnic cleansing program in both Israel proper and in the Occupied Territories, and these are Obama’s coverups of the Bush Administration as much as how he is trying to coverup for Bush by keeping torture records secret, keeping executive privilege intact, and so on. There is no change beyond the superficial change of faces and parties in the White House.

Military-industrial war games shall continue and Barack will now direct them. Just don’t buy these Obama coverups if you want real change to ever occur? Don’t let him coverup for the use of torture nor the use of Israel’s military machine.

A fine mess you got us into, said the fat man to the little man

A fine mess you got us into, said the fat man to the little man

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy- a fine messI’m convinced the economic “mess” we find ourselves in, is of the Laurel and Hardy variety. The iridescent definition of “mess” leads us to infer that our predicament-mess, results from a clutter-mess of options. To hear the parade of experts, our financial mess is a chaotic tangle to dumbfound even a string theorist. I think it’s more like a job for CSI. This “mess” is painted to obscure an entirely un-messy crime scene. The common American is in a mess alright, we’re staring at a bare bank vault floor.

Sleuths can trace a fugitive’s ATM visits, and every bank transaction above $2,500, do you think they can’t follow the money when it’s in the twelve figures, if they wanted to?

empty bank vaultThe mess may be a clutter of fingerprints and a tangle of wire transfers to Switzerland. Maybe we face a daunting defensive line of corporate lawyers. The press is no helping any, choosing to interview the usual odd-footed pundits, instead of the over hundred economists trying to beat down the door to oppose the various economic stimulus bank heists.

The entire public discourse is being dumbed down. The MSNBC text title beneath Obama as he gave his Daschle mea culpa, read “IS CHANGE TOO DIFFICULT?” By the way, couldn’t the President of the United States have enough clout to answer each question about Tom Daschle with a quick admission and segue to a pitch for his proposed stimulus package?

Next the spotlight moved to Joe the Plumber, the Senate Republicans inviting him to a closed door session where he could brief them on his Middle East junket, the stimulus, and party strategy. Joe the Not Even Licensed Plumber?

I was beginning to suspect Sarah Palin had been selected as a ruse to give the American people no choice but to elect a black man to the presidency. Now it appears the GOP was purposefully courting idiocy, and realizes now perhaps that it hadn’t aimed low enough. Maybe it hopes to recreate its success in the shoes of Dumb George.

To Joe the Plumber, every problem is not going to look like three quarter inch pipe in need of a wrench. Problems like the economy, or how to use your watch to calculate how to get to a political rally on time, are going to look like powerful quandaries. And the media hopes to use Joes like Joe as a Greek Chorus, or in modern parlance, a focus group of one, to demonstrate to the public beast that Joe the Everyman Us is stumped.

Does Obama have the votes to pass this or that? Even with a Democratic majority, polls will show that if Joe Public can’t count it on the fingers of both hands, he’ll believe the pundits when they say Obama doesn’t.

Salvation Army lives off government funding and pushes crazy religion too

Salvation Army kettleThe Salvation Army has steadfastly promoted itself as being a rather saintly organization and is out there every Christmas asking for your donations. Did you know that you already donate to them? That’s right! The Salvation Army, a religious charity, has received millions upon millions of government dollars to help spread their Far Right Wing brand of Christianity far and wide, but most surely off onto the homeless and more dependent populations of our country.

The Salvation Army has gotten much government money obtained through your taxes from all levels of government; local, state, and federal. It has gotten quite a bit of money from the government in Canada, too. Plus, many private corporations give special privilege to the Salvation Army, allowing them into areas with public access that they normally close off to almost all others. Every time you donate free items to the Salvation Army, the government is helping out their religious program by making the donation tax free. So there is a lot of government and major corporate assistance to this Right Wing Christian charity.

