++In Saipan, it's New Year's.
++The US finally released the last three Uighurs from Gitmo. They will probably be sent to Slovakia.
++The tribes in the Anbar Province in Iraq,once known as the backbone of the "Surge", are at war with the Iraqi government. 55 Sunni members of parliament have resigned in protest.
++Prince Bandar said he warned Russia about Chechen terrorists. Is this like his warning to the UK?
++Peter King says that the bombings in Russia are a wake-up call to Americans about Islamic terrorists.
++Josh Marshall at Talkingpoints has an excellent piece on Benghazi and Beyond the Crazy. He argues that the fake scandal prevents us from having the foreign policy debate we deserve about the role of our foreign service in conflict areas.
++Steve Benen, formerly of Washington Monthly and now the Rachel Maddow blogger, has a fine piece on Benghazi.
++The New York Times responded to criticism that their Benghazi piece was meant to exonerate Hillary Clinton. They said Hillary had nothing to do with their piece and they haven't made up their minds.
++Andrew Sullivan says that 2013 was a pretty sucky year but that beneath the surface some good happened.
++Brainwrap in his public service of keeping us up to date on Obamacare posted new figures from states last night.
++Sonia Sotomayor will count down the ball at Times Square tonight.
++For the first time in my life, I actually kept all dates,to-do lists and appointments in one notebook. It really is a BFD!
Showing posts with label Uighurs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Uighurs. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Friday, January 21, 2011
Time For Racheting Down The Rhetoric Is Over
House Republican Study Group has issued its plan to cut $2.5 trillion from the federal government over ten years. In my day, the House Study Group was where the GOP would put the radical right-wingers that didn't have the social skills to be hired as congressional aides. Among its suggestions is to defund USAID, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The National Endowment for the Arts, Public Broadcasting,all state aid forcing states to cut more government employees, AMTRAK and all funding for High Speed Rail, among other things.
But never fear the House Republicans said their agenda was to create jobs. So after the repeal of healthcare, now they are after global warming. This just edged out a new House bill to oppose all federal funding for abortion even though it doesn't exist now and to provide a "conscience clause" for all medical practitoners opposed to abortion. Randall Terry of Operation Rescue plans to run in the Democratic primaries against Barack Obama to make him answer questions on abortion. His past answer has been abortion should be "legal but rare." What more does Randall want? Rick Santorum blasted Obama--who has not said anything on abortion for over a year--for being a black man who condones abortion. Rick is suggesting that African-Americans are most likely to get abortions and that threatens their race. But since Rick is a member of the Christian Right, his main concern is the demographic winter coming for white people in the U.S.
Down in Tucson, the Arizona Tea Party wants to remove Sheriif Dupnick for his comments that the political rhetoric of the country trigger the slaughter. In Arlington, Massachusetts, a right-wing blogger who said "1 down and 537 to go" was arrested for keeping a large stockpile of weapons on hand. Teabaggers were quick to defend him and also are posting blogs arguing that revolutionary violence is OK because the Catholic Just war doctrine applies.
While most Americans supported President Obama's Tucson speech and the ceremony there, Franklin Graham resented the lack of references to Jesus Christ. Since the target of the assassination attempt was a Jewish Congresswoman, you might think references to Jesus might be inappropriate. I did and that's why I thought Eric Holder's long quotes from II Corinthians, which talked more about Jesus Christ than the usual prayers was wrong. I think Franklin was trying indirectly to defend his soul sister Sarah Palin.
The former Navy Chaplain says that the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a threat to national security and is actually a war on God. I always thought the repeal finally made the Navy legitimate."In the Navy..." The only military service represented in the Village People.
Talk about making money, the President's Midas Touch even concerns DADT. The repeal actually saves the American taxpayer $200 million. From TARP to the BP Oil Spill to DADT, Obama just coins money. That's what "Grand Theft Auto" Issa should be investigating. How come a socialist can make so much money?
