Wingnuts, 2nd Amendment, Mumbai

How long will it take for a Freeper or some (ahem) columnist at the NRO to say that the Indian tragedy would never had happened, were it not for firearm restrictions more severe than America's?

Perhaps some other mindless parrot of the fringe?

You just know that someone will argue that an armed populace would have prevented the greater carnage.

I'm betting on the Northerner for Southern Treason.

He likes guns.

I'm sure Sadly No! will have more soon.

Catch you later, in sadness.....

(Image Oddsock/CreativeCommons)

Colin Powell on McCain's Negative Campaigning

Well said, good timing.

Catch you later.....

Sub Prime Voter

Nice base you've got there, Sen McSellout. (from BrettMarty.com via 538)

Jeebus must be so proud of you.

Catch you later.....

Sad, But True...

The Washington Monthly

The McCain/Palin ticket is the first in American history in which both candidates were found to have violated ethics standards before a national election.

Now that's experience you can count on!

Catch you later.....

McCain's attacks fuel dangerous hatred -- baltimoresun.com

McCain's attacks fuel dangerous hatred -- baltimoresun.com:

By Frank Schaeffer

October 10, 2008

John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence....

...Shame!...

...You have changed. You have a choice: Go down in history as a decent senator and an honorable military man with many successes, or go down in history as the latest abettor of right-wing extremist hate....

...Stop! Think! Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.

Accusing your opponent of treason during a time of armed conflict and economic collapse is some pretty serious stuff.

Most of the treasonous behaviour I've seen lately comes the current administration.

One of my fondest dreams is to see Bush & Co. in the docks faced by the mountains of evidence of their criminality.

Obama is guilty alright. Guilty of being a fine, decent, hard-working, intelligent, patriotic Senator, devoted husband and loving father. Guilty of putting his own life at risk of mob violence or a lone gunman in an effort to make a positive difference for his family, friends and fellow American citizens in a time of crisis.

A crisis for which he is largely blameless.

And yet, while the GOPers whine and fling poo from their cages, Obama only seeks to unite us in common purpose in search of solutions, for the sake of the nation. And to implement those solutions while handcuffed by the sorry state of affairs brought on by the real criminals, the real traitors, whom he seeks to replace.

So, who is it that's really demonstrating patriotism here? Who's showing class?

Catch you later.....

(Image by Dutchlad, Flikr)

The Raw Story | Bush Administration will keep secret 'grim' Afghanistan report quiet until after election

The Raw Story Bush Administration will keep secret 'grim' Afghanistan report quiet until after election:

A secret US intelligence report which says the political and military situation in Afghanistan is "grim" will be withheld from the public until after the election, a new report says.

Intelligence officials are finishing up the National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan, according to ABC's Brian Ross, "but there are 'no plans to declassify' any of it before the election," an official said.

Is this what McCranky means when he claims to put country before party? Hypocrites!

Catch you later.....

(photo by Violinsoldier/Flikr)

Economist: McCain's Campaign: Lying, cynical, Divisive

It's clear from across the pond. Maybe we're too close?

America not quite at its best (final paragraph):

"What Mrs Palin does do, as a committed pro-lifer, is to ensure that the evangelical wing of the Republican party will turn out in their multitudes. Mr McCain has thus placed abortion, the most divisive cultural issue in America, at the centre of his campaign. His defenders claim that it is too big an issue to be ignored, that he has always opposed abortion, that culture wars are an inevitable part of American elections, and that it was only when he appointed Mrs Palin that the American public started to listen to him. All this is true: but the old Mr McCain, who derided the religious right as “agents of intolerance”, would not have stooped to that."

Reading the foreign press is a great way to step back and see the forest for the trees. Read it for yourself. From their point of view, it must look like "Inherit the Wind" is a current events documentary.

Thank god the GOP is there to protect the right-to-life of the HPV virus.

Schmucks!

Catch you later.....

Image courtesy of AnitWarPosters.com

What Price a Nation?

