There was one comment from a reader on the Mother Jones website that said: "I would tell them where Jimmy Hoffa is buried if they played the Barney song more than once."

Shoot, my kids, after just one season, would have confessed to the Manson Murders! And they were only just entering elementary school.

You only have to hear him once. He makes the same speech over and over again, not that he does a badly, it just isn't interesting.

And every time he talks from the top of his head rather than the patented speech he makes some kind of comment about how inferior the U.S., and "working class" Americans in general, ARE! He's the PINNACLE of unshackled condescension, haughtiness and inflated value of himself over us "lessers!" He's a fukking putz, but he's probably going to be the next prez, so we're stuck with the retarded, uninformed and just plain stupid picking our next prez!

I guess this means you'll be voting, eh?

Only against, not for! And I am a realist with regard to this. I live in California dude...the ignorant and illiterate gave us Feinstein & Pelosi. They gave us AHNOLD...the, er, "republican" married to the Kennedy liberal! And the next gov is PROBABLY going to be a formerly self-exiled buddhist / communist / Zen / Taoist / Jedi Knight / tax 'em even higher Brown. I love California, but I damned well understand why folks in Oregon and Washington don't care much for CA tourists or transplants. The "average" voter in California punches the bubbles the liberals in L.A. and S.F. point out for them because they're too damned dumb to be able to read / study with any real understanding (and many can't even read) of what it is they're looking at! So they take the word of the folks who say "if you're a poor, hard-working, lower class person with a family to raise, you need to vote Democrat because we're the only ones who care." And THAT, my friend, is an absolute FACT! (no link, I just witness it daily)

I wouldn't blame anyone for sitting this one out. McCain is too old and Obama is too inexperienced. Maybe the VP will matter this year.

Like you, I often vote against, but I think that against vote (against the last eight years) will bring Obama into office, inexperience and all.

I don't care for Mormons, but if McCain picked Romney I'd feel a whole lot better about him (doubtful though). And I'd take a McCain/Romney ticket over Obama/Clinton ANY day of the week. Obama/Clinton is like Satan and the anti-Christ...actually, I take that back...Clinton reminds me of the "whore of Babylon."

There's a difference between inexperience and blatant stupidity. You write as though McCain has fallen in lockstep with Bush for 8 years...HARDLY the case. And Obama would be the first REAL big step in handing U.S. sovereignty to the U.N. in my opinion. Fukk him...he's a slick talking (not all that slick though) same ole, same ole, FAR-left loon! And WAY more dangerous to the America we grew up in than John McCain.

McCain could be Reagan reincarnate and he would have tough time following Bushie.

I think Romney is the one that put UHC-lite into Mass. Under probably knows better than I, but I think it might be a slow-burn fiscal mess, like SS and medicare, just a little faster.

That's true, but with regard to economy & budgetary matters he's light years ahead of any of the other 3 mentioned (Obama, Clinton & McCain).

Maybe. he has a lot of religious baggage. Nothing that bothers me, but it will some folks.

Worse than Obama's?

Nothing compared to that.

Exactly...I'm pretty certain they quit preaching blatant racism in the LDS long before Obama was a twinkle in his papa's eye...it's been about a month since Obama separated HIMSELF from the racist fanatics at the Rev. Wright's Holy Temple of FukkWhitie, after sitting there shouting hallelujah for 20 years! And I'd bet Mrs. Obama has cut him off at the pass ever since, given her deep embarrassment over being stuck in America, a country she only recently became proud of! She's a bigger fukkin' retard than he is...and he's actually prettier...and HE'S an ugly fukk!

Ok, so the folks in Pelosi's district are ignorant and illiterate, but the folks in YOUR neck of the woods in CA are what, knowledgeable and literate?

As for Feinstein, it's a statewide election. I am sure a few knowledgeable and literate people voted for Feinstein and her opponent.

Btw, when it comes to ignorant and illiterate folks, I'd bet the CA G.O.P. has a firm hold over the majority of them, At least the melanin-deprived segment thereof. The Dems have a hold on the color-blessed segment of the igrnoant and illiterate voting bloc.

The whole farking state is full of em. The cali people who post here are the only smart ones.