Meanwhile,in the States, there is an ominous pattern of governments withdrawing Medicare from single Adults. That doesn't sound like anything significant but we are dealing with one of the few parts of the social nets, which supports the mentally ill. Are we going to rehospitalize the mentally ill? Maybe we could privatize mental asylums.
President Obama again betrayed his socialism by appointing GE's CEO Immelt as the head of his economic council, which has been renamed to emphasize jobs. Arianna Huffington seems to be hysterical that Obama ordered a government-wide effort to eliminate unnecessary regulations on business as a way to quietly stimulate the economy. Since this was also done during the Clinton Administration,I really don't see the great danger.
More dangerous is the effort by House Republicans to defund the new Consumer Protection Agency being created by my Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Elizabeth Warren. All she has to do is get it to July and the FED will fund it.
Rep. Peter King wants to start his investigations into American Muslims as part of the intelligence committee. No doubt he will ask Frank Gaffney, Washington's Go-To Islamophobe, to provide scholarly cover. I think we should encourage a widescale witchhunt. How about targeting Kareem Abdul Jabbar for the Muslim plot to corrupt basketball? Cat Stevens for introducing Sufi themes in his music. How about we go after Salmon Rushdie for a change? Why let Iran have all the fun? The possibilities are endless. Then the accused could be waterboarded to see whether they tell the truth. It would be like combining the Inquisition with the Salem Witch Trials and add a little Joe McCarthy. It would be boffo box on Fox News. This is an opportunity the country can't miss. We can then invite Franklin Graham to testify on how evil Islam is and how the Pentagon's National Prayer Committee kicked him off for his position.
Under They envy us our freedom department. I want to thank the Christian community in the United States for their great support for the Chaldean Christians in Iraq, who are being exterminated in the democracy we created. The last Christian left Anbar Province yesterday. Those who haven't been "disappeared" have gone into exile, making the Iraqi refugee flow the largest in the history of the Middle East. Hopefully, our Christians will come to the defense of the followers of John the Baptist, who still live in Iraq but are keeping a low profile. At least those awful Muslims came to the defense of Egypt's Coptic Christians, who had been subjected to suicide bombers and police brutality. The Muslim community in Egypt provided thousands of people to act as human shields against further attacks on the Coptics as they celebrated their Christmas.
Common Cause is taking aim at Supreme Court Justices Fat Tony Scalia and Chuckles Thomas claiming both men have a conflict of interest in the Citizens United case because they attended and participated in the Koch Brothers secret campaign conferences. If it were proven that both men had a conflict of interest, then Citizens United would have to be tried again. My problem is how does the Supreme Court actually regulate conflict of interest issues among justices. We know Elena Kagan recused herself from a series of cases when she got on since she had argued the government's case as Solicitor General but what if she hadn't. What mechanism exists to ensure this aside from impeachment which never will happen?
Rachel Maddow continues to report on the Spokane Martin Luther King bomb. The FBI has said it was the most sophisticated device they have seen in the States. They also claimed its positioning was very professional and that the damage done would have been profound. Federal authorities are already talking about this as "domestic terrorism". White supremacist groups aiming to push for the secession of the Pacific Northwest have been commmenting on this but not claiming credit. We should look back at the Belfast, Maine "dirty nuke" case, which disappeared from the media. There a neo-Nazi, who actually collected Hitler's kitchenware, had all the ingredients for a dirty bomb in his basement. He was upset by the election of Barack Obama and wanted to set the bomb off around Washington,D.C. He was only captured because he had abused his wife once too often and she ratted him out. I would imagine if we probe deep enough in Spokane we'll find some of the white supremacists from Idaho involved.
Speaking of secessionists, the National Enquirer, which gained credibility by exposing the Edwards'affair, reports that Todd Palin may be canoodling with a massage therapist. That's what a member of the Alaska Independence Party might do.
Glenn Beck has returned to his bipolar form. After displaying a slight contrition on Tucson, he is warning the American public about a "Reichstag". Glenn, it already happened, the Republicans took the House.
