gory war crime details

TEXT

right-wingers ignoring Obama's real tyranny

TEXT

Obama's arrogance

TEXT

Hollywood hires Sen Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to destroy the internet

TEXT

Obama's justification for assassinating Anwar al-Awlaki

TEXT

Bill Clinton's closest advisor: Dick Morris

TEXT

silencing Guantanamo's victims (literally)

TEXT

He's Back From His Gambling Binge in Atlantic City!

"Then there's the death toll. Nearly 40,000 Americans are killed each year by drug overdoses -- not drug-related car accidents, not drug-related gang violence or homicide; those are an entirely different and eye-popping set of numbers. By overdose alone, we lose the equivalent of more than one 9/11 a month and almost eight times as many Americans as have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 (deaths the national media reports on weekly, if not daily)...."

"In the meantime, the state of California has certified a proposition for November's ballot that would legalize the individual possession of dozens of joints of marijuana, even as more and more studies come out revealing the connection between marijuana use, psychosis and psychotic symptoms, among other ill-health effects... Legalization, however, is a siren song that truly will shipwreck more of our youth. Even with marijuana as prevalent and accessible as it is to young people, there is a reason the numbers for alcohol and tobacco use are higher than illicit drug abuse. When one talks to children, they give the answer: It is found in the word "illegal." Legalization removes stigma, is the handmaiden of availability and, as Joe Califano has pointed out, 'availability is the mother of use.'"

-William Bennett

I have only one question for Mr. Bennett: of the 40,000 Americans who died from overdose, the CDC says that 26,000 overdosed on prescription drugs. So how many overdosed on marijuana?

CNN censors war crime footage

Reporter Michael Ware claims to have witnessed and documented the shooting and agonizing death of an Iraqi teenager by an American soldier. CNN owns the video of this 2007 event and decided to sit on it. Disturbing footage like this most certainly make wars harder to cheerlead for. I imagine this same line of reasoning was at work when Obama chose to suppress the most recent batch of torture photos.

TEXT

pop quiz: how many wars in Iraq?

CNN REPORTER MICHAEL WARE: There was just not the one war in Iraq. You had the American war versus the insurgency, who are nationalists fighting to free their country and who were purely politically motivated. Then there's the American war with al Qaida in Iraq. Then there's the Sunni and Shia war amongst the Iraqis themselves. There was the Arab versus Kurdish on again off again little conflict. And then there was the Iranian war versus most of those named above.

Tariq Ali on Democracy Now!

Tariq Ali's latest book is The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad. Glenn Greenwald was also on yesterday's exceptional show:

TEXT

Obama on all those f-ing retards

At a DNC fundraiser last week, the President who's kept the torture chambers open in Afghanistan and at the secret sites abroad, sided with Bush/Cheney on every warfare measure you can think of and kept the banks in charge of this unsustainable economy, lectured his critics from the left.

He's killing more civilians in Pakistan than Bush could ever dream of and we're the pessimists?

Greenwald has a great piece on this:
TEXT

Obama is now in the minority on gay marriage

the latest AP poll found that 52 percent now favor full civil marriage rights for gay couples, and 58 percent support the same rights in every respect as heterosexual couples. President Obama, and those Democrats who do not have the balls to repeal DOMA, let alone the GOP base, are now in a minority in opposing marriage equality.

quote of the day

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: "This is no ordinary Democratic administration. It is highly ideological and ambitious."

ANDREW SULLIVAN:"I think the notion that this administration is ideological is bizarre. Did it nationalize the banks when it could have? Nope. Did it withdraw troops immediately from Iraq and Afghanistan? Nope. It followed Bush's timetable on Iraq and has massively - and foolishly - doubled down on counter-insurgency in Afghanistan. Did it prosecute the war criminals of the last administration? Nope; it has covered for them. Has it raised taxes on anyone? Nope. It merely wants the already-sunsetted Bush tax cuts on the wealthy to expire on schedule. Did it provide a Krugman-style stimulus? Ask Krugman. Is Obama a peacenik? I suppose we have forgotten that he used the Nobel ceremony to defend Reinhold Niebuhr, has retained extraordinary rendition, and ramped up the troop-levels in Afghanistan to far beyond anything Bush ever contemplated. Has the president publicly backed marriage equality or pot-decriminalization? Au contraire. Has he even risked an iota of political capital to end the ban on gays in the military? No. In fact, it is now more likely than not that gays will still be persecuted by their own country by the end of Obama's first term. On energy, Obama's positions are now close to identical to McCain's in the campaign (his one radical move was to the right on deep-sea oil exploration), and cap-and-trade is dead and will surely be buried in November. On education, Obama's support for teacher accountability is further to the right than Bush - and it tackles one of his own party's interest groups. On immigration, Obama's position is identical to Bush's and on his watch, illegal immigration has fallen sharply and border enforcement is up. The Supreme Court? Does Krauthammer think the modest Sotomayor and the careerist defender of executive power, Kagan, are in any way, shape or form as radical as Roberts or Alito? Does he think in the wake of Citizens United and the Second Amendment ruling that we are in danger of having a Supreme Court permanently shifted to the left? Again: what is Krauthammer smoking? And can I get some?"

