Young Turk Cenk Uygur Blasts SCUM* For Attacking Rolling Stone For "Outing" McChrystal

*SCUM = So-Called Unbiased Media--Michael Hastings just pushed the Press' relationship with the Military (which NEVER manipulates reporters, of course) back into that tricksy, antagonistic ground, just when everybody was happy with "cooperation." Reporters aren't supposed to be 'friends' with their sources...

And, lovely as she is, and as elegant and soothing and "privileged' as her posh, toff-y accents are, it appears Lara Logan's no better than a sluttish chambermaid for the powerful...

All Hail The New AMERICAN NATIONAL ICON!

More of that "Good, Old CYCBI," SCROTUS Edition

The Court's nominal "liberal" leader, JP Stevens, concurred with the majority, convinced apparently by the persuasive power of Solicitor General Kagan's arguments that there is SOME speech that may be subject to prior restraint.

Here's the take-away, if you haven't the patience to read the whole thing (advised): "The lesson here is that Barack Obama and the Democrats may have talked a different talk about civil liberties on the campaign trail, but they are committed to the same vicious policies as their predecessors. The Obama administration is willing to curtail all of our civil liberties in pursuit in the name of what was once Bush's "war on terror"--but is now wholly Obama's."

Somebody remind me again: what the fuck is this "change" you are all so excited about?

A license to witch-hunt

A Supreme Court decision on the Patriot Act shows where Barack Obama stands.

THE U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a part of the USA PATRIOT Act that criminalizes free speech as "terrorism"--and the Obama administration, which was expected to stop its predecessor's assault on the Constitution, is celebrating the decision as a victory.

The 6-3 decision of the court, announced June 21, upholds a portion of the 2001 Patriot Act that classifies some speech and other "intangible assistance" as material aid to terrorists.

The justices agreed with the arguments of the Obama administration--specifically, its choice to sit on the Supreme Court, former Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who made the White House's case before the court.

The administration opposed a lawsuit brought by the Humanitarian Law Project that challenged the law's provision that prohibits material support--specifically the giving of "expert advice or assistance"--to groups designated as "terrorist" by the U.S. State Department.

The law project wanted to provide advice to two groups--the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Kurdistan Workers' Party--on peacefully resolving disputes and working with the United Nations. But in his opinion justifying the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the motives of the Humanitarian Law Project didn't matter, and any assistance to a group on the State Department's terrorism list represented "material support."

The consequences of the ruling are far-ranging, as the New York Times pointed out:

The court at least clarified that acts had to be coordinated with terror groups to be illegal, but many forms of assistance may still be a criminal act, including filing a brief against the government in a terror-group lawsuit.

Academic researchers doing field work in conflict zones could be arrested for meeting with terror groups and discussing their research, as could journalists who write about the activities and motivations of these groups, or the journalists' sources. The FBI has questioned people it suspected as being sources for a New York Times article about terrorism, and threatened to arrest them for providing material support.

In a strong dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer, supported by Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said the court's majority was too willing to believe the government's argument that national security concerns required restrictions on speech and had "failed to insist upon specific evidence, rather than general assertion."

As David Cole, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, told the Times, "This decision basically says the First Amendment allows making peacemaking and human rights advocacy a crime."

On an individual level, the ruling strengthens the government's ability to pursue the kind of witch-hunts carried out against Palestinian professor Sami Al-Arian or Pakistani student Syed Fahad Hashmi, two of the approximately 150 defendants that the government has charged with violating the material-support provision since 2001.

In Hashmi's case, after enduring nearly four years in solitary confinement, he agreed to plead guilty to a single count of material support for the "crime" of helping an acquaintance store and transport ponchos and waterproof socks that allegedly ended up with al-Qaeda organizations in Pakistan. For this, he has been sentenced to another 15 years in prison.

But the lawyers who argued the case pointed out that the impact goes further--the Patriot Act's material-support provision is so vague that humanitarian groups and journalists and their sources can be ensnared.

Some legal theorists believe the law is so broad that it could be interpreted as criminalizing any speech that could be said to give legitimacy to a terrorist group--for example, those who support the right of Hamas to lead the Palestinian Authority (after being democratically elected), even though the organization is on the State Department list. That's because, as Breyer pointed out in his dissent, the law could have made a distinction between "when the defendant knows or intends that those activities will assist the organization's unlawful terrorist actions" and when they don't--but it fails to do so.

"Instead," as lawyer Wendy Kaminer noted in The Atlantic, "the majority gave the administration a blank check to criminalize political speech specifically intended to advance peace."

The ruling also fails to acknowledge that there are almost no checks on the ability of the State Department, under the direction of the Secretary of State, to designate groups as "terrorist"--and that those decisions are often based on political calculations.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THIS RULING will be seen as another win for the Supreme Court's right wing, now led by Chief Justice Roberts, a Bush appointee. But it's also claimed as a victory by the Obama administration--and in particular, its former Solicitor General and current Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, who argued the government's case in February.

Kagan has been criticized as too liberal by some conservative Republican senators, but this case shows she fits in squarely with the majority of justices who support expanding presidential power at the expense of our rights.

