World News Korner

"Duck Jews!" Sincerely Scott Walker

Courtesy of AOL:

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker may want to try using spell check.

The union busting Republican politician tried and failed to wish a happy Chanukah in an undated letter to a local group representing Jewish voters.

"Thank you again and Molotov," said the letter.

The incendiary remark came in a reply to letter from Milwaukee attorney Franklyn Gimbel, according to The Cap Times. The letter is undated but believed to have been written prior to him being elected governor.

He likely meant to write "mazel tov," a common Jewish phrase.

Perhaps Walker is to be excused for this gaffe, as he is a Baptist and the only thing they want from the Jewish people is for two thirds of them to die off so that Jesus will come back.

Yet another prime example of the kind of intellect that the Republican party believes fit to run the country.

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Courtesy of the Independent:

Atheists and humanists are increasingly being targeted as distinct minorities in “hate campaigns” across the globe, according to a new report which found that religious and political leaders are ratcheting up rhetoric against those who believe there is no God.

The report claims that the “hate speech” against atheists does not come exclusively from reactionary or radical religious leaders, but increasingly from political leaders, including heads of state.

The Freedom of Thought report, published by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), states: “In 2014, in addition to laws such as those targeting ‘apostasy’ and ‘blasphemy’, we have seen a marked increase in specific targeting of ‘atheists’ and ‘humanism’ as such, using these terms in a broadly correct way (the users know what they are saying) but with intent clearly borne of ignorance or intolerance toward these groups.”

The report singles out Najib Razak, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, who has called “humanism and secularism as well as liberalism” a “deviant” threat to Islam and the state. In a speech to the Quran Recital Assembly Razak said: “We will not tolerate any demands or right to apostasy by Muslims.”

Saudi Arabia is criticised for a new law equating “atheism” with “terrorism”. The very first article of the kingdom’s new terror regulations banned: “Calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion”.

Secular critics of Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the general who toppled Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, have found themselves targeted, through what the report calls “an organized backlash against young atheists”.

The report seems to mainly focus on predominantly Muslim countries, but of course Atheists are also oppressed and vilified here in the United States. And in our not to distant past we were even hung as witches or tortured for daring to have freedom of thought.

I often hear the Christians in this country complaining about their people being persecuted for their religion. But if they want to experience real persecution and oppression around the world, try telling people you are an Atheist.

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Courtesy of The Washington Free Beacon:

“I think months after 9/11 there were three people who we thought knew about imminent attacks, and we did whatever we had to do, and I pray to God that until the end of time we do whatever we have to do to find out what’s happening,” Wallace said on Tuesday’s Morning Joe. “And the notion that this somehow makes America less great is asinine and dangerous.”

Wallace also slammed White House Spokesman Josh Earnest for failing to admit that the CIA’s interrogation techniques did not yield information instrumental in finding and killing Osama bin Laden.

“I have never felt more frustrated with this White House’s inability to speak clearly than I was yesterday when Jon Karl was pushing Josh Earnest to say whether Obama found the information gleaned helpful in killing bin Laden,” Wallace said.

“That’s what this is about… The notion that what we do affects the behavior of terrorists is a lie. It’s a lie perpetrated by political correctness and by liberals and it’s dangerous.”

I know that when dealing with Sarah Palin we often embrace the adage "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," but in the case of Wallace we need to remember who she is and where she came from.

By the way the Senate torture report says that there were more than three detainees waterboarded and that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. And the "intelligence" he gave up was absolutely worthless.

What I find most damning is that Wallace's opinion is in direct conflict with her old boss John McCain's position.

The Bush Administration is guilty of war crimes and of lying to the American people. Period.

And nothing that Nicolle Wallace, Dick Cheney, or any other conservative pundit has to say will change that.

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Courtesy of Not the Voice of America's Facebook page:

Grant me this use of America's voice: When you cut through all the “inside baseball” stuff in this Omnibus Spending Bill that's in front of Congress, you're left with two cold hard facts: this bill doesn't defund Obama's amnesty (so he gets to reward lawbreakers with your tax dollars) and it adds to our dangerous, unsustainable debt. It also breaks campaign promises made by quite a few of our incumbent politicians on both sides of the aisle. Hey, if you thought we wanted more of the same as we worked our butts off to get good folks elected in November, then why did we vote to oust liberals who got America into this mess in the first place? Guess what, GOP: our victory party is over and voters are wide awake and trusting you to keep your promises to America. Get a handle on your debt. Stop Obama's amnesty to illegal aliens. Support our military. Bottom line: we elected you to stop Obama's “fundamental transformation of America.” Do it – especially you Republicans who promised to do it. Or face America's wrath next go 'round because an elephant never forgets.

"Grant me the use of America's voice." Does that remind anybody else of Palin writing that letter she wrote in God's voice about her easy pregnancy over a week before Trig was actually born?

For the record she does NOT speak in America's voice.

And also for the record the newly elected 2014 House members are not yet able to vote on this bill, and some of the members who are still there she actively tried to get replaced, so who the hell is she talking to?

However I am thrilled that she now refers to herself as an "elephant," because I have been looking for a new nickname.

Not to shock you or anything but I do almost agree with Palin on this, only not for the same reasons of course.

This Omnibus bill actually does suck and there are legitimate reasons to be against it.

Here are a few:

Congressional appropriators ordered four more F-35 joint strike fighters at a cost of $479 million dollars, even though the Pentagon didn’t ask for them.

Since those shiny new F-35s aren’t going to pay for themselves, Congress did manage to trim a few areas of the budget. For example, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, commonly referred to as WIC, was on the receiving end of a $93 million budget cut.