Paul Ryan has been chosen to respond to President Obama's State of the Union Address. Ryan's Blueprint for America has been buried with all the new GOP craziness. If this surfaces,people will have a field day. Ryan blasted the CBO for actually costing out his Blueprint, which they said would run massive deficits for decades and render the United States a type of Albania. Ryan has been given the most power any Budget Chairman in the House has ever had. He has veto on any budget proposals submitted in the House and also by the Senate in any reconciliation. It should be interesting if he talks about his ideas to privatize Medicare, Social Security and raise taxes on the middle class. Trust me he won't.
Conservatives are panicking over the rise of China. Even Mitt Romney believes the United States has to increase its military spending to compete because "the Chinese army works for very small pay." Of course, Republicans might pass funding for high-speed railso we can compete with China in this and other areas. What is it about economic development that the New GOP doesn't understand?
Personally, I am very skeptical that China will surpass the American economy anytime soon. And I also do not believe they manage capitalism better. I don't believe China can maintain its growth rate at 8% for the foreseeable future, which they claim they need to. Also by the time they are scheduled to surpass our economy, they will have a greater percentage of elderly in their population than we would. What terrifies the Chinese is the prospect of internal instability and their own military strategy suggests that.
Yesterday the Chinese leader tried to reassure Americans that they are playing a mature role in the global system. He pointed to the issues of Iran,Afghanistan and economic issues where the United States and China are cooperating closely. While Americans should be concerned about human rights issues, the preponderance of concern here in Washington is that China is about to surpass us. First, we have to drum up the Islamophobia. Then we can generate the fear of the Yellow Peril. We don't have energy for both right now.
I found it ironic that the Uighurs demonstrated here in Washington against the Chinese government. Under the previous administration, the Uighurs ended up being tortured in Gitmo and interrogated by the Chinese. When President Obama started releasing them, Congress made sure they could not be repatriated to the United States, despite having host families volunteering to take care of them.
But never fear the House Republicans said their agenda was to create jobs. So after the repeal of healthcare, now they are after global warming. This just edged out a new House bill to oppose all federal funding for abortion even though it doesn't exist now and to provide a "conscience clause" for all medical practitoners opposed to abortion. Randall Terry of Operation Rescue plans to run in the Democratic primaries against Barack Obama to make him answer questions on abortion. His past answer has been abortion should be "legal but rare." What more does Randall want? Rick Santorum blasted Obama--who has not said anything on abortion for over a year--for being a black man who condones abortion. Rick is suggesting that African-Americans are most likely to get abortions and that threatens their race. But since Rick is a member of the Christian Right, his main concern is the demographic winter coming for white people in the U.S.
Down in Tucson, the Arizona Tea Party wants to remove Sheriif Dupnick for his comments that the political rhetoric of the country trigger the slaughter. In Arlington, Massachusetts, a right-wing blogger who said "1 down and 537 to go" was arrested for keeping a large stockpile of weapons on hand. Teabaggers were quick to defend him and also are posting blogs arguing that revolutionary violence is OK because the Catholic Just war doctrine applies.
While most Americans supported President Obama's Tucson speech and the ceremony there, Franklin Graham resented the lack of references to Jesus Christ. Since the target of the assassination attempt was a Jewish Congresswoman, you might think references to Jesus might be inappropriate. I did and that's why I thought Eric Holder's long quotes from II Corinthians, which talked more about Jesus Christ than the usual prayers was wrong. I think Franklin was trying indirectly to defend his soul sister Sarah Palin.
The former Navy Chaplain says that the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a threat to national security and is actually a war on God. I always thought the repeal finally made the Navy legitimate."In the Navy..." The only military service represented in the Village People.
Talk about making money, the President's Midas Touch even concerns DADT. The repeal actually saves the American taxpayer $200 million. From TARP to the BP Oil Spill to DADT, Obama just coins money. That's what "Grand Theft Auto" Issa should be investigating. How come a socialist can make so much money?
