So now we have another "democratic" senator, eh? GREAT! Just what we needed - another ally of the Israeli Spy Ring! FUCK MAN, are we Democrats REALLY as big of whores as this makes us look? Really?via

I have no idea who the

smiley fuck is on the graph

WONDERING IF THE BUSH/CHENEY CREW MIGHT BE PACKING TO MOVE TO THE PARAGUAY HIDEOUT?

FROM A POST BY PAUL BEGALA AT HUFFPO:

...I was referencing the statement of a different member of the Senate: John McCain. On November 29, 2007, Sen. McCain, while campaigning in St. Petersburg, Florida, said, "Following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding."

"McCain is referencing the Tokyo Trials, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as 'water cure,' 'water torture' and 'waterboarding,' according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning." Politifact went on to report, "A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps."

Here's the money quote from Politifact:

"McCain is referencing the Tokyo Trials, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as 'water cure,' 'water torture' and 'waterboarding,' according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning." Politifact went on to report, "A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps."

GO.READ

Made Republican Condoleeza Rice: When the president approves it, it is not illegal

Like I said last week - let's just allow this "torture memo" action/reaction to percolate for a while longer before proceeding to prosecution. These horrible wingnuts will dispense the rope necessary...

unfucking believable!
click title above for the article at RAW STORY or HERE for the one at HUFFPO

YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK or HOW TO SCARE THE HELL OUT OF MILLIONS FOR ONLY $600,000 OF YOUR MONEY.

I AM BEGINNING TO WONDER IF PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS THE BALLS TO FIRE ANYONE FOR ANYTHING!

If nothing ELSE, the thoughtless dipshit responsible for this should be made to DONATE the squandered amount to some sort of clinic in New York City or something before heading to the unemployment office!

TO KEEP UP TO DATE ON THE SWINE FLU NEWS AND INFORMATION SUBSCRIBE TO EMERGENCY EMAIL DOT ORG

You can configure your subscription to bring you emails on this or any number of other emergencies like weather or whatever....just sayin'...

Chicago's South Side to Get Biggest Urban Solar Power Plant in the US

It shakes down like this: $60 million + 33,000 solar panels + 39 acres in the South Side of Chicago + Obama's stimulus = one solid, 10 megawatt producin' solar power plant. And it should be up and running by the end of this year. OH YEA, MAN...SCIENCE IS BACK!

War crimes will
be prosecuted,
war criminals
will be punished
and it will be
no defense to say,
"I was just
following orders."
March 17, 2003
President GWTF BUSH
speech about Iraq
in his run-up to Cheney's
LIE WAR

Thanks to my
younger brother
for finding
this for me

City of Paris Puts Map of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Online

Read the story HERE, while we wait for China to get our electric cars built for us because most of us can't afford a $40,000+ GM Volt!

SUNDAY CHURCH MUSIC IS BACK! BRING SOME BLUES - MAKE MINE BADASS!

Sweet Home Chicago - Buddy Guy/Eric Clapton

So much we still need to know PLEASE USE OUR HANDY CLICK~N~READ

Guanatanamo prison at sunrise, November 2008 (AP photo).

NiemanWatchdog.org is publishing a series of articles calling attention to the things we still need to know about torture and other abuses committed by the Bush administration after 9/11. Why the focus on what we don't know? Because when you think about how much remains hidden, how many issues are still unresolved, how many injustices have never been redressed, and how little accountability there has been, it's hard to make the argument that we're ready to move on.

If you, like me, are concerned about this whole "war on terra" abuses issue, please take the time to read and follow this series.

The former commander in charge of Abu Ghraib, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, US Army (Ret.) spoke with Keith Olbermann about the trickle down effect that the illegal torture had on service personal, two of whom are now serving prison sentences for following orders.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Special Prosecutor? Not Just Yet...

FROM DIGBY'S BLOG:

Condoleezza Rice, John D. Ashcroft and at least 10 other top Bush officials reviewed and approved as early as the summer of 2002 the CIA's use of harsh interrogation methods on detainees at secret prisons, including waterboarding that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has described as illegal torture, according to a detailed timeline furnished by Holder to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

At a moment when the Justice Department is deciding whether former officials who set interrogation policy or formulated the legal justifications for it should be investigated for committing crimes, the new timeline lists the members of the Bush administration who were present when the CIA's director and its general counsel explained exactly which questioning methods were to be used and how those sessions proceeded.

