I AM A DIASPORAL JEW OF THE ASHKENAZ TRIBE AND I HEREBY DECLARE BUELAHMAN AND LYNDA OF BUELAHMAN'S REDSTATE REVOLT TO BE ABSOLUTELY FREE OF ANTI-SEMITISM OF ANY KIND. THEIR VIEWS ON AMERICA'S ISRAEL POLICY IS THE SAME AS MINE. IT IS THE SAME AS WELL OVER 30% OF THE ISRAELI PEOPLE AND OVER 70% OF THE DIASPORAL ASHKENAZ COMMUNITY IN THE WORLD OUTSIDE BOTH THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL.
Archive for the ‘Crooks and Liars’ Category
I am a long time C&L fan (even though I don’t always agree with their politics. John Amato is a very talented Sax player who has managed to turn a brilliant idea into something viable and important. His usage of video sources always means that no one can lie without having it thrown in their face.
Nicolle Bell, Silent Patriot, BlueGal, and my favorite, nonny mouse are all contributers.
I don’t pretend to understand Afghanistan, but I do know it’s a big, poor, backward Islamic country in Central Asia with all sorts of warring factions that have been at it for decades, or even centuries. I know that American soldiers have been fighting there for eight years and that the situation is still a huge mess.
And now President Barack Obama, after sending 21,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan in March, is set to announce next week that he’s going to send over another 30,000 or so, which will bring the total number of US troops in that big, poor, backward, bewildering, violent Islamic country to about 100,000.
I don’t know much about Afghanistan, but I’m pretty familiar with America, familiar enough to know that America is not up for this. I don’t know if it’s possible to pacify Afghanistan – or Pakistan, Iraq, Iran or anyplace else in the region. I don’t know if this can be done even with millions of American troops fighting for 100 years.
But I do know, as I think everyone knows or should know, that America is not ready to fight Islamism like it fought Nazism and Communism, which means that in its wars in the Middle East, America is destined to lose. The only question is how long these futile adventures will last.
Actually, America fought one war in the Middle East that was not seemingly futile, not at all – the one in 1991 against Iraq. That was a “necessary war,” to use Obama’s term for the mess in Afghanistan. Back then, Saddam Hussein invaded an American-allied country, he electrified the entire Middle East, he was bidding for control, direct or indirect, over two-thirds of the world’s oil – he had to be stopped and turned back.
So president George H.W. Bush set a very clear, reasonable goal – forcing Saddam out of Kuwait – then sent half a million soldiers to do the job, accomplished it in six weeks with minimal allied casualties, then brought the troops home, leaving Saddam and Saddamism in ruins. That was a so called “good war.” But Afghanistan? After 9/11, the Americans should have retaliated by carpet bombing select areas of that country, killing tens of thousands of people, terrorists and civilians both, to let al-Qaida, the Taliban and everyone in the Islamic world know that there is a terrible price to pay for attacking America and killing 3,000 innocents.
Instead, America decided to “transform” the region. The result is that another 5,000 Americans have been killed, soldiers this time, bombs are still going off every which way in Iraq, and now a new president, this one a liberal Democrat, not a Republican neocon, is driving deeper and deeper into Afghanistan.
And what about Pakistan? And Iran? Are they next? “All options are on the table,” says Obama.
AMERICA’S PROBLEM is that it still wants to be a military superpower but is no longer willing to pay the price in blood and money, so it tries to do it on the cheap and as painlessly as possible, and winds up fighting endless wars with impossible goals in distant, hellish places.
If the US were serious about taking on a military challenge of this scope, it would reinstate the draft. This isn’t Grenada they’re dealing with, this is an enemy with outposts across the Middle East, and parts of Africa too. And the US means to go to war against this enemy with a volunteer army that’s drawn from less than 1 percent of American families!
“The problem in this country with this issue [of Afghanistan],” said Democratic Congressman David Obey, “is that the only people who have to sacrifice are military families, and they’ve had to go to the well again and again and again and again, and everybody else is blithely unaffected by the war.”
The American people won’t stand for a military draft; it’s a taboo subject . They won’t even stand for a war tax; that’s another taboo. But neither will they stand for the idea that America is not a military superpower anymore. And nobody in that country, not even the messiah of change, has the guts to tell them that they can’t have it both ways.
So the US pretends it can fight World War III like Grenada, its army is so far beyond overextended that there isn’t a word for it, the country spends more and more billions of dollars that it doesn’t have, and this has been going on now for almost a decade.