Meanwhile,in the States, there is an ominous pattern of governments withdrawing Medicare from single Adults. That doesn't sound like anything significant but we are dealing with one of the few parts of the social nets, which supports the mentally ill. Are we going to rehospitalize the mentally ill? Maybe we could privatize mental asylums.
President Obama again betrayed his socialism by appointing GE's CEO Immelt as the head of his economic council, which has been renamed to emphasize jobs. Arianna Huffington seems to be hysterical that Obama ordered a government-wide effort to eliminate unnecessary regulations on business as a way to quietly stimulate the economy. Since this was also done during the Clinton Administration,I really don't see the great danger.
More dangerous is the effort by House Republicans to defund the new Consumer Protection Agency being created by my Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Elizabeth Warren. All she has to do is get it to July and the FED will fund it.
Rep. Peter King wants to start his investigations into American Muslims as part of the intelligence committee. No doubt he will ask Frank Gaffney, Washington's Go-To Islamophobe, to provide scholarly cover. I think we should encourage a widescale witchhunt. How about targeting Kareem Abdul Jabbar for the Muslim plot to corrupt basketball? Cat Stevens for introducing Sufi themes in his music. How about we go after Salmon Rushdie for a change? Why let Iran have all the fun? The possibilities are endless. Then the accused could be waterboarded to see whether they tell the truth. It would be like combining the Inquisition with the Salem Witch Trials and add a little Joe McCarthy. It would be boffo box on Fox News. This is an opportunity the country can't miss. We can then invite Franklin Graham to testify on how evil Islam is and how the Pentagon's National Prayer Committee kicked him off for his position.
Under They envy us our freedom department. I want to thank the Christian community in the United States for their great support for the Chaldean Christians in Iraq, who are being exterminated in the democracy we created. The last Christian left Anbar Province yesterday. Those who haven't been "disappeared" have gone into exile, making the Iraqi refugee flow the largest in the history of the Middle East. Hopefully, our Christians will come to the defense of the followers of John the Baptist, who still live in Iraq but are keeping a low profile. At least those awful Muslims came to the defense of Egypt's Coptic Christians, who had been subjected to suicide bombers and police brutality. The Muslim community in Egypt provided thousands of people to act as human shields against further attacks on the Coptics as they celebrated their Christmas.
Common Cause is taking aim at Supreme Court Justices Fat Tony Scalia and Chuckles Thomas claiming both men have a conflict of interest in the Citizens United case because they attended and participated in the Koch Brothers secret campaign conferences. If it were proven that both men had a conflict of interest, then Citizens United would have to be tried again. My problem is how does the Supreme Court actually regulate conflict of interest issues among justices. We know Elena Kagan recused herself from a series of cases when she got on since she had argued the government's case as Solicitor General but what if she hadn't. What mechanism exists to ensure this aside from impeachment which never will happen?
Rachel Maddow continues to report on the Spokane Martin Luther King bomb. The FBI has said it was the most sophisticated device they have seen in the States. They also claimed its positioning was very professional and that the damage done would have been profound. Federal authorities are already talking about this as "domestic terrorism". White supremacist groups aiming to push for the secession of the Pacific Northwest have been commmenting on this but not claiming credit. We should look back at the Belfast, Maine "dirty nuke" case, which disappeared from the media. There a neo-Nazi, who actually collected Hitler's kitchenware, had all the ingredients for a dirty bomb in his basement. He was upset by the election of Barack Obama and wanted to set the bomb off around Washington,D.C. He was only captured because he had abused his wife once too often and she ratted him out. I would imagine if we probe deep enough in Spokane we'll find some of the white supremacists from Idaho involved.
Speaking of secessionists, the National Enquirer, which gained credibility by exposing the Edwards'affair, reports that Todd Palin may be canoodling with a massage therapist. That's what a member of the Alaska Independence Party might do.