In fact, that's one of the reasons she was chosen to join the court. She agrees with the Obama administration's fundamentally conservative position on these "war on terror" issues.

Barack Obama was expected by millions of people who voted for him to challenge George Bush's shredding of the Constitution. But a year and a half into his presidency, not only is the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay still up and running, but the Obama White House has explicitly upheld Bush administration policies on trial by military commissions, rendition of prisoners to allied regimes where torture is legal, warrantless wiretapping and the use of executive powers to hinder the prosecution of U.S. officials for illegal acts.

One of the latest outrages is the case of Yemeni detainee Mohamed Hassan Odaini. The government has concluded that Odaini did nothing wrong--but the Obama administration has refused to release him, and instead has fought vehemently in court to keep him imprisoned at Guantánamo. As Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald wrote:

[T]he Obama administration is knowingly imprisoning a completely innocent human being who has been kept in a cage in an island prison, thousands of miles from his home, for the last eight years, since he's 18 years old, despite having done absolutely nothing wrong...

If you're willing to work to keep a person whom you know is innocent imprisoned, what aren't you willing to do? What decent human being wouldn't be repulsed by this? I don't care how many times someone chants "Pragmatism" or "The Long Game" or whatever other all-purpose justifying mantras have been marketed to venerate the current president; these are repellent acts that have no justification.

Of course, none of this is new for the Obama administration; it's consistent with their course of conduct from the start.

The lesson here is that Barack Obama and the Democrats may have talked a different talk about civil liberties on the campaign trail, but they are committed to the same vicious policies as their predecessors. The Obama administration is willing to curtail all of our civil liberties in pursuing the name of what was once Bush's "war on terror"--but is now wholly Obama's.

Preserving the Appearances: Some Easy Reading For Judge Fuckwad Feldman

He quashed the presidential moratorium deep-water drilling today. May his ass drop into the shitter the next time he changes his robes.

Turns out, the Judge was probably NOT an impartial mediator of this dispute, cuz he owned a couple of chunks of stock in enterprises whose profitability were being limited as long as the moratorium persisted.

Judge Fuckwad Feldman is a big judicial cheese, so he may have forgotten the question of recusal. He's Big Deal Fuckwad Feldman and does whatever the fuck Big Deal Fuckwad Feldman WANTS to do.

And latterly, that's been to dabble in ahwl. Hizzoner Judge Big Time Fuckwad Feldman apparently is so deeply into ahwl, Texaco's got a rig on his asshole.

Yo, Fuckwad? Here's the pertinent statute, homework for tonight, you fatuous pig:

TITLE 28 > PART I > CHAPTER 21 > § 455

§ 455. Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge

(a) Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
(b) He shall also disqualify himself in the following circumstances:

(1) Where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding;
(2) Where in private practice he served as lawyer in the matter in controversy, or a lawyer with whom he previously practiced law served during such association as a lawyer concerning the matter, or the judge or such lawyer has been a material witness concerning it;
(3) Where he has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy;
(4) He knows that he, individually or as a fiduciary, or his spouse or minor child residing in his household, has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding;
(5) He or his spouse, or a person within the third degree of relationship to either of them, or the spouse of such a person:

(i) Is a party to the proceeding, or an officer, director, or trustee of a party;
(ii) Is acting as a lawyer in the proceeding;
(iii) Is known by the judge to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding;
(iv) Is to the judge’s knowledge likely to be a material witness in the proceeding.

(c) A judge should inform himself about his personal and fiduciary financial interests, and make a reasonable effort to inform himself about the personal financial interests of his spouse and minor children residing in his household.
(d) For the purposes of this section the following words or phrases shall have the meaning indicated:

(1) “proceeding” includes pretrial, trial, appellate review, or other stages of litigation;
(2) the degree of relationship is calculated according to the civil law system;
(3) “fiduciary” includes such relationships as executor, administrator, trustee, and guardian;
(4) “financial interest” means ownership of a legal or equitable interest, however small, or a relationship as director, adviser, or other active participant in the affairs of a party, except that:

(i) Ownership in a mutual or common investment fund that holds securities is not a “financial interest” in such securities unless the judge participates in the management of the fund;
(ii) An office in an educational, religious, charitable, fraternal, or civic organization is not a “financial interest” in securities held by the organization;
(iii) The proprietary interest of a policyholder in a mutual insurance company, of a depositor in a mutual savings association, or a similar proprietary interest, is a “financial interest” in the organization only if the outcome of the proceeding could substantially affect the value of the interest;
(iv) Ownership of government securities is a “financial interest” in the issuer only if the outcome of the proceeding could substantially affect the value of the securities.

