Study Suggests Why Gut Instincts Work
Mon Feb 9, 2009
LiveScience.com
Sometimes when you think you're guessing, your brain may actually know better.
After conducting some unique memory and recognition tests, while also recording subjects' brain waves, scientists conclude that some gut feelings are not just guesswork after all. Rather, we access memories we aren't even aware we have.
"We may actually know more than we think we know in everyday situations, too," said Ken Paller, professor of psychology at Northwestern University and co-researcher on the study.
"Unconscious memory may come into play, for example, in recognizing the face of a perpetrator of a crime or the correct answer on a test. Or the choice from a horde of consumer products may be driven by memories that are quite alive on an unconscious level."
The findings were published online Sunday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
The research, done with only a couple dozen participants, adds to a growing body of conflicting evidence about decision-making. In one study done in 2007, researchers found that quick decisions were better than those given lots of thought. But a study last year suggested neither snap judgments nor "sleeping on it" trump good old-fashioned conscious thought.
The new study
During the first part of the memory test in the new study, participants were shown a series of colorful kaleidoscope images that flashed on a computer screen. Half of the images were viewed with full attention as participants tried to memorize them. While viewing the other half, the participants were distracted: They heard a spoken number that they had to keep in mind until the next trial, when they indicated whether it was odd or even.
In other words, they could focus on memorizing half of the images but were greatly distracted from memorizing the others.
A bit later, they viewed pairs of similar kaleidoscope images in a recognition test.
"Remarkably, people were more accurate in selecting the old image when they had been distracted than when they had paid full attention," Paller said. "They also were more accurate when they claimed to be guessing than when they registered some familiarity for the image."
Splitting attention during a memory test usually makes memory worse.
"But our research showed that even when people weren't paying as much attention, their visual system was storing information quite well," Paller said.
The brain's role
During the tests, electrical signals in the brain were recorded from a set of electrodes placed on each person's head. The brain waves during implicit recognition were distinct from those associated with conscious memory experiences. A unique signal of implicit recognition was seen a quarter of a second after study participants saw each old image.
Other related research has shown that amnesia victims with severe memory problems often have strong implicit memories, Paller and his colleague, Joel L. Voss of the Beckman Institute, said in a statement.
"Intuition may have an important role in finding answers to all sorts of problems in everyday life," Paller said.
brain
Monday, February 9, 2009
Los Angeles is running out of water.
Of course there are no implications for people moving here, thousands, millions. No costs. No problems. After all, everyone else came here - everyone else should also be able to.
There are limits, and we have now reached, what appears to be the point at which we have no more resources. The next step will be rationing.
Imagine world response to that: The US rations water or electricity or ...
LA Mayor moves to limit water use and punish violators
12:27 PM, February 9, 2009
Calling the ongoing three-year drought a crisis, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today called for severe water-use restrictions and a tiered rate system that would reward customers who conserve and punish those who don’t with higher bills.
Lawn watering would be restricted to two days a week, Mondays and Thursdays, and could be cut to one day a week by summer if the drought continues, Villaraigosa said. The mayor made his announcement on a rainy winter day, but L.A.'s current wet weather is not expected to ease the drought. Restrictions could be imposed as early as March but would have to be approved by the City Council and commissioners at the city's Department of Water and Power.
The increased conservation measures are proposed because the Metropolitan Water District, a major wholesale water supplier to Los Angeles and the rest of Southern California, has warned that the worsening drought may force it to cut water deliveries by 15% to 25%.
“We’re headed into a crisis that we have not seen in decades," Villaraigosa said at a morning news conference in City Hall.
How much would water abuse cost residents?
The mayor urged the DWP to approve “shortage-year" rates, a tiered pricing system that encourages customers to conserve by charging more for water as usage increases. Customers who meet the city’s conservation targets would not see their bills increase -- and could even pay less -- the mayor said.
It will be up to the DWP’s board to set those conservation targets, and the price increases embedded in the proposed shortage-year rates, when it meets later this month. Customers could be asked to cut their water consumption by an additional 8% to 15%, or face steeper water rates if they do not.
Statewide, reservoir levels are at their lowest levels since the 1976-79 drought. The Eastern Sierra snowpack, a major source of water for the city, is also 71% of normal. Water that Southern California receives from the Colorado River Aqueduct and State Water Project also have fallen sharply, all of which is “grim news" to water users in Los Angeles, said DWP General Manager H. David Nahai.
water
There are limits, and we have now reached, what appears to be the point at which we have no more resources. The next step will be rationing.
Imagine world response to that: The US rations water or electricity or ...
LA Mayor moves to limit water use and punish violators
12:27 PM, February 9, 2009
Calling the ongoing three-year drought a crisis, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today called for severe water-use restrictions and a tiered rate system that would reward customers who conserve and punish those who don’t with higher bills.
Lawn watering would be restricted to two days a week, Mondays and Thursdays, and could be cut to one day a week by summer if the drought continues, Villaraigosa said. The mayor made his announcement on a rainy winter day, but L.A.'s current wet weather is not expected to ease the drought. Restrictions could be imposed as early as March but would have to be approved by the City Council and commissioners at the city's Department of Water and Power.
The increased conservation measures are proposed because the Metropolitan Water District, a major wholesale water supplier to Los Angeles and the rest of Southern California, has warned that the worsening drought may force it to cut water deliveries by 15% to 25%.
“We’re headed into a crisis that we have not seen in decades," Villaraigosa said at a morning news conference in City Hall.
How much would water abuse cost residents?
The mayor urged the DWP to approve “shortage-year" rates, a tiered pricing system that encourages customers to conserve by charging more for water as usage increases. Customers who meet the city’s conservation targets would not see their bills increase -- and could even pay less -- the mayor said.
It will be up to the DWP’s board to set those conservation targets, and the price increases embedded in the proposed shortage-year rates, when it meets later this month. Customers could be asked to cut their water consumption by an additional 8% to 15%, or face steeper water rates if they do not.
Statewide, reservoir levels are at their lowest levels since the 1976-79 drought. The Eastern Sierra snowpack, a major source of water for the city, is also 71% of normal. Water that Southern California receives from the Colorado River Aqueduct and State Water Project also have fallen sharply, all of which is “grim news" to water users in Los Angeles, said DWP General Manager H. David Nahai.
water
Mexico: And the Death March Continues Upward 2
This just defies ... 8,000 people in two years. 145 dissolved. $600 a week. The Mexican government has bigger issuesd to worry about than a wall. It needs to protect its people, stop the killers, and end the reign of a cartel responsible for over 8000 deaths.
Families want answers from man who says he dissolved 300 people
By Richard Marosi
Los Angeles Times
February 9, 2009
Reporting from Tijuana -- Fernando Ocegueda hasn't seen his son since gunmen dragged the college student from the family's house three years ago. Alma Diaz wonders what happened to her son, Eric, a Mexicali police officer who left a party in 1995 and never returned.
Arturo Davila still pounds on police doors looking for answers 11 years after his daughter and a girlfriend were kidnapped in downtown Ensenada.
For the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families of people who have vanished amid Baja California's drug wars, the search for justice has been lonely and fruitless. But their hopes have been buoyed recently by the Jan. 22 arrest of a man Mexican authorities believe is behind the gruesome disposal of bodies in vats of industrial chemicals.
Santiago Meza Lopez, a stocky 45-year-old taken into custody after a raid near Ensenada, was identified as the pozolero who liquefied the bodies of victims for lieutenants of the Arellano Felix drug cartel. Authorities say he laid claim to stuffing 300 bodies into barrels of lye, then dumping some of the liquefied remains in a pit in a hillside compound in eastern Tijuana.
His capture riveted Mexico with sickening details behind drug violence that has left more than 8,000 dead in two years. For the families of the disappeared, however, it was a chance to revive cases that seemed long forgotten.
A day after Meza's arrest, Ocegueda and 40 other people showed up at the federal attorney general's office in Tijuana, with family snapshots in hand, demanding that authorities query Meza about whether he recalled dissolving their missing loved ones.
In the following days, dozens more people came forward with tales of disappearances. "Please help me find out what happened to him," wrote one woman on a photograph of a young man smiling in a car. "He was my husband."
Victim rights groups estimate that there are more than 1,000 people missing in Baja California, including students, businessmen, merchants and cops. Their cases have been ignored, bungled or blocked by law enforcement officials, activists say.
As a potential cartel insider, Meza could peel back the mysteries surrounding the disappearances, they say. Ocegueda, president of the Citizens United Against Impunity, plans to visit Mexico City this week, where he will request a personal audience with Meza.
Authorities are unlikely to grant access to the suspect, but families hope they'll follow through on their promise to confront him with the photos. His capture has provided their greatest leverage against a government that for years has paid little attention to their concerns, said Ocegueda and other group leaders.
"The government wants to silence what cannot be silenced . . . but they didn't count on someone saying that he personally disintegrated 300 bodies," said Cristina Palacios Hodoyan, whose son, Alejandro, disappeared in 1997. "They're going to have to pay attention to us now."
Federal authorities have told the local media that they are cooperating with the families, having met with them and taken more than 100 photos.
The hillside compound where Meza told authorities he labored lies in an area acquainted with death. There are two cemeteries tucked in the surrounding hills, and funeral processions pass by daily on potholed Ojo de Agua road.
Behind the white gate, Meza said, he would fill a barrel with water and two large bags of lye. Wearing gloves and protective goggles, he'd light a fire underneath, and bring the liquid to a boil before depositing a body. After 24 hours, he would dump the disintegrated remains in a pit and set them aflame.
In Tijuana, the process is known as making pozole. That's because the pink liquid in the barrel resembles the popular Mexican stew. When a Mexican official asked Meza what he did for a living, he replied, "Me llaman el Pozolero": They call me the Pozole Maker.
He earned $600 weekly and said he learned how to disintegrate bodies by first experimenting with pig legs, according to the Mexican federal attorney general's office. Meza allegedly told authorities he worked for several top cartel lieutenants over a 10-year period, most recently for Teodoro Garcia Simental, whom authorities believe is behind the kidnappings of hundreds of people in recent years.
Meza's alleged deeds apparently went unnoticed in the shabby area of ranches and pig and chicken farms. Several neighbors said they had never seen him, and weren't curious. "It's best to be ignorant of such diabolical things," said a local pig farmer, who did not want to be identified because he feared for his safety.
[To read the rest of the article, click on the title link]
Mexico
Families want answers from man who says he dissolved 300 people
By Richard Marosi
Los Angeles Times
February 9, 2009
Reporting from Tijuana -- Fernando Ocegueda hasn't seen his son since gunmen dragged the college student from the family's house three years ago. Alma Diaz wonders what happened to her son, Eric, a Mexicali police officer who left a party in 1995 and never returned.
Arturo Davila still pounds on police doors looking for answers 11 years after his daughter and a girlfriend were kidnapped in downtown Ensenada.
For the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families of people who have vanished amid Baja California's drug wars, the search for justice has been lonely and fruitless. But their hopes have been buoyed recently by the Jan. 22 arrest of a man Mexican authorities believe is behind the gruesome disposal of bodies in vats of industrial chemicals.
Santiago Meza Lopez, a stocky 45-year-old taken into custody after a raid near Ensenada, was identified as the pozolero who liquefied the bodies of victims for lieutenants of the Arellano Felix drug cartel. Authorities say he laid claim to stuffing 300 bodies into barrels of lye, then dumping some of the liquefied remains in a pit in a hillside compound in eastern Tijuana.
His capture riveted Mexico with sickening details behind drug violence that has left more than 8,000 dead in two years. For the families of the disappeared, however, it was a chance to revive cases that seemed long forgotten.
A day after Meza's arrest, Ocegueda and 40 other people showed up at the federal attorney general's office in Tijuana, with family snapshots in hand, demanding that authorities query Meza about whether he recalled dissolving their missing loved ones.
In the following days, dozens more people came forward with tales of disappearances. "Please help me find out what happened to him," wrote one woman on a photograph of a young man smiling in a car. "He was my husband."
Victim rights groups estimate that there are more than 1,000 people missing in Baja California, including students, businessmen, merchants and cops. Their cases have been ignored, bungled or blocked by law enforcement officials, activists say.
As a potential cartel insider, Meza could peel back the mysteries surrounding the disappearances, they say. Ocegueda, president of the Citizens United Against Impunity, plans to visit Mexico City this week, where he will request a personal audience with Meza.
Authorities are unlikely to grant access to the suspect, but families hope they'll follow through on their promise to confront him with the photos. His capture has provided their greatest leverage against a government that for years has paid little attention to their concerns, said Ocegueda and other group leaders.