Glenn Beck has returned to his bipolar form. After displaying a slight contrition on Tucson, he is warning the American public about a "Reichstag". Glenn, it already happened, the Republicans took the House.
Paul Ryan has been chosen to respond to President Obama's State of the Union Address. Ryan's Blueprint for America has been buried with all the new GOP craziness. If this surfaces,people will have a field day. Ryan blasted the CBO for actually costing out his Blueprint, which they said would run massive deficits for decades and render the United States a type of Albania. Ryan has been given the most power any Budget Chairman in the House has ever had. He has veto on any budget proposals submitted in the House and also by the Senate in any reconciliation. It should be interesting if he talks about his ideas to privatize Medicare, Social Security and raise taxes on the middle class. Trust me he won't.
Conservatives are panicking over the rise of China. Even Mitt Romney believes the United States has to increase its military spending to compete because "the Chinese army works for very small pay." Of course, Republicans might pass funding for high-speed railso we can compete with China in this and other areas. What is it about economic development that the New GOP doesn't understand?
Personally, I am very skeptical that China will surpass the American economy anytime soon. And I also do not believe they manage capitalism better. I don't believe China can maintain its growth rate at 8% for the foreseeable future, which they claim they need to. Also by the time they are scheduled to surpass our economy, they will have a greater percentage of elderly in their population than we would. What terrifies the Chinese is the prospect of internal instability and their own military strategy suggests that.
Yesterday the Chinese leader tried to reassure Americans that they are playing a mature role in the global system. He pointed to the issues of Iran,Afghanistan and economic issues where the United States and China are cooperating closely. While Americans should be concerned about human rights issues, the preponderance of concern here in Washington is that China is about to surpass us. First, we have to drum up the Islamophobia. Then we can generate the fear of the Yellow Peril. We don't have energy for both right now.
I found it ironic that the Uighurs demonstrated here in Washington against the Chinese government. Under the previous administration, the Uighurs ended up being tortured in Gitmo and interrogated by the Chinese. When President Obama started releasing them, Congress made sure they could not be repatriated to the United States, despite having host families volunteering to take care of them.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Possibly the Last Post of 2009
I've kept my New Year's Resolution simple: I'm not putting plastic explosives in my underwear and I'm getting a haircut. Everything else is up for grabs.
Here's hoping this year brings some peace and calm to our troubled country as well as economic recovery.
A tip: When ever you hear Dick Cheney mouth off, it means that something has occured legally behind the scenes. Cheney's tirade accusing a man of escalating the war in Afghanistan, sending predators to pick off Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Yemen of "pretending we're at war" comes the day it appears that Cheney was explicitly linked to a mass of legal violations in the torture of detainees. Even, according to the legally unsound Bush torture memos,the waterboarding of detainees was illegal "if it wasn't aimed at preventing future attacks on the United States." Apparently, as I have written before, the whole rash of waterboarding was aimed solely at establishing an Al Qaeda--Saddam Hussein to justify the Iraq war and nothing else. The primary pusher of this was Dick Cheney, who was obsessed by the subject. It's ironic that the very administration he attacks is actually trying to protect him. It's like a giant case of chicken.
If you read the White House answer to the Cheney charges, a subtext can be read about basic American strategic errors committed during his watch. Shortly after 9-11, the United States decided to attack Afghanistan and then were planning to "pick off the low-hanging fruit" in Somalia and Yemen. The idea was to wipe out Al Qaeda in both places but the plan got sideswiped by people like Cheney who wanted the war in Iraq. We see the fruits of this blunder today as Al Qaeda restores itself in Yemen and the Obama Administration plays an almost eight-year old game of catch-up in Afghanistan. The underwear bomber incident only underscores the strategic blunder of the Bush Administration during these critical years. Cheney knows this in heart of hearts.