Obama's continuity praised

“For example, the American policies on renditions — the same. The American policies of taking the fight to the enemy, taking the leadership off the battlefield, continues. Indefinite detention of detainees continues. Military commissions continue to be in effect.

“State secrets has been invoked as much by President Obama’s administration as by President Bush’s administration in order to protect those things that are legitimately secret," Hayden said. "He’s pushed back on extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners that we hold at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. These are all good things, all continuity."

- Ex-CIA Director General Michael Hayden

Here's the interview the Hayden quote was taken from:

TEXT

How Zuckerberg really feels about you

Wait, are we all "dumb fucks" for trusting Facebook?

TEXT

while we're on the subject of the Drug War...

his father was murdered, so the high school suspended him for crying.

TEXT

guess who's spending money to stop legalization...

California Beer & Beverage Distributors: $10,000 to defeat Prop 19
California Police Chiefs Association: $30,000 to defeat Prop 19
California Narcotics Officers' Association: $20,500 to defeat Prop 19

TEXT

don't call it high fructose corn syrup

in related news, it's not TV, it's HBO...

TEXT

pop quiz: which network is #1? CBS, NBC, ABC, or FOX?

For the first time in American history, the number one TV network is Univision, (Spanish language TV).

NBC News anchor Brian Williams

"[The Daily Show with Jon Stewart] has chronicled the death of shame in politics and journalism. Many of us on this side of the journalism tracks often wish we were on Jon’s side. I envy his platform to shout from the mountaintop. He’s a necessary branch of government.”

-Brian Williams, the anchor of the NBC Nightly News.

(To paraphrase: Brian Williams is complaining that a comedian with a talk show on basic cable can tell the truth but a network news anchor with 8 million viewers doesn't have the "platform" to tell the truth).

the real reason Obama won't let torture victims sue

"The dilemma faced by the Justice Department was rather that evidence presented in the suit would likely be used in the future (not in the United States, obviously) to prosecute those who participated in the extraordinary renditions process." -Scott Horton, Harper's

TEXT

Glenn Beck's fondness for Martin Luther King, Jr.

Obama's big state secrets win!

The recent U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling shows the five foreigners who were victimized by our government's extraordinary rendition program that the CIA and assisting companies can kidnap, incarcerate and torture without any consequence. The lawsuit against Boeing has been thrown out in the name of securing state secrets. This is a big victory for President Obama justifying his "power to protect wartime actions from judicial scrutiny."

When one looks at our Empire's approach to warfare and the spying on and imprisoning of citizens without due process, seamless continuity links the Bush approach with Obama's.

TEXT


Glenn Greenwald considers this Times editorial to be "quite good."

TEXT

Jane Mayer on State Secrets:

TEXT

ACLU challenges Obama's right to assassinate US citizens overseas

Obama's right to assassinate an American citizen abroad is being challenged by the ACLU. I wonder what percentage of Hope-n-Change supporters agree that the US should legally be able to assassinate ANYONE?

TEXT


Meanwhile, a majority of Republicans polled believe Obama plans to one day implement Islamic law in the US.

TEXT

quote of the day

"For me, the strangest and most off-putting element of the [Glenn Beck event] was the disjuncture between the anti-authority dimension of the rally - our leaders have disappointed us and must be called to account! - and the whole-hog deference to militarism - we need to thank our soldiers for following orders so honorably and self-sacrificingly. While there were plenty of wounded soldiers on the stage, there was absolutely zero discussion of why these guys were being sent overseas and whether we should expect the same politicians who lie to us on domestic policy to be any better on foreign policy." -Nick Gillespie