The Salvation Army no longer appears to be overtly turning away those who refuse to participate in the religious services at their shelters, but….. The need for Homeless service is nationally very poorly met, so there is still much pressure if you are in need of assistance to appear to fit in with any religious proselytizing done, simply to get any personal favoritism being dished out. And the Salvation Army is an rabidly anti-Gay, anti-Spanish speaking, and pro religious discrimination in their hiring practices. How bad can these Right Wing Christians get with their prejudices? MSNBC reports Salvation Army leader to lose job over marriage
Rules (which) require officers to only marry a person within the organization
Pretty bad, it would seem.

Why are the various government bodies helping promote this sort of stuff with tax monies pulled in from people with multiple religious and nonreligious points of view? By not providing adequate services run by government agencies for The Needy, government is promoting a need to go to these Right Wing Christian run shelters, too. The Christian lobbyists are always out to try to erase any separation of Church and State, and as a result, the Salvation Army keeps on kicking, though most people totally disagree with their brand of aggressive Religious nuttiness. Time to take these outfits off the government dole! There are simply many, many other ways to help The Needy out, and government should be forced to do their job, rather than you just dropping a buck or two into the kettle and going on your merry way.

Pollsters detect Stevens Effect in Alaska

Pollsters detect Stevens Effect in Alaska

diebold-state-seal-of-alaskaObama’s victory has called into doubt the improbable Bradley Effect, but MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pointed to the re-election so far of Senator Ted Stevens in Alaska, a result which rings off-key with his pre-election eight point deficit in the polls, as suggesting a reverse-type Bradley Effect: voters misrepresenting their inclination to vote for a felon.

So why not name this specter after the honorable senator crook? The Stevens Effect: telling pollsters you will not vote for a candidate who’s a convicted felon, but in the voting booth making sure to kiss his ring.

But before we condemn the Alaska voters, let’s give them a chance to demand an investigation into their election results. Apparently the major contested offices won by Republicans on Tuesday polled very differently than the result. Plus, the Alaskan voter turnout came in much lower than expected. Until these anomalies are clarified, perhaps it’s too early to blame a Stevens Effect on the electorate. Maybe the Stevens Effect will eventually refer to a computer programming term for fixing the election result to please a mob boss.

At 84 years old, probably we’ll be denied the satisfaction that Senator Stevens will live to see his namesake effect calculated into pollster projections of upcoming elections.

Who is losing in the debates? We are.

FOX NEWS claims McCain is winning. MSNBC seems to be making an un-characteristic Obama gambit. Who’s losing the presidential debates? We are. And I’m not even talking about the exclusion of third party voices like Nader or McKinney. The Dems are winning, this last by “that one” but so is an escalation in Afghanistan, an attack on Pakistan, backing Israel in war-making against Iran, military intervention in Sudan, and the corporate profit replenishment bailout.

Lost in the concern about the Palin versus Biden match-up was Biden’s straight-up militancy. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Sudan. The Dems plan some kind of deceleration in Iraq, but more troops everywhere else. American voters haven’t become energized because they favor Dems over Repugs. They are against war! The American people prevailed eventually against the Vietnam War and they find themselves three decades later having to rise again to stop their government from waging war against the world in the name of the so-called GWOT.

Meanwhile the Democratic Party has co-opted that energy by posing as antiwar, and as the only social justice voice in Washington. Work within the system they say. But then you come against a hawkish leader like Joe Biden. What now. Are energized Dems cheering Biden’s war cries?

An audience member in last night’s debate advocated killing Bin Laden no matter where he’s hiding. Forget arguing whose borders must be respected. And the candidates seem to jostle for who is more eager to get Osama. I’d like to ask that woman if we should call in an air strike if it turns out Osama’s hiding in HER house? Should the US DoD violate American public’s territorial integrity?

Is this what American justice has become? Air strikes in lieu of day in court, rule of law, innocent until proven guilty? Do Dems and Republicans form just a blood-thirsty mob out to buttress their standard of living at any cost?

I caught some of the call-ins on C-SPAN after the debate. A number of the callers were for neither candidate and wanted to discuss the issues and candidates being cut out of the presidential debates. C-SPAN hung up on those.