(e) No justice, judge, or magistrate judge shall accept from the parties to the proceeding a waiver of any ground for disqualification enumerated in subsection (b). Where the ground for disqualification arises only under subsection (a), waiver may be accepted provided it is preceded by a full disclosure on the record of the basis for disqualification.
(f) Notwithstanding the preceding provisions of this section, if any justice, judge, magistrate judge, or bankruptcy judge to whom a matter has been assigned would be disqualified, after substantial judicial time has been devoted to the matter, because of the appearance or discovery, after the matter was assigned to him or her, that he or she individually or as a fiduciary, or his or her spouse or minor child residing in his or her household, has a financial interest in a party (other than an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome), disqualification is not required if the justice, judge, magistrate judge, bankruptcy judge, spouse or minor child, as the case may be, divests himself or herself of the interest that provides the grounds for the disqualification

Read up, yer fucking Honner, you venal, sold-out, corrupt, vile old fraud!

Jon Stewart with "Gaslands" Director Josh Fox

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Josh Fox
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

The US Deep-Water, Off-shore Oil Industry, Via Al Jazeera

Ach, Lord, the giftie gi'e us...

Positive Thinking: A snare and a delusion?

Mind-fucking: 18 Vets Commit Suicide Every Day

Probably not ALL of them in consequence of their experiences in the service.

But still...Damn! That's harsh...

Davis Fleetwood: "Alex Jones is a dim-witted, douchebag, Denialist dumb-fuck!"

Sang Freud: Can You Laugh At The Executioner On The Gallows Step?

If so, then you'll DIE laughing at this shit:

50 Statistics About The U.S. Economy That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

Most Americans know that the U.S. economy is in bad shape, but what most Americans don't know is how truly desperate the financial situation of the United States really is. The truth is that what we are experiencing is not simply a "downturn" or a "recession". What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end for the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen. Our greed and our debt are literally eating our economy alive. Total government, corporate and personal debt has now reached 360 percent of GDP, which is far higher than it ever reached during the Great Depression era. We have nearly totally dismantled our once colossal manufacturing base, we have shipped millions upon millions of middle class jobs overseas, we have lived far beyond our means for decades and we have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world. A great day of financial reckoning is fast approaching, and the vast majority of Americans are totally oblivious.

But the truth is that you cannot defy the financial laws of the universe forever. What goes up must come down. The borrower is the servant of the lender. Cutting corners always catches up with you in the end.

Sometimes it takes cold, hard numbers for many of us to fully realize the situation that we are facing.

So, the following are 50 very revealing statistics about the U.S. economy that are almost too crazy to believe....

One waits, usually in vain, for the authors of such jeremiads to take up the case of USer military spending as being the key goad and spur to all this defecit expenditure. Such is also the case here, but persevere, because some of the factoids are compelling.

However without a caveat to the effect that such predictions as are implied presume the continuation of current policies.

P.S.: I know it's "sang froid."

Daniel Ellsberg Has Some Authority In Such Matters

Via Der Spiegel, Ellsberg declares:

'Obama Deceives the Public'

Daniel Ellsberg, legendary leaker of the "Pentagon Papers" in 1971, still has a bone to pick with the White House. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the 79-year-old peace activist accuses President Obama of betraying his election promises -- in Iraq, in Afghanistan and on civil liberties.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Ellsberg, you're a hero and an icon of the left. But we hear you're not too happy with President Obama anymore.

Daniel Ellsberg: I voted for him and I will probably vote for him again, as opposed to the Republicans. But I believe his administration in some key aspects is nothing other than the third term of the Bush administration.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How so?

Ellsberg: I think Obama is continuing the worst of the Bush administration in terms of civil liberties, violations of the constitution and the wars in the Middle East.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: For example?

Ellsberg: Take Obama's explicit pledge in his State of the Union speech to remove "all" United States troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. That's a total lie. I believe that's totally false. I believe he knows that's totally false. It won't be done. I expect that the US will have, indefinitely, a residual force of at least 30,000 US troops in Iraq.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What about Afghanistan? Isn't that a justifiable war?

Ellsberg: I think that there's an inexcusable escalation in both countries. Thousands of US officials know that bases and large numbers of troops will remain in Iraq and that troop levels and bases in Afghanistan will rise far above what Obama is now projecting. But Obama counts on them to keep their silence as he deceives the public on these devastating, costly, reckless ventures.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You doubt not only Obama's missions abroad but also his politics back home in the US. Why exactly are you accusing the president of violating civil liberties?

Ellsberg: For instance, the Obama administration is criminalizing and prosecuting whistleblowers to punish them for uncovering scandals within the federal government …

SPIEGEL ONLINE: … Such as the arrest, confirmed this week, of an Army intelligence analyst for leaking the "Collateral Murder" video of a deadly US helicopter attack in Iraq, which was later posted online at WikiLeaks.

Ellsberg: Also, the recent US indictment of Thomas Drake.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Drake was a former senior official with the National Security Agency (NSA) who provided reporters with information about failures at the NSA.

Ellsberg: For Obama to indict and prosecute Drake now, for acts undertaken and investigated during the Bush administration, is to do precisely what Obama said he did not mean to do -- "look backward." Of all the blatantly criminal acts committed under Bush, warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, aggression, torture, Obama now prosecutes only the revelation of massive waste by the NSA, a socially useful act which the Bush administration itself investigated but did not choose to indict or prosecute!