"The government wants to silence what cannot be silenced . . . but they didn't count on someone saying that he personally disintegrated 300 bodies," said Cristina Palacios Hodoyan, whose son, Alejandro, disappeared in 1997. "They're going to have to pay attention to us now."
Federal authorities have told the local media that they are cooperating with the families, having met with them and taken more than 100 photos.
The hillside compound where Meza told authorities he labored lies in an area acquainted with death. There are two cemeteries tucked in the surrounding hills, and funeral processions pass by daily on potholed Ojo de Agua road.
Behind the white gate, Meza said, he would fill a barrel with water and two large bags of lye. Wearing gloves and protective goggles, he'd light a fire underneath, and bring the liquid to a boil before depositing a body. After 24 hours, he would dump the disintegrated remains in a pit and set them aflame.
In Tijuana, the process is known as making pozole. That's because the pink liquid in the barrel resembles the popular Mexican stew. When a Mexican official asked Meza what he did for a living, he replied, "Me llaman el Pozolero": They call me the Pozole Maker.
He earned $600 weekly and said he learned how to disintegrate bodies by first experimenting with pig legs, according to the Mexican federal attorney general's office. Meza allegedly told authorities he worked for several top cartel lieutenants over a 10-year period, most recently for Teodoro Garcia Simental, whom authorities believe is behind the kidnappings of hundreds of people in recent years.
Meza's alleged deeds apparently went unnoticed in the shabby area of ranches and pig and chicken farms. Several neighbors said they had never seen him, and weren't curious. "It's best to be ignorant of such diabolical things," said a local pig farmer, who did not want to be identified because he feared for his safety.
[To read the rest of the article, click on the title link]
Mexico
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Obamessiah: Armageddon Days Are Here (Again)
In the late 1980s there was a band called THE THE. They had several great songs. One in particular was titled: Armageddon Days are Here (Again). They were great, and at the same time, depressing. They were also 20 years early. It could be the theme song for Obamessiah. There is some irony to this as well - Obamessiah, end of times, Armageddon ... anyway ... hypocrisy also.
As is noted in the piece below, every time Bush went one way or another - positive outlook - he was naive; negative - he was gloom and doom.
Now Obama - with his dire outlook - talk about making Carter look downright optimistic!
Warning Mr. Obama - unless you turn things around within 20 months, the Republicans will be riding in to the rescue and the Congress will turn back to Republican control ... then they will be saying: Get Over It, We Won.
'Doom' rhetoric seen by some as 'not presidential'
Washington Times
Monday, February 9, 2009
Joseph Curl
From crisis to catastrophe. Off a cliff. Dark, darker, darkest. Mortal danger of absolute collapse. Armageddon.
President Obama and top Democrats on Capitol Hill are deploying these and other stark predictions of doom and gloom to push through their economic-stimulus package. In terms not heard in Washington since the late 1970s under President Jimmy Carter's watch, the new president has sought to terrify Americans into supporting the $800 billion-plus bailout bill.
While President Bush was accused shortly after taking office in 2001 of "talking down the economy" - and for saying the economy was "slowing down" - Mr. Obama is using ever-heightening hyperbole to hammer home his message. But the strategy brings great risk for the "Yes, We Can" man, who just three weeks ago told America in his inaugural address that despite "a sapping of confidence across our land," his election meant Americans had "chosen hope over fear."
"Mr. Hope has to be careful not to become Dr. Doom," said Frank Luntz, a political consultant and author of the book "Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear."
"The danger for him is using the Jimmy Carter malaise rhetoric, particularly for Mr. Obama, who was elected because people thought he was the solution. There's only so much negativity they will tolerate from him before they will feel betrayed," Mr. Luntz said.
Brad Blakeman, a senior aide to Mr. Bush from 2001 to 2004, said the new president's language is immature.
[Immature and irresponsible - but that was clear from his policy decisions concerning our allies. Why are some people just catching on now?]
"It's not presidential. An American leader needs to be hopeful and optimistic - and truthful. Everything he says is parsed; everything he says is searched for deep meaning. When he goes to 'DefCon 5' on the economy and says that we're on the brink of catastrophe, it's absolutely insane."
With his fiery rhetoric, the new president runs the risk of terrifying consumers and investors, which could depress the economy even further. While the economy is bad, it is a far cry from Great Depression levels, when as many as 30 percent of Americans were unemployed, compared with the 7.6 percent now.
Every president must walk a rhetorical tightrope when talking about the economy, a lesson Mr. Bush learned quickly, being bashed just after taking office for delivering somber news. The United States was just entering a mild recession - it had been in one, it turns out, for about nine months - and the new president said so.
Liberals went berserk.
"Every time we turn around, this guy is bad-mouthing the economy. Is that lifting our spirit or dumping on it in order to sell his tax cut?" liberal comentator Bill Press said on CNN.
Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, in an article headlined "Thanks Ever So Much, President Poor-Mouth," said, "Even if Bush turns out to be right in his predictions of gloom, that doesn't mean he was right to make them." The New York Times lectured Mr. Bush, saying that presidents were supposed to be "cheerleaders for the nation's economy."
But Mr. Bush tried that, too. As the United States recovered from the economic devastation caused by the 9/11 attacks, the president constantly talked up the economy, asserting that the American work force could compete with any in the world, and he assured Americans that happy days were right around the corner. Even as the currrent recession took hold, he continued to portray the nation's future in optimistic tones.
For all his effort, he was portrayed as a Pollyannish rube whose naivete so clouded his vision that he could not see the stark reality of the economic situation. How else to explain his optimism in the face of $4-a-gallon gas or exploding unemployment, or presidential statements a year ago, such as "I don't think we're headed to a recession, but no question we're in a slowdown."
Mr. Obama has gone much further than that. Just Friday, Mr. Obama said a report that 600,000 jobs were lost in January meant "it's getting worse, not getting better. ... Although we had a terrible year with respect to jobs last year, the problem is accelerating, not decelerating." Last week he said, "A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
But he isn't the only Democrat ramping up the rhetoric while talking down the economy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said last month that our economy "is dark, darker, darkest." Rep. David R. Obey of Wisconsin said, "This economy is in mortal danger of absolute collapse." And Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said of the economic-stimulus bill, "If we don't pass this thing, it's Armageddon."
**************************
Paging Mr. Carter. You were downright optimistic compared to McCaskill et al. Are you available?
Obama
As is noted in the piece below, every time Bush went one way or another - positive outlook - he was naive; negative - he was gloom and doom.
Now Obama - with his dire outlook - talk about making Carter look downright optimistic!
Warning Mr. Obama - unless you turn things around within 20 months, the Republicans will be riding in to the rescue and the Congress will turn back to Republican control ... then they will be saying: Get Over It, We Won.
'Doom' rhetoric seen by some as 'not presidential'
Washington Times
Monday, February 9, 2009
Joseph Curl
From crisis to catastrophe. Off a cliff. Dark, darker, darkest. Mortal danger of absolute collapse. Armageddon.
President Obama and top Democrats on Capitol Hill are deploying these and other stark predictions of doom and gloom to push through their economic-stimulus package. In terms not heard in Washington since the late 1970s under President Jimmy Carter's watch, the new president has sought to terrify Americans into supporting the $800 billion-plus bailout bill.
While President Bush was accused shortly after taking office in 2001 of "talking down the economy" - and for saying the economy was "slowing down" - Mr. Obama is using ever-heightening hyperbole to hammer home his message. But the strategy brings great risk for the "Yes, We Can" man, who just three weeks ago told America in his inaugural address that despite "a sapping of confidence across our land," his election meant Americans had "chosen hope over fear."
"Mr. Hope has to be careful not to become Dr. Doom," said Frank Luntz, a political consultant and author of the book "Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear."
"The danger for him is using the Jimmy Carter malaise rhetoric, particularly for Mr. Obama, who was elected because people thought he was the solution. There's only so much negativity they will tolerate from him before they will feel betrayed," Mr. Luntz said.
Brad Blakeman, a senior aide to Mr. Bush from 2001 to 2004, said the new president's language is immature.
[Immature and irresponsible - but that was clear from his policy decisions concerning our allies. Why are some people just catching on now?]
"It's not presidential. An American leader needs to be hopeful and optimistic - and truthful. Everything he says is parsed; everything he says is searched for deep meaning. When he goes to 'DefCon 5' on the economy and says that we're on the brink of catastrophe, it's absolutely insane."
With his fiery rhetoric, the new president runs the risk of terrifying consumers and investors, which could depress the economy even further. While the economy is bad, it is a far cry from Great Depression levels, when as many as 30 percent of Americans were unemployed, compared with the 7.6 percent now.
Every president must walk a rhetorical tightrope when talking about the economy, a lesson Mr. Bush learned quickly, being bashed just after taking office for delivering somber news. The United States was just entering a mild recession - it had been in one, it turns out, for about nine months - and the new president said so.
Liberals went berserk.
"Every time we turn around, this guy is bad-mouthing the economy. Is that lifting our spirit or dumping on it in order to sell his tax cut?" liberal comentator Bill Press said on CNN.
Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, in an article headlined "Thanks Ever So Much, President Poor-Mouth," said, "Even if Bush turns out to be right in his predictions of gloom, that doesn't mean he was right to make them." The New York Times lectured Mr. Bush, saying that presidents were supposed to be "cheerleaders for the nation's economy."
But Mr. Bush tried that, too. As the United States recovered from the economic devastation caused by the 9/11 attacks, the president constantly talked up the economy, asserting that the American work force could compete with any in the world, and he assured Americans that happy days were right around the corner. Even as the currrent recession took hold, he continued to portray the nation's future in optimistic tones.
For all his effort, he was portrayed as a Pollyannish rube whose naivete so clouded his vision that he could not see the stark reality of the economic situation. How else to explain his optimism in the face of $4-a-gallon gas or exploding unemployment, or presidential statements a year ago, such as "I don't think we're headed to a recession, but no question we're in a slowdown."
Mr. Obama has gone much further than that. Just Friday, Mr. Obama said a report that 600,000 jobs were lost in January meant "it's getting worse, not getting better. ... Although we had a terrible year with respect to jobs last year, the problem is accelerating, not decelerating." Last week he said, "A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
But he isn't the only Democrat ramping up the rhetoric while talking down the economy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said last month that our economy "is dark, darker, darkest." Rep. David R. Obey of Wisconsin said, "This economy is in mortal danger of absolute collapse." And Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said of the economic-stimulus bill, "If we don't pass this thing, it's Armageddon."
**************************
Paging Mr. Carter. You were downright optimistic compared to McCaskill et al. Are you available?
Obama
Human Slavery: Sex Trade, Croatia
TAKEN is not just a movie. While the story is fictionalized, the general details are not.
Estimates of between 600,000 and 800,000 people each year are kidnapped, or otherwise forced into slavery, and sold into the sex trade. Up to 70% are females, and 50% are minors.
Consider those numbers - 600,000 up to 800,000. Let's go with the higher number. 800,000 people each year, sold into slavery. Rwanda - at the very least, 800,000 butchered. Is there a difference? In the case of Rwanda, it is over for the individuals in less than 20 minutes in most cases. For the child sold as a sex object - it is for however long. Hours, days, weeks, months ... until the parasite that purchased them tires of them, and they are traded or killed. On one level there is a difference between a genocide and the slave trade, but on a moral level - there is no difference, both are equally evil.
I have no idea why this is tolerated. I understand the money, in areas where $30,000 is a kings ransom - but why. Why do we tolerate it. We have the ability to stop it. Why aren't we. Each day. More. Each day, innocence is lost, destroyed.
Who is WE? We is whoever you wish it to be ... The US, Interpol ... doesn't matter. These parasites get paid money, they do not put the money under their mattress. We have the ability to trace fund transfers - and the buying and selling of large numbers of human beings results in large sums being transferred or withdrawn from bank accounts. When someone in a country where $1,000 is more than the average person has, deposits above X amount - we watch them. Monitor their accounts. If they are linked to any sort of illegal behavior - drugs, slavery, kidnapping ... we leak it - tell their governments, tell their families, tell their newspapers, tell their opponents - and if that does not end the evil, we can find ways to shorten their lives. It is not as simple as I make out, nor is it much more difficult, although it would consume resources and would probably violate a law ... on a moral scale, it would be the right thing to do. It is one thing to cooperate with a tyrant when battling communism. It is another to have anything to do with parasites that need to be extinguished. No law, no court - simply kill them, whoever they are, wherever they may reside ... don't care. Every one of them - and leave the evidence of their evil strewn about for their families to find.
