Graham Predicts Successful Terrorist Attack
Followed by Harsh Resolution of Gitmo Impasse

post from Firedoglake on 20 September 2010 11:00:32 AM. © Firedoglake

Josh Gerstein provides Lindsey Graham a soap box to complain that his efforts to craft a grand compromise with the Administration on Gitmo stalled in May.[...]

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errorist-attack-followed-by-harsh-resolution-of-gitmo/

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GOP anti-masturbation activist US Senate
candidate: Who hasn't dabbled in witchcraft

post from AMERICAblog News on 20 September 2010 11:00:19 AM. © AMERICAblog News

I don't know anyone who's dabbled in witchcraft. The fact that she thinks it's something everyone's done is simply bizarre, and rather telling. Oh, and gotta love the FOX headline.

And before all you wiccans freak out, she spoke of blood on an altar. That's just f'd up.

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Can Comedy Central Rally the Radical Middle

post from Connecting.the.Dots on 20 September 2010 11:00:13 AM. © Connecting.the.Dots

When Americans badly needed a few laughs during the Great Depression, a cowboy comic named Will Rogers became a huge star--and influential public figure--by tweaking politicians and announcing, "I don't belong to any organized party, I'm a Democrat."

Now that Democrats and their independent ilk are even more disorganized and disheartened, here comes another comic calling for a "Rally to Restore Sanity" at the Washington Monument on October 30th.

After Glenn Beck's crowd scene at the nation's capital, Jon Stewart is organizing "people who've been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs." The effort may be starting out as a parody but could turn into a rallying point to counter Tea Party excesses.

The call to arms starts with the now classic "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" and goes on to riff on it:

"Who among us has not wanted to open their window and shout that at the top of their lungs?

"Seriously, who?

"Because we're looking for those people. We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it's appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles."

Stewart, along with Stephen Colbert holding a mock counter-rally, have the star power to draw an enormous crowd, and there will be no shortage of big names eager to join them. A cameo by one from the White House is certainly not out of the question.

Striking back at the Tea Party with reasonable arguments is not likely to sway millions of voters. Holding its excesses up to ridicule may work better

As Will Rogers used to say, "People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing."

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Wrong then, wrong now

post from Daily Kos on 20 September 2010 11:00:03 AM. © Daily Kos

Dan Gross at Slate connects with an uppercut to all that bushwa from the usual suspects about the need to keep the Bush tax cuts in place.

The bold and confident assertions made about the links between tax rates and economic growth, market performance, and prosperity are almost certainly wrong. Turn on CNBC or look at the Wall Street Journal op-ed page these days, and you'll learn that we must keep tax rates on capital gains, dividends, and income precisely where they are because shifting them to different levels will retard economic growth. Keep this in mind: The people who designed the current, unsustainable tax system promised us that lower marginal rates, and lower taxes on capital and dividends, would boost the economy, promote investment, create jobs, spur market performance, and raise everybody's income. They were wrong. (It's no coincidence that these same people also warned us that raising taxes in 1993 would kill market returns and the economy. They were wrong then, too. They're pretty much always wrong.) As I've pointed out, the years under the current tax regime have been a lost decade. Pick your metric—median income, employment, stock market returns, economic growth—the low-tax '00s sucked. Yet proponents of keeping the tax cuts persist in making the argument: To avoid a repeat of the past decade, we must have the exact same tax policies as we did for the past decade.

One of the lines we're already hearing is that if the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy aren't extended, it will amount to the largest tax increase in history. If that sounds familiar, it is. This was also claimed in 1993 and ever afterward about Bill Clinton who supposedly had imposed the "largest tax increase in history." Not only is this not true in absolute or percentage terms, it also conveniently missed the fact that individuals earning under $115,000 (that's $173,000 in 2010 dollars) didn't see their income taxes go up. Middle-class families (and everyone else) did have to pay an additional 4.5 cents per gallon of gasoline.

And what happened after those extra income taxes were imposed on upper-income Americans? The disaster predicted by Republicans? Not hardly. Twenty-two million new jobs. It can't be said that those jobs were caused by that tax increase. But it obviously wasn't an obstacle to their creation.

As so often has been the case in the past three decades, we on the left are once again reduced to fighting rearguard actions and nibbling around the edges of reform. That's what keeping tax cuts on the wealthy from being extended is all about. Nibbles. This needs doing of course. But the real fight, the one our political leaders should be pushing, is a revamp of the entire tax system that the supply-siders saddled us with from Reagan to Cheney-Bush. A key piece of that makeover should be restoring progressivity to the income tax code. That alone would help redress the worsening rich-to-poor ratio. Not the whole answer, obviously, but a piece of it.

