Another MUST READ from ...

Glenn Greenwald: Times Square bomber: Cause and effect in the War on Terror

Instead of 'Do to others what you would have them do to you' the US has turned The Golden Rule inside out. The US does onto them then is surprised when they do back at us.

If we had a few more thinkers in policy making positions, instead of the creeping and creepy militarists that we seem to be overrun with, they would have figured out that the US's behavior is not only the reverse of The Golden Rule it is also begging for a violent response.

Not that we are alone in history in taking this path. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor it was warning us to stay out of the their way. It did the opposite.

So the US is proceeding down one road while claiming to be going down another. Who benefits from this? Not most of the worlds' or even the US's population ...

Well, why would Obama care if Israel goes around killing Americans ...

The fact that a 19-year-old American citizen was one of the dead -- among those whom the report concluded was "summarily executed" by the Israelis -- makes the U.S. Government's silence here all the more appalling. One of the prime duties of a government is to safeguard the welfare of its own citizens. It's inconceivable for most governments in the world to remain silent in the face of formal findings that a foreign nation "summarily executed" one of its own citizens. ...

Why would Obama care if Israel goes around killing Americans ... or anyone else for that matter. Since Obama, himself, believes in killing Americans on his say so alone and definitely believes, as did George Bush, that killing around the world is what the US is entitled to do, then what can be the big deal about these violent, demented and illegal Israeli executions of civilians. Aren't the worst of the Israelis the people we've been emulating for decades now?

In his short time in office, Obama has shown that he cares about nothing except making nice with the rich, the powerful and the nuttiest of those calling themselves Christians.

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Oh, the irony!

This USA Today article, proudly touting the increased efforts of the U.S. Government to track down and punish war criminals (provided, of course, that they're not American) ...

Obama and WikiLeaks ...

Why, oh why, did Obama choose to take on Bush-the-Stupid's war and make it his own?

Now as A-Great-War-President, Obama's takes the usual approach that these types of illustrious leaders reflexively glom on to for a war --or other detrimental policy-- gone bad:

• increase the war effort (more troops, more money, more hype), and
• shut those damn truth-tellers up!

So again, I ask, how is Obama different from Bush?
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As Glenn Greenwald writes:

It's hardly a shock that the war in Afghanistan is going far worse than political officials have been publicly claiming. Aside from the fact that lying about war is what war leaders do almost intrinsically -- that's part of what makes war so degrading to democratic values -- there have been numerous official documents that have recently emerged or leaked out that explicitly state that the war is going worse than ever and is all but unwinnable. ... [emphasis added]

Greenwald also points to this post by Jay Rosen. It's one of Rosen's better posts and a must read:

The Afghanistan War Logs Released by Wikileaks, the World's First Stateless News Organization

Today's quote ...

What’s new is the public acknowledgment that this is what we do, and how we behave, that it’s routine, and the implicit acceptance that it’s okay. And all that has occurred with no recognition whatsoever that if an agent from another country did that here, it would be called a terrorist act carried out by a people without soul or morality.

-- Becoming 9/11: CIA Expands Drone Attacks Inside Pakistan by Scarecrow, firedoglake.com

Obama's patchwork principles ...

... like most Obama decisions, last night he incorporated enough of every side and paid homage to conflicting principles such that it's impossible to identify what he really believes ("civilian trials are a fundamental American value and now we'll deny them to many detainees" is quite similar to: "Afghanistan is in our absolute vital interest and we'll start leaving in 18 months"). He's convinced his admirers that this is a form of noble "pragmatism" but, far more often, it appears to be a mishmash of political calculations bereft of principle and plagued by numerous internal contradictions that make it impossible to understand, let alone defend. Everyone gets to read into it whatever they want to see.

America's delusion ...

... no matter how one rationalizes continuing and escalating the war in Afghanistan, the same arguments make a more compelling case for invading and nation-building in Mexico. Which we all know is laughable. So, why is no one laughing?

Still torturing ...

In my mind this makes Obama a complete failure as a human being:

The Status of Torture in Obama's America

... The President began with a big series of presidential orders that supposedly ended the Bush administration's policy of torturing prisoners, and shut down the CIA's black site prisons.

But as we know now, not all the black site prisons were shut down. Nor was the torture ended. Whether its beatings and forced-feedings at Guantanamo, or the kinds of torture described at Bagram, it's obvious that torture has not been rooted out of U.S. military-intelligence operations. In fact, by way of the Obama administration's recent approval of the Bush-era Army Field Manual on interrogations, with its infamous Appendix M, which allows for much of the kind of torture practiced at Bagram, the White House has institutionalized a level of torture that was introduced by the previous administration, but which has been studied and devised over the last fifty or sixty years.

Today's quote(s) ...