Just a thought - you kidnap an 11 year old from Morocco, take her to Serbia / Russia / Mecca, and sell her to a brothel or some prince. How would she even know where to begin, to get away and escape. She wouldn't.
Kidnap a 20 year old European female. Take her anywhere in the world, and sometime, somewhere, she may have the time and ability to escape and bring what you have done, to light - make it all public. Shine a very bright light on you and the evil you do.
Why then do you kidnap a 20 year old Euro? !!!
It doesn't take much imagination.
There are moments when I am very happy to know that hell exists. Your time is limited here, and eternity is forever.
Links to More Detail on Human Slavery / Sex Trade:
Economist, August 2008
Fox News article, 2005
UN Drugs and Crime
UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (UNIAP)
USAToday, 2/14/08
Croatian cops implicated in backpacker Britt Lapthorne case
February 9, 2009
Daily Telegraph
AN Australian woman has told how men who appeared to be Croatian police tried to abduct her in Dubrovnik, just five days before backpacker Britt Lapthorne disappeared.
The woman, identified only as Amber, narrowly escaped an attempt to snatch her from the street after a night out at the Fuego nightclub, where Britt was last seen alive.
She had heard a vehicle accelerate and turned around to see a blue van heading towards her, with two men in the front and another man hanging out the side sliding door.
Separated from two friends, she would have appeared as though she was on her own.
She fled screaming and her friends were still comforting her in a nearby park when they were approached by a group of men who were carrying guns and identified themselves as police.
She was stunned when she looked up and recognised one of the men as being the person who had leant out of the speeding van to try to grab her.
The implication is that her attacker may have been a Dubrovnik police officer or associate of police.
In another development, security cameras recorded a van pulling up outside the Fuego club at close to 5am on the night Britt disappeared.
When Amber was shown an image of the van, she said it was the same vehicle that had sped towards her.
The van appears to pick someone up from outside the club before driving off.
The woman detailed her story to Channel 7's new Sunday Night program and prepared a sketch of her attacker, who has distinctive wavy blond hair and should be identifiable if he is an officer.
Her story - also detailed in a statement to Australian Federal Police and passed on to Croatian police - raises the theory Britt may have been snatched by someone in a van.
Two other women say they were victims of separate abduction attempts after going to the Fuego club.
Kidnapping
Estimates of between 600,000 and 800,000 people each year are kidnapped, or otherwise forced into slavery, and sold into the sex trade. Up to 70% are females, and 50% are minors.
Consider those numbers - 600,000 up to 800,000. Let's go with the higher number. 800,000 people each year, sold into slavery. Rwanda - at the very least, 800,000 butchered. Is there a difference? In the case of Rwanda, it is over for the individuals in less than 20 minutes in most cases. For the child sold as a sex object - it is for however long. Hours, days, weeks, months ... until the parasite that purchased them tires of them, and they are traded or killed. On one level there is a difference between a genocide and the slave trade, but on a moral level - there is no difference, both are equally evil.
I have no idea why this is tolerated. I understand the money, in areas where $30,000 is a kings ransom - but why. Why do we tolerate it. We have the ability to stop it. Why aren't we. Each day. More. Each day, innocence is lost, destroyed.
Who is WE? We is whoever you wish it to be ... The US, Interpol ... doesn't matter. These parasites get paid money, they do not put the money under their mattress. We have the ability to trace fund transfers - and the buying and selling of large numbers of human beings results in large sums being transferred or withdrawn from bank accounts. When someone in a country where $1,000 is more than the average person has, deposits above X amount - we watch them. Monitor their accounts. If they are linked to any sort of illegal behavior - drugs, slavery, kidnapping ... we leak it - tell their governments, tell their families, tell their newspapers, tell their opponents - and if that does not end the evil, we can find ways to shorten their lives. It is not as simple as I make out, nor is it much more difficult, although it would consume resources and would probably violate a law ... on a moral scale, it would be the right thing to do. It is one thing to cooperate with a tyrant when battling communism. It is another to have anything to do with parasites that need to be extinguished. No law, no court - simply kill them, whoever they are, wherever they may reside ... don't care. Every one of them - and leave the evidence of their evil strewn about for their families to find.
Just a thought - you kidnap an 11 year old from Morocco, take her to Serbia / Russia / Mecca, and sell her to a brothel or some prince. How would she even know where to begin, to get away and escape. She wouldn't.
Kidnap a 20 year old European female. Take her anywhere in the world, and sometime, somewhere, she may have the time and ability to escape and bring what you have done, to light - make it all public. Shine a very bright light on you and the evil you do.
Why then do you kidnap a 20 year old Euro? !!!
It doesn't take much imagination.
There are moments when I am very happy to know that hell exists. Your time is limited here, and eternity is forever.
Links to More Detail on Human Slavery / Sex Trade:
Economist, August 2008
Fox News article, 2005
UN Drugs and Crime
UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (UNIAP)
USAToday, 2/14/08
Croatian cops implicated in backpacker Britt Lapthorne case
February 9, 2009
Daily Telegraph
AN Australian woman has told how men who appeared to be Croatian police tried to abduct her in Dubrovnik, just five days before backpacker Britt Lapthorne disappeared.
The woman, identified only as Amber, narrowly escaped an attempt to snatch her from the street after a night out at the Fuego nightclub, where Britt was last seen alive.
She had heard a vehicle accelerate and turned around to see a blue van heading towards her, with two men in the front and another man hanging out the side sliding door.
Separated from two friends, she would have appeared as though she was on her own.
She fled screaming and her friends were still comforting her in a nearby park when they were approached by a group of men who were carrying guns and identified themselves as police.
She was stunned when she looked up and recognised one of the men as being the person who had leant out of the speeding van to try to grab her.
The implication is that her attacker may have been a Dubrovnik police officer or associate of police.
In another development, security cameras recorded a van pulling up outside the Fuego club at close to 5am on the night Britt disappeared.
When Amber was shown an image of the van, she said it was the same vehicle that had sped towards her.
The van appears to pick someone up from outside the club before driving off.
The woman detailed her story to Channel 7's new Sunday Night program and prepared a sketch of her attacker, who has distinctive wavy blond hair and should be identifiable if he is an officer.
Her story - also detailed in a statement to Australian Federal Police and passed on to Croatian police - raises the theory Britt may have been snatched by someone in a van.
Two other women say they were victims of separate abduction attempts after going to the Fuego club.
Kidnapping
Canadian Justice = Injustice and a Joke
7 Feb 2009
The Windsor Star
BY SARAH SACHELI STAR JUSTICE REPORTER
Drunk driver gets 2 years in crash that killed daughter
The day his daughter died began like any other for Jim Ondejko.
Jessica finished in the bathroom as Jim’s feet hit the floor. They passed in the hallway. “We exchanged our usual ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye.’” Jessica left for work first. As Jim drove along Highway 20, he noticed a roadblock ahead. He turned on the radio to hear that a small black car had been in a crash. Pieces of it were strewn everywhere.
Didn’t connect.
Jessica drove a Saturn Ion — black. Jim didn’t make the connection.
He went about his business, meeting with a client, listening for radio updates about the crash that had disrupted his commute. Then his cellphone rang. The call came from his home, but the voice was unfamiliar. It was a chaplain. “My stomach felt like I’d swallowed a cannonball.”
Jim’s 22-year-old daughter died that day at the hands of a man who had spent the night drinking beer and snorting cocaine.
Scott Renaud, the grown son of an Amherstburg councillor, had driven head-on into Jessica’s car, breaking nearly every bone in the young woman’s body.
Jim Ondejko hasn’t turned on his car radio since.
Parole in 6 months
Renaud, 34, was sentenced Friday to two years in prison for impaired driving causing death. The sentence will have Renaud released on day parole in six months.
For Jim Ondejko and his wife, Nancy, their two surviving daughters and the more than 100 friends and family members who came to court Friday to support them, no sentence could ever be enough.
“God gave man free will and one man made a series of bad choices,” Jim said reading a prepared statement in court. “Because of his choices … our family has been handed a life sentence.”
Ironically, the Ondejko family wanted to keep Renaud out of the prison system where offenders like him are normally sent. They wanted him to be sentenced to the county jail. In an idiosyncrasy of the criminal justice system, a shorter sentence in jail can keep offenders behind bars for more time than longer sentences in a federal penitentiary.
Assistant Crown attorney Walter Costa implored Ontario court Justice Micheline Rawlins to sentence Renaud to two years less a day. That length of sentence would be served in the county jail and would keep Renaud behind bars for eight months — one-third of his sentence.
A sentence of two years places Renaud in the federal prison system, which would see him released on day parole after six months.
“I ask you not to send him to a federal penitentiary, but to the jail system,” said Costa, explaining the Ondejko family deserved some retribution for their daughter’s death. “I appreciate it may seem absurd that I’m standing here asking for less than the defence is asking for … but this individual deserves to be in a cell for as much time as possible.”
Rawlins did not agree. A federal penitentiary is where “like-minded individuals” are housed. “That’s where I think he should be.”
Rawlins gave Renaud credit for pleading guilty, saving the Ondejkos from having to relive their loss at a preliminary hearing and trial.
“I have been on the bench for 17 years and I know,” said Rawlins. “It’s like having a wound someone keeps cutting open again and again.”
But the Ondejkos disagreed. “I want the judge to know that just because he did not bring this to trial does not mean we do not relive those events every day of our lives,” said Jim. “We go through the same amount of pain, the same torture, day in, day out.”
His grief was so great that Jim had to take a medical leave from work. He has no benefits, so he and his wife are living off savings.
Nancy Ondejko said she can’t sleep and can’t find the words to describe “unbearable pain” she feels every day. “What does a mother say when she loses her precious baby? … On May 8, 2008 my life crumbled. Now my world is a pile of rubble.”
Derek Bischoff was planning a life together with Jessica, the woman he called his “one.”
Reading his victim impact statement in court Friday, he began with that old adage “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
Said Bischoff, “I knew what I had in Jess.”
The two worked together at Aerotech Automotive, a job-placement firm for engineers and designers. Jessica landed the job as a recruiter soon after graduating from the University of Windsor, where she’d put herself though school working at Pizza Hut. Jessica’s boss called Bischoff when Jessica didn’t show up for work.
Bischoff called home in a panic, asking his parents to track down the Ondejkos, a couple his parents had yet to meet. “We met for the first time in the hospital over Jessica’s still beautiful, but broken body,” said Peter Bischoff.
Speaking of the pain he sees each day in his son, he told the court, “there can be no forgiveness for the perpetrator.” The courts, he added, “is a legal system, not a justice system.”
Jessica’s eldest sister, Jackie Werstein, is a nurse at Hotel-Dieu, the hospital where Jessica was pronounced dead. It’s the place she stood over her sister’s body, laid out on a stretcher, illogically expecting to see her baby sister’s chest rise and fall. She held her sister’s lifeless hand and picked pieces of glass out of the fingers.
Jackie, pregnant with her second child, spoke of raising children in a world were people act with “complete disregard for others.”
“As parents we teach our children to make choices. For each choice there are consequences.”
Renaud sat motionless as Jessica’s family read victim impact statements in the packed courtroom. So many of Jessica’s friends and family turned out for the sentencing hearing, the proceeding had to be postponed for an hour while court staff located a bigger courtroom. The hearing was moved out of the Ontario court building and into Superior Court.
When the judge offered Renaud an opportunity to address the court, the man turned and faced the audience.
“It’s very hard for me to stand here to look at all of you,” he began. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of Jessica.… I ask God why he took Jessica’s life and not my own.”
Renaud, who had been free on bail, said he went Thursday to the cemetery where Jessica is buried and dug through the snow to find her gravestone. “I asked for her forgiveness.”
After his release from prison, Renaud will be on probation for three years, during which he must take counselling for substance abuse, abstain from alcohol and stay out of bars, liquor stores or any other place where the sale of alcohol is the primary business. He won’t be able to drive for five years and must submit a sample of his blood for the police DNA databank.
His lawyer, Brian Ducharme, said Renaud feels great remorse. “His life will never be the same.”
Killing Jessica Ondejko is Renaud’s second criminal conviction for drunk driving. He was convicted in 1996 of driving with more than the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream.
While his full criminal record wasn’t entered in court Friday, the prosecutor said he has other convictions too, including one earlier this week for criminal harassment.
***************************************
I have decided I never want to hear about the injustice of the death penalty in the US.