Word.

home

There are HUGE, HUGE amounts of folks in CA that vote democrat because they're TOLD that voting democrat is "better" for them because democrats really care about folks like them (uneducated and illiterate). Most of the voters I'm speaking of would not have the ability to read a ballot initiative and understand its content, so they just vote democrat because they "hear" that democrats are "FOR" the poor and the destitute. C'mon nomar...you and I BOTH know that's bullshhit! How many poor and truly illiterate minorities vote dem in CA simply because "educated" folks like yourself TOLD them to!?! THAT'S how Pelosi & Feinstein won...and continue to win! Too many folks in CA vote for their ilk because the fukking retards running Hollywood tell them that's who has their best interest at heart. In fact, folks all over the country, especially the really young voters & those who can't actually read a ballot for themselves, are going to vote for the same people their favorite actors and actresses vote for because, quite obviously, said movie stars would NEVER vote for anyone who didn't have the "little people" at the heart of their public service. Any RETARD knows this! Fukking retards is exactly what they are, too!

nomar - "Btw, when it comes to ignorant and illiterate folks, I'd bet the CA G.O.P. has a firm hold over the majority of them, At least the melanin-deprived segment thereof. The Dems have a hold on the color-blessed segment of the igrnoant and illiterate voting bloc."

And CA is chock-full of people who can't even speak or READ English who vote for the likes of those mentioned simply because they've been promised welfare checks, free roof over their heads, free meals and free healthcare...and they don't even have to be able to read the names on the ballots...that lefty in the corner will be MORE than happy to show them who and what to vote for!

Thats why libs are pissed about Iraqis getting money. I tcould be going as welfare checks to potential demorcrat voters in the election.

A Blind Eye to Guantanamo?

Book Says White House Ignored CIA on Detainees' Innocence



It appears to be an issue of Bush redefining words to suit his needs. You're an "enemy combatant," not based on anything you may or may not have done, but simply based on the President's assertion, even despite overwhelming evidence. Based on Major Gen. Michael Dunlavey’s evaluation that up to ½ of the detainees were innocent, we’re talking about a random process – 50/50 – flip a coin to determine guilt and innocence. But don't you worry your pretty little minds, it's just torture of the innocent in your name. Nothing you care about.

they couldn't care less

Interesting ... you got a group of folks, about half of whom have engaged in hostile acts agains America...and you seem to advocate letting all of them loose.

And naturally, if it's anti-American...you will be favorably disposed..

you seem to advocate torturing them all

At today’s House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil Rights hearing on torture, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, told Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) that over 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody, with up to 27 of these declared homicides

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/18/ex-sta...st-25-murdered/

That was some time ago...we can only hope that the numbers are higher today.

true Christian values

I would certainly advocate releasing the 50% who never did anything. And at miminum that innocent 50% will need to be compensated for the torture inflicted upon them.

You advocate murder?

YouTube: First Guantanamo Bay VIDEO Released



'You don't care about me,' Omar Khadr sobs in interview tapes



Growing up Gitmo

He is now 21 and has been there since he was 15. A substantial portion of his childhood has been lived at our various torture facilities. The sad thing is that Omar is quite correct. You really don't care that children, or anyone really, is being tortured. Do you? I wonder who the sick fark was that tortured a 15 yr old boy.

Word has it that some American called little Omar a motherfarker...that oughta be worth a coupla hundred grand to him and his family.

where ya get yer drivvle?

You're a deeply creepy guy, Bub.

Possibly one of the guys who happened to find out that the kid was responsible for using his youth to lure American GIs into a trap and then opened up on them with his AK-47...maybe even blew a buddie's brains out. But, at 15, he COULDN'T be guilty of being a MURDERER...could he!?!?! Torture him? No, I don't condone that...but it's HIGHLY unlikely he's INNOCENT!

Because I don't immediately believe your crap about lil' Omar?
Mebbe you oughta changes lenses once and a while.

switch to the approved blurry rose tint

Gitmo judge: No 'coercive' questioning evidence
Military jurist bars some statements in case against former bin Laden driver

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25789074/

told ya...

Does U.S. have stockpile of secret Gitmo tapes?
Foreign countries were told interrogations were recorded, documents show
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26026944/

The Bush administration informed all foreign intelligence and law enforcement teams visiting their citizens held at Guantanamo Bay that video and sound from their interrogation sessions would be recorded, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. The policy suggests that the United States could possess hundreds or thousands of hours of secret taped conversations between detainees and representatives from nearly three dozen countries.




they have copies of everything

Mark all posts as read

mark all reps as rubes

Abu Ghraib-i-fying America's Schools
by Michelle Malkin

The citizens of the world who hate America are going to love the latest agitprop released this week by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. In a document titled "A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools," the left-wing groups seek to paint a horrifying portrait of the nation's classrooms as Abu Ghraib-like torture chambers.