American Democracy sold out for "30 pieces of silver"; from the NY Times:

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL FOR TREASURY AUTHORITY
TO PURCHASE MORTGAGE-RELATED ASSETS

Section 1. Short Title.
This Act may be cited as ____________________.

Sec. 2. Purchases of Mortgage-Related Assets.

(a) Authority to Purchase.--The Secretary is authorized to purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase, on such terms and conditions as determined by the Secretary, mortgage-related assets from any financial institution having its headquarters in the United States.

(b) Necessary Actions.--The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation:

(1) appointing such employees as may be required to carry out the authorities in this Act and defining their duties;

(2) entering into contracts, including contracts for services authorized by section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts;

(3) designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them;

(4) establishing vehicles that are authorized, subject to supervision by the Secretary, to purchase mortgage-related assets and issue obligations; and

(5) issuing such regulations and other guidance as may be necessary or appropriate to define terms or carry out the authorities of this Act.

...Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

(emphasis mine)

Go to the link and see how easily and cheaply we can sell our national soul. It's only $2,333 per man, woman and child.

As long as we no longer need our Constitution or Bill of Rights, why not get rid of that pesky Judiciary?

And Congress? Traitors and capitulators all! String 'em up.

The NeoCon (emphasis on the "con") wet dream come true.

Call and Email your representatives at once and demand Congressional debate and oversight, as well as judicial review. This is BushCo's final assault on America and it must be stopped.

Catch you later.....

(Image courtesy of AntiWarPosters.com)

Update: Email response from Rep. Darrell Issa...

Thank you for taking the time to contact me. I am honored to serve you in Congress and take my obligation to you seriously. Your thoughts and concerns are always important to me and do make a difference. Please know that I will respond to your message as soon as possible.

If your message requires immediate attention, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at 202-225-3906 and speak to a memberof my staff. You may also contact my Vista, California office at760-599-5000.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be of service.

Oh, you can be sure to hear from me, Congressman, but will you be listening?

FBI disregarded secret court on private records - Yahoo! News

FBI disregarded secret court on private records - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI twice disregarded a secret court's constitutional objections and obtained private records for national-security probes, a U.S. inspector reported on Thursday....

...An influential Senate Democrat accused the FBI of "systemic failure" and the American Civil Liberties Union said the reviews demonstrated a need to check the agency's authority....

...Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the report "outlines more abuses and what appears to be the improper use of National Security Letters for years in a systemic failure throughout the FBI ... Legislative action may be necessary to correct these abuses."

The FBI's assertion that is working to correct flaws in the system with an eye toward protecting civil liberties is believeable. Right? They're trustworthy, right? Santa?

Catch you later.....

Thanks, Georgie, you're doin' a heck of a job!

Retail gasoline price hits record: AAA - Yahoo! News

Remember when the war in Iraq was going to pay for itself?

TOM TOMORROW:

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2008/03/10/tomo/

One extremely gratifying aspect of the Web is the ease with which one can go back and look anew at the lunacy of the Neocons and their demon-partners, the "religious" right.

Together, I think with malicious intent, these marginally aware, minimally conscious groups have brought us to the brink of the destruction of the American Dream. Out of pure avarice. Greed. The lust for power.

And in John McLame they offer us 4 more years of this mindless crap, with the added attraction of an anger management problem.

Meanwhile, democrats, progressives, liberals, whatever are fighting among themselves like a bunch of jealous sisters around prom time. Jeebus people, look at the stakes, grow a spine and get down to the dirty work that lies ahead.

Impeach Already! Protect the Constitution!

I've been looking hard at this on-line, learn Chinese at home deal, 'cause it looks like it'll be more important here in So-Cal than even Spanish before long. We're giving the store away!

The inter-personal, intra-party B.S. going on in the Netroots, cable news, and elsewhere is, frankly, disgusting, especially given the long term stakes.

Supreme Court, anyone?

