Friday, May 06, 2011

War Criminals

From Andrew Sullivan:
Here's a great quote:

"Former government lawyer John Yoo taking credit on behalf of the Bush administration for Sunday's strike against Osama bin Laden is like Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic, taking credit for the results of the 1998 Academy Awards," - Andrew Cohen.

Not only do these war criminals and shoddy lawyers refuse to take accountability for their crimes, they tell clear untruths about how the capture of bin Laden was achieved and distort history.


So let us be very clear. The war criminal Dick Cheney presided over the worst lapse in national security since Pearl Harbor, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 people. This rank incompetent failed to get bin Laden at Tora Bora, and then dragged the US on false pretenses into a war in Iraq, empowering Iran's dictatorship, and killing another 5,000 more Americans on a wild goose chase. He presided over the deaths of more than 8,000 Americans, and tens of thousands of Iraqis during his criminally incompetent years in office.


On the other hand, the man who abolished torture as soon as he took office, Barack Obama, captured and killed Osama bin Laden, and captured a massive trove of intelligence, more than two years later. No Americans died in the operation.


What on earth are we debating? How have these delusional maniacs managed to even get us onto this turf? Because they have to. Because when the full truth of these past years are fully in focus, they will be revealed as some of the greatest criminals ever to have wielded power in America.

Mother's Day is coming up...

Thursday, May 05, 2011

Did you know that there is a GOP Presidential Debate tonight?

Well there is and Matt Taibi has a few choice words about the Republican field of candidates (most of whom have declined to attend the Faux News-sponsored event on Crackertown, SC.)

Yes, you read the news right: there is going to be a 2012 presidential debate this evening. Five Republicans are getting together in Greenville, South Carolina to kick off the long process of burying their party as a mainstream political force for the next decade or so. ...snip...
First of all, for the next eighteen months, Obama is going to respond to every single foreign-policy question by holding up Bin Laden’s head and swinging it in front of him like a lantern (metaphorically speaking, of course)....snip...

[F]or the next eighteen months, Barack Obama can walk into Florida and Arizona and California and explain to every person over 50 that the Republicans want to eliminate the Medicare program as they know it. The Republicans meanwhile are already running sideways away from Ryan’s program[.] ... And this is without even taking into consideration the highly negative (for the Republicans) demographic picture heading into 2012, in which a Republican base that skews older, male, and white is slowly shrinking, while Obama’s urban, ethnic, and young base is growing....snip...

Of course the one way to combat all of this would be to put forward a unifying, charismatic candidate whose personality reaches across the middle and snags that extra 4-5 percent of middle-ground undecideds who would put the Republicans back on top. But that’s exactly who the Republicans do not have. Instead, the potential Republican field is made up of two distinct types of candidates: loony-ass, polarizing insurgents drunk on Christian mysticism and/or ego sickness (Michelle Bachmann, Donald Trump, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin) and waffling, opportunistic bores destined to spend most of the primary campaign arguing that they are less terrifying to imagine holding the nuclear briefcase than anyone from the first group (Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney).

Photoshopping The Situation Room

"The Situation" in the Situation Room

On them it looks good...

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

GOP declares war on women

Those Neanderthal jerks in the GOP have decided that me know more than women about a woman's body. There are a couple of items in the blogoshpere today that every woman should know. Any woman who votes for these turds should have their heads examined... seriously!  

PAY ATTENTION LADIES!!! The GOP wants control of your uterus. 

From Think Progress:
The 2010 conservative tidal wave has thrust the nation into an open era of anti-choice zealotry. Nearly 1,000 anti-choice bills are advancing through GOP-led state houses nationwide — their absurdity matched only by the House GOP’s No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion bill which will be voted on later today. At the epicenter of this anti-choice maelstrom is Planned Parenthood, a women’s health organization that provides vital services like STD tests and treatment, cancer screenings, and contraception to low-income women. Only 3 percent of their work is abortion services and, per federal law, no public funds go towards that service.

But the mere idea of abortions has been enough to spur an all out campaign to gut the organization by any means necessary. Indeed, picking up where the House GOP left off, Indiana is set to become the first state to defund Planned Parenthood with Kansas and several other states not too far behind. But, in their crusade to eviscerate Planned Parenthood, states like Indiana, Texas, and Oklahoma are willing to accept a great number of low-income women and children as collateral damage:
INDIANA: Of the 28 Planned Parenthood clinics in Indiana, only four even offer abortion services. But Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) is committed to denying all 28 clinics the $2 million in Medicaid funds they normally receive — a move that will gut the STD testing and treatment, cancer screening and prevention, and contraception services provided to at least 9,300 low-income women in the state. What’s more, because it is illegal for any state to deny payment to health care clinics that provide “a constitutionally protected service,” the state would be penalized with sanctions that could cost all family-planning or women’s health-care providers $4 million in Medicaid funding, leaving thousands more low-income women bereft of vital services.
TEXAS: Texas GOP state senators put a “poison pill” into a women’s health program designed to ensure that “groups like Planned Parenthood do not receive state funding.” The Demonstration Project for Women’s Health Care Services is designed to help poor, uninsured women receive health care including family planning services. While 90 percent of the program is federally funded and Texas (and federal) law already forbids any state money from being spent on abortions. The poison pill makes it so the entire Demonstration Project program “is shut down if an abortion [provider] files and wins a lawsuit against the provision preventing funding.” Thus, should a health clinic file a lawsuit and win, as it has in the past, the entire program that serves 40,000 Texas women will be eliminated.
OKLAHOMA: So “disturbed” is Oklahoma state Rep. Jason Murphey (R) by Planned Parenthood’s abortion referral services, he is planning legislation that would make nutrition vouchers inaccessible to thousands of low-income mothers. The federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program provides federal grants for food vouchers, regular check-ups, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant women and mothers of young children. Oklahoma distributes these funds through 9 independent contractors, including Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma. Because Murphey’s plan would prohibit any independent contractor from passing out vouchers, the Huffington Post reports that it would severely jeopardize over 9,300 low-income Oklahoman women’s ability to afford nutritional food for their children.
Not to be outdone by the states, it appears some House Republicans are willing to take the entire economy hostage by linking their draconian H.R. 3 measure to the debt ceiling increase. “What we use the debt limit to leverage is really up to the leaders, [but] I would think this would be one of the bills that we could be asking for,” said ardent anti-choice Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA).

That woman is an idiot!

Here we go again.

Sarah Palin had a Katie Couric moment over the weekend during the White House Correspondents Dinner festivities.

At the MSNBC after party, NBC's blog NBCU Direct asked several party attendees the following question: Who do you think is the most influential journalist today?

But while most of the attendees had no problem coming up with answers (Eliot Spitzer said Brian Williams, as did Andrea Mitchell, while SNL's Bill Hader went for The New Yorker's David Grann), Palin fumbled when asked.

"Oh my goodness, that's a great question," she said, before turning to her husband Todd and asking for his input.

When Todd also balked, Palin came back and said, "Um, gosh, that's a great question, I have to think about it, OK? Because there are many."
As Palin walked away from the camera, she ran into her Fox News pal Greta Van Susteren, and then turned back to the NBC cameras to shout, "Greta Van Susteren is the most influential journalist!"