The general calling for more troops cannot be trusted. The Afghan government has no credibility. The Taliban are resurgent, and they are based in Pakistan, anyway. The only thing going well in Afghanistan is the opium trade. Which is going very well, indeed.

-- Afghanistan: With Democracy Dead, It's Time To Leave by Turkana, The Left Coaster

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... we now have a killing un-declared at-war policy with Pakistan that very few Americans truly comprehend in a nose-wrinkling geopolitical coupling that produces horrifying gory deaths of innocents which Americans would not tolerate once, not for one second, on their own soil and people. Throw on a scary robotic era of death by machines on top of this nuclear enchilada and the result is not good. Not good at all.

-- A Pakistani Meander by paradox, The Left Coaster

Today's quote ... how long, indeed?

How long are we going to continue to do this? We invade and occupy a country, and then label as "insurgents" or even "terrorists" the people in that country who fight against our invasion and occupation. With the most circular logic imaginable, we then insist that we must remain in order to defeat the "insurgents" and "terrorists" -- largely composed of people whose only cause for fighting is our presence in their country. All the while, we clearly exacerbate the very problem we are allegedly attempting to address -- Terrorism -- by predictably and inevitably increasing anti-American anger and hatred through our occupation, which, no matter the strategy, inevitably entails our killing innocent civilians.

-- Former Marine Captain resigns in protest of Afghanistan war by Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens puts it in words ...

"They're opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world ... We're entitled to it," Pickens said of Iraq's oil. "Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars."

...

"We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil," Pickens said.

Just who is this 'we' oil man?

I'm almost speechless. But the thoughts that do come to mind are: another arrogant, contemptible turd and mucus secreting corporate slug.

T. Boone Pickens "takeovers put many independent oil producers out of business. With an estimated current net worth of about $3 billion, he is ranked by Forbes as the 117th-richest person in America and ranked 369th in the world." [Wikipedia]

And to think he didn't get Iraq and after supporting all the warmongers collected in Bush's Corporate regime that sacrificed so much American blood and money for his benefit.

I realize American corporations just don't care, but what about all the non-Americans that were murdered and killed and raped and tortured and starved and abused. What about all their losses in lives and property and hope for a decent life? 'We," oil man, are all smaller because you and your corporate buddies supported and encouraged a mental deficient 'president' and a criminally insane 'vice president' to perpetrate a war of terror on Iraq. And that 'we' includes you, oil man.

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One little point I don't quite grasp. If Corporatist T. Boone Pickens concludes that the blood and money expended by Americans should result in his personal increase in wealth and power where does the blood and money of others that is destroyed by Americans enter into that accounting? Is it a plus or minus in T. Boone Pickens mind? Or does it just not exist in his mind?

Today's quote, oh well, let's make that two ...

... When corporate gains are privatized and losses are socialized, you think maybe the working people have finally had enough of picking up the slack? ...

-- The Wealthy Are Very Upset That People Are Angry. Oh, Stop Your Sobbing. by Susie Madrak

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... many Americans don't ever think much about the huge gap between what we claim about ourselves and what we do. But much of the rest of the world -- certainly including the Muslim world -- sees that discrepancy quite clearly, often up-close. ...

-- David Rohde's insights into what motivates the Taliban by Glenn Greenwald, salon.com

Obameter: Promises kept so far ...

Promise Kept rulings on the Obameter

Promise No 125 (Direct military leaders to end war in Iraq) may have been kept but extricating the US from useless, destructive and immoral wars around the globe is does not appear to be part of Obama's mindset.

And stalking too ...

The Israeli leadership has all BushCo's best qualities:

• They make war on civilians cutting off food, water, medicine.
• They are liars: Why Israel Won’t Allow Journalists Into Gaza
• They even stalk their victims by phone:

In messages that have left many Palestinians rattled, Israel has been placing calls to Gaza residents to personally warn them that their homes, or adjacent buildings, were targets.

Among those trapped in their homes was Wafa Kannan, a 27-year-old Gaza City resident who's been camping out in a narrow apartment corridor with her mother and two brothers since the strikes began on Saturday.

Over the weekend, Kannan's mother received a recorded call on her cell phone from the Israeli military. When she heard who was calling, she hung up. Minutes later, the same call came to the landline in her apartment warning her to leave if she was storing weapons.

So right ...

Greenwald:

... Israel's wars are, by definition, America's wars; its enemies are our enemies; its disputes and conflicts and interests are, inherently, ours; and America's only duty when Israel fights is to support it uncritically. ...

This is how the US has responded to Israel for years, nae decades. Why? When and why did we give up our sovereignty to Israel? And does the perpetual excuse making for Israel's German-like heavy hand have anything to do with the willingness of most Americans to invade a country that did not, even could not, threaten us to perform our own German-like deeds?