Rice gave a key early approval, when, as Bush's national security adviser, she met on July 17, 2002, with the CIA's then-director, George J. Tenet, and "advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaydah," subject to approval by the Justice Department, according to the timeline. Rice and four other White House officials had been briefed two months earlier on "alternative interrogation methods, including waterboarding," it states. Waterboarding is a technique that simulates drowning.

A year later, in July 2003, the CIA briefed Rice, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Attorney General Ashcroft, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and National Security Council legal adviser John Bellinger on the use of waterboarding and other techniques, it states. They "reaffirmed that the CIA program was lawful and reflected administration policy."

GO.READ

I SAY, stand down on the SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TALK for a week or two. Let's wait and see what crawls out from under the rugs in the basements of some of these 'people'. I mean, we should give them all the rope they want if they are willing to do us the favor of throwing it over the tree branch for us...just sayin'...

WORLD EARTH DAY = New Japan mission to hunt 60 minke whales

TOKYO (AFP) — Japan was set to launch another whaling mission Wednesday, aiming to catch up to 60 minke whales off its northeastern coast for what it calls research, the government said.

Environmental group Sea Shepherd condemned the launch of the annual hunt, which follows a recent Antarctic expedition by Japan that netted 680 whales.

"It doesn't matter whether it's 60 or 680 whales, it's too many," said Greenpeace International spokesman Greg McNevin. "They can perfectly well study whales without killing them."

Japan hunts whales using a loophole in a 1986 international moratorium on commercial whaling that allows "lethal research" on the mammals, and makes no secret of the fact that the animals' meat is then served as food.

"The purpose of the research is to collect basic data for resuming sustainable commercial whaling in the future," Hiroko Furukawa, an official at Japan's Fisheries Agency, told AFP on Tuesday.

Four whaling ships and one designated research vessel will set sail from Ayukawa port in northern Miyagi prefecture and hunt whales within 80 kilometres (50 miles) off the coast until late May, the official said.

Greenpeace, which also accuses Japanese whalers of embezzling whale meat, protested last week when Japan's fleet returned from a five-month Antarctic mission.

The mission was marked by tense standoffs at sea with militant activists.

The Japanese Fisheries Agency said the environmentalist group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society made it impossible for the whaling vessels to operate on 16 days of the 100-day whale hunt.

The six ships caught 679 minke and one fin whale on the mission, the agency said.

That was well below its planned haul of between 765 and 935 of the giant mammals.

Japan will launch the new whaling mission ahead of the International Whaling Commission's annual general meeting in June in Madeira, Portugal.

The focus of negotiations is now whether to allow Japan to conduct commercial whaling near its coast if it scales down the Antarctic hunt.

Japan defends whaling as a tradition and accuses Westerners of disrespecting its culture. It has threatened to leave the IWC if it does not shift to what Tokyo believes is its original purpose, managing a sustainable kill of whales.

Bailout’s top cop probes twenty TARP fraud cases

Neil Barofsky, the top watchdog over the government’s financial bailout efforts, is pursuing 20 civil and criminal investigations into potential fraud in the programs.

In an interview with The Hill, Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), said he has urged his staff of 37 to zero in on fraud, push cases and deter crime.

GO.READ
Nice to see the Justice department working for the PEOPLE again!

You may be interested to know I found this story over at BAILOUT WATCH

Glutton for punishment?

Not angry enough about the "financial crisis"
yet?

4 more reasons to be outraged:

1. Goldman Sachs became profitable again -- by pioneering a new round of accounting tricks. In its report on the first quarter of 2009, Goldman claimed a profit of $1.8 billion. How did the banking giant do it? By magically making December disappear.

2. Edward Liddy, the former Goldman Sachs board member installed as the head of AIG by former Goldman Sachs chairman Hank Paulson, turns out to have holdings in Goldman Sachs of more than $3 million -- raising serious questions about potential conflicts of interest and the role Goldman Sachs played in the initial decision to bail out AIG.

3. Pension funds are just now starting to get "uneasy" about their Wall Street investments. CalPERS, the nation's largest pension fund, has finally come to the conclusion that it should consider insisting that fees be performance-based, instead of, as the New York Times put it, "an arrangement where hedge fund managers could collect hefty fees regardless of whether the funds made or lost money."

4. The three big credit rating agencies -- Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch -- stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars in the government's latest plan to ease the credit markets.

OH YES, THERE IS MUCH MUCH MORE TO BE READ HERE...

