Retro

Instructional Video on removing the Bushliciouscombobulationalistic attitude from America’s sphincter.

from www.ebaumsworld.com posted with vodpod

h/t T.R.

BuelahMan Describes What a “Redneck” is

BuelahMan Plots Fight Against an Insurgency

CIA On Torture Memo:

‘We Need To Stop Writing This Stuff Down’

WASHINGTON—During a press conference Tuesday, CIA chief Michael Hayden expressed regret over the organization’s inhumane interrogation tactics of simulating drowning, removing fingernails with pliers, and lacerating genitals, when he told reporters the practices should never have been committed to paper. “Geez, what the heck were we thinking?” Hayden said. “Our job is to protect the American people from this kind of disturbing stuff, and I don’t know why we even jotted it down in the first place. Next time we’ll just keep it to ourselves.” Hayden also said the agency planned to remove the locations and mailing addresses of secret detention facilities from its official website.

Glenn Beck and Your Morning Upchuck

Wanna puke a little in your mouth? Watch this sick asshole praise his god amoung men.

The Iraqi Millionaires Club

And I ain’t talking ’bout Dinar:

Iraq Conflict Has Killed A Million Iraqis: Survey

LONDON (Reuters) – More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain’s leading polling groups.

The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) with 2,414 adults in face-to-face interviews, found that 20 percent of people had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes.

The last complete census in Iraq conducted in 1997 found 4.05 million households in the country, a figure ORB used to calculate that approximately 1.03 million people had died as a result of the war, the researchers found.

The margin of error in the survey, conducted in August and September 2007, was 1.7 percent, giving a range of deaths of 946,258 to 1.12 million.

ORB originally found that 1.2 million people had died, but decided to go back and conduct more research in rural areas to make the survey as comprehensive as possible and then came up with the revised figure.

The research covered 15 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. Those that not covered included two of Iraq’s more volatile regions — Kerbala and Anbar — and the northern province of Arbil, where local authorities refused them a permit to work.

Estimates of deaths in Iraq have been highly controversial in the past.

Medical journal The Lancet published a peer-reviewed report in 2004 stating that there had been 100,000 more deaths than would normally be expected since the March 2003 invasion, kicking off a storm of protest.

The widely watched Web site Iraq Body Count currently estimates that between 80,699 and 88,126 people have died in the conflict, although its methodology and figures have also been questioned by U.S. authorities and others.

ORB, a non-government-funded group founded in 1994, conducts research for the private, public and voluntary sectors.

The director of the group, Allan Hyde, said it had no objective other than to record as accurately as possible the number of deaths among the Iraqi population as a result of the invasion and ensuing conflict.

Bushilicious’ Surveillance Program in 30 Seconds

Bipartisanship = Dems Caving

You ever notice how what is described in Congress as “Bipartisanship” is simply the THUGS voting in block and grabbing as many capitulating Dems as is possible. Glenn Greenwald has the numbers and it is exactly what one would expect from a bunch of worthless, spine-free pussies.

To support the new Bush-supported FISA law:

GOP – 48-0

Dems – 12-36

To compel redeployment of troops from Iraq:

GOP – 49-0

Dems – 24-21

To confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General:

GOP – 46-0

Dems – 7-40

To confirm Leslie Southwick as Circuit Court Judge:

GOP – 49-0

Dems – 8-38

Kyl-Lieberman Resolution on Iran:

GOP – 47-1

Dems – 27-21

To condemn MoveOn.org:

GOP – 49-0

Dems – 23-25

The Protect America Act:

GOP – 44-0

Dems – 20-28

Declaring English to be the Government’s official language:

GOP – 48-1

Dems – 16-33

The Military Commissions Act:

GOP – 53-0

Dems – 12-34

To renew the Patriot Act:

GOP – 54-0

Dems – 34-10

Cloture Vote on Sam Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court:

GOP – 54-0

Dems – 18-25

Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq:

GOP – 48-1

Dems – 29-22

McCain’s Wars: “Something We Can All Rally Behind”

Joe Scarborough is another clueless redneck that finds idiotic statements like McCain’s funny.

Supposedly a joke… I am not laughing.

151 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

Wait…

 that should be “Signing Statements”, not bottles.