The inhumanity and barbarism of a system that does what the Canadian system did to this family. A Joke. A Crime in itself.
Canada
The Windsor Star
BY SARAH SACHELI STAR JUSTICE REPORTER
Drunk driver gets 2 years in crash that killed daughter
The day his daughter died began like any other for Jim Ondejko.
Jessica finished in the bathroom as Jim’s feet hit the floor. They passed in the hallway. “We exchanged our usual ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye.’” Jessica left for work first. As Jim drove along Highway 20, he noticed a roadblock ahead. He turned on the radio to hear that a small black car had been in a crash. Pieces of it were strewn everywhere.
Didn’t connect.
Jessica drove a Saturn Ion — black. Jim didn’t make the connection.
He went about his business, meeting with a client, listening for radio updates about the crash that had disrupted his commute. Then his cellphone rang. The call came from his home, but the voice was unfamiliar. It was a chaplain. “My stomach felt like I’d swallowed a cannonball.”
Jim’s 22-year-old daughter died that day at the hands of a man who had spent the night drinking beer and snorting cocaine.
Scott Renaud, the grown son of an Amherstburg councillor, had driven head-on into Jessica’s car, breaking nearly every bone in the young woman’s body.
Jim Ondejko hasn’t turned on his car radio since.
Parole in 6 months
Renaud, 34, was sentenced Friday to two years in prison for impaired driving causing death. The sentence will have Renaud released on day parole in six months.
For Jim Ondejko and his wife, Nancy, their two surviving daughters and the more than 100 friends and family members who came to court Friday to support them, no sentence could ever be enough.
“God gave man free will and one man made a series of bad choices,” Jim said reading a prepared statement in court. “Because of his choices … our family has been handed a life sentence.”
Ironically, the Ondejko family wanted to keep Renaud out of the prison system where offenders like him are normally sent. They wanted him to be sentenced to the county jail. In an idiosyncrasy of the criminal justice system, a shorter sentence in jail can keep offenders behind bars for more time than longer sentences in a federal penitentiary.
Assistant Crown attorney Walter Costa implored Ontario court Justice Micheline Rawlins to sentence Renaud to two years less a day. That length of sentence would be served in the county jail and would keep Renaud behind bars for eight months — one-third of his sentence.
A sentence of two years places Renaud in the federal prison system, which would see him released on day parole after six months.
“I ask you not to send him to a federal penitentiary, but to the jail system,” said Costa, explaining the Ondejko family deserved some retribution for their daughter’s death. “I appreciate it may seem absurd that I’m standing here asking for less than the defence is asking for … but this individual deserves to be in a cell for as much time as possible.”
Rawlins did not agree. A federal penitentiary is where “like-minded individuals” are housed. “That’s where I think he should be.”
Rawlins gave Renaud credit for pleading guilty, saving the Ondejkos from having to relive their loss at a preliminary hearing and trial.
“I have been on the bench for 17 years and I know,” said Rawlins. “It’s like having a wound someone keeps cutting open again and again.”
But the Ondejkos disagreed. “I want the judge to know that just because he did not bring this to trial does not mean we do not relive those events every day of our lives,” said Jim. “We go through the same amount of pain, the same torture, day in, day out.”
His grief was so great that Jim had to take a medical leave from work. He has no benefits, so he and his wife are living off savings.
Nancy Ondejko said she can’t sleep and can’t find the words to describe “unbearable pain” she feels every day. “What does a mother say when she loses her precious baby? … On May 8, 2008 my life crumbled. Now my world is a pile of rubble.”
Derek Bischoff was planning a life together with Jessica, the woman he called his “one.”
Reading his victim impact statement in court Friday, he began with that old adage “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
Said Bischoff, “I knew what I had in Jess.”
The two worked together at Aerotech Automotive, a job-placement firm for engineers and designers. Jessica landed the job as a recruiter soon after graduating from the University of Windsor, where she’d put herself though school working at Pizza Hut. Jessica’s boss called Bischoff when Jessica didn’t show up for work.
Bischoff called home in a panic, asking his parents to track down the Ondejkos, a couple his parents had yet to meet. “We met for the first time in the hospital over Jessica’s still beautiful, but broken body,” said Peter Bischoff.
Speaking of the pain he sees each day in his son, he told the court, “there can be no forgiveness for the perpetrator.” The courts, he added, “is a legal system, not a justice system.”
Jessica’s eldest sister, Jackie Werstein, is a nurse at Hotel-Dieu, the hospital where Jessica was pronounced dead. It’s the place she stood over her sister’s body, laid out on a stretcher, illogically expecting to see her baby sister’s chest rise and fall. She held her sister’s lifeless hand and picked pieces of glass out of the fingers.
Jackie, pregnant with her second child, spoke of raising children in a world were people act with “complete disregard for others.”
“As parents we teach our children to make choices. For each choice there are consequences.”
Renaud sat motionless as Jessica’s family read victim impact statements in the packed courtroom. So many of Jessica’s friends and family turned out for the sentencing hearing, the proceeding had to be postponed for an hour while court staff located a bigger courtroom. The hearing was moved out of the Ontario court building and into Superior Court.
When the judge offered Renaud an opportunity to address the court, the man turned and faced the audience.
“It’s very hard for me to stand here to look at all of you,” he began. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of Jessica.… I ask God why he took Jessica’s life and not my own.”
Renaud, who had been free on bail, said he went Thursday to the cemetery where Jessica is buried and dug through the snow to find her gravestone. “I asked for her forgiveness.”
After his release from prison, Renaud will be on probation for three years, during which he must take counselling for substance abuse, abstain from alcohol and stay out of bars, liquor stores or any other place where the sale of alcohol is the primary business. He won’t be able to drive for five years and must submit a sample of his blood for the police DNA databank.
His lawyer, Brian Ducharme, said Renaud feels great remorse. “His life will never be the same.”
Killing Jessica Ondejko is Renaud’s second criminal conviction for drunk driving. He was convicted in 1996 of driving with more than the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream.
While his full criminal record wasn’t entered in court Friday, the prosecutor said he has other convictions too, including one earlier this week for criminal harassment.
***************************************
I have decided I never want to hear about the injustice of the death penalty in the US.
The inhumanity and barbarism of a system that does what the Canadian system did to this family. A Joke. A Crime in itself.
Canada
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Torture and Use of Torture
C. Torture known terrorists if they know details about future terrorist attacks in the U.S.
2005 Jan 7-9
Willing 39%
Not willing 59%
No opinion 2
2001 Oct 5-6
Willing 45%
Not willing 52%
No opinion 2%
Taken from gallup.com
I would expect that another poll, with more recent numbers, exists.
I understand Jessica Lange and John Cussack oppose torture at any cost ... well, I don't really think they do, I think they say they do, in part because they have no backbone and it is easier to align yourself with other losers than think for yourself. In any event, I will (until I explain why they are hypocrites) accept them at their word, and the fact that, according to the poll, between 52-59% of Americans oppose torture.
I will admit - I am very happy that there are rough men who will do what is necessary in order that I live, in order that my family lives, in order that hundreds of millions of others do what they do each day without missing a heartbeat thinking about how close they have come to becoming a terrorism statistic.
I am very happy knowing these men will do whatever is necessary to ensure they do not win.
The 59% of Americans feel the same way, they just don't understand what is at stake.
It is always easier in the abstract to be opposed to torture, spanking, divorce, or the death penalty. Abstract. When Americans are confronted with the question and it is held in the abstract, they will side with what Americans have always been known for, their compassion and humanity. Fewer than 1/2 a percent of Americans think torture is a good idea. The rest of us oppose it, and we sleep well believing that as Americans we uphold a standard, an ideal - that forbids us from applying torture to our list of methods to get answers.
In the real world, the results would be different and Americans would become much more realistic - what if a terrorist is caught, and enough information is discovered at the scene to suggest there were 15-20 others, and their plans involve malls, buses, and elementary schools, in at least 12 cities across the US. Several dates were written on various papers, but all of them in the very immediate future.
We know they are terrorists because bin Ladens photo is on the wall, they have written 'jihad is our mission' on the walls, and evidence exists of ablution having been done recently.
You caught one person. He spits at you and tells you he would rather die than talk. He wants to meet Allah, and he wants you to die. He tells you that soon he and others will be in paradise and blood will run in the streets.
What do you do?
Arrest him?
Handcuff him?
Read him his Miranda rights?
Call him an attorney?
And wait?
His attorney will not be arriving for 1-2 hours.
You cannot speak to him, not even to ask him where he was born. Can't do it. In fact, asking him if he wants something to drink may well be problematic, but would be overlooked at trial.
I'll change it a bit.
You find documents that mention C-4 and electronic devices to detonate bombs, plans for buildings that you cannot tell for sure what they are, but they include ventilation systems, Blue Bus, MTA, LAUSD, a number of private schools, 1-2 universities, a number of buildings in downtown Los Angeles, LAX, Burbank/Glendale Airport, John Wayne Airport, and something about a water treatment plant and gases.
I suppose you could: close all schools servicing 12 million people, shut down the bus lines in LA County, close three airports, close universities, evacuate buildings downtown, shut down water plants in Los Angeles ... and the cost would be easily $50 million lost, in a blink. At a time when the city is short $400 million. I DOUBT IT.
I assume waht Jessica Lange and Cussack would say is - use your police, detective work ... and then BOOM.
Scores of buses, a mall, a univserity, five middle schools, an airport - all blown up. Thousands dead.
And the police - had just begun their detective work. Now they won't need to. What they can do, is use the time to notify the families that their relatives will not be going home because torture is unAmerican.
I am sure they will understand.
Let's assume for a moment that Jessica's son and her daughter were at the airport. Lange's other son, was at the local university when it was attacked. None survived.
Mr. Cussack was a bit more fortunate - his nephew was at school and the school was bombed, but his nephew did survive.
The police who wouldn't have much else to do, could go around and do notifications.
Here is where the hypocrisy comes in - if someone took Cussack's nephew or Lange's son - and buried them alive. I have absolutely no doubt, both of them would tear the perpetrators eyes out if it got them their loved one back. I am certain, beyond a doubt - and I don't know either of them.
Our intelligence services do not collect people who were strolling along the road picking flowers. Use the gray matter you have to grapple with this idea - collecting some useless piece of garbage to store for years, at taxpayer cost, in a facility where he might be set free and or might pass along information on his location, and or get an attorney and or make the story known ... just grapple with that for a moment. These men who have done intelligence work, been trained in at least 3-4 foreign countries ... are fucking rock hard stupid. Is that what you are suggesting Mr. Cussack. They collect sweet innocent little boys off the streets, having no clue why or what they will do with them ... that these men cannot distinguish between bad and reasonably innocent. That is what you are saying Cussack/Lange/Streisand et al. It is you who are rock hard stupid.
The hypocrisy is and would be deafening.
These men will do what is necessary, regardless of what Obamessiah says, to ensure it does not happen - to ensure you and your unworthy ilk, are not slaughtered at the alter of hate, by those who desire your deaths (far ahead of mine given what it is you do - paid prostitutes). When you are begging for your life, they will not offer you a tea to calm your nerves or dullen the pain - for you are unworthy of that small gesture. They will butcher you - even while you protest at the top of your lungs how much you hate Bush.
terror
2005 Jan 7-9
Willing 39%
Not willing 59%
No opinion 2
2001 Oct 5-6
Willing 45%
Not willing 52%
No opinion 2%
Taken from gallup.com
I would expect that another poll, with more recent numbers, exists.
I understand Jessica Lange and John Cussack oppose torture at any cost ... well, I don't really think they do, I think they say they do, in part because they have no backbone and it is easier to align yourself with other losers than think for yourself. In any event, I will (until I explain why they are hypocrites) accept them at their word, and the fact that, according to the poll, between 52-59% of Americans oppose torture.
I will admit - I am very happy that there are rough men who will do what is necessary in order that I live, in order that my family lives, in order that hundreds of millions of others do what they do each day without missing a heartbeat thinking about how close they have come to becoming a terrorism statistic.
I am very happy knowing these men will do whatever is necessary to ensure they do not win.
The 59% of Americans feel the same way, they just don't understand what is at stake.
It is always easier in the abstract to be opposed to torture, spanking, divorce, or the death penalty. Abstract. When Americans are confronted with the question and it is held in the abstract, they will side with what Americans have always been known for, their compassion and humanity. Fewer than 1/2 a percent of Americans think torture is a good idea. The rest of us oppose it, and we sleep well believing that as Americans we uphold a standard, an ideal - that forbids us from applying torture to our list of methods to get answers.