Bush brought no indictments against whistleblowers, though he suspended Drake's clearance. Obama, in this and other matters relating to secrecy and whistleblowing, is doing worse than Bush. His violation of civil liberties and the White House's excessive use of the executive secrecy privilege is inexcusable.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why would Obama reverse himself?

Ellsberg: He's a good politician. He said what he needed to say to get elected, and now he's just taking advantage of the office. Like any administration before, his administration caters to the profits of big corporations like BP and Goldman Sachs -- even though I think BP won't get off that easily this time. His early campaign contributions, the big corporate contributions, came from Wall Street. They got their money's worth.

In fact, during the campaign of 2008, three candidates were backed by Wall Street: Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. If you look at the rhetoric, the most promising was John Edwards. Too bad he turned out to be a jerk.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But Obama has been very verbal about his criticism of Wall Street.

Ellsberg: His actions are totally uncoupled from his public statements. I don't even listen anymore. He has turned 180 degrees. Another example: His promise to filibuster a law giving the phone companies legal immunity for any role they played in the Bush's domestic eavesdropping program. Then he not only voted not to filibuster it, he also voted for the law -- against the wishes of his backers.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you think that will backfire for the Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections?

Ellsberg: I don't think what Obama is doing is the best way to get votes. But it's the best way to get campaign contributions.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You were the ultimate whistleblower. In 1971, you leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, revealing that the government was well aware the Vietnam War couldn't be won. You changed history but were vilified and prosecuted for it. Would you still do it today?

Ellsberg: I wouldn't wait that long. I would get a scanner and put them on the Internet.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Would that still have the same impact?

Ellsberg: If the Pentagon Papers came online today all at once, the government wouldn't be tempted to enjoin it. Back then, we got this long duel going between newspapers and the government. In the end, 19 newspapers ended up putting up parts of the documents, day after day after day. It created this ongoing scandal. I don't think it would have the same impact online as having it in the Times.

Yup. Ellsberg is in no position to KNOW explicitly the details of Prez Shamwow's deceptions via the War Dept, as he was when the Pentagon Papers passed through his hands in the late '60s. But his analysis of Prez. Shazama's domestic intel plans seem right on, in light of known facts and actions.

And he's right, too, that the imprimatur of the NYTimes added credibility to the revelations that would be/is absent from the on-line "news" environment.

Guess What? Campaign Ads DO Have Consequences

The CONSUMATE ad-man, Stan Freeberg, had already admitted to anyone who was paying attention that, contratry to the pious proclamations by ad school profs that ads were only supplying a demand for information (i shit you not), ads CREATED demand--and primarily by repetition...It makes a difference if you can buy five spots per hour, instead of only one or two.

Money talks; big ad buys affect poll results
BY BILL COTTERELL • FLORIDA CAPITAL BUREAU • JUNE 10, 2010

A new statewide poll shows Republican challenger Rick Scott has vaulted past Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum in the race for governor.

And Jeff Greene, another wealthy candidate financing his own first statewide race, has surged into a dead heat with U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami Gardens, in the U.S. Senate race.

"Mothers may tell their children that money can’t buy happiness, but what these results show is that money can buy enough television ads to make political neophytes serious contenders," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "It certainly doesn’t hurt with Greene or Scott that this is shaping up to be the year of the anti-establishment candidate."

The Quinnipiac Poll showed Scott, a wealthy Naples businessman who has been flooding television with advertisements, leading McCollum by double digits -- 44 percent to 31 percent -- in a GOP primary.

In the Democratic primary, Meek clings to a 29-27 percent lead over Greene, a Palm Beach County real estate investor who is another "deep pockets" newcomer financing his own campaign.

But there were large numbers of undecided voters in both parties. Quinnipiac said 60 percent in both parties said they could change their minds before the Aug. 24 primaries.

The winner of the Democratic Senate nomination will face Gov. Charlie Crist, running as an independent, and Republican Marco Rubio in November. The GOP nominee for goveror will face Democrat Alex Sink and independent Bud Chiles in the general election.

"Around the country, challengers to so-called career politicians seem to be doing well, and these showings by Scott and Greene certainly fit very well into that trend," said Brown.

Scott's television barrage has driven state Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, out of the race. His former company, Columbia/HCA, paid the largest Medicare fraud fine in history, $1.7 billion, while Scott was in charge -- which he mentions in some of his advertising, while saying he took responsibility although he was not criminally charged.

McCollum has recently putting out daily statements about Scott's "fraud files." A Quinnipiac poll on Wednesday indicated either McCollum and Scott would beat Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the likely Democratic nominee for governor, or independent challenger Lawton "Bud" Chiles.

Arizona's controversial immigration law looks like a big factor. Quinnpiac found that 86 percent of Republicans approve of it, and Scott promises in his advertisements to bring such a law to Florida. Those ads also feature a quote from McCollum, saying "we don't need that law" in Florida.

Despite his former company's fraud penalties, the poll said 40 percent of Republicans view Scott favorably and 12 percent disapprove of him, while 46 percent didn't know enough about him to form an opinion. McCollum, a Republican congressman for 20 years now running his fourth statewide race, was viewed favorably by only 41 percent of Republicans and unfavorably by 19 percent with 36 percent not having an opinion.