Open the Government issued their Secrecy Report Card 2007, which lays out what secret, conniving, back-stabbing robbery the Bush Administration has been pummeling America with. From their pdf (please visit the site to read the entire thing):

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

OpenTheGovernment.org’s fourth annual report, Secrecy Report Card 2007, shows both a continued expansion of government secrecy across a broad array of agencies and actions and some, limited, movement toward more openness and accountability.

While every administration wants to control access to information about its policies and practices, information created by or for the federal government belongs to the American public and should be open (except in strictly limited and specified contexts). As this principle is often honored more in the breach than in the observance, public access to government information has varied over time. The current administration has exercised an unprecedented level not only of restriction of access to information about federal government’s policies and decisions, but also of suppression of discussion of those policies, their underpinnings, and their implications. It has also increasingly refused to be held accountable to the public through the oversight responsibilities of Congress. These practices inhibit democracy and our representative government; neither the public nor Congress can make informed decisions in these circumstances. Our open society is undermined and made insecure.

HIGHLIGHTS

• In six years, President Bush has issued at least 151 signing statements, challenging 1149 provisions of laws. In the 211 years of our Republic to 2000, fewer than 600 signing statements that took issue with the bills were issued. Among recent presidents, Reagan issued 71 statements challenging provisions of laws before him; G.W.H. Bush issued 146; Clinton, 105.

• Since 2001, the “state secrets” privilege has been invoked a reported 39 times—an average in 6.5 years (6) that is more than double the previous 24 years (2.46).

• On average since 2000, non-competed contract funding makes up more than 25 percent of all awards: 26.2% ($559.9 billion) In 2006, 25.9 percent ($107.5 billion) of federal contract funding was given out without any competition; another 5.1 percent ($21.3 billion) was awarded without competition because of specific requirements. In 2000, 45 percent of contract dollars were awarded under full and open competition; by 2006, only 34 percent followed such open procedures.

• A 2007 Justice Department Office of the Inspector General report on secret wiretap warrants indicated that the government made 143,074 National Security Letter requests in the period 2003-2005. The number for 2006 remains classified.

• With 2,176 secret surveillance orders approved in 2006, federal surveillance activity under the jurisdiction of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court more than doubled in five years.

This is important, not to point out that Bush is a crook and liar… hell, everyone knows that. This is to highlight that his latest Signing Statement added to the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, basically is telling Congress that whatever they put in to their quaint little law is only good if he deems it good.

His “Memorandum of Justification” carries the waiver.

He says that some of the issues contained “could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations.” So he signs a law, then adds a little memo that says, “Whatever!!! I’ll do what I want!”

Impeaching Bushilicious is Delayed

Wonder what those complicit Richard Noggins’ said to Dennis to get him to back off?

Kucinich postpones Bush impeachment effort

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Sabrina Eaton

Plain Dealer Bureau

Washington — After promising to mark President Bush’s final State of the Union speech by introducing articles of impeachment against Bush, Cleveland Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich postponed the effort.

Kucinich said Monday that he met with members of the House Judiciary Committee after making last week’s impeachment pledge. He said he came away “hopeful there will be an inquiry by the Judiciary Committee.”

“I will give them the opportunity to proceed before introducing articles of impeachment,” he said in a statement. The committee’s spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.

Last year, Kucinich introduced a measure to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney that has collected 24 co-sponsors. His effort to bring the matter before the full House won support from Republicans who wanted to embarrass House Demo cratic leaders, but eventually was referred to the Judiciary Committee.

Kucinich told The Plain Dealer editorial board last week that nine of the Judiciary Committee’s 40 members favor his bid to impeach Cheney.

“I do not believe that there will be an impeachment this year — I don’t think that will happen — but I do think that the questions relating to an inquiry of both the president and the vice president are important so that our nation has a real understanding of the effort that was made, a consistent effort, to mislead the people into supporting a war,” he said.

One Bush Left Behind

Read the following message I received from Greg Palast a few minutes ago. Leave it to Greg to do a little math. Too bad most us rednecks fail in math.

by Greg Palast

Here’s your question, class:

In his State of the Union, the President asked Congress for $300 million for poor kids in the inner city. As there are, officially, 15 million children in America living in poverty, how much is that per child? Correct! $20.

Here’s your second question. The President also demanded that Congress extend his tax cuts. The cost: $4.3 trillion over ten years. The big recipients are millionaires. And the number of millionaires happens, not coincidentally, to equal the number of poor kids, roughly 15 million of them. OK class: what is the cost of the tax cut per millionaire? That’s right, Richie, $287,000 apiece.