In the real world, the results would be different and Americans would become much more realistic - what if a terrorist is caught, and enough information is discovered at the scene to suggest there were 15-20 others, and their plans involve malls, buses, and elementary schools, in at least 12 cities across the US. Several dates were written on various papers, but all of them in the very immediate future.
We know they are terrorists because bin Ladens photo is on the wall, they have written 'jihad is our mission' on the walls, and evidence exists of ablution having been done recently.
You caught one person. He spits at you and tells you he would rather die than talk. He wants to meet Allah, and he wants you to die. He tells you that soon he and others will be in paradise and blood will run in the streets.
What do you do?
Arrest him?
Handcuff him?
Read him his Miranda rights?
Call him an attorney?
And wait?
His attorney will not be arriving for 1-2 hours.
You cannot speak to him, not even to ask him where he was born. Can't do it. In fact, asking him if he wants something to drink may well be problematic, but would be overlooked at trial.
I'll change it a bit.
You find documents that mention C-4 and electronic devices to detonate bombs, plans for buildings that you cannot tell for sure what they are, but they include ventilation systems, Blue Bus, MTA, LAUSD, a number of private schools, 1-2 universities, a number of buildings in downtown Los Angeles, LAX, Burbank/Glendale Airport, John Wayne Airport, and something about a water treatment plant and gases.
I suppose you could: close all schools servicing 12 million people, shut down the bus lines in LA County, close three airports, close universities, evacuate buildings downtown, shut down water plants in Los Angeles ... and the cost would be easily $50 million lost, in a blink. At a time when the city is short $400 million. I DOUBT IT.
I assume waht Jessica Lange and Cussack would say is - use your police, detective work ... and then BOOM.
Scores of buses, a mall, a univserity, five middle schools, an airport - all blown up. Thousands dead.
And the police - had just begun their detective work. Now they won't need to. What they can do, is use the time to notify the families that their relatives will not be going home because torture is unAmerican.
I am sure they will understand.
Let's assume for a moment that Jessica's son and her daughter were at the airport. Lange's other son, was at the local university when it was attacked. None survived.
Mr. Cussack was a bit more fortunate - his nephew was at school and the school was bombed, but his nephew did survive.
The police who wouldn't have much else to do, could go around and do notifications.
Here is where the hypocrisy comes in - if someone took Cussack's nephew or Lange's son - and buried them alive. I have absolutely no doubt, both of them would tear the perpetrators eyes out if it got them their loved one back. I am certain, beyond a doubt - and I don't know either of them.
Our intelligence services do not collect people who were strolling along the road picking flowers. Use the gray matter you have to grapple with this idea - collecting some useless piece of garbage to store for years, at taxpayer cost, in a facility where he might be set free and or might pass along information on his location, and or get an attorney and or make the story known ... just grapple with that for a moment. These men who have done intelligence work, been trained in at least 3-4 foreign countries ... are fucking rock hard stupid. Is that what you are suggesting Mr. Cussack. They collect sweet innocent little boys off the streets, having no clue why or what they will do with them ... that these men cannot distinguish between bad and reasonably innocent. That is what you are saying Cussack/Lange/Streisand et al. It is you who are rock hard stupid.
The hypocrisy is and would be deafening.
These men will do what is necessary, regardless of what Obamessiah says, to ensure it does not happen - to ensure you and your unworthy ilk, are not slaughtered at the alter of hate, by those who desire your deaths (far ahead of mine given what it is you do - paid prostitutes). When you are begging for your life, they will not offer you a tea to calm your nerves or dullen the pain - for you are unworthy of that small gesture. They will butcher you - even while you protest at the top of your lungs how much you hate Bush.
There are moments when I wonder why - why you can't get a fucking clue, why the men who protect us, bother. Most of us are not worth it.
terror
Biden: He Knows Not What He Says
MUNICH - Vice President Joe Biden delivered a clear message to Iran, saying Saturday the U.S. was willing to talk but will act to isolate and pressure Tehran if it does not abandon its nuclear ambitions and support for terrorism.
Mr. Biden, how is this different than the Bush policy?
The Bush administration embraced diplomacy - negotiation - carrots and sticks, with Iran. We sold tens of thousands of pounds of grain to Iran, we had low level meetings between representatives of their government and our own. Bush started off his discussion with Iran concerning nuclear power by telling Tehran they could have as many nuclear plants as they wanted ... all they had to do was sell the waste product to the Russians or the French. Iran said no.
The US policy became one of isolating Iran while negotiating.
How is it different?
The answer, Mr. Biden, and you know this - it isn't.
You are lying Mr. Biden, and doing a disservice to the United States, and to the president. When the next administration does the same to you - what will you say? I know what you will do - you will lecture and attack. Bush is above that petty behavior. You sir, are not.
Stop lying.
Biden
Mr. Biden, how is this different than the Bush policy?
The Bush administration embraced diplomacy - negotiation - carrots and sticks, with Iran. We sold tens of thousands of pounds of grain to Iran, we had low level meetings between representatives of their government and our own. Bush started off his discussion with Iran concerning nuclear power by telling Tehran they could have as many nuclear plants as they wanted ... all they had to do was sell the waste product to the Russians or the French. Iran said no.
The US policy became one of isolating Iran while negotiating.
How is it different?
The answer, Mr. Biden, and you know this - it isn't.
You are lying Mr. Biden, and doing a disservice to the United States, and to the president. When the next administration does the same to you - what will you say? I know what you will do - you will lecture and attack. Bush is above that petty behavior. You sir, are not.
Stop lying.
Biden
Canada and its Medical System
I have visits from over 100 countries. From China to Lebanon, from Tehran to Marakesh, from Vanatu to Finland, Canada to South Africa ... 100 countries, which I think is a few.
I do hold views on quite a few of them, but I try to avoid expressing those thoughts as clearly as I do others - this post is on one topic - medical care / hospitalization.
I know someone, they are ignorant of the medical systems of the US / Canada and Britain. They are certain that in the US we have no medical care, because that is why Obama said he wants to create a system for everyone instead of one for the rich and the poor.
She said that to me. She repeated that tripe.
I want to never speak to her again. She is ignorant for repeating such tripe, and she offended me in her stupidity.
The issue - she is but one of millions who are so stupid, they actually believe the lies. And they believe the lies because if it was a lie someone would say it was a lie and because no one calls them on the lie, they believe it is true. Make sense.
BUT ITS A LIE.
Shit for brains.
Canada's system is crap. If you want to live, and you have serious issues, come to the US.
If you don't have the money - so what. The mexicans who flood across the borders, the others who come here on vacation and plan their vacation to time perfectly with their ... accidental birth. They ALL know the system is free. If you don't, it says more about you than about the system.
Medical
I do hold views on quite a few of them, but I try to avoid expressing those thoughts as clearly as I do others - this post is on one topic - medical care / hospitalization.
I know someone, they are ignorant of the medical systems of the US / Canada and Britain. They are certain that in the US we have no medical care, because that is why Obama said he wants to create a system for everyone instead of one for the rich and the poor.
She said that to me. She repeated that tripe.
I want to never speak to her again. She is ignorant for repeating such tripe, and she offended me in her stupidity.
The issue - she is but one of millions who are so stupid, they actually believe the lies. And they believe the lies because if it was a lie someone would say it was a lie and because no one calls them on the lie, they believe it is true. Make sense.
BUT ITS A LIE.
Shit for brains.
Canada's system is crap. If you want to live, and you have serious issues, come to the US.
If you don't have the money - so what. The mexicans who flood across the borders, the others who come here on vacation and plan their vacation to time perfectly with their ... accidental birth. They ALL know the system is free. If you don't, it says more about you than about the system.
Medical
Friday, February 6, 2009
Panetta: Don't Touch Me or My Goon Will Get You.
That's the way you do it, when you're a liberal.
You'd think these guys were Rich Republicans trying to steal your rights ... but oh no, it's not ... it's a lib.
Amazing.
Let's keep it in perspective. The guy is NOTHING right now. Not even DCIs are so difficult. Panetta is nothing as yet.
Reporter restrained after Panetta hearing
February 6, 2009
Following Leon Panetta’s confirmation hearing Thursday, several reporters approached the CIA director-designate in the hallway outside room G-50 in the Dirksen Building.
There, CongressDaily reporter Chris Strohm — upon asking a question — was physically restrained by a man who accompanied Panetta at hearings both days. Strohm, when reached by phone Friday, said he was unsure of the man’s role.
“I felt this hand grab my right arm and push me aside,” Strohm said. By his account, Strohm told the man, “Please don’t touch me” more than once. Eventually, the man let him go. Tim Starks, a reporter for Congressional Quarterly, said he witnessed Strohm approach Panetta and ask a question, just before the man began “grabbing him by the arm and moving him away.”
“I said to the guy, ‘That’s not the way you do it,’” recalled Starks.
Starks said that he’s covered the CIA for years and had never seen a reporter strong-armed that way before, adding that the agency is typically respectful of journalists.
Reflecting on the incident, Strohm played it down somewhat, saying that he’s “had worse happen” while reporting.
A staff assistant at The Panetta Institute said they are not addressing any media inquiries before Panetta’s confirmation. The White House declined to comment.
After today’s hearing, there was no similar incident: Panetta briefly answered questions from reporters.
Panetta
You'd think these guys were Rich Republicans trying to steal your rights ... but oh no, it's not ... it's a lib.
Amazing.
Let's keep it in perspective. The guy is NOTHING right now. Not even DCIs are so difficult. Panetta is nothing as yet.
Reporter restrained after Panetta hearing
February 6, 2009
Following Leon Panetta’s confirmation hearing Thursday, several reporters approached the CIA director-designate in the hallway outside room G-50 in the Dirksen Building.
There, CongressDaily reporter Chris Strohm — upon asking a question — was physically restrained by a man who accompanied Panetta at hearings both days. Strohm, when reached by phone Friday, said he was unsure of the man’s role.
“I felt this hand grab my right arm and push me aside,” Strohm said. By his account, Strohm told the man, “Please don’t touch me” more than once. Eventually, the man let him go. Tim Starks, a reporter for Congressional Quarterly, said he witnessed Strohm approach Panetta and ask a question, just before the man began “grabbing him by the arm and moving him away.”
“I said to the guy, ‘That’s not the way you do it,’” recalled Starks.
Starks said that he’s covered the CIA for years and had never seen a reporter strong-armed that way before, adding that the agency is typically respectful of journalists.
Reflecting on the incident, Strohm played it down somewhat, saying that he’s “had worse happen” while reporting.
A staff assistant at The Panetta Institute said they are not addressing any media inquiries before Panetta’s confirmation. The White House declined to comment.
After today’s hearing, there was no similar incident: Panetta briefly answered questions from reporters.
Panetta
Cher - her Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Stupidity
Stupid is as stupid does, these people make brain dead comatose patients appear almost Hawking-like.
Cher: Republican Rule Almost ‘Killed Me’
Friday, February 06, 2009
By Nicholas Ballasy, Video Reporter
(CNSNews.com) - Grammy award-winning singer and Academy award-winning actress Cher told CNSNews.com that living under Republican rule almost “killed" her, and she does not understand why anyone would want to be a Republican.
She also said that President Barack Obama’s “intelligence” and “spirit” are “so great” he will be able to do “more than anyone could possibly do.”
“His intelligence is so great and his spirit is so great, I believe he will be able to do as much if not more than anyone could possibly do,” Cher told CNSNews.com at the “Declare Yourself” inaugural ball.
“I just think he’s totally the right person at this time in our history," she said. "He brings something more in his spirit than maybe another president could be even with the same intelligence. There’s something about him that brings more with his spirit, and that’s what Americans need right now. Republicans almost killed me.”
When asked to explain how Republicans somehow “killed” her, Cher was not specific.
“You know what? I have so – I try to be charitable and there are some really good Republicans, but I just don’t understand how anyone would want to be a Republican. I just can’t figure it. I don’t understand,” she said. “If you’re poor, if you’re any kind of minority – gay, black, Latino, anything. If you’re not a rich – I don’t know. If you’re not a rich born-again-Christian, I don’t get it.”
Cher also said President Obama will not end the war in Iraq right away.“I think as soon as he can. I don’t think it will be easy. It would be kind of simplistic to think that’s going to happen right away,” she said.