At this point, is anybody confident that if and when the US gets out of Iraq, after all these years of horror and devastation, it will leave behind a stable, decent, more or less pro-American country?
Is anybody confident of such a happy end to the war in Afghanistan?
I don’t think so. I think if America knew right after 9/11 what it knows now, there is no way on earth it would have started these wars.
But now Obama wants more – not because he believes he can salvage the situation in Afghanistan, but because he’s afraid of what will happen if he abandons it to the likes of al-Qaida and the Taliban. Which is a very legitimate worry. I worry about that too.
But the only way the US can salvage Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Pakistan, or Iran, or any country in the Muslim world, is to fight like it fought every other major war in its history – with a draft, with war taxes, with a clear, reasonable goal and the readiness to pursue it to the end.
Is America up for that today? No, it’s not, I’m happy to say, because, like I said, even millions of American soldiers fighting for 100 years might not be enough to neutralize the threat of Islamism.
It’s fight or flight, which means the only choice left is flight. The US is not a military superpower anymore, and it’s just hurting itself and a lot of other people by pretending.
The time has come for America to wrap up these endless, failed third world wars.
It’s not going to be easy. And the worst part is that after Obama deepens America’s commitment with 30,000 new soldiers, getting out is going to be even harder.
Facts
Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States.
By the fall of 1621 only half of the pilgrims, who had sailed on the Mayflower, survived. The survivors, thankful to be alive, decided to give a thanksgiving feast.
Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the second Monday in October in Canada.
The Plymouth Pilgrims were the first to celebrate the Thanksgiving.
The pilgrims arrived in North America in December 1620.
The Pilgrims sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to reach North America.
The pilgrims sailed on the ship, which was known by the name of ‘Mayflower’.
They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day in the fall of 1621.
They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day at Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The drink that the Puritans brought with them in the Mayflower was the beer.
The Wampanoag Indians were the people who taught the Pilgrims how to cultivate the land.
The Pilgrim leader, Governor William Bradford, had organized the first Thanksgiving feast in the year 1621 and invited the neighboring Wampanoag Indians also to the feast.
The first Thanksgiving feast was held in the presence of around ninety Wampanoag Indians and the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, was also invited there.
The first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three days.
President George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in the year 1789 and again in 1795.
The state of New York officially made Thanksgiving Day an annual custom in 1817.
Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor with a magazine, started a Thanksgiving campaign in 1827 and it was result of her efforts that in 1863 Thanksgiving was observed as a day for national thanksgiving and prayer.
Abraham Lincoln issued a ‘Thanksgiving Proclamation’ on third October 1863 and officially set aside the last Thursday of November as the national day for Thanksgiving. Whereas earlier the presidents used to make an annual proclamation to specify the day when Thanksgiving was to be held.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt restored Thursday before last of November as Thanksgiving Day in the year 1939. He did so to make the Christmas shopping season longer and hus stimulate the economy of the state.
Congress passed an official proclamation in 1941 and declared that now onwards Thanksgiving will be observed as a legal holiday on the fourth Thursday of November every year.
Over 30 years ago– I had read a small leather-bound book about the Shroud. I enjoyed the starting point that the researcher used . Art. It was amazing and thought provoking. Anyway– since then I have always found the research facinating. Of course I am lost when it comes to why no DNA research– but thats just me. lol
Sun, Nov. 22, 2009
Researcher says faint text proves shroud’s authenticity
By Ariel David
Associated Press
ROME – A Vatican researcher asserts that nearly invisible text on the Shroud of Turin proves that the artifact revered as Jesus’ burial cloth is authentic.
The assertion made by Barbara Frale in a book drew immediate skepticism from some scientists, who maintain the shroud is a medieval forgery.
Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, said Friday that she used computers to enhance images of faintly written words in Greek, Latin, and Aramaic scattered across the shroud.
She asserted that the words include the name “Jesus Nazarene” in Greek, proving that the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have labeled Jesus a Nazarene without referring to his divinity.
The shroud bears the figure of a crucified man, complete with blood seeping out of nailed hands and feet, and believers say Christ’s image was recorded on the linen fibers at the time of his resurrection.
The fragile artifact, owned by the Vatican, is kept locked in a special protective chamber in Turin’s cathedral and is rarely shown.
Skeptics point out that radiocarbon dating conducted in 1988 determined it was made in the 13th or 14th century.