I believe Dick Cheney is coming close to the Nixon zone when Nixon became non compis mentis during the Watergate investigations. Alot of this has a background in the second Bush term. During the first term, Cheney studied the Threat Matrix-we knew the Matrix would come into this. This was all the unfiltered intelligence on every threats against the United States and the President from around planet earth. Most intelligence analysts said these were garbage. Cheney read them everyday and presented them to President Bush everyday. If you inhabited this world, you would go stark raving barkers.
The two personalities Bush personnel said needed a muzzle were Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. The whole Valerie Plame incident gave Bush the excuse to usher Rove out the door and banish Cheney to the Vice Presidency. By 2004, President Bush understood in his own peculiar way that Cheney's way was the wrong way. You began to see langauge about closing Gitmo and we now know that the torture memos were being revised,if not rescinded. All the Cheney rhetoric now is in part to re-fight the bureaucratic battle he lost.
But now with the CIA's Inspector General's Report somewhere in the limbo of being released and the OPR report on the torture lawyers promised soon, the stakes become a little higher.
God knows what will emerge with the millions of e-mails recovered recently because they cover the whole time period of the outing of Valerie Plame and some of the torture times.
It is not incidental that Cheney claims Obama will release hard-bitten terrroists when it has become known that it was what he personally ok'd with the release of the two men who taught the underpants bomber about explosives. My jokes about Cheney's Raiders, referring to Gitmo detainees released to Yemen and Saudi Arabia under the Bush Administration, literally turn out to be true. He was the man who personally approved their transfers. And they are all back in the field.
(Parenthetically--Could we release the remaining Uighurs from Gitmo? If real Al Qaeda people can got to art therapy classes in Saudi Arabia, why can't people who had nothing to do with nothing be released?)
Here's hoping this year brings some peace and calm to our troubled country as well as economic recovery.
A tip: When ever you hear Dick Cheney mouth off, it means that something has occured legally behind the scenes. Cheney's tirade accusing a man of escalating the war in Afghanistan, sending predators to pick off Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Yemen of "pretending we're at war" comes the day it appears that Cheney was explicitly linked to a mass of legal violations in the torture of detainees. Even, according to the legally unsound Bush torture memos,the waterboarding of detainees was illegal "if it wasn't aimed at preventing future attacks on the United States." Apparently, as I have written before, the whole rash of waterboarding was aimed solely at establishing an Al Qaeda--Saddam Hussein to justify the Iraq war and nothing else. The primary pusher of this was Dick Cheney, who was obsessed by the subject. It's ironic that the very administration he attacks is actually trying to protect him. It's like a giant case of chicken.
If you read the White House answer to the Cheney charges, a subtext can be read about basic American strategic errors committed during his watch. Shortly after 9-11, the United States decided to attack Afghanistan and then were planning to "pick off the low-hanging fruit" in Somalia and Yemen. The idea was to wipe out Al Qaeda in both places but the plan got sideswiped by people like Cheney who wanted the war in Iraq. We see the fruits of this blunder today as Al Qaeda restores itself in Yemen and the Obama Administration plays an almost eight-year old game of catch-up in Afghanistan. The underwear bomber incident only underscores the strategic blunder of the Bush Administration during these critical years. Cheney knows this in heart of hearts.
I believe Dick Cheney is coming close to the Nixon zone when Nixon became non compis mentis during the Watergate investigations. Alot of this has a background in the second Bush term. During the first term, Cheney studied the Threat Matrix-we knew the Matrix would come into this. This was all the unfiltered intelligence on every threats against the United States and the President from around planet earth. Most intelligence analysts said these were garbage. Cheney read them everyday and presented them to President Bush everyday. If you inhabited this world, you would go stark raving barkers.
The two personalities Bush personnel said needed a muzzle were Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. The whole Valerie Plame incident gave Bush the excuse to usher Rove out the door and banish Cheney to the Vice Presidency. By 2004, President Bush understood in his own peculiar way that Cheney's way was the wrong way. You began to see langauge about closing Gitmo and we now know that the torture memos were being revised,if not rescinded. All the Cheney rhetoric now is in part to re-fight the bureaucratic battle he lost.
