Selective honesty in action

Sean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck's Protest Footage

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For this 11th day of the 11th month

Today, I have a little advice for certain people.

Here goes: If you want to honour WWII veterans like my father for their sacrifices, then don't trivialize the evil they were up against.

The Nazis rounded up millions of people they didn't like and murdered them. That's nothing at all like trying to see that everyone can get the health care they need. In fact, it's kinda the opposite, don't ya think?

The Nazis invaded and occupied countries. Obama's immediate predecessor defied international law by invading a country, and Obama is trying to rectify that. That makes Obama less Hitler-like than the guy he succeeded -- who, let's be clear, was no Nazi either.

Today, Tea Party protesters across the U.S. should pledge to never compare a politician to Hitler unless that politician wants to commit genocide or invade countries to give the American people more lebensraum.

And they should pledge further to stand up to anyone at their little rallies who comes waving a sign that makes such a comparison.

The Rude Pundit, by the way, has a "modest proposal" for what should happen to one ignorant Nazi fetishist. I'm not saying it's exactly the right approach, but it's an understandable reaction. I can relate.

LONG LIVE AMERICA

I have spent my entire life in public service, both in the military and in law enforcement. I was raised in a Navy family and I was proud of my father for his service and my mother for the sacrifices she made attendant to that service. I have an affinity for those who serve their country and a particular animus for those who would pretend to cause them harm.

Yesterday I watched, with rolling tears and a heaving chest, the memorial at Fort Hood, Texas for those men and women who were murdered by a ruthless al Qaeda terrorist, who was also an officer in the United States Army medical corps. I was angry at the Army for allowing traitorous fanatics like this to operate openly. I was depressed at the thought of how many other terrorists may well occupy our military installations. I was ashamed to think how much I hated these Muslim killers. I was disturbed at how dark my thoughts became as I imagined the horror and the hate that I would like to bestow on these Allah loving devils.

I understand the notion of war and the inevitability of human conflict. I do not, however, understand the need to kill for one's notion of "God" or other myths that are beyond the pale. Is the Christian God as merciless as the Muslim God? Of course. History proves that. Are the Christians capable of the same violence? Of course. History proves that. What does that mean for decent people everywhere? Where can we be safe? Will we ever again be safe from these religious fanatics?

There are those who think al Qaeda to be a small, insignificant group of frightened arabs hiding in caves in Pakistan. They do not understand the nature of this dark beast. Osama bin Laden has long arms. His tentacles reach across the globe, embracing it not with love but hate. What happened at Fort Hood proves the existence of this evil. Should I wish death on all Muslims? No! Do I wish death on all of those who would harm our nation? Yes! If all Muslims secretly wish to harm our nation do I wish death on all Muslims? Yes!

My rational mind tells me that all Muslims are not terrorists any more than all black people are thieves, or all people who live in the south hate all people who are black. It cannot be a collective or subjective judgment, nonetheless the hatred on this day for the murderer Hasan runs deep. Now I just have to sort it all out......forgive me.

Wise Women are in misery...

Women are under attack, yet again!  Made the pawns of political strategy by blue dogs and the rightwingnutters who would decree to a woman, her rights.  Perhaps this is summed up best by Maddow (as usual)...

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I have enjoyed the rights my mother, a Republican, voted for:  a women's right to CHOOSE! nearly all of my life.  I know several women who took advantage of this right.  I can remember rallies that established this right.  Pro-Choice is a right.  Under constant attack by the right wing, Roe v Wade has withstood the onslaught for generations.   It represents my own value and ethics.  I am stunned that after so much sacrifice and public demonstration, our government, a clear Pro-Choice majority, could ever allow such a thing...caving to New Republican agendas and blue dog positioning__ all in the name of propping up health care insurance monopolies.  It's outrageous.  This boils down to money... the insurance companies are manipulating politics to undermine the advance of vital health care marketplace vi a single payer or public option to ensure fair and quality based health care coverage for all Americans.  Stupak-Pitts can kiss my ass at high noon in the village square! 

Women are now faced with another battle, perhaps the largest ever, on an issue already majority voted on, to bypass the real issue, health care coverage for all Americans.  It's outrageous.  It's outrageous that the House allowed ... I did not watch the coverage on C-Span where I would have been illuminated to this ... instead I was keeping pace through HuffPo on Saturday and enjoyed a few brief moments of elation that HCR passed.  My bad.   This poses to be, yet again, for the daughters, the fight of a lifetime to restore abortion rights and coverage back into equality.  The New Republicans have garnered a victory in turning Democrats against each other in this process by way of repetitive arguments.  Stupak-Pitts replaced the Caps Amendment (which ensured the status quo) at the last minute and Ms. Pelosi allowed it... I would have never bet on that one.  

This is a hallelujah pass to the PRO-Lifer's that have retorted to murder to accomplish their goals.  It's stunning.  And the audacity of the Speaker to ask for my contribution to further fight against the New Republicans.... on this bill... well, I'm stunned again. What next? 

IT'S A STORMIN' IN THE DEEP SOUTH!

Today is the day that Hurricane Ida, now downgraded to a tropical storm, has decided to visit my neck of the woods. As a result contributors are invited to share their wisdom as I have my hands full with 9 dogs, an overflowing lake, and water, water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink. Water, water everywhere with nary a drop to drink.....

Note: Identify the origin of the quote and the author to win a MM prize.

BILLIONAIRE CEO OF GOLDMAN SACHS SAYS FIRM IS DOING "GOD'S WORK"

This is one of those "you have got to be shitting me" stories! When I first heard this I thought it was a joke, or at the least the sole property of Fox News, which is owned and operated by God himself. I was, however, mistaken. Read and weep:

Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs (GS), has put an unusual spin on the bank's activities. He says his firm is doing "God's work." This may seem like an audacious statement coming from a man whose company has been harshly criticized for planning to give many of its employees multi-million pay packages just a bit more than a year after the collapse of the credit markets.

