Headlines - Tuesday July 27

Dog Thankful His Master Loves Pets

More Than Human Beings

 

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Chinese View of Sarah Palin.

 

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Posted without comment (for now), a profile of the Wikileaks leaker, who will likely rot in jail for the rest of his life, if his captors have any say. From Wired in June:

SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he's being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.

Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.

He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing "almost criminal political back dealings."

The Wired story has a ton of info, and is well worth a click.

 

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In order to counter the leaked Af-Pak war

documents, the Obama Administration has

reportedly ordered its spokespersons to use

even bigger shovels.

 

 

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From the shit you can not make up file

Former Goldman Sachs employee, TARP overseer, and treasury employee during the Bush administration turned investment banker takes to the Washington Post to lecture the little people on entitlement spending:

The fiscal crisis in Europe has awoken Americans to the enormous challenge we face from entitlements. The promises our country has made over the past few decades, combined with changing demographics and rising costs, have put us on a path to national insolvency. Unless we control our deficits we will face stifled economic growth and impaired standards of living, perhaps even as soon as a few years from now. Most economists agree that raising taxes cannot pay for these commitments; entitlements must be cut. Before we can embrace any reform proposals, however, we must understand the influence our culture has on our decision making.

A nation's culture can have a profound impact on its competitiveness. Our shared beliefs in free markets, fair play and the rule of law inspire entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams and give global investors confidence to bring their money to America. These beliefs have passed from citizen to citizen, from generation to generation. They have strengthened over our history and brought an important competitive edge to the United States.

Our belief in free markets is founded on the idea that each individual acting in his or her self-interest will lead to a superior outcome for the whole. The financial crisis has reminded us that free markets are not perfect—but they do allocate capital better than any other system we know. A "me first" mentality usually makes markets more efficient.

But this "me first" mentality can also lead to shortsighted political decision making. Most Americans agree that we need more energy from clean sources, such as wind power—until someone proposes installing a transmission line near their homes. Most people are against earmarks—unless it is their representative scoring money for their district.

Got it? The genius of the free market is that it only really works when those at the top have a "me first" attitude and give themselves massive bonuses while railing against the inheritance tax and paying nothing in taxes because of our current tax system (capital gains). When you folks look forward to 300 bucks every couple of weeks from the social security you paid into your entire lives that was spent financing tax cuts for the rich and foriegn wars, then you're just being selfish.

I seriously hope Neel Kashkari chokes to death on caviar.

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Our insane policies continue:

At least 45 civilians, many women and children, were killed in a rocket attack by the NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province last week, a spokesman for the Afghan government said on Monday.

The incident happened in Helmand's Sangin district on Friday when civilians crammed into a mud-built house to flee fighting between NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops and Taliban insurgents, Siyamak Herawi told Reuters.

"The investigation shows that the rocket was fired by NATO and 45 civilians, many of them women and children, have been killed," he said.

Reports of civilian deaths and casualties caused by foreign troops are a major cause of friction between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers and have led to street protests.

Maybe if all these people dye their hair blonde and rename themselves Jon Bonet the American people will start to notice. And let's remember- wikileaks is the real problem. Not our policies.

(via)

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"Hmmm, at roughly $2 million each, $18 million

will buy me nine more yachts. Now that I think

about it, that minor misadventure in the Gulf of

Mexico hasn't turned out bad for me at all."

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Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, currently running third in the state's Republican gubernatorial primary race, says he's not sure if Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion apply to the followers of the world's second largest faith, Islam.

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President Obama to become president of daytime teevee

Barack Obama is going to be on The View on Thursday, because he is not too popular now, and he was popular in 2008 when he was on that show last, so certainly viewers who don't have jobs and commercials for cleaning products are the magic he needs to get back that '08 touch. According to Barbara Walters, THIS IS HISTORY, as no sitting president has wasted his time on daytime television before. MORE »

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"We don't think it is appropriate to have guns in churches. The bishops decided that, if the bill became law, the bishops would let their pastors know that this would not be permissible in Catholic churches."     Danny Loar, of the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops, saying guns won't be 
allowed in their churches, no matter what Bhahbi Jindal says Link 

"Catholic Bishops worried about guns? Or worried that little boys might be able to fend them off with a Glock? lokidog, Link

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The Afghan papers and Obama's last chance

by: Yellow Dog

I don't have the national security or intelligence industry chops to analyze the military implications of the leak of 92,000 supposedly secret documents about the Afghanistan clusterfuck.

But I know a little something about journalism, and sources who have ulterior motives for leaking documents, and the political uses of both.

I think the Afghan papers are the 21st-Century Pentagon Papers, but not for the reasons you've probably read.

Steve M. doubts this release will accomplish anything because today there is no strong anti-war movement to take advantage of it. But the big consequence of the Pentagon Papers release - besides strengthening the First Amendment guarantee of a free press - was the destruction of the presidency of Richard Nixon.

After the Pentagon Papers release, Nixon put his paranoid bugging schemes into full gear.  The Watergate break-in, remember, was intended to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. And Nixon won re-election in a landslide five months later.

I don't think the Afghan papers will bring down the Obama administration in the same way, mostly because this administration lacks both the mental illness and criminal character of Nixon's.  