While faint letters scattered around the face on the shroud were seen decades ago, serious researchers dismissed them because of the test’s results, Frale said in an interview.
But when she cut out the words from photos of the shroud and showed them to experts, they concurred the writing style was typical of the Middle East in the first century A.D. – Jesus’ time.
She believes the text was written on a document by a clerk and glued to the shroud over the face so the body could be identified by relatives and buried properly. Metals in the ink used at the time may have allowed the writing to transfer to the linen, Frale said.
“I tried to be objective and leave religious issues aside,” Frale said. “What I studied was an ancient document that certifies the execution of a man, in a specific time and place.”
Frale is noted in Italy for her research on the medieval order of the Knights Templar and her discovery of unpublished documents on the group in the Vatican’s archives.
Earlier this year she published a study contending the Templars at one time had the shroud in their possession. That raised eyebrows because the order was abolished in the early 14th century and the shroud is first recorded in history about 1360 in the hands of a French knight.
But her latest book, The Shroud of Jesus Nazarene, in Italian, raised doubts even among experts.
“People work on grainy photos and think they see things,” said Antonio Lombatti, a church historian who has written books about the shroud. “It’s all the result of imagination and computer software.”
Lombatti also rejected the idea that authorities in the time of Jesus would officially return the body of a crucified man to relatives after filling out some paperwork. Victims of the most cruel punishment used by the Romans would usually be left on the cross or were disposed of in a dump to add to the execution’s deterring effect.
People are people everywhere we go aren’t they. I had prior looked into a company called ‘PLUG’ and it actually has stock– it is wave energy. Now listening to this I kept answering outloud… ” Hell we can’t get people to stop killing people and you want to change people into tree planters. Well and good but in a world gone mad… well, really… what are we doing??? and for heavens sake… Carbon Credits exchanged globally– and Carbon swopping??? Geeeeeeeeece
Accidentally last night, I watched a PBS documentary titled “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin”. I cried so hard. I had no idea about this little known, to me, huge part of history. I Immediately flashed back to the time of my daughters and my reunion. It was filmed live-time in 1998 for The Learning Channel– and as a heart felt thank you, I will never ever forget or regret giving Boris [ the TLC Reunion cameraman-- from Moscow] my ‘Meet the Beatles’ album! I never fully understood his weeping when I gave it to him… not until now. I sincerely hope that you can watch this program . It is just Awesome, and above all just plain humbling. I never knew– I just never knew. Below are 6 links to the documentary that someone was awesome enough to post on youtube!!!
Brief::
Mon, November 9 | 9PM How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin
This is the extraordinary and untold story of how the Beatles punctured the Iron Curtain. In August 1962, award-winning director Leslie Woodhead made a two-minute film, in Liverpool’s Cavern Club, with a raw and unrecorded group of unknown rockers — the Beatles. Twenty-five years later, while making a series of films in Russia, Woodhead learned just how powerful Beatlemania was in the Soviet Union. Even though the Beatles never performed there, their music and rebellious style had soaked into the lives of a generation of Russian kids. This film features personal stories from members of Russia’s Beatles generation, who talk about how the Fab Four changed their lives, gave them hope and helped to undermine the foundations of the Soviet system. The music was the number one enemy of the State, and teens learned English, revolution and gained strength to over throw the Communist system by listening to underground recordings made using old x-ray film negatives called ‘bones’. To this day, the Beatles remain engrained in the life changed hearts of a once hostage entire youth of a nation .
Barack Obama was elected on 4 November 2008 after a campaign that promised change.
One year on, BBC’s Newsbeat traveled across the country to find out how people feel in Obama’s America.
In the first of five reports, Jonathan Blake travels to Tennessee where unemployment is highest among young people to see how he’s trying to fix the economy.
I had hope for a few of the Obama Ass-Kissing Sycophants over at the premiere Ass-Kissing Sycophant’s site. But Nicolle has apparently been paid really good money (or has lost her ever-loving mind). I expect John and quite a few others there to celebrate and defend O. It is what they are paid to do.
But Nicolle? Really? I watched as BlueGal swallowed the bait, hook, line and sinker. Now one of the last seemingly sane ones has joined the others.
I’ll ask again, How Many Innocent babies Do I Need To Kill To Win a ‘Peace’ Prize, Nicolle?
Stop defending anything and EVERYTHING that comes as a criticism of O. It really makes you look like a fool.