The poll was conducted last week among 814 Republicans and 785 Democrats. It has a margin of error or plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Pat Buchanan Would Have Gotten A Bonus...

if he'd said what Helen Thomas got fired for...

Column A

CF, the Precautionary Principle.

Some Slim Shred of Sanity Still Prevails In Prescott, AZ

A member of the City Council, a goitered, gloating gringo named Blair, had (operant case: past) a radio program on the local rightwing out-flow, on which he berated the city for prominently featuring the physiognomy of a child whose physical characteristics were distinctly non-caucasian. This 'diversity" drove Blair into a tizzy, and he prevailed upon the school-board, at least initially, to modify the image on the building, and lighten the skin-tone of the central and most prominent figure in the mural. The Board agreed, until the story hit the web and the national reaction began to pour into parochial, little Prescott.

"On June 5th, 2010 in Prescott, AZ, Miller Valley Elementary School principal Jeff Lane and Prescott Unified School District Superintendent Kevin Kapp admit they made a mistake and apologize for their decision to lighten children's faces on the "Go Green" mural painted on the side of the school."

Genau! EXACTLY Right!

By the end of his term, Prez Shamwow is supposed to become the most detested black man in America since Johnnie Cochran or OJ Simpson...and thereby prepare the way for the recrudescence of Bushevism--Jeb this time...

The Peace prize is the centerpiece of Shamwow's "legacy." It's set up as a kind of consolation prize. He's only gonna be a one-termer, but they'll give him a few token 'victories" to assure his "place in history." For example, he'll be remembered as "Rooseveltian": FDR for 'health care reform,' Teddy for "financial regulation reform," and wise and foreward-looking for an 'energy bill,' and maybe even an "immigration bill," so that when his only term ends in 2012, and he's become the most detested black in Americaq since OJ, he can still join the pantheon of noble black people in Murka, with MLK, and DuBois, and Washington, et al...the apotheosis of Tokenism.

The Case for "Clean Elections"

(Which misses the obvious point that if elections actually meant anything, the elites wouldn't let the Middull Murkin proletariat anywhere near a polling booth)

January 06, 2009 — "Clean Elections: Changing the Face of America" is a video narrated by journalis "Clean Elections: Changing the Face of America" is a video narrated by journalist Bill Moyers on the influence the Clean Elections movement--or publicly financed elections--has had on politics and campaigns in Maine, Arizona, and North Carolina. The video includes interviews from politicians and citizens from Arizona and Maine as well as comments from national organizations including Public Campaign, Common Cause, and Democracy Matters.

I Can't Wait Til Obama Becomes President

And apparently I am not alone. I truly anticipate the day when "One thing’s for sure, once Barack Obama comes to power you’ll never again see an oil corporation-infested administration do nothing about a major crisis, lie about it, and protect British Petroleum instead of the American public." Right? RIGHT?

Via The Regressive Antidote:

Watching the latest tragedy unfold in the Gulf this last month, all I can say is: I can’t wait for Barack Obama to become president.

This Bush guy is such a disaster, literally and figuratively. It just seems that the destruction of America he presides over is all but endless. As if one Gulf Coast disaster left to rot in the sun wasn’t enough for this president, now comes a second. What did those folks in New Orleans ever do to him? Heck, what did Americans ever do to him?

I just can’t wait any longer for the new administration to take office. They are absolutely guaranteed to handle things so much differently than the Cheney Bots in the White House who seem intent on wrecking the whole world, with their charity beginning at home.

Look at this oil spill disaster, for example.

To start with, Barack Obama would never pick a guy like Ken Salazar for the crucial environmental position of Secretary of the Interior. Of course Bush would, though. Salazar has been deeply tied to mining and ranching industries his entire career – just the kind of corporate hack Cheney would insist on for the position. In fact, Salazar was even a big supporter of his predecessor, the corrupt industry shill, Gale Norton. After all the work environmentalists put into getting Obama elected, there’s no way he’d choose someone like Salazar for this position, a guy so lame that mining association lobbyists welcomed the appointment when Bush made it. What does that tell you? Of course, Salazar has turned out – just as you’d expect – to be the “Heckuva Job, Kenny” of the oil spill. This will never happen once Obama gets in and puts a real environmentalist atop the Interior Department.

Nor would Obama ever adopt the “Drill, baby, drill” mentality that Bush did earlier this year, when he opened up vast expanses of the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling – much of it for the first time, ending a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along 167 million acres off the East Coast, from Delaware all the way down to Florida. This travesty by the Bush administration – which delighted oil companies and right-wing drilling advocates but angered environmentalists and appalled residents of those states – would never happen under an Obama administration. Unlike Bush, not only will Obama cease the expansion of drilling in these sensitive areas, he’ll surely cut it back. And not a moment to soon! Who knows where the next destructive spill will be.