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Today's QUOTES:

As I contemplate how to pry a few dollars from these systems designed to humiliate and degrade my clients, already struggling with being social outcasts, chronic illness, drug addiction and mental illness I sigh audibly. I read of billion dollar bailouts and disappearing pallettes of cash as I ponder how to help a family with $400.00 so they will not be homeless in three days. I am so very tired. --You Know Who We Really Hate? by Jake T. Snake, Whiskey Fire ... no mainstream politician would dare express the view that 70% of Americans support ... --George Washington's warnings and U.S. policy towards Israel by Glenn Greenwald, salon.com Now, I'm not saying that the non-violence way of Ghandi is the only way to do it (although that would really freak out the Israelis if the Palestinians did it with the same fervor that the Indian patriots employed it). --Comment by Paul in KY to George Washington's warnings and U.S. policy towards Israel by Glenn Greenwald, salon.com

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Putting dogs to sleep and Scott McClellan ... probably not what you think.

I read this post because I recently had to put a very old and very special border collie to sleep. The post ends with this message:

Somehow, this experience today is giving me a bit more tolerance. Even for Scott McClellan. I'm wondering. Is there a chance that he's actually doing this for a good reason? That he's really trying to set things right? We see how the right wing is all attacking him. What if other former Bush people develop guilt or wake up and decide to do the right thing? It would be nice if they were appreciated for telling the truth. They should assume that Bush's enablers and co-conspirators will attack them. They might even expect that the complicit mainstream media people who allowed them to lie, without challenging, without asking tough questions, might, as passive co-conspirators, attack them.

But if potential truth-tellers see that the reward for telling the truth is villification from everyone, even from those who seek the truth, then it will be that much more daunting for them to. Maybe we need to be thankful that McClellan is now telling more truth. ...

I've been watching the reactions to McClellan. The reaction that surprises me the most is from those who dismiss the McClellan's statements with, 'well, we already knew that, anyway.'

I have no idea why McClellan is telling the truth now. I wish more of Bush's stooges were able to bring themselves to come out with the truth at the time. But we all know what happened to those who did and ... I cannot honestly decide which route I would have taken. I think it may have depended on which stage of my life I was in ...

Having 'what we already know' confirmed by McClellan is no small matter. It has upset many of the enablers in the media and made them look foolish as they pretend they are guiltless. They will get over it too quickly but without McClellan, or someone like him, that would not have happened. It also helps confirm what 'we already knew' to a larger set. It has a certain credibility coming from McClellan. After all he has inside and situational knowledge we can only guess at.

And ... we should encourage the truth. If we want the truth we should not criticize and belittle the teller of that truth for confirming that we were right in the first place. No matter what McClellan's motives in telling the truth (conscience, money, survival) we should not make it even more difficult for others to tell the truth. One can respect the truth without respecting everything McClellan has done.

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

... quite a few yesterdays as I have been camping in the White Mountains.

... scientists now predict that, at least among insects, global warming will take its biggest toll in the tropics--home to more than half the world's species.

... 20 percent of returning U.S. soldiers have post- traumatic stress disorder or depression

... As I often note these days, we are drowning in lies. Yet it is still no small wonder that this entire conversation about Wright, King, et al. proceeds in the almost complete absence of a discussion of what Wright has actually said, just as no one seems to remember what King actually said.

... [the chieftains of the Terror War] do not and have never cared a single instant about the freedom and well-being of the Iraqi or the Iranian people. (Or the American people, for that matter.) They are engaged on a long-range project of perpetual war toward an eventual goal of iron-clad military domination of a strategic portion of the world's energy supplies and distribution, and the establishment of America's "unipolar domination" over geopolitical affairs.

crAZy Person: Jon Kyl


In fact, the only way McCain's bankrupt domestic policies will not cause one misstep after another is if he confines himself to whistle-stop tours of gated communities and medieval castles.

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

The President of the United States has openly, proudly admitted that he approved the use of interrogation methods that are by every measure -- including the measure of United States law -- criminal acts of torture. It is one of the most brazen and scandalous confessions of wrongdoing ever uttered by an American leader -- and it has had no impact whatsoever. No scandal, no outcry, no protest, no prosecution.

... As obvious as it seems, men who fetishize warrior values and fail to live up to them, often feel they have something to prove. That's at least partly how we wind up with people sitting around a table calling Colin Powell a wimp for timidly mentioning that torture might not be a good idea.

Perhaps it is time to reconsider our social currency.

Employers' needs are not the object of government. The public interest, that forgotten quantity, is its purpose. ...

Myths that the United States is a nation of laws, not men, die hard. ...

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

... Why is the ACLU seemingly alone in calling for a Special Counsel to investigate clear war crimes by this government?

In cov’rage quite sloppy at best,
The press attacked Hill’ry with zest,
Disputing her facts.
But ’twas they who were lax.
Cuz if Clinton says east they say west.

