Mike Luckovich: The last… (cartoon)
By admin | January 7, 2009
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In the name of God's will: Endless slaughter
By admin | January 7, 2009
Every year, humanity is treated to the annual (nearly constant) Israeli slaughter of its neighbors. This incessant, never-ending, circular-jerk, cluster fuckforever we are told is ordained by God. It is God's will, the Israelis insist, for them to have the land formerly occupied by the Palestinian people. Since, we are told, it is God's will that the land belong to the Israeli people; since it is supposedly God's will, we are to mindlessly accept and tolerate Israel's annual (nearly constant) slaughter of its neighbors.
The thing is, though—the thing is that if God had wanted Israel to have the land, why didn't God GIVE the land to the Israeli people? It seems rather strange that an omnipotent God, the Master of Mankind had created this grand plan for the people of Israel and yet, not that anyone seems to notice, it required the doings of the former League of Nations and the British Empire to bestow the land upon the Israelis.
That doesn't really seem like God's will, does it? Doesn't it seem to be much less a case of Divine intent and much more a case of simple thievery? Assuming that there is an all knowing, all powerful God and assuming that he did intend for the Israeli people to live on the land that they currently occupy; if this were God's doing, why has it been a nonstop struggle—complete with an annual (nearly constant) need for Israel to slaughter literally thousands of innocent people? If, as the Israelis and their supporters insist; if God had wanted the Israeli people to occupy this land, why has it been so difficult? If it were God's will, would it really require an endless circle of violence to maintain the circumstance?
And, let's ask ourselves, if God's will requires so much violence and death and destruction; let's ask ourselves how is it possible that birds can fly, while no one and no beast must die in order for it to be so?
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Interior Dept's Loyal Bushie installs quarter-million dollar shitter
By admin | January 6, 2009
This is just too much! Bush's boy at Interior wasn't happy with his office bathroom, so he pissed away $235,000 of taxpayer money for a new shitter and shower…
When Dirk Kempthorne took over as Secretary of the Interior in May 2006, he was appalled by the state of the interior… of his office bathroom. You see, it had no shower, refrigerator or freezer, vital staples of any adequate executive loo. Kempthorne took care of that. Al Kamen of the Washington Post reports that, at a cost of only $235,000 to the taxpayers, Kempthorne had the missing appliances installed and had enough money left over for some nice monogrammed towels.
Oh, he was in charge of this mess:
While Kempthorne was busy in his bathroom, his department was plagued by a massive scandal. According to a report from the AP last September, 13 former and current employees working in Denver and Washington that were tasked with handling billions of dollars in oil royalties allegedly rigged contracts, accepted gifts and even engaged in sexual relations with oil company employees.
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FOX News' Wall Street Urinal gets schooled for fake reporting
By admin | January 6, 2009
Is Nate Silver the last person in the United States, who is capable of discerning fact? Ever since FOX News' Rupert Murdoch took over the Wall Street Journal (Urinal?) the rag has printed more falsehoods than facts. The Columbia Journalism Review highlights the Urinal's latest disaster and credits FiveThirtyEight.Com's Nate Silver for figuring out the truth behind the WSJ's false claims:
The WSJ alleges that the vote ought not be certified because of several problems including double-counting of damaged ballots, ignored absentee ballots, and differing vote counts.
But numbers whiz kid Nate Silver takes the apart the story paragraph by paragraph and backs it up with some research evidence…
For instance, the Urinal claimed:
Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.
Mr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on “counting every vote” wants to shut the process down. He’s getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.
To which Silver corrected:
The Canvassing Board indeed determined that it lacked the jurisidiction to handle duplicate ballots, telling Coleman that he had to go to court. Which he did. And the court threw the case out because Coleman didn’t have any evidence.
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Paying for avoiding the tough decisions
By admin | January 6, 2009
Hhmmm…so, like, some think that Gaza and Zimbabwe are the result of, oh, ignoring problems until they reach disaster-level proportions.
Looking away always has a rationale. Cold war manoeuvring and U.S. domestic politics made it difficult to knock Middle East heads back when the issues were mainly land and water and before each fresh horror entrenched a new hatred. Ignoring Mugabe's descent into despotism was the price, along with generous, blinkered aid, of pushing South Africa's privileged whites toward democracy.
Whatever the justifications, the outcomes are now inescapable. Israel, after being drawn into a blundering 2006 adventure in southern Lebanon, is again trying to prove that disproportionate retaliation will discourage opponents with deep historical grievances and current existential fears. Zimbabwe is home to a humanitarian catastrophe made more poignant by state incompetence and Mugabe's icy indifference.