We also wouldn’t be in this mess if federal regulators were doing their job, instead of being emasculated by regressive Bush administration deregulatory policies that turn industry loose to do whatever it wants. Regulators knew that backup systems were required to control the blowout preventers that failed in the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, and they even told rig operators that in 2009. But they never did anything about, relying instead on promises from the offshore drilling corporations that they were on top of it. Wait ‘til Obama gets into office, man! He’ll clean up that nonsense in a hurry. Regulators will actually regulate, and regulatees be whipped into shape, and forced to comply with the government-enforced public interest, just like they should be.

I’ll tell ya another thing. When Obama is president, you won’t see reckless companies like BP getting permission from the industry whores in the Minerals Management Service to drill wells without obtaining the permits that they are required by law to first receive from other government agencies. This is exactly what happened with Deepwater Horizon. And since January 2009 alone, permission to go forward for at least three huge lease sales, 103 seismic blasting projects and 346 drilling plans has been granted by MMS without getting the environmental protection permits required from other federal agencies, like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to protect endangered species, among other things. MMS staff scientists are also regularly pressured and overruled by management whenever they raise concerns about the environmental impacts of drilling projects. No way will these sort of destructive sell-outs ever happen once Barack Obama is in the White House.

It’s bad enough that the United States government under George W. Bush has been so culpable in so many ways for the wreckage that has come from the BP spill in the Gulf, but even worse is how they are helping BP to lie about its magnitude. First the administration said that the spill was pumping 1000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf. Then they increased that number to 5000 barrels. What we have now learned is that the real figure must be several times larger than that. Worse, we know that the administration is allowing BP to use a measuring technique specifically not recommended for this sort of spill, and has actually turned away a private team of scientists who were standing by ready to deploy the proper measurement equipment. Ian MacDonald, a Florida State University oceanographer who is expert in measuring oil flows, believes the amount must “easily be four or five times” what the administration is saying. Indeed, he and others have analyzed video imagery and estimated that the breach is spilling on the order of 70,000 barrels of oil every day. He notes that, “The government has a responsibility to get good numbers. If it's beyond their technical capability, the whole world is ready to help them.”

But, of course, the Bush people absolutely don’t want help to accurately measure the disaster their corporate patrons have created. In fact, because of their ties to industry, they want to make sure it isn’t properly measured. The situation is actually worse that, however. MacDonald and others believe that BP is actively trying to “hide the body” in this crime, and that the administration is assisting them in doing that by not collecting sufficient deep water samples to map out the damage, and by torpedoing those few gathered by scientists on their own. Over a month after the spill began there are still no deep water test results released by the government and no pressure from the administration for BP to collect this data. Worse, when independent oceanographers collected one sample that confirmed their theory about deep water spills creating huge underwater plumes of oil in the ocean, NOAA immediately criticized the results of the study, even though they had previously pointed to their partial funding of the effort as an example of the government’s attempts to stay on top of measuring the impact of the spill.

Just as they did with the whole Iraq WMD scare, the congenital liars in the Bush administration can’t seem to help themselves. They love the corporate class so much – even foreign corporations – that they are willing to put big money interests ahead of the American public who is their real constituency, and help protect those corporations with official lies. Won’t it be great when Obama gets in and puts the hammer down on this sort of disgusting treason in the White House?

Another sickening aspect of this tragedy is the cover-up which is already underway. As they did with 9/11 and Iraq, the Bush administration has again appointed a Potemkin Panel to investigate this crisis. But, guess what? Its six-member Board of Inquiry is made up of half Coast Guard staffers and half MMS clowns. It obviously is going to be completely unable – by design – to tell the truth about what has happened here, especially where the key government agencies nominally in charge are concerned. This is a total white-wash. You can bet that a guy like Obama would never countenance such behavior if he were president today.

Bush is also playing deceitful games with policy on this issue, trying make the public think that he’s environmentally friendly, even while he is taking excellent care of his buddies in the oil industry. After the blow-out, the president announced a moratorium on permits for drilling new offshore wells, and promised to stop giving environmental waivers for offshore drilling projects. But guess what? While we weren’t looking this last month, the administration issued seven new permits and handed out five environmental waivers for just the sort of projects like Deepwater Horizon that were supposed to be banned now because of their potential to replicate the current destruction we’re witnessing. In fact, many of these projects involve wells nearly twice as deep in the ocean the one currently spewing oil, and are therefore even more potentially dangerous.

The president himself said, “It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies. That cannot and will not happen anymore.” But it has. Seven times. The president also said, “We're also closing the loophole that has allowed some oil companies to bypass some critical environmental reviews.” But he hasn’t. Five times. Bush’s Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, explicitly testified that “there is no deep-water well in the OCS [outer continental shelf] that has been spudded – that means started – after April 20”. But, in fact, Newfield Exploration Company confirmed that it was issued a permit on May 11 to drill, and has been doing so. And they’re not alone.