Palin gets natural lip gloss from NPR

Palin gets natural lip gloss from NPR

Palin-McCain Couric interview
We may all be eagerly awaiting the Thursday VP debate trainwreck, with finally a sense that sanity cannot but otherwise prevail on coverage of the Sarah Palin dunce cap corner. But Americans don’t have to look far to see that media bemusement with Palin is not unanimous, in fact NPR is still fawning. Nina Totenberg’s recent profile of Palin was as facetious as Palin herself. And the NPR website transcript suggest the staff don’t want to leave a record of Totenberg’s unbending endorsement. Morning Edition listeners get propaganda, websurfers get something more palatable than pure barf.

Totenberg knew she could not ignore the public’s growing repudiation of Palin, fueled by Palin’s self-immolation on ABC and lampooned by MSNBC, SNL and everyone in between. In her Morning Edition report, Totenberg began by paying lip service to her uphill task, putting the proverbial –you’d think a little too cliche at the moment– lipstick on a pig, paraphrased as sugarcoating. And then laying on the sugar anyway. In the excerpt below, the words in bold are actually Totenberg’s emphasis, not mine!

There’s no way to sugarcoat this. After a BRILLIANT debut at the Republican Convention and a speech that ELECTRIFIED the delegates and the country, Sarah Palin is STRUGGLING in her second act — as a candidate seeking to persuade uncommitted voters that she’s prepared to be vice president of the United States.

She draws HUGE crowds, though not as huge as G.O.P. staffers would like you to believe, still, by most standards, they’re ENORMOUS — five, ten, fifteen, even twenty thousand! People, particularly women, are thrilled to see someone SO like themselves up there and SUCCEEDING. And she remains a SPUNKY speaker.

Let’s see. Nina Totenberg concedes that sugarcoating will be impossible, then piles it on: “brilliant,” “electrified,” “huge crowds,” “enormous.” Not as huge as someone would have you believe, but ENORMOUS? Did you know huge was less than enormous? And then: “someone so like themselves,” “succeeding.” Now would either of those descriptions fit the Sarah Palin you’ve seen? She’s SO like you? She’s succeeding? Of course Totenberg doesn’t say she thinks so, nor that YOU think so, but simply that people do. Particularly women. Really Nina?

Then there’s a sample of Palin’s “spunky” speech:

[PALIN:] “Okay Pennsylvania. Over the next forty days, John McCain and I, we’ re gonna take our message and our mission of reform to voters of every background, in every party, or no party at all, and with your vote, we’re going to Washington to shake things up.”

Now I think it’s one thing to clean up Palin’s English, maybe even to prettify the grammar, but quite another to add or delete words. Compare the above semi-corrected transcript of Palin’s eruditeness to NPR’s.

Further on, Totenberg covers Palin’s energy policy expertise, playing a portion of Palin’s speech where she takes credit for a natural gas pipeline. Totenberg debunks, sort of:

News reports DO INDEED give her credit for the pipeline agreement, but suggest that Palin has left so many financial and land-rights problems unresolved that the pipeline might never be built.”

Totenberg sites “News reports” to substantiate Palin’s claims, the NPR website transcript changes this to “Media reports,” but isn’t this the same as arguing “Some People Say” to back up a statement without having to validate or invalidate it yourself?

(I recall NPR confronting Senator McCain about his ad accusing Barack Obama about advocating sex-ed for preschoolers. NPR cited Factcheck.org for contradicting McCain’s charge, to which the GOP candidate merely countered that the so-called “Factcheck.org” was entitled to their different view of the facts. Never did NPR feel compelled to provide investigation of its own into the facts. Do we need a news program to be so objective that it can be detached from reporting what is fact or what is misrepresentation?)