The pernicious idea that broader societal prosperity comes from shoveling ever more wealth into the hands of the already-wealthy has been repeatedly debunked. But that never stops its propagandists from trying to cram this lie down our throats. Call it populism, self-defense in the class war, or whatever you like, but the only leaders truly deserving our votes are those who publicly, forcefully reject this lie, and give us action to match their words.

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Corker Booed By Workers At GM Plant Ceremony,
Takes Credit For Saving Industry That He Opposed Saving

post from Think Progress on 20 September 2010 11:00:03 AM. © Think Progress

corkorian General Motors recently announced that, thanks to federal efforts to keep the American auto industry from going under, it would be able to rehire 483 workers at its Spring Hill, Tennessee plant to manufacture “three variants of Ecotec four-cylinder engines.” The $438 million arrangement will start producing engines for the Buick, Chevrolet, and GMC models by 2011.

As auto blog Jalopnik reports, the plant recently held a ceremony to welcome back the new workers to begin production of the Ecotec engines. Attending the ceremony were three local Republican legislators, Sens. Bob Corker, Lamar Alexander, and Rep. Marsha Blackburn. Ironically, all three of these lawmakers opposed the plans to save General Motors and other U.S. auto companies. This didn’t stop Corker from taking credit for the federal rescue, anyway. At the event he claimed he “contributed to strengthening the auto industry in this country.” Jalopnik reports that “irony of the Republican lawmakers’ presence wasn’t lost on the workers who attended the ceremony; they booed Tennessee Republican Bob Corker”:

Happy days came back Friday to Spring Hill, Tenn., when General Motors announced it would rehire 483 laid-off workers to build four-cylinder engines. On hand to cheer the news: Three Republican lawmakers who opposed the bailout that saved GM.
As part of its $50 billion bankruptcy arranged by the Obama administration, GM shuttered the Spring Hill plant’s assembly line last year, shedding 2,000 jobs in the process, but kept building four-cylinder engines. The new plan calls for $483 million in spending to upgrade the engine line, pending a deal on state incentives.
The irony of the Republican lawmakers’ presence wasn’t lost on the workers who attended the ceremony; they booed Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, and one UAW official made clear from the stage that the union still remembered which politicians had voted to rescue Wall Street but opposed an auto industry bailout.

Jalopnik goes on to note that when the auto industry rescue was being negotiated, Corker was speaking very differently about federal efforts to revive GM. At the time, Corker said that the Obama administration “has decided they know better than our courts and our free market process how to deal with these companies. … This is a major power grab.”

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Next up: Tajikistan

post from They gave us a republic... - Front Page on 20 September 2010 11:00:00 AM. © They gave us a republic... - Front Page

Look for the conflict in Tajikistan to get really prominent really fast.

Things like this don't tend to be isolated incidents. Things like this spark sectarian civil wars.

At least 23 soldiers have been killed in an assault on a military convoy in Tajikistan, officials said on Monday, the worst attack in a spate of recent violence in the impoverished Central Asian nation.
The attack occurred around midday local time on Sunday in the mountainous Rasht Valley, about 150 miles east of the capital, Dushanbe. A column of military vehicles carrying about 80 soldiers was passing through the region while on patrol when they were ambushed by gunmen located in the heights above them, Faridun Makhmadaliyev, a spokesman for the Tajik Defense Ministry, said by telephone.
"While on patrol, a column of military servicemen came under attack by a terrorist group," Mr. Makhmadaliyev said. He would not say why they were on patrol.
The column sustained heavy fire from machine guns and grenade launchers, he said. At least 23 servicemen were killed and several more were critically wounded, he said. Other reports said that as many as 40 soldiers may have been killed.
Mr. Makhmadaliyev said the gunmen had ties to "mercenaries" from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Chechnya in Russia. The attack, he said, was led by former field commanders from the United Tajik Opposition, a loose coalition of Muslim and nationalist groups that fought against Tajikistan's current authorities in a bloody civil war in the 1990s.

Islamic militancy has been a pervasive threat since Tajik independence after the fall of the Soviet Union. Of course, it doesn't help that the governent uses that threat to punish political opponents, leaving the general population quite literally caught in the crossfire as the same Islamic fundamentalist fire that has raged across Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Chechen region now threatens the impoverished and long-suffering people of Tajikistan.

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Why the Cowboys have issues

post from Where's the Outrage? on 20 September 2010 10:58:51 AM. © Where's the Outrage?

There is no team in the NFL who should be more worried about their season after week two than the[...]

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Why the Cowboys have issues

post from Where's the Outrage? on 20 September 2010 10:58:51 AM. © Where's the Outrage?