There's more to all of this than hand-wringing and hindsight. Rethinking what the world is willing to tolerate is as much a priority as rebuilding confidence in the global financial order. It requires reconsidering how and when to best intervene when one country's crisis becomes the world's responsibility.
To miss the urgency is to miss the concentric rings of extremism radiating from the Middle East to Afghanistan and as far west as North America's diasporas. To miss the importance is to miss the suffering of Darfur.
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John Sherffius: Safe (cartoon)
By admin | January 6, 2009
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Bush Family: America's Karmic blowback
By admin | January 6, 2009
George H. W. Bush has made it known that he hopes to inflict his other spawn, Jeb, upon the American people and the world. For those not aware, Jeb Bush was the popular Florida Governor that had tried to force the State Police to take hostage and stand guard over the vegetative Terri Schiavo. It was to be his last ditch effort to both score points with the extremist evangelical crowd that had brought his brother to power and to impose his religious doctrine upon Terri and her desire to be allowed to die with dignity.
Jeb Bush, like his brother George and Tom DeLay and Bill Frist and the extremist evangelical leadership; Jeb Bush is a pro-life hypocrite, who champions war and embraces death sentences and ignores the threat that global warming poses to all life on the planet (because, after all, oil profits trump even life).
Lucky us!
It is easy to understand why George H. W. Bush is hopeful that Jeb (where is Ellie Mae and Jethro) will get his turn at being President. After all, would anyone want George W. Bush to be their family's legacy? Jeb probably wouldn't be much better than his moronic brother — it isn't as though intellect is the Bush clan hallmark — but he sure as hell couldn't be any worse, right? H. W. obviously sees Jeb as the family's last hope at rescuing the Bush brand. Yeah, ah, good luck with that!
It is all a bit too scary though, isn't it? ANOTHER Bush at the helm! What is scarier still, is the fact that the American people are likely as not to vote another Bush into office—short memory span and all that.
Al Qaeda and 9/11 were blowback created by the Reagan-Bush foreign policy and now, so it seems, the Bush family is Karmic blowback for all the wrongs ever committed by the United States—we are all being made to pay via the Bush family, for every wrong ever committed by the U.S. government. The Bush family is America's collective punishment for wholesale slaughter of Native Americans and the Japanese internment and the School of the Americas and Vietnam and, yes, sadly, Iraq…. Jeb Bush and the entire Bush family as Karmic blowback—the Universe's "ain't life a bitch" payback scheme.
Lucky us!
Topics: Political | 5 Comments »
Olbermann: Obama's tax cuts (video)
By admin | January 6, 2009
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Excess lead leads to violent behavior
By admin | January 6, 2009
If Republicans want to reduce crime (if they do anymore…who knows what Republicans stand for nowadays) they should consider stronger environmental and health standards. An ongoing study finds that children exposed to too much lead, grow up to be violent offenders:
For the past three decades, researchers from the University of Cincinnati have been following 240 people from predominately African American neighborhoods of Cincinnati with high lead contamination. With each passing year, more is revealed about how lead in the environment affects health and behavior. Now, new research reveals that, even at low levels, lead exposure in early development shrinks key areas of the brain, and is linked with violent crime.
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Stop the Israeli madness
By admin | January 6, 2009
The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross has said that Palestinians are dying while waiting for ambulances in Gaza.
"Some wounded people simply die while waiting for an ambulance," said Antoine Grand, head of the ICRC office in Gaza. "This is of course absolutely appalling. The ambulances must reach the injured as fast as possible."
In some other cases, ambulances cannot reach the wounded at all because of the ongoing fighting and shelling
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Franken ready to get to work in US Senate
By admin | January 6, 2009
Al Franken is going to be the next Senator from Minnesota, the only question is how long it takes Republican Coleman to quit pitching his fit—when he does, Franken says he will be ready to get to work.
Al Franken, calling himself “the next senator from Minnesota,” said Monday afternoon he is “ready to go to Washington to get to work just as soon as possible.”
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Obama signals end to Bush's un-Constitutional terror tactics
By admin | January 6, 2009
Let's hope Obama does put an end to the Bush lunacy.
In filling four senior Justice Department positions Monday, President-elect Barack Obama signaled that he intends to roll back Bush administration counter-terrorism policies authorizing harsh interrogation techniques, warrantless spying and indefinite detentions of terrorism suspects. Obama's pick of Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen to take charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, the unit that churned out the legal opinions that justified harsh detainne treatment, was especially telling.
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