The Justice Department said Friday that it had opened a criminal investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a secret National Security Agency program under which President George W. Bush authorized eavesdropping on people in the United States without a court warrant.
In other words, instead of investigating the actual lawbreaking, these "law enforcement" agents are investigating the stool pigeons who informed the public about it.
Could we have better proof that gangsters are running the government?
Friday, December 30, 2005
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Daily Show, now for Windoze only
We're sorry, but MotherLoad will only play on PCs with Windows XP or 2000/SP4+. Click below to make sure you launch our standard media player for video (except MotherLoad exclusives).
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?ml_collection=23917
Yeah, I use Windows, too, but sometimes I like to use other OS's, and even RealPlayer.
Anybody got any ideas WHY they did this at Comedy Central?
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?ml_collection=23917
Yeah, I use Windows, too, but sometimes I like to use other OS's, and even RealPlayer.
Anybody got any ideas WHY they did this at Comedy Central?
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Go figure
Is there nothing that will wake Americans up?!?
Early Iraq election results show Shi'ite strength
Monday 19 December 2005, 7:59am EST
"BAGHDAD, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Early results from the count of votes in more than half Iraq's regions, including Baghdad, confirmed a strong showing for the ruling Shi'ite Islamist Alliance, figures from the Electoral Commission showed on Monday."
Meanwhile back at Crawford Ranch:
Bush ratings rise on Iraq election, economy - poll
Tue Dec 20, 2005 1:38 AM GMT
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A successful Iraq election and an improved domestic economic outlook have lifted U.S. President George W. Bush's job-approval rating to its highest level since March, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Monday.
"Forty-seven percent of Americans now approve of Bush's job performance, up from Bush's all-time low approval rating of 39 percent in November and the president's best showing since March when it was 50 percent, ABC said."
Bush is handing Iraq over to pro-Iranian Shi'ite extremists who hate America, but know how to exploit the idiotic people who are running this administration
Early Iraq election results show Shi'ite strength
Monday 19 December 2005, 7:59am EST
"BAGHDAD, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Early results from the count of votes in more than half Iraq's regions, including Baghdad, confirmed a strong showing for the ruling Shi'ite Islamist Alliance, figures from the Electoral Commission showed on Monday."
Meanwhile back at Crawford Ranch:
Bush ratings rise on Iraq election, economy - poll
Tue Dec 20, 2005 1:38 AM GMT
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A successful Iraq election and an improved domestic economic outlook have lifted U.S. President George W. Bush's job-approval rating to its highest level since March, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Monday.
"Forty-seven percent of Americans now approve of Bush's job performance, up from Bush's all-time low approval rating of 39 percent in November and the president's best showing since March when it was 50 percent, ABC said."
Bush is handing Iraq over to pro-Iranian Shi'ite extremists who hate America, but know how to exploit the idiotic people who are running this administration
Monday, December 19, 2005
Bush on Constitution and warrants
Speaker: President George W. Bush
Title: President Bush: Information Sharing, Patriot Act Vital to Homeland Security
Location: Buffalo, NY
Date: 04/20/2004
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 20, 2004
President Bush: Information Sharing, Patriot Act Vital to Homeland Security
Remarks by the President in a Conversation on the USA Patriot Act
Kleinshans Music Hall
Buffalo, New York
9:49 A.M. EDT
. . .
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires-a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
Title: President Bush: Information Sharing, Patriot Act Vital to Homeland Security
Location: Buffalo, NY
Date: 04/20/2004
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 20, 2004
President Bush: Information Sharing, Patriot Act Vital to Homeland Security
Remarks by the President in a Conversation on the USA Patriot Act
Kleinshans Music Hall
Buffalo, New York
9:49 A.M. EDT
. . .
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires-a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
Friday, December 16, 2005
Wingnut for sale!
Doug Bandow, a Cato Institute senior fellow and columnist for Copley News Service took money from Jack Abramoff to write columns, Business Week reported.
In fact Bandow has rather obviously been without principles. His first reaction to the Miers nomination was that appointing someone unqualified wasn't enough, they should be even more unqualified than Miers. His second take, less than a fortnight later, was the opposite.
Now we know who's been pulling his strings.
In fact Bandow has rather obviously been without principles. His first reaction to the Miers nomination was that appointing someone unqualified wasn't enough, they should be even more unqualified than Miers. His second take, less than a fortnight later, was the opposite.
Now we know who's been pulling his strings.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Israel
Personally I'd love it if all the Israelis came to the United States. The US has done very well by its Jews (and of course vice versa) so I think if we got more that would be even better. The Middle East's loss would be our gain.