If - and it's a big if - Obama avoids the mistake Nixon made, which was fighting the release of the papers on national security grounds, even though the papers indicted previous Democratic administrations, the president might turn them to his advantage.

But only if he immediately repudiates unequivocally the atrocities confirmed by the Afghan Papers, especially those committed since January 20, 2009.

The surprise in the Afghan Papers is not that Pakistan, to whom we have given tens of BILLIONS of dollars since 2001 to help us in Afghanistan, has instead spent most of that money - wait for it - helping the Taliban kill American soldiers.

Ahmed Rashid has been writing about that since BEFORE 9-11, and liberal bloggers have been bitching about it ever since.

The only news here is that the U.S. has known about it all along, and continued to give billions of taxpayer dollars to Pakistan to help it kill American soldiers.

That, children, is what used to be known as treason.

As inexcusable as was the Nixon administration's prolonging of the war for political purposes, as horrific as were the many war crimes the U.S. committed in Vietnam, I am unaware of any evidence or even hint that the U.S. paid an ostensible ally which then used the money to help North Vietnam kill American soldiers.

The Afghanistan clusterfuck is, indeed, Obama's Vietnam. But he still has a chance to salvage it all - the country, the destructively over-extended U.S. Army, the real fight against real terrorists, diplomacy with both Iran and Pakistan, the honor of the United States of America and his own presidency.

But he has to embrace the release of the Afghan Papers as patriotism at its finest, and vow to stop the insanity before it destroys us.

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Ding dong, the climate change bill is dead

There will be no climate-change legislation this year. Who is to blame?

Douthat:

Cap-and-trade's backers are correct to point the finger rightward. If their bill is dead, it was the American conservative movement that ultimately killed it. Climate legislation wasn't like health care, with Democrats voting "yes" in lockstep. There was no way to get a bill through without some support from conservative lawmakers. And in the global warming debate, there's a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the conservative movement and the environmentalist cause.

Klugman goes further.

So it wasn't the science, the scientists, or the economics that killed action on climate change. What was it?

The answer is, the usual suspects: greed and cowardice.

If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn't be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries — above all, the coal and oil industries — would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom lines.

Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organizations pushing fake scandals; look at the think tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissions would cripple the economy. Again and again, you'll find that they're on the receiving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy companies, like Exxon Mobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting climate-change denial, or Koch Industries, which has been sponsoring anti-environmental organizations for two decades.

Or look at the politicians who have been most vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of their campaign money? You already know the answer.

By itself, however, greed wouldn't have triumphed. It needed the aid of cowardice — above all, the cowardice of politicians who know how big a threat global warming poses, who supported action in the past, but who deserted their posts at the crucial moment.

There are a number of such climate cowards, but let me single out one in particular: Senator John McCain.

There was a time when Mr. McCain was considered a friend of the environment. Back in 2003 he burnished his maverick image by co-sponsoring legislation that would have created a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions. He reaffirmed support for such a system during his presidential campaign, and things might look very different now if he had continued to back climate action once his opponent was in the White House. But he didn't — and it's hard to see his switch as anything other than the act of a man willing to sacrifice his principles, and humanity's future, for the sake of a few years added to his political career.

Alas, Mr. McCain wasn't alone; and there will be no climate bill. Greed, aided by cowardice, has triumphed. And the whole world will pay the price.

Conservatives did to the climate change issue what they did to health care reform – lie and distort to the point of manipulating public opinion to be what they needed it to be.  It really is as simple as that.

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Irony. Pushing up daisies.

The aptly named Neel "Kashkari" says, "Entitlements for me, but not for the olds:"

The fiscal crisis in Europe has awoken Americans to the enormous challenge we face from entitlements. The promises our country has made over the past few decades, combined with changing demographics and rising costs, have put us on a path to national insolvency. Unless we control our deficits we will face stifled economic growth and impaired standards of living, perhaps even as soon as a few years from now. Most economists agree that raising taxes cannot pay for these commitments; entitlements must be cut. Before we can embrace any reform proposals, however, we must understand the influence our culture has on our decision making.

In the same breath, he says this:

Cutting entitlement spending requires us to think beyond what is in our own immediate self-interest. But it also runs against our sense of fairness: We have, after all, paid for entitlements for earlier generations. Is it now fair to cut my benefits? No, it isn't. But if we don't focus on our collective good, all of us will suffer.

There ya have it. We have to make personal sacrifices so corporations won't suffer.

And I wonder why I'm having such a hard time getting out of bed these days.

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Did you know it's not a "lynching" if a rope isn't used?

White Republicans who write for The American Spectator and who have no knowledge of recent American history should really just shut the fuck up.

"What the FUCK did you just say?"

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Still no improvement in Iraq. "Two car bombs have exploded near the southern Iraqi city of Karbala, killing at least 20 people, officials say. The bombs went off on the road from the city of Najaf, which is often used by Shia pilgrims travelling to shrines. Dozens of people were wounded in the blast, hospital officials told reporters. Iraq has been without a government since elections in March and it is feared that insurgents are exploiting the power vacuum. Hundreds have been killed in attacks by insurgents since the election."