But now with the CIA's Inspector General's Report somewhere in the limbo of being released and the OPR report on the torture lawyers promised soon, the stakes become a little higher.
God knows what will emerge with the millions of e-mails recovered recently because they cover the whole time period of the outing of Valerie Plame and some of the torture times.
It is not incidental that Cheney claims Obama will release hard-bitten terrroists when it has become known that it was what he personally ok'd with the release of the two men who taught the underpants bomber about explosives. My jokes about Cheney's Raiders, referring to Gitmo detainees released to Yemen and Saudi Arabia under the Bush Administration, literally turn out to be true. He was the man who personally approved their transfers. And they are all back in the field.
(Parenthetically--Could we release the remaining Uighurs from Gitmo? If real Al Qaeda people can got to art therapy classes in Saudi Arabia, why can't people who had nothing to do with nothing be released?)
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Sunday Morning Blues--The Beat Goes On
The RNC attacked Barack Obama for taking his wife to New York to see August Wilson's "Joe Turner", while Americans are suffering. There's some truth to this, August Wilson's "Radio Golf" is playing here in Washington. He could have stayed home but he probably hasn't gotten that far in Wilson's cycle of plays. Next time, Barack, find a ranch to go to on a weekend.
There goes the neighborhood. President Obama has a habit of ruining favorite places to eat around Washington. Yesterday he stopped into Five Guys in Southeast to buy hamburgers for the White House staff. After he visited Ben's Chili Bowl recently, the place has been mobbed. As Yogi said,"No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded." At this rate all my favorite spots will be out of bounds. Thanks, Barack.
If you want to hear a serious discussion on the constitutionality of gay marriage, find the YouTube of Hardball with Ted Olson and David Boies discussing their defense of gay marriage. It's obvious that Chris Matthews doesn't like the idea and would like to avoid using the word "marriage" when it comes to gays. It's shocking television because someone was allowed to utter rational,sophisticated arguments for--anything.
Bad News for those of us who would like to be sponsors of the Uighurs held at Gitmo.
The Department of Justice informed the Supreme Court that the 17 Uighur men forcibly brought to Gitmo seven years ago "are free to leave" but have no right to come to the United States. The Uighurs are one of history's tragedies which we should be ashamed of contributing to. Muslims from western China, these particular men wandered to Afghanistan, where they lived in a ramshackle village and did received training --once--with old rifles by people 'associated with" the East Turkestan Independence Movement, a group that later allied themselves with Al Qaeda--but after these men had already been seized by American forces. It has been assumed that the United States seized these people in exchange for a vote at the UN on Iraq. Considered terrorists in China--along with the Dalai Lama for that matter, the Bush Administration allowed Chinese officials to interrogate them at Gitmo. There are no charges being brought against them. In fact, the US couldn't find any evidence they had ever participated in any acts of terrorism. Five have already been freed and sent to Albania in 2006. New Gingrich wanted them returned to China, where they would be executed. There is an Uighur American community in Arlington, Virginia who have said they are willing to house and monitor the former prisoners. But both Republicans and Democrats have whipped up local fears about this so forget about it. However, my counter prosposal is that Khalid Sheik Mohammed be released to live in David Addington's house here in Alexandria, which God struck with lightening last year.
The Anti-Defamation League has sent out a warning that White Supremacist groups plan to recruit at the July 4 Tea Parties. The statement is well-worth reading. "Whites Forward" created the Tea Party Americans Coalition (TPAC) as a "working group for serious White racialist Activists in the US who want to effectively coordinate our efforts and intervene for effect in Tea Party-type events." They hope that TPAC will be the "genesis of our new White mass movement and the fertile womb of our pro-White political party." The coalition includes the Council of Conservative Citizens, the Nationalist Coalition, David Duke's EURO and European Americans United. Erich Gliebe, who heads the West Virginia-based National Alliance, claims that he experienced an increase in applications and requests for information as a result of the April 15th tea parties.