Cher
Cher: Republican Rule Almost ‘Killed Me’
Friday, February 06, 2009
By Nicholas Ballasy, Video Reporter
(CNSNews.com) - Grammy award-winning singer and Academy award-winning actress Cher told CNSNews.com that living under Republican rule almost “killed" her, and she does not understand why anyone would want to be a Republican.
She also said that President Barack Obama’s “intelligence” and “spirit” are “so great” he will be able to do “more than anyone could possibly do.”
“His intelligence is so great and his spirit is so great, I believe he will be able to do as much if not more than anyone could possibly do,” Cher told CNSNews.com at the “Declare Yourself” inaugural ball.
“I just think he’s totally the right person at this time in our history," she said. "He brings something more in his spirit than maybe another president could be even with the same intelligence. There’s something about him that brings more with his spirit, and that’s what Americans need right now. Republicans almost killed me.”
When asked to explain how Republicans somehow “killed” her, Cher was not specific.
“You know what? I have so – I try to be charitable and there are some really good Republicans, but I just don’t understand how anyone would want to be a Republican. I just can’t figure it. I don’t understand,” she said. “If you’re poor, if you’re any kind of minority – gay, black, Latino, anything. If you’re not a rich – I don’t know. If you’re not a rich born-again-Christian, I don’t get it.”
Cher also said President Obama will not end the war in Iraq right away.“I think as soon as he can. I don’t think it will be easy. It would be kind of simplistic to think that’s going to happen right away,” she said.
Cher
Mexico: And the Death March Continues Upward
Where else but in a country where the government is helpless, and spends its time attacking the US immigration policies instead of the crime that kills scores of people each day.
More people die in Tijuana and Juarez in half a year than die in all of the US in a year. They are already off to a great start.
207 dead; army storms warehouse in Juárez
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Posted: 02/05/2009
The Mexican army and heavily armed federal police with a helicopter flying overhead raided a drug warehouse Thursday morning in Juárez even as killings are surging beyond the extraordinary levels of last year.
If it isn't a war zone, it would be hard to tell by the body count, which has reached 207 in the Juárez area this year.
In the first five days of February, 54 people were slain, surpassing the 37 homicides in all of February last year.
The raid by forces with Joint Operation Chihuahua led to the seizure of nearly 2 tons of marijuana hidden in plastic containers apparently ready to be transported to the United States, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for the federal anti-crime operation.
An estimated 100 federal agents and soldiers with their faces masked took part in the unusually strong show of force as they rushed into the same warehouse on Mexico street where four men were shot to death Tuesday. No arrests were reported.
The raid came as the Juárez region continues to boil with drug-related violence.
Before dawn Thursday, five men were shot execution-style in the community of El Millón, east of Juárez across the Rio Grande from Fabens, Chihuahua state police said.
The men were lined up, their heads covered and their hands and feet bound with tape when they were shot in the backyard of a home, police said. The men, who had not been identified, were wearing pajama pants and underwear.
Some Juárez news outlets reported that the men belonged to the same family and were pulled out of a home while they slept.
Investigators said the men were killed by 11 rounds fired by a "military-style" small firearm.
El Millón is a village in the valley of Juárez whose farming communities are part of a notorious smuggling corridor east of El Paso-Juárez that has recently become a hot spot for violence.
Last Saturday, three severed heads - the latest in a string of similar decapitations in the valley - were found in an ice chest in the main plaza in El Millón, along with an undisclosed threatening message, police said.
The valley drug-smuggling corridor is reputedly controlled by Jose Rodolfo Escajeda, alias "El Rikin," who was featured by the Drug Enforcement Administration on a "wanted" billboard in El Paso last year, a DEA spokesman said. Escajeda remains at large.
The violence in Juárez and other parts of the state of Chihuahua began in January 2008, spurred by a war among the Juárez and Sinaloa drug cartels. More than 1,600 people were killed last year in Juárez.
Almost all the slayings remain unsolved, though authorities have made a few arrests.
For example, Israel Duran Ledesma, 18, aka "El Loco" or "El Morgan," was arrested Wednesday evening on the Bridge of the Americas.
Duran is charged in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Felix Antonio Garcia Ramirez during a Sept. 22 fight among street vendors and window washers on the same international bridge.
By the numbers
The number of homicides in Juárez compared with the count at the same time last year.
January 2009: 153.
January 2008: 37.
*February 2009: 54.
February 2008: 37.
Total homicides
*2009: 207.
2008: 1,609.
*Homicides as of the evening of Thursday, Feb. 5.
Sources: Chihuahua state police and El Paso Times tally.
More people die in Tijuana and Juarez in half a year than die in all of the US in a year. They are already off to a great start.
207 dead; army storms warehouse in Juárez
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Posted: 02/05/2009
The Mexican army and heavily armed federal police with a helicopter flying overhead raided a drug warehouse Thursday morning in Juárez even as killings are surging beyond the extraordinary levels of last year.
If it isn't a war zone, it would be hard to tell by the body count, which has reached 207 in the Juárez area this year.
In the first five days of February, 54 people were slain, surpassing the 37 homicides in all of February last year.
The raid by forces with Joint Operation Chihuahua led to the seizure of nearly 2 tons of marijuana hidden in plastic containers apparently ready to be transported to the United States, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for the federal anti-crime operation.
An estimated 100 federal agents and soldiers with their faces masked took part in the unusually strong show of force as they rushed into the same warehouse on Mexico street where four men were shot to death Tuesday. No arrests were reported.
The raid came as the Juárez region continues to boil with drug-related violence.
Before dawn Thursday, five men were shot execution-style in the community of El Millón, east of Juárez across the Rio Grande from Fabens, Chihuahua state police said.
The men were lined up, their heads covered and their hands and feet bound with tape when they were shot in the backyard of a home, police said. The men, who had not been identified, were wearing pajama pants and underwear.
Some Juárez news outlets reported that the men belonged to the same family and were pulled out of a home while they slept.
Investigators said the men were killed by 11 rounds fired by a "military-style" small firearm.
El Millón is a village in the valley of Juárez whose farming communities are part of a notorious smuggling corridor east of El Paso-Juárez that has recently become a hot spot for violence.
Last Saturday, three severed heads - the latest in a string of similar decapitations in the valley - were found in an ice chest in the main plaza in El Millón, along with an undisclosed threatening message, police said.
The valley drug-smuggling corridor is reputedly controlled by Jose Rodolfo Escajeda, alias "El Rikin," who was featured by the Drug Enforcement Administration on a "wanted" billboard in El Paso last year, a DEA spokesman said. Escajeda remains at large.
The violence in Juárez and other parts of the state of Chihuahua began in January 2008, spurred by a war among the Juárez and Sinaloa drug cartels. More than 1,600 people were killed last year in Juárez.
Almost all the slayings remain unsolved, though authorities have made a few arrests.
For example, Israel Duran Ledesma, 18, aka "El Loco" or "El Morgan," was arrested Wednesday evening on the Bridge of the Americas.
Duran is charged in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Felix Antonio Garcia Ramirez during a Sept. 22 fight among street vendors and window washers on the same international bridge.
By the numbers
The number of homicides in Juárez compared with the count at the same time last year.
January 2009: 153.
January 2008: 37.
*February 2009: 54.
February 2008: 37.
Total homicides
*2009: 207.
2008: 1,609.
*Homicides as of the evening of Thursday, Feb. 5.
Sources: Chihuahua state police and El Paso Times tally.
Panetta (Obama): No to prosecuting CIA
Liberals must be livid.
They voted for a guy who would bring change - he has not.
They voted for a guy who would clean up the messs - he has not.
They voted for a guy they said would end torture - he won't, and has not.
They voted for a guy because he said he would prosecute when actions were criminal and torture was criminal - Panetta says they won't.
His honeymoon ended almost before he started. The obituary is premature, but we can get the pen and paper out.
Honestly, you are running out of reasons, quickly.
Panetta: No prosecution for CIA interrogators
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
February 6, 2009
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration will not prosecute CIA officers who participated in harsh interrogations that critics say crossed the line into torture, CIA Director-nominee Leon Panetta said Friday.
Asked by The Associated Press if that was official policy, Panetta said, "That is the case."
It was the clearest statement yet on what Panetta and other Democratic officials had only strongly suggested: CIA officers who acted on legal orders from the Bush administration would not be held responsible for those policies. On Thursday, he told senators that the Obama administration had no intention of seeking prosecutions for that reason.
Panetta, in an interview with the AP after a second day of confirmation hearings with the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that he arrived at that conclusion even before he began meeting with CIA officials.
"It was my opinion we just can't operate if people feel even if they are following the legal opinions of the Justice Department" they could be in danger of prosecution, he said.
Panetta demurred on saying whether the Obama administration would take legal action against those who authorized or wrote the legal opinions that, for a time, set an extremely high legal bar for an action to constitute torture.
"I'll leave that for others," Panetta said.
Panetta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton administration and an ex-congressman from California, is expected to be confirmed by a wide margin next week.
Panetta told the committee that the Obama administration will continue to hand foreign detainees over to other countries for questioning, but only if it is confident the prisoners will not be tortured in the process.
That has long been U.S. policy, but some former prisoners subjected to the process — known as "extraordinary rendition" — during the Bush administration's anti-terror war contend they were tortured. Proving that in court has proven difficult, as evidence they are trying to use has been protected by the president's state secret privilege.
"I will seek the same kind of assurances that they will not be treated inhumanely," Panetta said during his second day before the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I intend to use the State Department to be sure those assurances are implemented and stood by, by those countries."
Some critics worry that any gray area in delineating policy on renditions could allow for abuses.
A detainee could be handed over to another country for reasons other than harsh or coercive questioning. Some prisoners may not have intelligence of value to the United States in its effort to break up global terrorist groups, but they might yield intelligence valuable to another government's more localized security problems.
How such renditions work and what happens after prisoners are handed over are secrets, and it is unclear that the Obama administration would have any more tools to assure humane treatment than its predecessor.
The options are limited: refuse to transfer prisoners to governments that have a history of torture or human rights abuses; require prisoners be allowed regular visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross; or demand that U.S. officials have access to the prisoners after the transfer. Each option carries with it the potential of harming or complicating relationships with foreign intelligence agencies.
Panetta formally retracted a statement he made Thursday that the Bush administration transferred prisoners for the purpose of torture.
"I am not aware of the validity of those claims," he said.
Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., chastised Panetta for careless words. "You cannot be making statements or making judgments based on rumors and news stories," he said.
Because he has not yet been confirmed, Panetta has not been briefed on the details of the secret program.
Panetta said he believed the Bush administration was trying to protect the country from terrorists with its use of secret prisons, renditions and harsh interrogations.
"I think they made some wrong decisions, I think they made mistakes," he said. "I think sometimes they believe the ends justifies the means, and that's where people sometimes go wrong."
Panetta said he thinks that in the fear of another Sept. 11-style attack, Bush administration officials thought, "We can't be bothered with legalisms."
Panetta said, however, that he believes the greatest weapon the United States has against terrorists is its moral authority and commitment to the rule of law.
[You Mr. Panetta SHOULD NOT be confirmed. You have no fucking clue.]
CIA
They voted for a guy who would bring change - he has not.
They voted for a guy who would clean up the messs - he has not.
They voted for a guy they said would end torture - he won't, and has not.
They voted for a guy because he said he would prosecute when actions were criminal and torture was criminal - Panetta says they won't.
His honeymoon ended almost before he started. The obituary is premature, but we can get the pen and paper out.
Honestly, you are running out of reasons, quickly.
Panetta: No prosecution for CIA interrogators
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
February 6, 2009
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration will not prosecute CIA officers who participated in harsh interrogations that critics say crossed the line into torture, CIA Director-nominee Leon Panetta said Friday.
Asked by The Associated Press if that was official policy, Panetta said, "That is the case."
It was the clearest statement yet on what Panetta and other Democratic officials had only strongly suggested: CIA officers who acted on legal orders from the Bush administration would not be held responsible for those policies. On Thursday, he told senators that the Obama administration had no intention of seeking prosecutions for that reason.
Panetta, in an interview with the AP after a second day of confirmation hearings with the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that he arrived at that conclusion even before he began meeting with CIA officials.
"It was my opinion we just can't operate if people feel even if they are following the legal opinions of the Justice Department" they could be in danger of prosecution, he said.
Panetta demurred on saying whether the Obama administration would take legal action against those who authorized or wrote the legal opinions that, for a time, set an extremely high legal bar for an action to constitute torture.
"I'll leave that for others," Panetta said.
Panetta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton administration and an ex-congressman from California, is expected to be confirmed by a wide margin next week.