Also highlighted in the speech is her son, in Iraq, her Down Syndrome baby boy, and on the stage when we were with her, two of her three daughters, who with their mother worked the rope line for a few minutes afterwards. And then there’s Palin’s husband Todd, affectionately known as “The First Dude,” who’s a commercial fisherman, oil field worker, union member and close adviser to his wife.

[PALIN:] “He is the four time winner of the Iron Dog, the world’s longest snow machine race, two thousand miles! And the more John McCain hears about that Iron Dog Race, the more often he says Todd’s crazy.

Did you know Todd Palin’s moniker was coined out of “affection?” Whose? On the radio broadcast, it was just “The First Dude” which mirrors recent national news photo captions, usually sarcastic. However the NPR website transcript specifies “Alaska’s First Dude,” which might have made Totenberg’s suggestion more credible. I don’t know, we’d have to consult Palin’s Alaskan constituents.

Here is part of NPR’s written version of Nina Totenberg’s report, submitted for comparison. Palin Tries For Second Act On The Road. Perhaps NPR is not submitting such as being a literal transcript. Indeed even some of their quotes of Sarah Palin are not the words she actually spoke. By the way, the original web transcript did not include the disingenuous preface “There is no way to sugarcoat this.” This was added a day later. The transcript also omits Palin’s extra embellishments about her husband. In effect NPR listeners heard a vastly aggrandizing report than NPR has decided to put on record.

Morning Edition, September 30, 2008 · There is no way to sugarcoat this. After a brilliant debut at the Republican National Convention and a speech that electrified the delegates and the country, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is struggling in her second act — as a candidate trying to persuade uncommitted voters that she is prepared to be vice president of the United States.

Palin draws huge crowds. They aren’t as huge as GOP staffers would like you to believe, but they’re still enormous by most standards — 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, even 20,000 supporters. Many people, particularly women, are thrilled to see someone like themselves on stage, and Palin is a spunky speaker, especially when she promised that she and McCain would go to Washington to shake things up.

“John McCain and I are going to take our message and our mission of reform to voters of every background, in every party or no party at all,” she said at a recent campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Media reports give her credit for the pipeline agreement, but suggest that Palin has left so many financial and land-rights problems unresolved that the pipeline might never be built.

Palin also spoke of her eldest son, who is serving in Iraq, and her infant son, who has Down syndrome. And she introduced her two young daughters, Willow and Piper, who joined her on stage and later helped her work the rope line, as well as her husband, Todd. Affectionately known as “Alaska’s First Dude,” Todd Palin is a commercial fisherman, oil field worker, union member and close adviser to his wife.

The family introductions took at least a couple of minutes in an 18-20 minute speech that was nearly identical to the one she gave at the Republican National Convention.

Joseph –I am a Zionist– Biden’s love affair with pigs wearing lipstick

CopObama and running mate Joe “I am a Zionist” Biden are big fans of hiring even more cops, funding even more militarization of the US, and exporting that military policing mindset to around the pigs-in-love globe to the torturers that the US government constantly allies itself with. Yes, Joe Biden wants to hire another 50,000 PLUS extra pigs in the US as the following excerpt from his web site illustrates…

‘Funding 50,000 Cops and 1,000 FBI Agents: In the 1990s, the Biden Crime Bill added 100,000 cops to America’s streets. As a result, murder and violent crime rates went down eight years in a row. George Bush’s cuts to the program have put America at risk and crime rates are back on the rise. Joe Biden wants to put 50,000 more cops on the street and add 1,000 more FBI agents to address the rise in crime and threats of terrorism.’

For full scope of Biden’s love affair with lipsticked pigs see his Homeland Security No priority is higher than America’s safety snoutings.

And the pigs love the Democratic Party. The love affair is mutual! MSNBC reports that POLICE ORGANIZATIONS BACK OBAMA-BIDEN. Now isn’t that lovely?

The last thing our country needs is yet more funding for prisons, military, pigs, and their weaponry. Joe Biden and Obama don’t think that though, and in the National Porcine Employment Homeland Security Department, they can certainly more than hold their own with the McCain-Palin nutters. Beware!