NO VASELINE, BUTTER, OR EVEN GODDAMNED MAYONAISE OFFERED...BEND OVER AND TAKE IT LIKE A MAN, YOU WHINY TAXPAYERS!

In a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing, former Halliburton unit KBR complained that it will be at a “competitive disadvantage” to win “large-scale” international contracts because it is being forced to comply with U.S. laws.
Last month, KBR pleaded guilty to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and admitted that it paid $180 million in "consulting fees" to two agents for use in bribing Nigerian government officials to win a lucrative construction contract for the Bonny Island natural gas liquefaction plant while former Vice President Dick Cheney headed the corporation. KBR paid a $402 million fine as part of its plea deal.

WELL NOW, AINT THAT A BITCH?

SECRET MEMOS POINT DIRECTLY TO BUSH CREW CRIMES!

Disturbing secret memos released yesterday detail the sadistic interrogation methods the Bush administration authorized the CIA to use on detainees. These memos provide shocking confirmation of high-level involvement in the Bush torture program.

It's appalling to see how far our nation strayed from our commitment to human rights. To restore our values we must demand accountability from those responsible.

The last thing America can do now is adopt a “let bygones be bygones” approach to these despicable and indefensible activities.

In America, no one is above the law -- and when crimes have been committed, our legal system demands accountability.

It took five long years for the ACLU to force these memos out into the open. And, no matter how long it takes, we’re going to keep pushing until those responsible for these heinous acts are held accountable.

Enforcing the law is not a political decision. In America, there aren’t seasons when we enforce the law and other seasons when we simply ignore it.

Slamming people against walls. Placing them in stress positions for prolonged periods. Waterboarding them. These are the kinds of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that these outrageous memos seek to justify.

In short, as one of the Bush torture memos openly acknowledges, they seek to permit activities that our own State Department routinely condemns as torture.

We can’t just say “Tsk. Tsk. That should never have happened” and walk away. We must demonstrate our commitment to the rule of law and demand accountability if our country is going to move forward.

Teabag Tax Protest My Aching Ass! Click HERE to send a real message!

They covered their faces, massed in the streets, and destroyed the property of a giant global corporation. Declaring an end to global trade run by the East India Company that was destroying local economies, this small, masked minority started a revolution with an act of rebellion later called the Boston Tea Party.

HERE COMES THE NEW, IMPROVED, TEA BAGGED REPUBLICAN PARTY!

We have an AARP VISA credit card. The first of June it is going from 7.24% annual interest rate to 11.24% annual interest rate! I'm tellin' ya folks, it don't pay to be nice to banks!

The Worst Giveaway Yet: Another $50 Billion for Rust-Bucket Nukes?

IF NUCLEAR POWER IS SUCH A GREAT DEAL, WHY DO WE CITIZENS HAVE TO SUBSIDISE THEM WITH OUR (LESS THAN EVER) TAX MONEY?

• "...No independent financiers will take an un-subsidized flier on new reactors. Nuke operators can't get private insurance on a major melt-down. With the proposed Yucca Mountain dump all but dead, the industry -- after fifty years -- has no certified place to take its high-level radioactive waste...

• The nuke power industry is back at the public trough for the fourth time in two years demanding $50 billion in loan guarantees to build new reactors...

• The latest demand for a $50 billion taxpayer handout to the nuclear power industry has been sleazed into the Senate budget bill...

• The first terror jet to hit the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 flew directly over Indian Point, whose elderly containments could not withstand an airplane's impact...

• But the NRC's willingness to re-license the rickety, trouble-plagued Oyster Creek signals a willingness to ignore a wide range of serious health, safety and environmental concerns.

Thus pushers of the "Peaceful Atom" are pumping hard for taxpayer handouts and against meaningful regulation, even for the oldest and most decrepit reactors..." PLEASE, READ THE WHOLE STORY HERE. THE WASTE PRODUCT AND FALLOUT FROM THESE PLANTS IS PLUTONIUM - THE NUMBER ONE MOST LETHAL AND DANGEROUS POISON EVER KNOWN.

**Note** Half-life: the time it takes a radioactive substance to lose half its radioactive energy. After two half lives, a quarter of the sample is unchanged and after three, an eighth. Many highly radioactive materials such as plutonium must go through several half-lives before they become safe to handle without protection. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years.

Interior secretary: Wind could replace coal power

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is optimistic about the potential of wind power to help wean the U.S. from dependence on foreign oil.