Meanwhile, back in the Gulf, the Bush administration seems completely intent on letting its oil industry buddies do whatever they want, no matter the damage. There are substantial concerns about the health and environmental impact of Corexit (just the name freaks me out), the oil dispersant being used in world-record amounts (over 700,000 gallons so far) to deal with the spill. According to Representative Edward Markey, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, “We know almost nothing about the potential harm from the long-term use of any of these chemicals on the marine environment in the Gulf of Mexico, and even less about their potential to enter the food chain and ultimately harm humans”. Great.

So the Bush administration pretended to order BP to scale back the use of Corexit, and pretended to give them a deadline by which to do so. But BP just told the government where they could stick their deadline, and kept on deploying the toxic chemicals. I doubt they’d dare to try that if a real environmentalist who put the interests of the public ahead of oil company profits – someone like Barack Obama – was in the Oval Office. You can bet the house on that.

The Bush Leaguers have also played silly games with public relations, like wimpy babies trying to act tough, just as they did when the Vietnam-evader himself put on a flight suit and landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln to declare “Mission accomplished” in Iraq, before the real war even started. Now they talk about how they’re gonna “keep the boot on the neck” of BP to clean up the spill. Tough words, man. According to the New York Times, though, “Oil industry experts said they did not take seriously the sporadic threats by the administration that the federal government might have to wrest management of the effort to plug the well from BP. The experts said that the Interior and Energy Departments do not have engineers with more experience in deepwater drilling than those who work for BP and the array of companies that have been brought into the effort to stem the leak. ‘It's worse than politics,’ said Larry Goldstein, a director of the Energy Policy Research Foundation, which is partly financed by the oil industry. ‘They have had the authority from Day 1. If they could have handled this situation better, they would have already.’”

Speaking of rank public relations maneuvers, Bush pretended to blow his top when the three companies (including Halliburton, of course) all blamed each other for the catastrophe, and called their antics a “ridiculous spectacle”, despite doing little himself to deal with the issue for more than a month now. Then he professed anger and astonishment at the “cozy relationship” between the oil industry and the government. Imagine that! Putting on his tough guy face, Bush waved his arms and said, “I will not tolerate any more finger-pointing or irresponsibility”. Oh, that’s cute. What’s he gonna do, order BP to act responsibly? Next year sometime? Over brandy and cigars in the Oval Office? I’ll tell you one, thing, if Obama were in the White House you’d never see a “ridiculous spectacle” like the one the president is putting on right now.

And, you know, you would also think that Bush learned his lesson from 9/11 and Katrina about getting up off the couch and engaging himself when there is a national crisis going on. Apparently not, however. Just like when Katrina hit, he’s running around doing political fundraisers while the country scrambles to deal with a crisis, and now he’s taking a vacation, as well, just like he did in the month before 9/11, after being warned of an imminent attack. Unbelievable.

Speaking of vacation, I just can’t take it anymore. These Bush clowns and their destructive antics are just killing me. It seems like it’s taking forever for the Obama administration to start, and for these predators to go.

I just can’t deal with it anymore. I’m gonna go take a long nap

Someone wake me up, oh, say, about a year-and-a-half into the Obama administration, wouldya?

By that time they should have really made their mark, and life will be so much better in America.

One thing’s for sure, once Barack Obama comes to power you’ll never again see an oil corporation-infested administration do nothing about a major crisis, lie about it, and protect British Petroleum instead of the American public.

That’s change you can believe in.

The "Pep" Boys of Religious Oppression: Yaweh, Mohammed & Jesus

From 2005, an oldie/goodie by "Young Turk" Cenk Uygur which ran on HuffPost before Arianna got nervous:

If You're a Christian, Muslim or Jew - You are Wrong

We live in a twisted world, where right is wrong and wrong reigns supreme. It is a chilling fact that most of the world's leaders believe in nonsensical fairytales about the nature of reality. They believe in Gods that do not exist, and religions that could not possibly be true. We are driven to war after war, violence on top of violence to appease madmen who believe in gory mythologies. These men are called Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Osama bin Laden is insane. He believes God whispered in the ear of Mohammed 1,400 years ago about how he should conquer Arabia. Mohammed was a pure charlatan -- and a good one at that. He makes present religious frauds like Pat Robertson look like amateurs.

He said God told him to have sex with as many of the women he met as possible. I'm sorry, I meant to say "take them as wives." God told him to kill all other tribes that stood in his way or that would not placate him with assurances of loyalty or bribes. God told him, conveniently, that everyone should follow him and never question a word he said.

He sold this bag of goods to the blithering idiots who lived in the Arabian Peninsula at the time. If that weren't shockingly stupid enough, over a billion people continue to believe the convenient lies that Mohammed told all that time ago -- to this very day.

We live in a world full of insane people. Sanity is an island battered in an ocean of frothing delusion. The people who believe in science are the minority. The people who believe in bloody fairytales are the overwhelming majority.

George W. Bush is the most powerful man alive. He is a class A imbecile. He is far less intelligent than the average Christian. But like most of the others, he believes Jesus died for his sins. That idea is so perverse and devoid of logic it should shock the conscience. Instead, it gets him elected, and earns him the reverence of a great percentage of America. America! The most advanced country in the world -- run by a bunch of villagers who still believe Santa Claus is going to save them.