Zombies infest Information Super Highway

dead iphoneAre you part of the growing INTERNET zombie crowd? You know what I mean, are you a cyborg zombie infested with spyware, spam, and HIV (hijacked INTERNET voices)? Are you down with the Microsoft runs? Zombie plague sweeps the internet You are sick because the police target the wrong people to harass and now you are a zombie! The cyberpolice aren’t after them that made you sick, but you!

Tiki Barber is my hero

Marie Walden poolsideBeware. This is going to be a rant.
 
Today, I met with great misfortune. I watched MSNBC’s unbelievably sub-par coverage of the Olympics. Jenna Wolfe, know-nothing sports commentator extraordinaire, was recounting her favorite moments of the Games. To her, the most poignant moment was American swimmer, Dara Torres, being wonderfully gracious in defeat. Torres didn’t win, but the moment was inspiring nonetheless. Wolfe’s asswipe co-commentator back home, tight-pants Tamryn someone-or-another, chimed in “if you’re not first, you’re last.”

You have got to be fucking kidding me. Dara Torres, 41-year-old mother of two children, is competing in her FIFTH Olympic Games. She’s medaled in each and every one. In Beijing, she took silver in the women’s 50-meter freestyle race, .01 seconds behind the 22-year-old winner, Britta Steffen. About 35 minutes later, she won another silver medal as part of the American 4×100-meter medley relay team. Her 12 Olympic medals tie the all-time medal record for a female Olympian.

What a loser.

When Jenna Wolfe wasn’t supplying us with completely asinine commentary, she was mocking co-host and NFL phenom, Tiki Barber, for not having a Superbowl Ring.

My favorite moment of the Games? I’d say it was when Tiki Barber called Jenna Wolfe a cunt on-air for all the world to hear. He’s taking all the heat for the “lack of chemistry.” But for those of us who understand and revere sport, Tiki’s words are pure gold.

The Texas state government trial by press of the Eldorado parents

The Texas state government has decided to try the parents of the Eldorado children in the press by circulating new rumors that underage boys were sexually abused and that children had their bones deliberately broken by the parents. This is a new low to date in the government’s actions, who have yet, weeks after their raid, to file any criminal charges against anybody! …See MSNBC titled Official: Sex abuse of boys in sect possible
Texas investigators give few details, cite journal entries, interviews

Besides trying to taint this fundy religious group with being interested somehow in homosexual sex, the allegations about broken bones are certainly unique in its stupidity. Out of 417 children, the CPS claims that 41 children have evidence of broken bones! Well whoop-to-do here. Can you imagine the evil these parents had to have been up to? Where are the charges, Rick? Rick Perry is the Bush clone that is Governor of Texas who launched this nightmare. These evil parents were breaking children’s bones, but your courts can’t back any of that up, now can they? So it’s trial by slandering these folk in the press, is it?

Once again, it is not backing up the sick religion of fundy Mormonism of the 19th Century to be against the government’s actions at Eldorado. It is not supporting sex with underage girls. It is simply nothing more than supporting the right to a fair trial before punishment is made. It is to not support group punishment when maybe a few have broken some laws. It is Americanism not to cheerlead the victimization of vulnerable parents by a sick government bureaucracy.

Keep this in mind [and naught else]

Robert Silverberg’s documentary OUTFOXED outed the Fox Network’s “some people say” technique, which they used to relate hearsay which in reality was attributable most likely to no one but spin doctors. Neither Fox nor CNN nor MSNBC can use that expression again without embarrassing themselves. You’d THINK.
 
Now this catchphrase irritates more and more each time I hear it:
“You have to remember-“

Experts being interviewed by the media now preface A LOT of their statements with “you have to remember,” especially when cornered to explain something beyond what their viewers are prepared to swallow. “Keep in mind” is another variant as they build an incongruous argument.