"The idea that wind energy has the potential to replace most of our coal-burning power today is a very real possibility," he said. "It is not technology that is pie-in-the sky; it is here and now," Salazar said...

A member of the American Coal Council, for example, told the Associated Press he thinks Salazar is too optimistic with his offshore wind estimates...

...oil and gas industry representatives expressed concern about the Obama Administration promotion of renewables...

OH NOES! NOBODY WANTS OUR DIRTY STUFF NO MORE!

THERE IS ONLY ONE GARDEN PLANET, AND WE ARE VERY CLOSE TO RUINING IT...

GENERAL MOTORS PLANS IT'S RESCUE

WITH A $40,000 ELECTRIC CAR!
HOW BRILLIANT IS THAT!

'toon found HERE

US military: 5 American soldiers, 2 Iraqi policemen killed in suicide truck bombing in Mosul

Please click the title above to read the story. While reading, please remember: THE IRAQ WAR WAS, AND IS STILL BASED ON LIES (OR "UNTRUTHS" IN WA DEE SEE SPEAK).

OH LOOK, WE ARE STILL THERE, STILL DYING, STILL NOT FIXING THE HUGE SCREW-UP BASED ON THE LIES.

IVAW ON PBS NEWS HOUR - 8 1/2 MINUTES

ECONOMY IMPROVING? DOSEN'T LOOK LIKE IT TO US AS WE PREPARE TO LOSE MY WIFE'S HEALTH CARE INSURANCE...

I AM SO HAPPY TO HEAR THE TALKING HEADS ON THE TEEVEE MACHINE YAPPING AWAY ABOUT HOW WELL THE STOCK MARKET AND HOUSING STARTS ARE DOING. THE GREAT NEWS OF THE FAKE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE AND HOW MUCH THIS FRAUDULENT ECONOMIC CATASTROPHE IS IMPROVING.

That said, here is part of an email in response from one of my state Senators in Washington state:

"It’s important to remember that we legislators came to Olympia as teachers, nurses, business professionals and the like interested in strengthening education, improving access to health care and making our state a better place to do business. We did not come here to decimate the kind of core government services that will be weakened in this budget.

I recognize the all-cuts budget we have proposed may not fully reflect Washington values. But it does continue our commitment to the most vulnerable and strategically leaves intact programs with the best chance of surviving a multi-year economic downturn.

This budget doesn’t pick winners and losers. It shares the sacrifice throughout all government programs.

With tax collections continuing to fall, our budget cuts 60 percent deeper than Gov. Chris Gregoire did when she introduced her plan in December. The Senate plan would eliminate as many as 8,000 jobs for teachers, higher education workers and other state employees as well as 10,500 seats in state colleges and universities.

Though both programs would be kept intact, the plan would eliminate subsidized health insurance more than 40,000 of the state’s working poor and more than 3,000 deemed unemployable due to a physical or mental handicap would lose general assistance payments. Funding for hospitals, some children’s vaccines, property poor school districts and nursing homes would be slashed."

NOW I DON'T KNOW WHO IS BULLSHITTING WHOM AROUND HERE, BUT FROM OUT HERE IN THE REAL AMERICA, THINGS AINT LOOKIN SO FUKKEN ROSY!

WE ARE BEING FLIM-FLAMMED BY SOME REAL SMOOTH OPERATORS HERE, AND THERE AINT A DAMNED THING WE CAN DO.

Wagoner's pension secure as GM's workers could be hit THE DAMNED WTF'S JUST KEEP COMING, DON'T THEY?

"Wagoner's pension payments are being preserved even as those of rank-and-file GM workers are more at risk..."

"According to GM's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he (Wagoner) earned $14.4 million in total compensation in 2007 and $5.4 million in 2008, even though most of his income was tied to the company's performance, which was dismal.

Wagoner had agreed to work for a salary of $1 this year, while Henderson took a 30 percent cut from his $1.7 million salary in 2008. GM executives have received no bonuses for the past three years because those awards were tied to the performance of the company's stock, which has plummeted, closing at $2.70 a share on Monday."

I HAVE TO WONDER IF THIS WHOLE DAMNED 'ECONOMIC COLLAPSE' IS ANOTHER BUSHCO SCAM TO KILL OFF THE UNIONS! REMEMBER FOLKS, IT STARTED DURING BUSH'S REIGN, AND DAMNED NEAR EVERYTHING THAT DID SMELLS TO HIGH HEAVEN!

GATES TO PRESENT 'BIG CUTS' for US defense budget

Not just cuts. "Big" cuts.