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Corporate Media Bequeaths Afghanistan War to
Obama

Obama's War
Combating Extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Members of U.S. platoon in Afghanistan accused of killing civilians for sport
For weeks, according to Army charging documents, rogue members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, floated the idea. Then, one day last winter, a solitary Afghan man approached them in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. The "kill team" activated the plan.
One soldier created a ruse that they were under attack, tossing a fragmentary grenade on the ground. Then others opened fire.
According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones.
The subsequent investigation has raised accusations about whether the military ignored warnings that the out-of-control soldiers were committing atrocities. The father of one soldier said he repeatedly tried to alert the Army after his son told him about the first killing, only to be rebuffed.

So... I decided to write the Washington Post a letter -- in the form of a comment in the comments section of tis article, because I've learned it's just useless to write these people letters, they never print mine, I'm just too fucking verbose.

First -- I'm utterly horrified by this, though unsurprised. Men have been committing atrocities in wars since wars have been happening.
Second -- that header disgusts me: "Obama's War." I known he's been President almost 2 years, and made ...the disastrous decision to escalate the war - but honestly -- "Obama's War?" We've been there over 9 years, Obama's been President ALMOST 2... I'd say this is still MOSTLY George W. Bush's war. And the blame for its grotesque mismanagement -- and ultimate failure, which almost anyone with foresight can predict with certitude -- rests mostly, as well, on that idiot's shrugging, giggling shoulders.
"Obama's War," my aunt Hilda. I see the corporate media got their marching papers from their GOP masters. Tell me, how long DID it take, exactly, before you all waited to start flaying this President in print?

... continued ...

Personally, I was too busy watching in horror as the internet came alive with the long-dormant, hideous racism that apparently was just waiting for its chance in this country to come out and play. I'd stopped paying attention, long ago, to the corporate media; I knew THAT was a rigged game. Even MSNBC, with its few refreshing (though admittedly far-too-liberally biased) non-conservative voices, is still mostly another bastion of corporate blather. Witness its parent company: GE. You can't get more corporate than that.
Whenever anyone spouts that ridiculous phrase, "Liberal media," I want to vomit. "Liberal?" How CAN it be, when ALL media is corporate-owned? Spare me. The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, CBS News -- all of you -- corporate to your cores.
"Obama's War." The article itself may be a great piece of journalism -- but that header tells me all I need to know about where you stand on this President... and the Democrats, and any liberal agenda that might be fighting to break through the corporate haze that Citizens' United and its ilk have created.
Angels and ministers of grace, defend us.
The corporate media certainly won't.

And that, as they say, is that.

I think I'm getting my writing mojo back. I might be here awhile, since I can't go back to school till I get my Michigan residency established, which won't be till January...

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WSJ op-ed falsely claims Imam Rauf said Ground
Zero isn't "hallowed ground"

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 20 September 2010 10:53:12 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

A September 20 Wall Street Journal op-ed falsely claimed that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said "Ground Zero can't be hallowed ground because there is a strip joint and an off-track betting office nearby." In fact, Rauf was referring to the proposed site for the Islamic community center, which is not at Ground Zero.

WSJ op-ed distorts Rauf's remarks about "hallowed ground"

Fouad Ajami: Rauf "insist[ed] that Ground Zero can't be hallowed ground." In a September 20 Wall Street Journal op-ed, appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations:

QUESTIONER: I'm dealing with an asymmetry whereby the act of putting your center where you are, at the moment appears as a form of a desecration to those people who think it is hallowed ground. How does the process of teaching work when the students take this perception of the teacher to the teaching process the teacher wants to bring to the students?
MR. RAUF: (Brilliant ?) question. First of all, it is absolutely disingenuous, as many have said, that that block is hallowed ground. As Clyde Haberman and many people have educated and taught and tried to teach the public, both Muslim and non-Muslim, that, you know, with a strip joint around the corner, with betting parlors, to claim it is hallowed ground is -- it's hallowed ground in one sense, but, you know, it doesn't make -- it doesn't add. So let's -- let's clarify that misperception.
But the important part of what I'm trying to do, and my work, is that we -- I need a space, I want a space where the voice of the moderates can be amplified. It's not good enough to teach where no students will hear you. We need to create a platform where the voice of moderate Muslims will be amplified. Everybody wants this. Non-Muslims want the voices of moderate Muslims to be amplified, and moderate Muslims want the voices of moderates to be amplified.

Park51 is not at Ground Zero. As a map published by the Wall Street Journal itself shows, the proposed Islamic community center would be located two blocks away from the site where the World Trade Center stood.

Map of Park51 site