For my part, I need to get over being told I HAVE to do anything, especially when it comes to listening or thinking. Why and WHAT do I have to keep in mind? Some other false assumption that’s been spun into my head, which, unrestrained by logic, I might have wisely discarded?

Anyone of a respectable higher education knows the media’s official explanation of anything is a house of cards. It’s usually a fairly robust house to be sure, constructed with plenty of redundancy to buttress your sense of understanding of the whole, a myopic view however, as seen from a hole in the plywood keeping pedestrians safely at bay. But the cards rely on a foundation like anything else, in this case drawn from a pack of lies.

Faced with fresh questions from the uninitiated, or stories spun to death with fallacies, the clean-up experts find themselves having to start each time with “you must keep this in mind-“ to remind you about the face cards they’ve already dealt your hand.

If they could do away with the “must,” the admonishment might be more palatable, don’t you think?

But they can’t, just as they have to condemn you to the future that’s in store for you. You MUST believe, or most certainly you’ll choose not to.

Oops! We missed the target…

So sorry. We missed the target… but there was nefarious activity there. The title to this reportage on MSN is… ‘Attack that killed kids likely missed target- Officials: Military knew children were present but considered risk worth it’

That even sounds like Madelyn Albright is still on the job? Of course, this is Afghanistan we’re talking about now, and not Iraq. That must be different?

Pentagon lies blowback- from Jessica Lynch to Pat Tillman

Remember Jessica Lynch and the Pentagon psy-op built around her capture by Iraqis? It was all lies we were fed just like with the bull shit stories the Pentagon has been telling us regarding Pat Tilman’s death. Following is an excerpt from recent MSNBC reportage.

….On April 24, 2007, Lynch was back in the spotlight when she testified before a House committee investigating whether the Pentagon misled the American public about the experiences of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lynch was walking slowly, according to the Associated Press, when took her seat at the witness table along with relatives of former NFL star Pat Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

“The bottom line,” Lynch said in a determined tone, “is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don’t need to be told elaborate tales.”
…..
—————————————————————————————————–
Comment…But they don’t want to tell the truth, simply because it is too self incriminating , Jessica. Full article at MSNBC

Is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad antiJewish?

We have on this blog, a comment made by a Zionist who identified himself with the name of the president of Iran. Coward. As such, he is imitating the Jewish comedian Sasha Cohen’s character who represents himself as a backward Muslim named ‘Borat’. I am old enough to remember that this was the style in Southern KKK circles, too. Some White KKKers and other White racists found it fantastically funny to burlesque Blacks by giving themselves nicknames which were considered at the time as being Black names. They would then play at being ‘niggers’ as they called the victims of their racist abuse.

In like manner, a couple of years ago I participated in a heavily Israeli loaded MSN newsgroup where a lot of Israeli IDF types were sending in pictures from Israel along with their racist antiArab/ antiMuslim vitriol. The most obnoxious of these stone cold thugs called himself ‘Abbas’, the name of the, at that time, new Palestinian Authority president. He just thought it such a laugh to be a racist Jewish killer and to be writing under the e-nickname ‘Abbas’. So here is an interview with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Judge for yourself who is the more odious racist, our anonymous Zionist poster, or the person he is making fun of?

Oliver North and Bizarro World

Oliver North is in Nicaragua advising voters there not to vote for Daniel Ortega for President this November 5. He is one of a series of benevolent GOP thugs who have gone down there the last couple of weeks to help ‘bring democracy’ to that country. And part of democracy, according to the GOP, is to intervene in the affairs of foreign, and supposedly sovereign, states.
 
Here is what MSN says that he told Nicaraguans…. Ollie told them that they had suffered enough from the influence of outsiders! Now that’s Bizarro World! He was referring to Hugo Chavez, and not the GOP of the USA, of course. But it’s too bad that the Nicaraguans can’t arrest this war criminal and have him shot. In fact, it’s too bad that Americans can’t do the same. Our national security certainly is not helped by allowing terrorists like Ollie to run loose.