The report compiles sob stories of students humiliated after being disciplined by school officials for unruliness, and claims that minority students are "disproportionately targeted" for punishment. Citing international law and threatening lawsuits, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU are demanding that the White House and Congress ban physical discipline in all public schools.

The report says that "more than 200,000 U.S. public school students were punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year," but makes no distinction between "beatings" that take the form of mere knuckle-rapping versus swats on the backside versus over-the-line violent confrontations. In several of the anecdotes cited, it wasn't bruised bottoms that upset the supposedly brutalized students. It was bruised egos.

Peter S., a middle-school student from the Mississippi Delta, whined to the researchers: "The other kids were watching and laughing. It made me want to fight them. When you get a paddling and you see everyone laugh at you, it make you mad and you want to do something about it." How about ending your bad behavior and flying right?

Of course educators must use common sense when punishing bad apples. Of course they should be held accountable if they cause undue harm. But the agenda of these outfits is not to ensure the safety of everyone in the classroom. Their agenda is to demonize unapologetic enforcers of order and to impose international dictates on American public institutions.

The main author of the report is a special fellow with the Open Society Institute, funded by George (America must be "de-Nazified") Soros. Replete with references to the Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the report declares in sweeping terms: "All corporal punishment, whether or not it causes significant physical injury, represents a violation of each student's rights to physical integrity and human dignity. It is degrading and humiliating, damaging the student's self-esteem and making him or her feel helpless." It's Gitmo all over again.

As usual, the Human Rights Watch/ACLU activists inject claims of racial discrimination into the mix -- repeatedly underscoring that many of the remaining states that allow corporal punishment are in the South. They infer deliberate targeting of black students based on statistics that reportedly show that "in the 13 southern states where corporal punishment is most prevalent, African-American students are punished at 1.4 times the rate that would be expected given their numbers in the student population, and African-American girls are 2.1 times more likely to be paddled than might be expected."

But that disproportion does not automatically equal discrimination. What they don't tell you are the races or ethnicities of the victims of the thugs being disciplined. What they don't bother to mention -- because it doesn't fit the America-as-torturer-of-minorities narrative -- is the unmitigated violence perpetrated in American classrooms against minority teachers.

The recent videotaped beating of black Baltimore teacher Jolita Berry by a black female student -- as other black students cheered and screamed, "Hit her!" -- exposed the continuing chaos in inner-city districts. In that school system alone, 112 students were expelled for assaults on staff members this school year.

Federal education statistics show that between 1996 and 2000, 599,000 violent crimes against teachers at school were reported. On average, the feds say, in each year from 1996 to 2000, about 28 out of every 1,000 teachers were the victims of violent crime at school, and three out of every 1,000 were victims of serious violent crime (i.e., rape, sexual assault, robbery or aggravated assault). Violence against teachers is higher at urban schools.

America's problem isn't that we're too tough and cruel in the classroom. It's that we've become too soft and placative, too ashamed and timid to assert authority and take unilateral action to guarantee a secure environment. Exactly where the human rights groups want us.

The United States cannot conceal pictures of abusive treatment of detainees by its soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan by saying their release might cause enemies to hurt someone, a federal appeals court said Monday in ordering the release of 21 photographs.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a 2006 ruling by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordering the release of the pictures to the American Civil Liberties Union. Hellerstein had ordered identifying facial features be removed from the pictures.

The color photographs were taken by servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The government has opposed the release of pictures of abuse, saying they would incite violence against U.S. troops in Iraq and provoke terrorists.

US govt can't block detainee photos release
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DET...EMPLATE=DEFAULT

The pictures provoke terrorists? How about the pictures provoke everyone? And they should. Torture is pure evil and the Republican party has embraced it.

Before you idiots chime in... trrrsts loppin haids off and other stupid, irrelevant crap.

And this proves they are morally bankrupt. Let's reject 200+ years of civilized behavior and embrace activities that used to be considered war crimes before Bush. whatever happened to that "shining city on the hill"? Pubes just dismiss it all in their unbridled desire for power and control over everything.