But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is wrong when he says that if others harmed the Jewish community and created problems for the Jewish community, they have to pay the price themselves because the US has discriminated far less against Jews than Iran and other Middle Eastern countries have. Sure, medieval Islam was very tolerant of Jews, arguably more tolerant than medieval Christian societies were. However, Jews need to ask Muslims today "What have you done for us lately?" There are a lot of Israelis, a lot, who are refugees from Muslim persecution, and Muslims cannot continue to say Christians are the only cause of the problem. There are statistically no Jews, NONE, who want to emigrate to Muslim countries. The United States continues to attract Jews, just as it attracts persecuted minorities from around the world. Far more Israelis become Americans than vice versa. How many countries can say that?
Come to think of it, if we can't have all the Jews, could we at least take the Palestinians? They are some of the best educated and most entrepreneurial of all Arabs, with the possible exception of the Lebanese. The United States has done well by its Lebanese and other Arab Americans. I think we could use some more. Send me your huddled masses in the refugee camps, please. I should like to lift my lamp beside the golden door again.
But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is wrong when he says that if others harmed the Jewish community and created problems for the Jewish community, they have to pay the price themselves because the US has discriminated far less against Jews than Iran and other Middle Eastern countries have. Sure, medieval Islam was very tolerant of Jews, arguably more tolerant than medieval Christian societies were. However, Jews need to ask Muslims today "What have you done for us lately?" There are a lot of Israelis, a lot, who are refugees from Muslim persecution, and Muslims cannot continue to say Christians are the only cause of the problem. There are statistically no Jews, NONE, who want to emigrate to Muslim countries. The United States continues to attract Jews, just as it attracts persecuted minorities from around the world. Far more Israelis become Americans than vice versa. How many countries can say that?
Come to think of it, if we can't have all the Jews, could we at least take the Palestinians? They are some of the best educated and most entrepreneurial of all Arabs, with the possible exception of the Lebanese. The United States has done well by its Lebanese and other Arab Americans. I think we could use some more. Send me your huddled masses in the refugee camps, please. I should like to lift my lamp beside the golden door again.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
General Clark's latest prescription
His NYT op-ed
My response:
The perfect can be the enemy of the good, and especially in the Middle East you often have to look for a lesser evil. Lesser evilism is actually a major principle in Islamic law.
Here's the problem I see with this column's conclusion:
First, the Iraqis must change the Constitution as quickly as possible after next week's parliamentary elections. Most important, oil revenues should be declared the property of the central government, not the provinces. And the federal concept must be modified to preclude the creation of a Shiite autonomous region in the south.
Asking Iraqis to change their constitution is probably unrealistic., and I'm not sure how much attention they are going to pay to the Constitution anyway. Federalism is not well understood in the Arab world, their only word for it is a loan, and this so-called "federalism" may be only a prelude to partition. And what if you got a unitary state? It and its oil revenues would be dominated by the 60% Shi'ites anyway.
I see no good option here, nor much chance of getting influence. Our least bad option now may be handing over to a Shi'ite theocracy. This was our nightmare from Reagan through Clinton, but Bush II has balled things up, perhaps beyond retrieval.
Also, a broad initiative to reduce sectarian influence within government institutions is long overdue.
That's been tried. It's called Ba'athism. It is totally discredited and didn't work very well at defusing sectarian tendencies. I think it's too late for us to try doing it now.
Maybe we should have tried to educate our Cold War clients, especially in the Islamic world, about American principles such as democracy, freedom of religion, and federalism. Maybe we should do that now. But we haven't. Secularism was associated with Saddam, just as multi-ethnicity in Yugoslavia was associated with Communism. Speaking of which, I'd be interested to hear your comparisons between Iraq and your experiences in the former Yugoslavia, general.
What's the least bad proposal for an American policy that I have seen yet? This column, even though I respectfully disagree with part of it. Thank you, sir, and I wish you were running American foreign policy, but right now I think our best option was our worst nightmare not long ago. The alternatives in Iraq seem to be civil war, or even a new Al-Qa'ida base. You're right that we can't just pull out, but we have to hand over to someone else, some kind of international force, that we can trust. And no one is going to help Bush out now.
Even worse, I don't see much chance of getting a change in US course before 2008.
When that time comes I'm ready to back you again.
His further discussion:
We have three interests in Iraq: preventing a "terrorist " claim of victory there, leaving behind a stable, integral and peaceful Iraq which doesn't threaten its neighbors, and dealing with other regional problems like Iran and Syria. A hasty pullout certainly will be cited by the terorists as a sign of their success. It will demoralize our friends and supercharge their recruiting. My OP-ED yesterday addresses the second interest. On the third, we need strength to deal with Syria and Iran. A pullout driven by cries of woe and partisanship at home just makes us weaker.
What I tried to say yesterday was that against the Sunnis we should be content to aim for reassimilation into society, rather than just killing them. If we continue to try to kill them we just make more enemies....
my comment:
Bush's classic tar baby policy #48157
Posted by Dan Juma on December 7, 2005 - 8:19pm.
We can't leave without making the situation worse, especially when there is no Iraqi security force to take over. What little there is seems to be Shi'ite militia in disguise.