That is your boss’s job (he gets paid well for it).
Heather at C&L is one of the few Democratic party sycophants that will push the buttons of Obama (much unlike her boss, the Ass-Kisser). I noticed the latest video that she put up had absolutely no commentary attached, so I am unclear whether or not she truly even grasps this association.
I would bet, however, that there is a directive to keep the commentary positive or have none at all when it comes to the Ass they kiss, so she dare not make too many waves.
I think the “spoof” that Heather was afraid to address in real terms says it all.
The man is a damned liar and the sooner you realize it and admit it, the better for this country.
Gosh, so the current healthcare debacle is a “clusterf*&k”? Really?
Do you think so?
Basically we still don’t know what’s actually going to happen until the president takes the stage and speaks to the nation and then even after that, the Baucus Dogs still have to release their bill. And then we move on to the next step in the process. This is a massive clusterf*&k, but getting any type of health care reform passed was never going to be easy. We all knew it, I just thought Axelrod’s team would have handled it better from the start.
Jesus Jumping Jehosiphites, John!
What we all know is that the Ass-Kissing Sycophantic Chorus of “Progressives” has not helped the cause. As a matter of fact, you have fucked it up immensely by your worship of “O”.
Let me tell you what is going to happen. Barack Hussein Obama is going to bow to the Corporate Interests as he has done since day one. It is just that you ignorant assholes haven’t the brains to understand this, or worse, are complicit in the travesty. At the very least you should be ashamed.
Single Payer, Not-For-Profit is the only viable solution. Period.
Or you could be like Ed and consider what we have to be the best healthcare imaginable.
He’s going home. The man convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 bombing of a Pam Am flight over the Scottish town in Lockerbie, has been released from prison on compassionate grounds. Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi is already on his way home to Libya, where it is believed he will die of prostate cancer within three months.
In making his decision, the Scottish Justice Minister has brought earned the ire of plenty of people. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pleaded that it would be “absolutely wrong” to release him. Many American families of the victims agreed with her, and the White House has already issued a statement expressing ‘deep regret’.
But in Scotland, many of the victims’ families supported al-Megrahi’s release – generally because of widely held questions over the safety of his conviction.
Last week we talked about whether people convicted of serious crimes should ever be released on compassionate grounds. That’s still a very valid question to ask today, but his release also throws up other issues.
Libya sits on the largest oil reserves in Africa, oil reserves many companies are keen to have access too. Two years ago, then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair laid the foundations for Al-Megrahi’s release by agreeing a prisoner transfer deal with Libya. Just a few hours later British oil company BP announced a multi-million dollar deal to search for oil in the country.
Scotland says Al-Megrahi’s release was agreed only taking into account the law relating to compassion. But there are many who say it also has to do with improving ties with a potential major oil source.
Al-Megrahi’s freedom also throws back into the mix questions over the safety of his conviction, and whether he was indeed just a pawn in a bigger game designed to bring Libya back in from the cold.
These “health care fairs” are popping up all over the country as currently almost 50 million Americans have no real health care. Is this the kind of reform the health insurance corporations suggest we have?
Last night at the cultural rally in Seoul one of the songs had a chorus line that went: “Say good-bye to the world you thought you lived in”……a fitting way to describe America’s race to the bottom of the barrel.
Isn’t it past time that we began to demand more and to fight for it?
We have become a colonized people in the US by the corporate powers but we still seem to suffer from the illusion that we are a democracy and that the people are in charge. The sooner we wake up from this misbegotten dream the better for us all.
And then California does THIS (h/t WorldProutAssembly):
A state board voted Thursday to begin terminating health insurance for more than 60,000 children Oct. 1 as a result of the budget amendments signed into law recently by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Those children would be up for an annual review of their coverage next month, but instead they may be dropped from the California Healthy Families program under the action by the state Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board. The board is scrambling to secure funding from other sources, including money set aside by voters for early childhood education, but so far it has come up short. If additional funds are not found, board officials said, the program could ultimately drop 669,296 children in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2010. Currently, 921,000 people age 18 and younger are enrolled in Healthy Families.
By Patrick McGreevy and Evan Halper
Yes, cut healthcare for the neediest. I know I ain’t no California Dude, but this sure seems fucked up to me.