Mr. Bush said, “In neighborhoods across our country, there are boys and girls with dreams. And a decent education is their only hope of achieving them.”

So how much educational dreaming will $20 buy?

-George Bush’s alma mater, Phillips Andover Academy, tells us their annual tuition is $37,200. The $20 “Pell Grant for Kids,” as the White House calls it, will buy a poor kid about 35 minutes of this educational dream. So they’ll have to wake up quickly.

-$20 won’t cover the cost of the final book in the Harry Potter series.

If you can’t buy a book nor pay tuition with a sawbuck, what exactly can a poor kid buy with $20 in urban America? The Palast Investigative Team donned baseball caps and big pants and discovered we could obtain what local citizens call a “rock” of crack cocaine. For $20, we were guaranteed we could fulfill any kid’s dream for at least 15 minutes.

Now we could see the incontrovertible logic in what appeared to be quixotic ravings by the President about free trade with Colombia, Pell Grant for Kids and the surge in Iraq. In Iraq, General Petraeus tells us we must continue to feed in troops for another ten years. There is no way the military can recruit these freedom fighters unless our lower income youth are high, hooked and desperate. Don’t say, ‘crack vials,’ they’re, ‘Democracy Rocks’!

The plan would have been clearer if Mr. Bush had kept in his speech the line from his original draft which read, “I have ordered 30,000 additional troops to Iraq this year – and I am proud to say my military-age kids are not among them.”

Of course, there’s an effective alternative to Mr. Bush’s plan – which won’t cost a penny more. Simply turn it upside down. Let’s give each millionaire in America a $20 bill, and every poor child $287,000.

And, there’s an added benefit to this alternative. Had we turned Mr. Bush and his plan upside down, he could have spoken to Congress from his heart.

-For more on Bush and education read “No Child’s Behind Left” in Armed Madhouse excerpted here.
-Also read Palast’s take on the 2007 State of the Union here.

*************
Greg Palast is the author of the NY Times best-sellers, Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. View Palast’s investigative reports for BBC Television on our YouTube Channel.

Join our social networking sites on Facebook on MySpace and on Google’s Orkut. Sign up for RSS updates of our site and for our podcasts.

Support our work by donating to the Palast Investigative Fund(a 501c3 educational foundation).

Bush Has Been Right All Along

(Hear me out)

Bush has proved that the presidency had been mis-represented for the first 200 some-odd years (those previous inept bastards should be held in shame). Bush’s ability to shrug off minuscule opinions (similar to the gnat-like Congressional Laws he signs) of anyone who disagrees because of his “instinct” or of who his “Father” is, signals that all other presidents were inferior and failed at their positions.

 He has a justice department that basically allows him to do anything he sees fit to do. No worries.

Executive order… presidential directives… hand-picked audiences… torture…

 Every tool to basically eliminate the need for Congress.

PERFECT for a Democratic President sure to win in November. Yeah, Bush has set the stage for the next Dem president… right all along.

(rolling eyes)

I can’t help but think that we have something horrible in store for us before the next election that will give reason to keep him as the president. Funny how things like that happen while he is around. For it is the height of idiocy to continue the meme set, without some ulterior plan set in motion.

So what will you do when Martial Law occurs? Will you finally see the monster for what he is?

I doubt it.

You’ll probably rally around the evil lies, like the past 7 years worth.

SOTU Breakdown By Think Progress and The Onion

Think Progress had a minute by minute breakdown of the SOTU address last night and added FACT to Bushilicious’s fiction. Great commentary and worth the read this morning.

As an example:

SOTU: Veterans Health Care Has Gotten Worse Under Bush

Bush said: “Over the past 7 years, we have increased funding for veterans by more than 95 percent. As we increase funding, we must also reform our veterans system to meet the needs of a new war and a new generation.”