Panetta told the committee that the Obama administration will continue to hand foreign detainees over to other countries for questioning, but only if it is confident the prisoners will not be tortured in the process.
That has long been U.S. policy, but some former prisoners subjected to the process — known as "extraordinary rendition" — during the Bush administration's anti-terror war contend they were tortured. Proving that in court has proven difficult, as evidence they are trying to use has been protected by the president's state secret privilege.
"I will seek the same kind of assurances that they will not be treated inhumanely," Panetta said during his second day before the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I intend to use the State Department to be sure those assurances are implemented and stood by, by those countries."
Some critics worry that any gray area in delineating policy on renditions could allow for abuses.
A detainee could be handed over to another country for reasons other than harsh or coercive questioning. Some prisoners may not have intelligence of value to the United States in its effort to break up global terrorist groups, but they might yield intelligence valuable to another government's more localized security problems.
How such renditions work and what happens after prisoners are handed over are secrets, and it is unclear that the Obama administration would have any more tools to assure humane treatment than its predecessor.
The options are limited: refuse to transfer prisoners to governments that have a history of torture or human rights abuses; require prisoners be allowed regular visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross; or demand that U.S. officials have access to the prisoners after the transfer. Each option carries with it the potential of harming or complicating relationships with foreign intelligence agencies.
Panetta formally retracted a statement he made Thursday that the Bush administration transferred prisoners for the purpose of torture.
"I am not aware of the validity of those claims," he said.
Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., chastised Panetta for careless words. "You cannot be making statements or making judgments based on rumors and news stories," he said.
Because he has not yet been confirmed, Panetta has not been briefed on the details of the secret program.
Panetta said he believed the Bush administration was trying to protect the country from terrorists with its use of secret prisons, renditions and harsh interrogations.
"I think they made some wrong decisions, I think they made mistakes," he said. "I think sometimes they believe the ends justifies the means, and that's where people sometimes go wrong."
Panetta said he thinks that in the fear of another Sept. 11-style attack, Bush administration officials thought, "We can't be bothered with legalisms."
Panetta said, however, that he believes the greatest weapon the United States has against terrorists is its moral authority and commitment to the rule of law.
[You Mr. Panetta SHOULD NOT be confirmed. You have no fucking clue.]
CIA
Obama: Attack the Man Who Was Respectful To You: Shows Character
International Herald Tribune
By Peter Baker
Thursday, January 22, 2009
By Peter Baker
Thursday, January 22, 2009
WASHINGTON: On the plane, no longer Air Force One but now Special Air Mission 28000, they talked about the speech. George W. Bush, the former president, was heading home to Texas with his inner circle, having just left the Capitol, where his successor first thanked him for his service and then proceeded to trash it.
The Bush team had worked assiduously to make the transition smooth for Barack Obama and stayed out of the way as he used the post-election period to take leadership of the economy even before being sworn in. Now, as far as some of them were concerned, the new president had used his inaugural lectern to give the back of the hand to a predecessor who had been nothing but gracious to him.
Mark McKinnon, the political consultant who helped elect Bush twice and was on the plane Tuesday, described the mood as one more of equanimity than resentment. In an essay on The Daily Beast, the new Web magazine started by Tina Brown, McKinnon said there were good wishes for the new president and "an absence of malice one normally sees among the constituencies of the vanquished." But he also said there were "some critical reviews of the speech, complaints about taking unnecessary shots and grousing about borrowed ideas."
Obama never directly mentioned Bush's name after the ritual thank you at the beginning of his Inaugural Address but the context of some of his remarks was lost on no one. He criticized "our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age." He promised to "restore science to its rightful place." He rejected "as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." He assured the rest of the world "that we are ready to lead once more."
Some writers concluded that it was the first time since Franklin D. Roosevelt took over from Herbert Hoover in 1933, that an incoming president used his Inaugural Address to so evidently repudiate his predecessor as he headed for the door.
Obama quickly followed words with action. The day after the inauguration, on his first full day in office, he instructed military commanders to draft a plan to withdraw combat forces from Iraq and on Thursday he plans to sign executive orders closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and reversing Bush's policies on interrogations.
Bush knew that was coming as he winged his way back to Midland, Texas, on Tuesday. Aboard the big blue-and-white jet that afternoon were some of his most loyal confidants - Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Dan Bartlett, Andrew Card Jr., Donald Evans, Joshua Bolten, Ed Gillespie, Margaret Spellings, Clay Johnson, Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Miers and others.
McKinnon described Bush's spirits as high. "While I expected the president's mood to be defiant, bitter, defensive or vengeful toward his critics, he was anything but," McKinnon wrote. The passengers were shown a 22-minute film produced by Scott Sforza and edited by Laura Crawford celebrating the Bush presidency.
When Bush landed, he told a waiting crowd of supporters that he left Washington with his head held high. "When I go home tonight and I look into the mirror, I'm not going to regret what I see," he said.
But if Bush was not eager to lash back at his critics, some of his loyalists were. In the hours since the Bush plane landed and the former president began his new life out of office, his defenders have begun pushing back. Two of his former top aides, Rove and Marc Thiessen, a White House speechwriter, have newspaper columns out Thursday implicitly rebutting Obama.
Rove wrote in The Wall Street Journal that as his former boss departed Washington, "in a last angry frenzy his critics again distorted his record, maligned his character and repeated untruths about his years in the Oval Office," adding that "nothing they wrote or said changes the essential facts."
Rove went on to define Bush's legacy as the two of them see it. Bush, he wrote, was ultimately right about Iraq and right about his tactics in the war on terrorism. He cut taxes "for every American who pays taxes," appointed conservative judges, began an unprecedented campaign to fight AIDS in Africa, expanded Medicare to cover prescription drugs and introduced the No Child Left Behind education accountability program.
"He didn't get everything right - no president does - but he got the most important things right," Rove wrote. "And that is enough."
Thiessen, in The Washington Post, focused his argument on the fact that terrorists never struck American soil again after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, calling that Bush's singular legacy. "If Obama weakens any of the defenses Bush put in place and terrorists strike our country again, Americans will hold Obama responsible - and the Democratic Party could find itself unelectable for a generation," he wrote.
The opening shots signal what could be a sustained debate in the coming months and years between Bush and Obama partisans over the nature of the former president's record and what he left his successor to deal with.
Bush himself has said he plans to stay out of "the klieg lights" and let the new president govern without criticism. His defenders took no such pledge. They understand that victors write the history, but they are determined to make sure they get a crack at shaping that narrative themselves.
Bush
Rove: Bush was right
OPINION
JANUARY 22, 2009
Bush Was Right When It Mattered Most
By KARL ROVE
Its call sign has always been Air Force One. But on Tuesday, it was Special Air Mission 28000, as former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura returned home to Texas on a plane full of family, friends, former staff and memories of eight years in the White House.
The former president and his wife thanked each passenger, showing the thoughtfulness and grace so characteristic of this wonderful American family.
A video tribute produced warm laughter and inevitable tears. There was no bitterness, but rather a sense of gratitude -- gratitude for the opportunity to serve, for able and loyal colleagues, and above all for our country and its people.
Yet, as Mr. Bush left Washington, in a last angry frenzy his critics again distorted his record, maligned his character and repeated untruths about his years in the Oval Office. Nothing they wrote or said changes the essential facts.
To start with, Mr. Bush was right about Iraq. The world is safer without Saddam Hussein in power. And the former president was right to change strategy and surge more U.S. troops.
About Karl Rove
Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy making process.
Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.
Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon & Schuster.
A legion of critics (including President Barack Obama) claimed it couldn't work. They were wrong. Iraq is now on the mend, the war is on the path to victory, al Qaeda has been dealt a humiliating defeat, and a democracy in the heart of the Arab world is emerging. The success of Mr. Bush's surge made it possible for President Obama to warn terrorists on Tuesday "you cannot outlast us."
Mr. Bush was right to establish a doctrine that holds those who harbor, train and support terrorists as responsible as the terrorists themselves. He was right to take the war on terror abroad instead of waiting until dangers fully materialize here at home. He was right to strengthen the military and intelligence and to create the new tools to monitor the communications of terrorists, freeze their assets, foil their plots, and kill and capture their operators.
These tough decisions -- which became unpopular in certain quarters only when memories of 9/11 began to fade -- kept America safe for seven years and made it possible for Mr. Obama to tell the terrorists on Tuesday "we will defeat you."
Mr. Bush was right to be a unilateralist when it came to combating AIDS in Africa. While world leaders dithered, his President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief initiative brought lifesaving antiretroviral drugs to millions of Africans.
At home, Mr. Bush cut income taxes for every American who pays taxes. He also cut taxes on capital, investment and savings. The result was 52 months of growth and the strongest economy of any developed country.
Mr. Bush was right to match tax cuts with spending restraint. This is a source of dispute, especially among conservatives, but the record is there to see. Bill Clinton's last budget increased domestic nonsecurity discretionary spending by 16%. Mr. Bush cut that to 6.2% growth in his first budget, 5.5% in his second, 4.3% in his third, 2.2% in his fourth, and then below inflation, on average, since. That isn't the sum total of the fiscal record, of course -- but it's a key part of it.
He was right to have modernized Medicare with prescription drug benefits provided through competition, not delivered by government. The program is costing 40% less than projected because market forces dominate and people -- not government -- are making the decisions.
Mr. Bush was right to pass No Child Left Behind (NCLB), requiring states to set up tough accountability systems that measure every child's progress at school. As a result, reading and math scores have risen more in the last five years since NCLB than in the prior 28 years.
He was right to stand for a culture of life. And he was right to appoint conservative judges who strictly interpret the Constitution.
And Mr. Bush, a man of core decency and integrity, was right not to reply in kind when Democratic leaders called him a liar and a loser. The price of trying to change the tone in Washington was to be often pummeled by lesser men.
Few presidents had as many challenges arise during their eight years, had as many tough calls to make in such a partisan-charged environment, or had to act in the face of such hostile media and elite opinion.
On board Special Air Mission 28000, I remembered the picture I carried in my pocket on my first Air Force One flight eight years ago. It was an old black-and-white snapshot with scalloped edges. It showed Lyndon Johnson in the Cabinet Room, head in hand, weeping over a Vietnam casualty report. George Christian, LBJ's press secretary, gave it to me as a reminder that the job could break anyone, no matter how big and tough.
But despite facing challenges and crises few others have, the job did not break George W. Bush. Though older and grayer, his brows more furrowed, he is the same man he was, a person of integrity who did what he believed was right. And he exits knowing he summoned all of his energy and talents to defend America and advance its ideals at home and abroad. He didn't get everything right -- no president does -- but he got the most important things right. And that is enough.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
Bush
JANUARY 22, 2009
Bush Was Right When It Mattered Most
By KARL ROVE
Its call sign has always been Air Force One. But on Tuesday, it was Special Air Mission 28000, as former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura returned home to Texas on a plane full of family, friends, former staff and memories of eight years in the White House.
The former president and his wife thanked each passenger, showing the thoughtfulness and grace so characteristic of this wonderful American family.
A video tribute produced warm laughter and inevitable tears. There was no bitterness, but rather a sense of gratitude -- gratitude for the opportunity to serve, for able and loyal colleagues, and above all for our country and its people.
Yet, as Mr. Bush left Washington, in a last angry frenzy his critics again distorted his record, maligned his character and repeated untruths about his years in the Oval Office. Nothing they wrote or said changes the essential facts.
To start with, Mr. Bush was right about Iraq. The world is safer without Saddam Hussein in power. And the former president was right to change strategy and surge more U.S. troops.
About Karl Rove
Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy making process.
Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.
Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon & Schuster.
A legion of critics (including President Barack Obama) claimed it couldn't work. They were wrong. Iraq is now on the mend, the war is on the path to victory, al Qaeda has been dealt a humiliating defeat, and a democracy in the heart of the Arab world is emerging. The success of Mr. Bush's surge made it possible for President Obama to warn terrorists on Tuesday "you cannot outlast us."
Mr. Bush was right to establish a doctrine that holds those who harbor, train and support terrorists as responsible as the terrorists themselves. He was right to take the war on terror abroad instead of waiting until dangers fully materialize here at home. He was right to strengthen the military and intelligence and to create the new tools to monitor the communications of terrorists, freeze their assets, foil their plots, and kill and capture their operators.
These tough decisions -- which became unpopular in certain quarters only when memories of 9/11 began to fade -- kept America safe for seven years and made it possible for Mr. Obama to tell the terrorists on Tuesday "we will defeat you."