Frank Rich decimated the whole Beltway circus concerning the Cheney speech at AEI. In his NYT piece "Who is to Blame for the Next Attack", he dismantles Cheney's arguments piece-by-piece. Most interesting is his paragraph on the planned hydrogen cyanide attack for the New York City subways. The plot was called off 45 days before zero hour. The reason was that Al-Zawahri nixed it because it was not enough of an encore to 9/11, which requires the creation "of an upward arc of rising and terrible expectation" that is "multiplied by time passing." In short, the follow-up has to be something on the order of a nuclear event.
There goes the neighborhood. President Obama has a habit of ruining favorite places to eat around Washington. Yesterday he stopped into Five Guys in Southeast to buy hamburgers for the White House staff. After he visited Ben's Chili Bowl recently, the place has been mobbed. As Yogi said,"No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded." At this rate all my favorite spots will be out of bounds. Thanks, Barack.
If you want to hear a serious discussion on the constitutionality of gay marriage, find the YouTube of Hardball with Ted Olson and David Boies discussing their defense of gay marriage. It's obvious that Chris Matthews doesn't like the idea and would like to avoid using the word "marriage" when it comes to gays. It's shocking television because someone was allowed to utter rational,sophisticated arguments for--anything.
Bad News for those of us who would like to be sponsors of the Uighurs held at Gitmo.
The Department of Justice informed the Supreme Court that the 17 Uighur men forcibly brought to Gitmo seven years ago "are free to leave" but have no right to come to the United States. The Uighurs are one of history's tragedies which we should be ashamed of contributing to. Muslims from western China, these particular men wandered to Afghanistan, where they lived in a ramshackle village and did received training --once--with old rifles by people 'associated with" the East Turkestan Independence Movement, a group that later allied themselves with Al Qaeda--but after these men had already been seized by American forces. It has been assumed that the United States seized these people in exchange for a vote at the UN on Iraq. Considered terrorists in China--along with the Dalai Lama for that matter, the Bush Administration allowed Chinese officials to interrogate them at Gitmo. There are no charges being brought against them. In fact, the US couldn't find any evidence they had ever participated in any acts of terrorism. Five have already been freed and sent to Albania in 2006. New Gingrich wanted them returned to China, where they would be executed. There is an Uighur American community in Arlington, Virginia who have said they are willing to house and monitor the former prisoners. But both Republicans and Democrats have whipped up local fears about this so forget about it. However, my counter prosposal is that Khalid Sheik Mohammed be released to live in David Addington's house here in Alexandria, which God struck with lightening last year.
The Anti-Defamation League has sent out a warning that White Supremacist groups plan to recruit at the July 4 Tea Parties. The statement is well-worth reading. "Whites Forward" created the Tea Party Americans Coalition (TPAC) as a "working group for serious White racialist Activists in the US who want to effectively coordinate our efforts and intervene for effect in Tea Party-type events." They hope that TPAC will be the "genesis of our new White mass movement and the fertile womb of our pro-White political party." The coalition includes the Council of Conservative Citizens, the Nationalist Coalition, David Duke's EURO and European Americans United. Erich Gliebe, who heads the West Virginia-based National Alliance, claims that he experienced an increase in applications and requests for information as a result of the April 15th tea parties.
Frank Rich decimated the whole Beltway circus concerning the Cheney speech at AEI. In his NYT piece "Who is to Blame for the Next Attack", he dismantles Cheney's arguments piece-by-piece. Most interesting is his paragraph on the planned hydrogen cyanide attack for the New York City subways. The plot was called off 45 days before zero hour. The reason was that Al-Zawahri nixed it because it was not enough of an encore to 9/11, which requires the creation "of an upward arc of rising and terrible expectation" that is "multiplied by time passing." In short, the follow-up has to be something on the order of a nuclear event.
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