FACT — 1.8 MILLION VETERANS LACK HEALTH INSURANCE: “The new study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, estimated that in 2004 nearly 1.8 million veterans were uninsured and unable to get care in veterans’ facilities.” [New York Times, 11/9/07]

FACT — NUMBER OF UNINSURED VETERANS INCREASED BETWEEN 2000 AND 2004: “Just under two million veterans (12.7 percent of non-elderly veterans) were uninsured in 2004, up 290,000 since 2000, the study published in the December, 2007 issue of the American Journal of Public Health found.” [Harvard Science, 10/30/07]

FACT — NEARLY 20 PERCENT OF VETERANS RETURNING FROM IRAQ HAVE MILD TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURIES: “Screening efforts show 10% to 20% of Marines and soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq may have suffered this wound, according to the Army. The task force last May found that ‘major gaps’ in identifying and treating the injury ‘were created by a lack of coordination and policy-driven approaches.’” [USA Today, 1/18/08]

FACT — NUMBER OF PTSD CASES INCREASING DRAMATICALLY: “The number of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder from the Department of Veterans Affairs jumped by nearly 20,000 — almost 70% — in the 12 months ending June 30, VA records show.” [USA Today, 10/18/07]

The Commentary from The Onion’s man of the street is hilarious, but true. It said:
President Bush delivered his last State Of The Union Address last night. What do you think?

“He’s right. No one can deny the results of No Child Left Behind, because thanks to the program, no one has any basic reasoning skills.”

“It was a great speech, but my only problem was that President Bush failed to address why our government is doing such a shitty job.”

“I wish there were a way to find out what’s happening in this country more than once a year.”

Mississippi: Do You Love Your Redneck Governor Yet?

He is doing it again? That loudmouthed redneck is about to steal money from the folks who lost their homes, but for some reason I imagine you’ll just let it happen. God, I’m glad I left that God forsaken state. I’d come back if I thought the people would grow some balls and help me fix this thievery. But I have little hope for you now. The poorest state in the union, with more folks in poverty and Barbour will take money issued for homes and “earmark” it for other things.

I have a nephew who has been working with those tainted trailors down there and he is outraged over this bit of news. People are getting screwed.

Digby shares the details (the original MSNBC article found here):

While thousands of Mississippians who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina remain in FEMA trailers, the federal government on Friday approved a state plan to spend $600 million in grants earmarked for housing on a major expansion of the state-owned port — a project that could eventually include casino and resort facilities.

[...]

The money in question is part of $5.5 billion in HUD Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that Congress authorized for Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005. Administered by the Mississippi Development Authority, about $3.4 billion was allocated to replace and repair some of the nearly 170,000 owner-occupied homes destroyed or damaged by the storm. Another $600 million was set aside for programs to replace public housing, help small landlords fix their units and foster construction of new low- and moderate-income housing.

When it became clear that homeowners, who had to meet specific criteria on damage and insurance, would not tap all of the grant money, Barbour instructed the state development agency to seek a waiver from HUD to redirect $600 million for work on the port.

Mississippi, with the highest poverty rate of any state by several measures, already had won HUD waivers of rules that require the funds to benefit low- and moderate-income residents. Critics see the waivers as a product of the unparalleled influence with the Bush administration enjoyed by Barbour, a former Reagan White House political director, Republican National Committee chairman and legendary fixer who continues to receive checks from the Washington lobbying shop that still bears his name.

[...]

After the storm, an update to the master plan found that Katrina had “accelerated redevelopment of port areas and opened new opportunities for the growth of the maritime and gaming markets.” The plan raises the prospect of new casino-resort development on port land as part of a public-private partnership, financed separately from the CDBG money.

It wasn’t until early December, six months after the update was adopted by the port authority, that the state development authority sought a waiver from HUD to divert $600 million of the housing grant money to the port — more than double the net dollar damage reportedly sustained by the port from Katrina.

[...]

Barbour’s current position that part of the housing grant pool was always intended for the port is at odds with his March 2006 testimony before a Senate committee, in which he emphasized that the CDBG money was mostly committed to housing and sought new funds for the port. A year later, Gray Swoope, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority, did not mention port funding in testimony before Congress about the use of grant funds a few months before the new port master plan was adopted.

[...]

Port Executive Director Don Allee agreed to an interview with msnbc.com, then canceled it and did not schedule another despite repeated requests.

Cindy Singletary of Living Independence For Everyone, one of 50 nonprofit, religious and social advocacy groups that make up the Steps Coalition, sees the move to divert the housing funds as a bait-and-switch maneuver. “I have nothing against the port itself,” she said. “The main thing I’m against is the priority of it. … We have jobs on the coast. There’s ‘help wanted’ signs everywhere. But we don’t have homes, we don’t have apartments. … That, to me, should be the No. 1 priority for Mississippi.”