Mr. Bush was right to be a unilateralist when it came to combating AIDS in Africa. While world leaders dithered, his President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief initiative brought lifesaving antiretroviral drugs to millions of Africans.
At home, Mr. Bush cut income taxes for every American who pays taxes. He also cut taxes on capital, investment and savings. The result was 52 months of growth and the strongest economy of any developed country.
Mr. Bush was right to match tax cuts with spending restraint. This is a source of dispute, especially among conservatives, but the record is there to see. Bill Clinton's last budget increased domestic nonsecurity discretionary spending by 16%. Mr. Bush cut that to 6.2% growth in his first budget, 5.5% in his second, 4.3% in his third, 2.2% in his fourth, and then below inflation, on average, since. That isn't the sum total of the fiscal record, of course -- but it's a key part of it.
He was right to have modernized Medicare with prescription drug benefits provided through competition, not delivered by government. The program is costing 40% less than projected because market forces dominate and people -- not government -- are making the decisions.
Mr. Bush was right to pass No Child Left Behind (NCLB), requiring states to set up tough accountability systems that measure every child's progress at school. As a result, reading and math scores have risen more in the last five years since NCLB than in the prior 28 years.
He was right to stand for a culture of life. And he was right to appoint conservative judges who strictly interpret the Constitution.
And Mr. Bush, a man of core decency and integrity, was right not to reply in kind when Democratic leaders called him a liar and a loser. The price of trying to change the tone in Washington was to be often pummeled by lesser men.
Few presidents had as many challenges arise during their eight years, had as many tough calls to make in such a partisan-charged environment, or had to act in the face of such hostile media and elite opinion.
On board Special Air Mission 28000, I remembered the picture I carried in my pocket on my first Air Force One flight eight years ago. It was an old black-and-white snapshot with scalloped edges. It showed Lyndon Johnson in the Cabinet Room, head in hand, weeping over a Vietnam casualty report. George Christian, LBJ's press secretary, gave it to me as a reminder that the job could break anyone, no matter how big and tough.
But despite facing challenges and crises few others have, the job did not break George W. Bush. Though older and grayer, his brows more furrowed, he is the same man he was, a person of integrity who did what he believed was right. And he exits knowing he summoned all of his energy and talents to defend America and advance its ideals at home and abroad. He didn't get everything right -- no president does -- but he got the most important things right. And that is enough.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
Bush
Obama: Don't Buy American - It makes The Euros Feel Good
The inclusion of the phrase - Buy American, was so offensive to the Canadians and the Euros they demanded Obama pull it. And he did. Who is supposed to be responsible for ensuring our economy does well, that we prosper, if not the dear leader. Who? And he caved in faster than your prom date. Isn't it evil to suggest Americans BUY AMERICAN. We should have - Buy World, if they have their way.
4 Feb 2009
National Post
Canwest News Service
Urges Congress to change provision
WASHINGTON • U.S. President Barack Obama yesterday said he wanted Congress to make changes to the controversial “Buy American” provision in the nearly US$900-billion economic stimulus legislation in a bid to avert a trade war.
Mr. Obama warned it would be a “mistake” for the United States to put up new barriers when global trade is already suffering.
“I agree that we can’t send a protectionist message,” Mr. Obama said in a televised interview with Fox News.
“I want to see what kind of language we can ... work on this issue. I think it would be a mistake, though, at a time when worldwide trade is declining, for us to start sending a message that somehow we’re just looking after ourselves and not concerned with world trade.”
In an interview with ABC television he added, “I think we need to make sure that any provisions that are in there are not going to trigger a trade war.”
The comments marked Mr. Obama’s first public statements on a controversy that erupted with the passage in the House of Representatives last week of a stimulus bill that bans the use of foreignmade iron or steel in projects launched to jump-start the ailing U.S. economy.
Canada has warned the United States would “lose its moral authority” to stave off protectionism if the final bill adopted by Congress includes the Buy American measure. Mr. Obama has asked lawmakers to pass a final bill for his signature as early as next week.
In Ottawa yesterday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the Buy American provision a threat to all industrialized countries. “These are not measures targeted at Canada, they are measures that are of concern to all trading partners of the United States,” Mr. Harper said.
Mr. Obama’s remarks, however, have given the Harper government a ray of hope in what has become a mad scramble among Canadian diplomats — and high-powered U.S. business lobbyists — to win amendments to the massive stimulus bill now working its way through Congress.
“I think [the] concerns are justified,” Representative Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader in the House of Representatives, said after speaking with Canadian ambassador Michael Wilson.
The US$819-billion House of Representatives version of the stimulus bill mandates that only U.S.-produced steel and iron be used in stimulus projects.
However, the US$888-billion Senate version includes language requiring all stimulus-related projects to use only American-made goods.
“As you know, the Senate bill goes much further than the House bill, but I am sure that will be a matter for discussion after the Senate passes its bill,” Mr. Hoyer said, referring to future negotiations to reconcile the two pieces of legislation.
Opponents of the Buy American measure — including Canada and the European Union — acknowledge it will be difficult to convince lawmakers to completely strip the provision from the final version of the bill.
Instead, critics are focusing their efforts at convincing the Senate to pass amendments allowing for broad exceptions to the Buy American rule.
Failing that, Buy American opponents hope the Senate will adopt the more restrictive language approved by the House, which includes some caveats to waive the U.S.-only rule on steel and iron if it is deemed too costly or not in the public interest.
“You are seeing a lot of moving parts, a lot of negotiation behind the scenes,” said Maryscott Greenwood, executive director of the Canadian-American Business Council, a lobby group for companies with interests in both countries.
Working in Canada’s favour is strong opposition to the Buy American provisions among pro-free trade Republicans in the Senate.
Mr. Obama is eager to win bipartisan support for the stimulus package, and a compromise by Democrats on the Buy American clause might help the President’s cause.
The main obstacles for Ottawa, however, is the popularity of Buy American among labour groups and free trade critics who carry significant influence with Democrats.
The Canadian government’s efforts to fight the Buy American provisions have been boosted by groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Yesterday, the National Association of Manufacturers said the measure would “backfire” on American workers and goes against America’s international trade obligations.
“Even though this section [of the stimulus bill] may be well intended, NAM members are very concerned that the new ‘Buy-American’ provisions in the bill will potentially backfire on the United States and end up harming American workers and companies across the entire U.S. economy,” wrote John Engler, the group’s president and a former Republican governor of Michigan.
Obama
Oil and Gas Prices
OIL is selling for below $40 a barrel. $39 +
And gas prices increase.
democrats - where are your hearings?
Boxer - where is the vitriol, the attack Panzer, where is your condemnation of big oil?
Come on - wake up - save us, from oil.
oil
And gas prices increase.
democrats - where are your hearings?
Boxer - where is the vitriol, the attack Panzer, where is your condemnation of big oil?
Come on - wake up - save us, from oil.
oil
Obamessiah: The Sheen Wore Off and we've lost that lovin' feelin
(although I never had it)
I believe he sums it up in so few words - what all the posts and news bits have pointed toward:
The Fierce Urgency of Pork
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 6, 2009; A17
"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
-- President Obama, Feb. 4.
Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.
And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040.
Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.
The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.
He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.
At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend.
And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.
It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.
It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.
Not just to abolish but to create something new -- a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance.
The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.
After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.
I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.
Obama
I believe he sums it up in so few words - what all the posts and news bits have pointed toward:
The Fierce Urgency of Pork
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 6, 2009; A17
"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
-- President Obama, Feb. 4.
Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.
And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040.
Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.
The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.
He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.
At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend.
And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.
It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.
It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.
Not just to abolish but to create something new -- a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance.
The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.
After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.
I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.
Obama
Democrats: Get Over It, We Won, We Don't Need You ... but we do, please help us.
Yesterday we learned something new (well, it wasn't new, but the braggadocio was) - WE DON'T NEED YOU, WE DON'T NEED TO COMPROMISE, WE HAVE THE VOTES ... so Get Over It, We Won.
Let's take a moment ....
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Mr. Schumer - Never count your chickens before they hatch.
Mr. Reid - Your arrogance is deafening, and also shows your greatest weakness.
No one likes someone who dictates. Apparently, SOME DEMOCRATS don't either!
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
I almost feel sorry for Mr. Obama, almost. THIS IS yet another failure for Obama.
6 Feb 2009
By PAUL KANE and SHAILAGH MURRAY
The Washington Post
Senate stalls vote on stimulus package
Lawmakers decide more time needed to work on cutting back $100 billion
Washington— A bipartisan coalition of senators withheld support Thursday for President Obama’s economic recovery package, leaving the scope and timing of his first major initiative in doubt as they sought to cut more than $100 billion from the legislation.
Despite growing concerns from Republicans and Democrats about the cost of the plan, senators did not reach agreement on which programs to trim. Instead, as the chamber has debated the bill this week, its cost has grown by almost $40 billion, with the tab now at more than $920 billion.
Senate leaders had hoped to vote on the measure Thursday, but after a series of meetings among nearly 20 senators did not yield a deal, the negotiators agreed to continue talking.
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that he would allow the centrist, bipartisan group to continue working and that, if it reaches consensus, he will schedule a vote for today on final legislation. If that fails, he will call for a rare Sunday session for a key procedural vote that would require 60 votes for passage.
[to read the rest of the article, go to the Washington Post website. As I did not get the above from that site, I cannot link to a paid website.]
Obama
Let's take a moment ....
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Mr. Schumer - Never count your chickens before they hatch.
Mr. Reid - Your arrogance is deafening, and also shows your greatest weakness.
No one likes someone who dictates. Apparently, SOME DEMOCRATS don't either!
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
I almost feel sorry for Mr. Obama, almost. THIS IS yet another failure for Obama.
6 Feb 2009
By PAUL KANE and SHAILAGH MURRAY
The Washington Post
Senate stalls vote on stimulus package
Lawmakers decide more time needed to work on cutting back $100 billion
Washington— A bipartisan coalition of senators withheld support Thursday for President Obama’s economic recovery package, leaving the scope and timing of his first major initiative in doubt as they sought to cut more than $100 billion from the legislation.
Despite growing concerns from Republicans and Democrats about the cost of the plan, senators did not reach agreement on which programs to trim. Instead, as the chamber has debated the bill this week, its cost has grown by almost $40 billion, with the tab now at more than $920 billion.
Senate leaders had hoped to vote on the measure Thursday, but after a series of meetings among nearly 20 senators did not yield a deal, the negotiators agreed to continue talking.
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that he would allow the centrist, bipartisan group to continue working and that, if it reaches consensus, he will schedule a vote for today on final legislation. If that fails, he will call for a rare Sunday session for a key procedural vote that would require 60 votes for passage.
[to read the rest of the article, go to the Washington Post website. As I did not get the above from that site, I cannot link to a paid website.]
Obama
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Hey Hey BHO What Have You Done To Lower Gas Prices Today!
Hey Hey BHO What Have You Done To Lower Gas Prices Today!
Hey Hey BHO What Have You Done To Lower Gas Prices Today!
Hey Hey BHO What Have You Done To Lower Gas Prices Today!
Hey y'all ... I know for 8 years some people went hog wild accusing The Bushman of oil connections, profits for oil companies, and all that jazz, but I have a question for you.
When was oil $41 a barrel and what were the gas prices?
What is oil today?
What is the gas price?
Isn't it odd? Why no hearings? Why no big Senate hearings on the inflated prices?
Why no Dem banging their shoe screaming they will roll over oil?
Why?
What happened to change?
I have an idea.
You ran into a tax revenue you liked, so it didn't bother you they charge more ... because you get more revenue off them ... and you like that.
Who you don't like is the taxpayer ... what you do like are taxes.
Pretty obvious, I think.
pre
Hey Hey BHO What Have You Done To Lower Gas Prices Today!
Hey Hey BHO What Have You Done To Lower Gas Prices Today!
Hey y'all ... I know for 8 years some people went hog wild accusing The Bushman of oil connections, profits for oil companies, and all that jazz, but I have a question for you.
When was oil $41 a barrel and what were the gas prices?
What is oil today?
What is the gas price?
Isn't it odd? Why no hearings? Why no big Senate hearings on the inflated prices?
Why no Dem banging their shoe screaming they will roll over oil?
Why?
What happened to change?
I have an idea.
You ran into a tax revenue you liked, so it didn't bother you they charge more ... because you get more revenue off them ... and you like that.
Who you don't like is the taxpayer ... what you do like are taxes.
Pretty obvious, I think.
pre
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