This is the behavior of a sick child, not one of the most powerful and privileged men in the world, but Glenn and Joan must watch with daily fury as the truth is blatantly ignored, the US propaganda corps has its marching orders and by God they will be enforced, no matter what happens, no matter how many die, no matter how stupid, unlawful, childish or grossly offensive the episode the result is always the same: ignore it, hide it, confuse it, the Republicans are in power, don’t take the country down.

Hiding the truth is in fact the surest way to take the country down, a basic fact of life most five-year-olds learn very well, but one our Republican and “journalism” brethren refuse to learn, no matter the sickening, outrageous scope of their behavior. ...

Pollan claims that in the Western diet, good old food has been replaced by nutrients, mom's good advice by nutritional experts, common sense by confusion, and for most, a relatively good diet by a bad and dangerous one. ...

We have tended to segment health care into periods of life, but are now beginning to wake up to the fact that disease and disability are cumulative, and build over a lifetime.

If this were simply a story of an airline trying to cut corners, and in the process putting passengers at risk, it would be startling enough. But in this case, we’re talking about federal inspectors who were pressured by their superiors to allow an airline to put passengers at risk.

... To me, the 2008 Democratic primary campaign is a watershed event in the history of the progressive blogosphere. It has revealed that some of the alleged "progressive" bloggers are fundamentally no different than the media and the deranged right-wing bloggers they have long claimed to detest. The Trina Bechtel incident is the "crowning" event on a sickening trend in this election campaign - where Gore was replaced by Clinton and the "media" was supplemented by an influential portion of the allegedly "progressive" blogosphere. I can easily see an entire book being written on the work of these jokers who have turned the credibility of the blogosphere to dust because of their Clinton-hatred. There used to be a time when bloggers like Glenn Greenwald and Atrios used to write again and again about how the right-wing blogosphere was almost always wrong, especially in their attacks on Democrats. Today, it is clear that such blog posts could equally well be written about a prominent section of the formerly "progressive" blogosphere.

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

Arizona is among five states in the nation either in recession or on the verge of it, Vest said. The others are Michigan, California, Florida and Nevada, he said. For most, the primary cause was likely a boom and bust in the housing market with heavy speculation and prolific use of risky mortgages, he said.
The purpose of government is to promote the general welfare of the people. There is no other reason to have a government except to promote the general welfare of the people. Therefore health care is a civil right. -- Randi Rhodes
... that would be $3,500,000,000,000. Mostly for an immoral, illegal, unjustified war of aggression that has wrought hell on an innocent people, and is now expected to accomplish nothing. ... Except for making certain individuals and corporations very very rich.

Destruction on the move ...

Using the desire to commit more destruction in the middle east, beyond the already decimated Iraq, as a reason to despoil our own nest here at home ...

Eminent domain’s poster children -- Ranchers fight a military proposal to expand training ground in southeastern Colorado by Eryn Gable

Yuma Proving Ground exploring expansion --Impact on desert uncertain if Army approves proposal by Corinne Purtill

Some familiar with the area said they are wary of the expansion.

Ron Kearns was a wildlife biologist for 25 years at Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, which is adjacent to the proving ground. In September 2005, munitions on the proving ground started the King Fire, which burned 26,000 acres of Kofa and 3,000 acres of the proving ground. Kofa staff also found spent rounds in the refuge, Kearns said.

"If they get that expansion, they're going to be burning up the desert," said Kearns, who is now retired. "It just seems like a bad idea all the way around."

The people of the US, after all we've done to destroy Iraq, may not have some special right above all other people on this earth, to keep what's ours intact but we do have a moral obligation to stop the slaughter and make what restitution we can (not that we can bring back the lives we've taken). If the people of this country can see our way to stop destroying other countries, then maybe we will also have the power to stop the steady destruction of our own.

Not much hope in this is there?

Something that always confused me was the concept of Christ dying for our sins. What was the point. Since everyone kept on sinning and often those who claim to represent Christ the most have sinned the most. That it's a very humanly conceived racket is the only conclusion that I've come to. Sin, get forgiven, sin some more. And those who control the forgiveness market live in luxury. So unChrist like one would think.

Assuming the God fearing multitude considers fouling our own 'god-given' nest a sin and then once we've sinned to the point that we've completely fouled this nest, the earth, what good will that forgiveness do us? Ah, the 100 virgins (male virgins too?) or heaven, a place where even the lowest rung of heaven will surpass our wildest dreams. Yea really? Well, if that's the case why not just end it now. And here comes the clincher. Suicide would void the warranty! Ha! Hilarious!

But we are committing suicide. Fouled air, fouled water, melting ice caps, rising oceans, increasing extremes in temperature, food production problem increasing, perpetual war and destruction, and on and on. Will your God notice (this kind of suicide) and void that warranty?