There is no damn Easter Bunny. There is no Jesus waiting to return. Moses never even existed. These were all convenient lies from the men of those times to gain power. Their actions were rational -- they wanted to deceive their brethren so that they could amass power. I get their motivations. But I cannot, for the life of me, understand our motivations, thousands of years later, still following the conmen of yesteryear into our gory, bloody, violent end.

Jesus is said to have said on the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Because Jesus was insane and the God he thought would rescue him did not exist. And he died on that cross like a fool. He fancied himself the son of God and he could barely convince twelve men to follow him at a time when the world was full of superstition.

Excellent marketing by some of his followers would later rescue his botched effort. How many people saw his miracles? One? Twelve? Eighty? Why didn't he show the whole world? Not because this is some giant pop quiz by God to test us -- but because he did not perform any miracles!

Even his apostles can't agree on what miracles he supposedly carried out or when he carried them out. Or whether he returned after death or he didn't. Whether they saw him in person or just as a vision. Rational human beings shouldn't believe this kind of nonsense. Yet most of the world does.

If a man today killed his only son to show how much he loved other people, he would be considered a madman, locked in jail and earn society's contempt. Yet we think this is some sort of noble act by our Father in Heaven.

In Heaven? What, with the harps and the winged angels and the 72 virgins? My God, how stupid do you have to be to believe that?

I know most of you don't actually read your religious texts, and when you do, you assiduously try to avoid the parts that make no sense whatsoever or hide underneath the comforting grasp of your religious leaders who have concocted a bunch of circular logic (a crime to even use that word in regards to Christianity, Islam or Judaism) to shield you from the obvious folly of the written text.

So, I'm not calling you stupid if you haven't really read the material. And I know how powerful brainwashing is. We all received it when we were young and it is exceedingly difficult to break its grasp. But people dance around the issue out of politeness because they don't want to call you what you are -- ignorant.

There are a lot of people I love dearly and respect wholeheartedly who believe in religion. I hate to do this to them. But we have killed far too many people, wasted far too much time on this nonsense for us to keep going in this direction for fear of offense.

Jesus was a lunatic. God is not coming to your rescue. He hasn't come to anyone's rescue in thousands of years, including Jesus. Mohammed was a power hungry, scam artist and ruthless conqueror. Moses and Abraham were figments of the imagination of some long dead rabbi. He would probably laugh his ass off at all of you who still believe the fairytales he made up thousands of years ago. He probably wouldn't even believe it if you told him.

Did I mention Judaism? The chosen people? Come on, get off it. People walk around in clothes from 18th century Russia, thinking they have been chosen by God when they look like a bunch of jackasses. I'm tired of all the deaths because we did not want to give offense. Orthodox Jews are wrong and ridiculous.

As are the orthodox and fundamentalists of all of the religions. It says in the Bible that it is an abomination to wear clothes made of two different cloths or to eat shellfish. If you think God will hate you because you mixed wool and linen or because you ate some shrimp, you are insane.

How long are we going to dance around the 800-pound gorilla in the room? The world is run by madmen. It's not just Bush and bin Laden. It is the leader of all of the countries in the Middle East, almost all of the Americas and most of the rest of the world.

Have I offended you? That's too bad. Stop killing each other in the name of false and ridiculous Gods and I will stop ridiculing you. Trust me, your offense is much worse than mine.

Right now as you read this, there are ignorant, hateful Muslims teaching other ignorant Muslims how to put on a suicide belt. There are orthodox Jews telling other Jews how they must never leave their "holy land" no matter what the consequences are to other human beings. They assure their followers -- remember, they are not the chosen ones, we are. If we crush and oppress them, don't worry, God will excuse it, and even desires it, because He is on our side.

There are maniacal Christians who are praying for the end of time. Who are hoping that most of the world's population is wiped off the face of the Earth by their vengeful and murderous God. Whom they believe is, ironically, a loving God. Unless, of course, you make the fatal mistake of not kissing his ass and appeasing him, in which case he will slaughter you and condemn you to eternal torture. What kind of sick people believe this?

The kind who live next to you. The kind who voted for George Bush. The kind who send their religious leaders to the White House to argue against even-handedness in the Middle East because it would prevent their sick prophecy. The kind who have undue influence over how we use the greatest and most lethal army ever built by man.

If you don't want to be called ignorant or misinformed, then get informed. Learn the real nature of our universe and put aside old wives tales about resurrected Gods, omniscient prophets and a guy who could split the Red Sea but couldn't find where he's going in the desert for forty years.

It's the year 2005. Let's start acting like it.

Why do they seem to act as if their "omnipotent" god needs their pitiful interference to accomplish its ends? If their "gods" are indeed all-powerful, not all the human agency in the world could forestall them.

The Owners Want Your Retirement Money & They're Gonna Get It

That's the sole and only purpose of Prez. Shamwow's "Deficit Reduction Commission": to abscond witht he Social Security 'surplus,' the last big pool of capital in the whole country that is NOPT exclusively devoted to enriching the Owners, whose obsequious tool he is and has always been...