Yet it is our presence which is inflaming the situation. We have to bring someone else into it, maybe Arab League, or UN, or international Muslim force. Yet the Republican administration will not even invite Democrats into a war cabinet the way FDR had Republicans in his WWII cabinet. Forget about anyone else.
The situation will continue to deteriorate until Bush is replaced. This policy proposal is the least bad option I have seen, and the best positioning for the 2006 and 2008 elections I have seen from a Democrat. Keep trying to explain the situation to people and especially keep trying to influence policy. Iraq is not Vietnam. Vietnam only involved Vietnamese nationalism, Iraq involves Arab and Islamic nationalisms.
Sure, we should try to bring the Sunnis into the society, but ultimately it is up to the Shi'ites to accept them. Can we make these people love each other? I don't think so.
My response:
The perfect can be the enemy of the good, and especially in the Middle East you often have to look for a lesser evil. Lesser evilism is actually a major principle in Islamic law.
Here's the problem I see with this column's conclusion:
First, the Iraqis must change the Constitution as quickly as possible after next week's parliamentary elections. Most important, oil revenues should be declared the property of the central government, not the provinces. And the federal concept must be modified to preclude the creation of a Shiite autonomous region in the south.
Asking Iraqis to change their constitution is probably unrealistic., and I'm not sure how much attention they are going to pay to the Constitution anyway. Federalism is not well understood in the Arab world, their only word for it is a loan, and this so-called "federalism" may be only a prelude to partition. And what if you got a unitary state? It and its oil revenues would be dominated by the 60% Shi'ites anyway.
I see no good option here, nor much chance of getting influence. Our least bad option now may be handing over to a Shi'ite theocracy. This was our nightmare from Reagan through Clinton, but Bush II has balled things up, perhaps beyond retrieval.
Also, a broad initiative to reduce sectarian influence within government institutions is long overdue.
That's been tried. It's called Ba'athism. It is totally discredited and didn't work very well at defusing sectarian tendencies. I think it's too late for us to try doing it now.
Maybe we should have tried to educate our Cold War clients, especially in the Islamic world, about American principles such as democracy, freedom of religion, and federalism. Maybe we should do that now. But we haven't. Secularism was associated with Saddam, just as multi-ethnicity in Yugoslavia was associated with Communism. Speaking of which, I'd be interested to hear your comparisons between Iraq and your experiences in the former Yugoslavia, general.
What's the least bad proposal for an American policy that I have seen yet? This column, even though I respectfully disagree with part of it. Thank you, sir, and I wish you were running American foreign policy, but right now I think our best option was our worst nightmare not long ago. The alternatives in Iraq seem to be civil war, or even a new Al-Qa'ida base. You're right that we can't just pull out, but we have to hand over to someone else, some kind of international force, that we can trust. And no one is going to help Bush out now.
Even worse, I don't see much chance of getting a change in US course before 2008.
When that time comes I'm ready to back you again.
His further discussion:
We have three interests in Iraq: preventing a "terrorist " claim of victory there, leaving behind a stable, integral and peaceful Iraq which doesn't threaten its neighbors, and dealing with other regional problems like Iran and Syria. A hasty pullout certainly will be cited by the terorists as a sign of their success. It will demoralize our friends and supercharge their recruiting. My OP-ED yesterday addresses the second interest. On the third, we need strength to deal with Syria and Iran. A pullout driven by cries of woe and partisanship at home just makes us weaker.
What I tried to say yesterday was that against the Sunnis we should be content to aim for reassimilation into society, rather than just killing them. If we continue to try to kill them we just make more enemies....
my comment:
Bush's classic tar baby policy #48157
Posted by Dan Juma on December 7, 2005 - 8:19pm.
We can't leave without making the situation worse, especially when there is no Iraqi security force to take over. What little there is seems to be Shi'ite militia in disguise.
Yet it is our presence which is inflaming the situation. We have to bring someone else into it, maybe Arab League, or UN, or international Muslim force. Yet the Republican administration will not even invite Democrats into a war cabinet the way FDR had Republicans in his WWII cabinet. Forget about anyone else.
The situation will continue to deteriorate until Bush is replaced. This policy proposal is the least bad option I have seen, and the best positioning for the 2006 and 2008 elections I have seen from a Democrat. Keep trying to explain the situation to people and especially keep trying to influence policy. Iraq is not Vietnam. Vietnam only involved Vietnamese nationalism, Iraq involves Arab and Islamic nationalisms.
Sure, we should try to bring the Sunnis into the society, but ultimately it is up to the Shi'ites to accept them. Can we make these people love each other? I don't think so.
Monday, December 05, 2005
What a crazy world this is
Some people throw away delicacies because they have too much food while others are starving. The Niger famine is particularly reprehensible because the world could see it coming. It is particularly strange because it seems to contradict Amartya Sen's claim that democracies don't have famines.
Most of all, What is to be done?
Find out what you can do.
Most of all, What is to be done?
Find out what you can do.
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