Really?

Obama has requested 533.7 billion dollars for the main defense budget for fiscal 2010, excluding most of the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That request marks an increase of four percent compared to fiscal 2009.

That last part, the part that reveals those "big cuts" are actually a four percent increase? That's paragraph 16 of the article. Before the reader gets to that, here are some of the words encountered: "cuts...scale back spending...cutting or scaling back...slash...cutbacks...slashed." It is of course true that some particular programs are being cut, while others are being increased. But the defense budget itself? Not on your life. Well, unless you're in the military. Then it may well be your life. LINK

Maybe they can use this "new and improved" bullshit
coming from the White House
to fertilise their new vegetable patch?

FROM THE GREAT BLOG
"WHATEVER IT IS, I'M AGAINST IT":

Karzai claims to be reconsidering the new marriage law (which my previous posts should have made clear apply only to Shiites, who are a smallish minority in Afghanistan). Today Obama finally spoke out about it (in response to a question at a press conference), calling it “abhorrent.” I could have done without him adding a cultural sensitivity caveat (“And we think that it is very important for us to be sensitive to local culture, but we also think that there are certain basic principles that all nations should uphold, and respect for women and respect for their freedom and integrity is an important principle.”), since I can’t think of any instance in which being “sensitive to local culture” about the position of women in society is not likely to be at the expense of equality (and you’ll notice he talked about respect for women, a rather elastic term – the Shiite fundies would claim to have nothing but respect for their chattel women – and freedom and integrity, but did not mention equality.)

It’s interesting that Western news stories have focused almost exclusively on the marital rape aspect, with many reports leaving out the requirement for wives to get their husbands’ permission to set foot outside the family home, and even fewer mentioning the legalization of marriage of girls after they menstruate for the first time. LINK

Stop your legislators and the Governor from destroying Washington’s health care safety net!

This week, the Legislature decided to rip a hole in our health care safety net that will take us years and maybe even decades to repair. The House and Senate budgets will leave at least 150,000 more people without access to health care, kick tens of thousands of people off Basic Health, abandon our most vulnerable citizens in the most desperate of times, overwhelm your community’s hospital emergency rooms and health clinics, and cut the resources to cope with the impact.

Make no mistake: these cuts will fuel a long-term health care crisis in this state and drive up costs for everyone.

CLICK HERE or ABOVE to send your legislators and Governor Gregoire the message!

Let's see if I have this shit correct: We are spending billions and trillions and gafuckingZILLIONS on wars in Iraq and AfghanifuckingSTAN. We are dumping billions and grillions and bazillions down the banker's endless ratfuckingholes. SO NOW we get a story (with a picture!) of our pal Geithner the money maker studying a new deal with goddamned COLOMBIA to nearly triple the Inter-American Development Bank's capital to $280 billion! HEY FUCK YES GEITHNER YA FUCKING WALL STREET BANKER RIP OFF MOTHERFUCKING ARTIST! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY BUSINESS! SHUT WALL STREET DOWN - IT IS DISEASED AND SHOULD BE ROPED OFF IN QUARENTINE!

assholes....

OUR NICE 3 BEDROOM 2 BATH HOME, 10 MINUTES WALK FROM THE BEACH IS FOR SALE!

The property is over 1/2 acre, includes huge shop building, greenhouse and potting shed. Huge back porch with clear acrylic roof, built-in hot tub, lovely private back yard. The house has all new: siding, roofing, windows, doors. Now in the process of repainting inside, and hope to have new flooring and carpet in soon. $189,000. joetruck AT gmail.com

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION AND PICTURES

New Public Database Reveals First-Hand Accounts of How Toxic Burn Pits Are Making U.S. Troops Sick

Y'know, I go out of my way to not allow anything plastic into the paper that I burn as trash in a barrel. The DOD is not even THAT SMART. This story is unfucking believable!

This story of the burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan is HORRENDOUS. I just CAN'T IMAGINE that this sort of shit is being done in OUR NAME. Of course, I have a hard time with the Department of Defense bombing the hell out of innocent people who never did a fucking THING to us too...

Department of Defense says it aint happening. The fuckers NEVER take ANY responsibility, and they work for US. GO.READ, then please follow the links in the story!

Thank you,
Your friendly neighborhood angry veteran.

GOOD NEWS REPUBLICAN WINGNUTS! YOU HAVE A NEW LEADER! CLICK HERE TO MEET HIM!