Heather, at C&L, has a clip of Real Time’s Real Reporter, Dana Gould, as he examines the difference between visiting the right-wing nutcases and the RAM gathering in California. Can you imagine the upside down rationale for the people WITH healthcare being all pissed off about Single payer (or any kind of change), when the people hurting the most are the most cordial and helpful?
done
But the Brutal Truth About America’s Healthcare is described by the founder of RAM, Stan Brock in this interview and article first published at The Independent/UK and also featured at CommonDreams. You keep hearing the Rush maniacs scream at TownHall events, but they are mum about this issue. Here is a snippet:
…
President Obama’s healthcare plans had been a central plank of his first-term program, but his reform package has taken a battering at the hands of Republican opponents in recent weeks. As the Democrats have failed to coalesce around a single, straightforward proposal, their rivals have seized on public hesitancy over “socialized medicine” and now the chance of far-reaching reform is in doubt.
Most damaging of all has been the tide of vociferous right-wing opponents whipping up skepticism at town hall meetings that were supposed to soothe doubts. In Pennsylvania this week, Senator Arlen Specter was greeted by a crowd of 1,000 at a venue designed to accommodate only 250, and of the 30 selected speakers at the event, almost all were hostile.
The packed bleachers in the LA Forum tell a different story. The mobile clinic has been organized by the remarkable Remote Area Medical. The charity usually focuses on the rural poor, although they worked in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Now they are moving into more urban venues, this week’s event in Los Angeles is believed to be the largest free healthcare operation in the country.
Doctors, dentists and therapists volunteer their time, and resources to the organization. To many US medical professionals, it offers a rare opportunity to plug into the public service ethos on which their trade was supposedly founded. “People come here who haven’t seen a doctor for years. And we’re able to say ‘Hey, you have this, you have this, you have this’,” said Dr Vincent Anthony, a kidney specialist volunteering five days of his team’s time. “It’s hard work, but incredibly rewarding. Healthcare needs reform, obviously. There are so many people falling through the cracks, who don’t get care. That’s why so many are here.”
Ironically, given this week’s transatlantic spat over the NHS, Remote Area Medical was founded by an Englishman: Stan Brock. The 72-year-old former public schoolboy, Taekwondo black belt, and one-time presenter of Wild Kingdom, one of America’s most popular animal TV shows, left the celebrity gravy train in 1985 to, as he puts it, “make people better”.
Today, Brock has no money, no income, and no bank account. He spends 365 days a year at the charity events, sleeping on a small rolled-up mat on the floor and living on a diet made up entirely of porridge and fresh fruit. In some quarters, he has been described, without too much exaggeration, as a living saint.
Though anxious not to interfere in the potent healthcare debate, Mr Brock said yesterday that he, and many other professionals, believes the NHS should provide a benchmark for the future of US healthcare.
“Back in 1944, the UK government knew there was a serious problem with lack of healthcare for 49.7 million British citizens, of which I was one, so they said ‘Hey Mr Nye Bevan, you’re the Minister for Health… go fix it’. And so came the NHS. Well, fast forward now 66 years, and we’ve got about the same number of people, about 49 million people, here in the US, who don’t have access to healthcare.”
“I’ve been very conservative in my outlook for the whole of my life. I’ve been described as being about 90,000 miles to the right of Attila the Hun. But I think one reaches the reality that something doesn’t work… In this country something has to be done. And as a proud member of the US community but a loyal British subject to the core, I would say that if Britain could fix it in 1944, surely we could fix it here in America.
Healthcare compared
Health spending as a share of GDP
US 16%
UK 8.4%
Public spending on healthcare (% of total spending on healthcare)
I’ll tell you where he has been: sucking up to the power elite in the Dem Party and complicit MSM by bowing down to snuggle his little nose in the ass crack of the wealthiest thieves in American Political history.
Yeah, Johnny Boy, what happens if Single Payer actually gains ground and people start pushing their congressmen for it, while this entire time you have been awash in the bullshit “Public Option” (which is dead) and NOT using you “Mighty” blog to push these criminals into doing the right thing?
Let me tell you what he will do: he will say he was for it all along, but…
The “but” is that you are a sycophantic pussy, Johnny Boy. You should have been a man… a Patriot. But you are a coward that will try to take some credit for something I hope comes, when in truth you are a part of the problem that has caused this thing to be beaten down thus far.
I am working as hard as possible at this little puny blog to make the right choice for America.
Again, where the hell have you been (and wipe that shit off your nose)?
BuelahMan
Lynda
kelsosnuts