The Geneva Conventions Apply When We Say So

23 Sep 2008 08:33 pm

The ACLU blog has more on yesterday's 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decision:

When the ACLU and others first requested access from the government to the now-infamous photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the government responded that disclosure would be an "unwarranted invasion of privacy" of the detainees in the pictures. According to the government, the detainees’ privacy justified keeping the photos from the public, even if—as the ACLU requested—all identifying features in the photos were obscured. Not surprisingly, both the trial and appellate courts rejected the argument. After all, if you cannot recognize the detainees in the pictures because their faces and distinguishing features have been replaced by black boxes, how can their privacy be at stake?

What is surprising, however, is the government’s partial reliance on the Geneva Conventions to make this argument.

The Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions protect prisoners of war and detained civilians from "insults and public curiosity." (An extreme example of subjecting a prisoner to "public curiosity" might be parading that prisoner in shackles down a street lined with jeering civilians.) The government argued, in the court’s words, that "a photograph of abuse is so humiliating that its dissemination always opens the detainee to ‘public curiosity.’"

The argument is surprising, of course, because the same administration maintained for years that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to any of the detainees in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. It is surprising because the same administration relied upon its determination that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to justify its use of barbaric and inhumane interrogation methods in the first place. It is surprising because there would be no photos of abuse to request had the government cared this much about the Geneva Conventions before the abuses occurred and the photos were taken.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_...-conv.html#more

Rice admits Bush officials held White House talks on CIA interrogations


Her written statement to Senate investigators is the first official high-level acknowledgment of meetings that led to harsh methods such as waterboarding.
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

11:47 PM PDT, September 24, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Senior Bush administration officials held a series of meetings in the White House in 2002 and 2003 to discuss allowing the CIA to use harsh interrogation methods on Al Qaeda detainees, according to a written statement Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently provided to Senate investigators.

Rice's written response to investigators on the Senate Armed Services Committee marks the first time a high-ranking White House official has formally acknowledged the White House discussions, which led to the CIA's use of waterboarding and other coercive methods.


In particular, Rice wrote in the Sept. 12 statement that officials discussed simulated torture techniques that elite U.S. soldiers were subjected to as part of a survival training program, and that she and other officials were told that such methods "had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm."

Rice, who was serving as national security advisor at the time of the discussions, did not identify the source of that assertion. She was referring to a U.S. military program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE, which at times has included waterboarding and other controversial methods subsequently employed by the CIA.

Rice's written responses were released Wednesday by the office of Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the armed services committee, which has been investigating apparent interrogation abuses by U.S. military personnel.

"We've long believed they took place," Levin said in an interview, referring to the high-level meetings that Rice described. Her responses, however, provide what he described as "new, concrete evidence that they took place in the White House."

Levin questioned the assurance Rice said she and other officials obtained that SERE methods were safe. Levin said that contradicted statements from SERE experts who have pointed out that soldiers, unlike prisoners, can order the treatment stopped.

Rice did not disclose who at the meetings, but said that she had "asked Atty. Gen. [John] Ashcroft personally to review and confirm the legal advice" being prepared by the Department of Justice on the CIA's interrogation plans.

Other senior officials who routinely attended so-called principals meetings included then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; Alberto R. Gonzales, then the presidential counsel; and David S. Addington, the vice president's counsel.

The committee submitted similar questionnaires to other Bush administration officials. But Levin said that they declined or refused to respond. Robert Wood, a State Department spokesman, said the department would not comment on correspondence between Rice and members of Congress.

Former CIA Director George J. Tenet wrote in a book last year that after the capture of Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in March 2002, the agency turned to the National Security Council for guidance on "how to handle him."

The National Security Council's role in shaping interrogation policy has been previously reported.

But Rice is the highest-ranking official to acknowledge the White House meetings, as well as their focus on the SERE program.

Rice said the purpose of the meetings was "to ensure that CIA's proposed interrogation program complied fully with U.S. legal obligations."

Huh?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wa...0,1828234.story

Navy Lawyer: "Torture is at issue in this case."

25 Sep 2008 05:02 pm

A military prosecutor at Guantanamo quits:

"My ethical qualms about continuing to serve as a prosecutor relate primarily to the procedures for affording defense counsel discovery," wrote Vandeveld in his filing. "I am highly concerned, to the point that I believe I can no longer serve as a prosecutor at the Commissions, about the slipshod, uncertain 'procedure' for affording defense counsel discovery."

Also from the article:

Defense attorneys said they will seek to exclude from trial all evidence extracted under duress. "Torture is at issue in this case," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, who is representing Ammar al-Baluchi. "It is going to be at the very center of this case."

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_.../09/ethics.html