Admiral Fallon's departure today does not bode well for the near term future. Think Bush will go for a hat-trick? Three wars in one Administration! War with Iran! Because Iraq was a typo?!

Our culture, history, current level of education, awareness does not bode well for taking the long view. Something that opposing entities (nations, philosophies, religions, whatever) seem to do easily.

Enlightened Self-Interest Anyone?

Catch you later.....

Court rejects ACLU challenge to wiretaps - What a surprise!

Court rejects ACLU challenge to wiretaps - Yahoo! News

.....ACLU officials described the situation as a "Catch-22" because the government says the identities of people whose communications have been intercepted is secret. But only people who know they have been wiretapped can sue over the program.

A lawsuit filed by an Islamic charity met a similar fate. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year ruled against the Oregon-based U.S. arm of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, concluding that a key piece of evidence is protected as a state secret.

In that case, the charity alleged the National Security Agency illegally listened to its calls. The charity had wanted to introduce as evidence a top-secret call log it received mistakenly from the Treasury Department.

The hits just keep on coming.

Catch you later.....

The Looming Banking Collapse

Mon Feb 18, 9:09 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Banks in the United States have been quietly borrowing "massive amounts" from the U.S. Federal Reserve in recent weeks, using a new measure the Fed introduced two months ago to help ease the credit crunch, according to a report on the web site of The Financial Times.

The newspaper said the use of the Fed's Term Auction Facility (TAF), which allows banks to borrow at relatively attractive rates against a wide range of their assets, saw borrowing of nearly $50 billion of one-month funds from the Fed by mid-February.

The Financial Times said the move has sparked unease among some analysts about the stress developing in opaque corners of the U.S. banking system and the banks' growing reliance on indirect forms of government support.

(Reporting by Mark McSherry; Editing by Valerie Lee)

From Jim Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation,

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/02/shoes-dropping.html

.... And after another while, the nature of money became so detached from anything real, so abstract, that its very existence became hypothetical. Even this "worked" for a while, in terms of the managers of this money being able to "cream" substantial amounts of this hypothetical money off the top of their notional operations and translate that hypothetical cream into Tribeca lofts, Gulfstream jets, and other real luxuries. The rest of the economic food chain -- and the social order that represented it -- got stripped of remaining asset value (and social value) until they had nothing left to trade with except debt, in one form or another, and this phase of the game turned out to have a short lifetime when the the only debts remaining to be monetized were the contracts on houses occupied by people with no hope of ever meeting their obligations -- and then the whole sorry racket started to go up in a vapor. This is roughly where we are, and where the banks stand today. They are pretending to have money and desperately cadging loans from all comers to keep appearances up, but the loans can't come in fast enough. The appearance of confidence is crucial (as it is, of course, in any "con" game) to keep the investors (depositors) at bay. If a bunch of investors (depositors) all got nervous about the solvency of a given bank, they might try to slip in there during business hours and withdraw or redeem their "money" and perhaps translate it into items of value like gold coins, bottles of vodka, or cases of 9 millimeter pistol ammunition. And if enough of this bunch showed up at the same time, we would see a phenomenon called a "run" on a bank. And after that started at one bank, the thing Franklin Roosevelt called "fear itself" could easily spread to depositers in other banks pretending to be OK... and that would be the magic moment that the USA discovered it was no longer a rich nation."

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The whole house of cards is poised to come down around our ears. McCain might get his hundred years war. Over food, fuel, shrinking land masses, religious fanatacism... the list grows and grows. Who in their right mind would want to be President?

Sweet dreams, catch you later.....

DUH!

With a year to go, trust academia to prove what has been obvious to all but 29% of us for a very long time.

Study: False statements preceded war - Yahoo! News

What galls the most is Shrub and Dick's cynical belief, since proven mostly true, that they would get away with it because a fearful mob is easy to lead and we want to believe our elected leaders in time of crisis. And just because they could. Bastards!

Catch you later.....