Blankfein told The Times of London, "We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. We have a social purpose." That is, of course, a social purpose that comes at a very steep price; it charges huge fees for raising money and handling M&A transactions, even if they eventually fail.

Goldman may be trying to publicize its role as a firm that finances the American economy and to hide its role in helping to create and market exotic money instruments like mortgage-backed securities. It wants the public to forget the money it made on the capital that the government gave it under the TARP program, and forget that it is not willing to reign in pay for even a year as a sort of penance for the financial community's and its own contributions to the collapse of the financial markets -- a collapse which has helped put millions of people out of jobs

More....

REMEMBERING THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL

GRAHAM PRAYS FOR FAILURE OF HEALTH CARE; LIEBERMAN TO FILIBUSTER MUCH NEEDED REFORM

Obstructionist whack-Packers Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman are pulling out all the stops to defeat health care reform. The former is calling on Jesus and the latter is going to talk non stop (a fate worse than death) by way of filibustering the bill. Sadly, Dennis Kucinich, the liberal hero, is also opposed to progress. He was one of the Democrats who voted against the bill in the House. Watch as Republican Graham and Republican Lite Lieberman make their case on the Sunday talk shows:

More David Shuster with guest chickenhawk

Just so no one will freak here is the full story about the good chickenhawk:

Former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo attempted to argue against Democratic plans for health care reform on Friday by claiming veterans were dissatisfied with their government-run health care. He was confronted by blogger Markos Moutlitsas, who unlike Tancredo is a veteran himself, and reacted by stalking off the set of MSNBC's The Ed Show where both men were guests.

Tancredo had begun by pointing to what he sees as problems with the Medicare system when host David Schuster interrupted him to ask, "So how about the Veterans Administration? The Veterans Administration is a single-payer system. ... That's also a threat to our freedom?"

"Every veterans groups I ever went and talked to complained about the Veterans Administration and the way it was a bureaucratically-run program that didn't serve their needs," Tancredo told Schuster. "They would much rather have vouchers that would allow them to go out and buy their insurance in a private marketplace."

Moulitsas, founder of The Daily Kos, began laughing as Tancredo was speaking. "Tom, I'm a veteran," he told Tancredo. "I did not get a deferment because I was too depressed to fight in a war that I supported in Vietnam."

This was a slightly garbled reference to Tancredo's having obtained 1-Y status in 1970, after his student deferments ran out, on the grounds that he had been "diagnosed with depression when he was 16 or 17 and received medication for five years for panic attacks and bouts of anxiety and depression." Tancredo was 24 at the time.

Truth fucking hurts sometimes.

3 CHEERS for Little David Shuster!

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What else can you say?  David won his sea legs in my estimation!  Cheers David.  Get 'em!

WAR OF THE CHURCHES: HAPPY DOG DAY!

TIDBITS: BACHMANN FOR PRESIDENT?

The next thing you know we will see the Dumbers and Baggers on the Right nominating their new leader, Michele Bachmann for president in 2012. It wouldn't surprise me. Would it surprise you?

Remembering How ... Fired UP!

In the face of the Republican downsize in House seats, you really have to wonder__ is the Republican Party actually ___ really___ OVER?  (And is a new right wingnut conservatism party beginning?)  Very frightening for the actual Republican Party... Chuck Devore vs Carly Fiorina?  And Lindsey Graham is the one tich, tich-ing the conservatives in Cali?  It's stupifying!  But then again, I've become redundant...

One after another Republicans' in office are either conceding or stepping out of the political way of the right wingnutters.  In all honesty, it does seem that Rushbo is making the major political policy; him or his necrophillic nephew Glen Beck.  They are calling up the living STUPID.  [Now!  I can only pray that they really focusing on the FL campaign of Crist for Senate with Maro Rubio...read more.  Under the tattered Lake Worth for Obama flag I am emailing back and forth with other local Dems on how to make a contribution to our eventual Democrat candidate to beat Crist...with the looming probability of a 'right wing conservative' candidate to challenge Crist, well, game (might be) over! Happy to serve tea for that! Kendrick Meek and Corrine Brown are the Dems gearing up to run against Crist... they need mundo help, too.]

But how in the hell do these quacks get any leverage?  It seems the consensus is "its the ECONOMY stupid!"  To that I would respond with this kind of 'sanity'... my absolute no. 1 reason (among so many) for voting for President Obama... a new, Green Economy!   It looms still.  Nobel prize winner Al Gore spoke to Rachel Maddow last night on the subject...

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The Obama White House has already created progressing new infrastructure jobs and intends to create new tech and service jobs in health care with HCR.  Not to mention the potential for Green / clean energy jobs that wait to be invested! 

I can get all FIRED UP for that!  And, it goes without saying... we will have a fight on our hands down here for the Senate seat.  A Republican or political right conservative candidate will NOT serve the environment.   [Can you believe Rushbo's comment to Riffkin?  This guy drips with ugly and bastard-ly.]  Climate Change legislation is vital. 

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’

I have, from time to time, supported the need for narrowly defined enhanced psychological interrogation techniques in the most extreme circumstances, i.e. to obtain information that could save the lives of innocents. When I read this story, however, I was sickened and hopeful that it was not true. Sadly, I think it just might be. If so where have we gone in this country? Who have we become? Read this shocking story and watch the videos:

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is "endemic" to the country's justice system.

Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, country he describes as a "totalitarian" state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.

The following videos were posted to YouTube by the Real News Network on Oct. 26 and Nov. 4, 2009.