The 2014 Midterms saw voters in Oregon, Alaska, and Washington, D.C. vote to legalize Marijuana for recreational use. Unlike in Alaska and Oregon, however, the D.C. ballot measure is subject to congressional approval. So, despite the fact that the actual citizens of Washington, D.C. voted for legalization by a margin of more than 2 to 1, anti-legalization advocates in Congress attached a rider that completely undoes the voter-backed change and keeps Marijuana illegal.

The current budget deal includes a repeal of the Dodd-Frank derivatives rule that was literally written by big bank lobbyists — A leaked document obtained by the New York Times revealed that 70 of the 85 lines of derivatives language reflect recommendations made in a piece of model legislation drafted by lobbyists for Citigroup, another bank that played a major role in the 2008 crisis and also received billions of federal stimulus dollars.

If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because the House passed the exact same CitiGroup-written law last year, but it died after resistance from the Senate and Treasury Department. Now, Wall Street’s allies in Congress have effectively copy-pasted the CitiGroup-approved language out of the old bill and into the current budget deal, which is much less susceptible to a veto threat since a veto would shut down the government. In a provision conveniently located on page 1,599 of a 1,603 page document,

Congress lays out donation rules that would allow individuals to give more than $300,000 directly to political parties every year. According to the Washington Post’s Matea Gold, under the new rules, one couple could legally funnel nearly $1.3 million to a party’s various account.

So yes there are real reasons to be frustrated by this bill, however they are certainly not the ones pissing off the Wasilla Wendigo.

By the way this is the picture that Palin used for her Facebook post on this.

That's Sarah Palin in a nutshell.

Claiming to speak for American while wrapping her feet in it's flag.

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Here is brief portion of the article courtesy of Time Magazine:

The death in Dallas of Thomas Eric Duncan, the first Ebola patient diagnosed on U.S. soil, and the infection of two nurses who treated him, shook our faith in the ability of U.S. hospitals to handle this kind of disease. From there the road to full freak-out was a short one. An Ohio middle school closed because an employee had flown on the same plane as one of Duncan’s nurses. Not the same flight, just the same plane. A Texas college rejected applicants from Nigeria, since that country had some “confirmed Ebola cases.” A Maine schoolteacher had to take a three-week leave because she went to a teachers’ conference in Dallas. Fear, too, was global. When a nurse in Spain contracted Ebola from a priest, Spanish authorities killed her dog as a precaution, while #VamosAMorirTodos (We’re all going to die) trended on Twitter. Guests at a hotel in Macedonia were trapped in their rooms for days after a British guest got sick and died. Turned out to have nothing to do with Ebola.

The problem with irrational responses is that they can cloud the need for rational ones. Just when the world needed more medical volunteers, the price of serving soared. When nurse Kaci Hickox, returning from a stint with MSF in Sierra Leone with no symptoms and a negative blood test, was quarantined in a tent in Newark, N.J., by a combustible governor, it forced a reckoning. “It is crazy we are spending so much time having this debate about how to safely monitor people coming back from Ebola-endemic countries,” says Hickox, “when the one thing we can do to protect the population is to stop the outbreak in West Africa.”

I don't know if it was purposeful or not, but Time is certainly going to ruffle more than a few conservative feathers with this choice.

After all it was the conservatives, and their propaganda channel that were yelling "The sky is falling, the sky is falling" when all that was really happening was that America discovered that they were no more immune from getting sick than everybody else.

The treatment of Kaci Hickox was simply embarrassing and I think it is awesome that she is being vindicated for her understanding that she was not a risk to her fellow citizens, and recognition for her selflessness in trying to help those who desperately needed her even at risk to her own health.

Oh and by eh way, and fuck Governors Chris Christie and Paul LePage.

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Funny.

What is not quite as funny is that this is based on an actual product printed by the Alaska Mint.

Actually come to think of it that kind of funny as well.

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Courtesy of The Nation:

The debate in Washington over Bush-era torture at the Central Intelligence Agency took a large leap forward Wednesday morning when Senator Mark Udall took the Senate floor and disclosed portions of an internal CIA review, while renewing his demand for a change in the intelligence agency’s leadership and criticizing the Obama administration for not doing enough to ensure torture doesn’t happen again.

The so-called “Panetta Review” has dominated much of the drama leading up to the torture report’s release. The document is an internal CIA examination that reportedly validated many of the worst claims about the torture program, including much of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s findings. (The CIA was after this document when it breached Senate computers in January.)

On Wednesday, Udall described the Panetta Review as a “smoking gun”—proof from the CIA itself that there were serious problems with the torture program. It undercuts almost every contemporary statement made by CIA Director John Brennan and other top intelligence officials, he said, who have vocally been defending what occurred.

Here is what Udall disclosed on the Senate floor today:

"The Panetta Review found that the CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Congress, the president, and the public on the efficacy of its coercive techniques. The Brennan Response, in contrast, continues to insist that the CIA’s interrogations produced unique intelligence that saved lives. Yet the Panetta Review identifies dozens of documents that include inaccurate information used to justify the use of torture—and indicates that the inaccuracies it identifies do not represent an exhaustive list.

The Panetta Review further describes how detainees provided intelligence prior to the use of torture against them. It describes how the CIA—contrary to its own representations—often tortured detainees before trying any other approach. It describes how the CIA tortured detainees even when less coercive methods were yielding intelligence. The Panetta Review further identifies cases in which the CIA used coercive techniques when it had no basis for determining whether a detainee had critical intelligence at all. In other words, CIA personnel tortured detainees to confirm they didn’t have intelligence—not because they thought they did.

To date, there has been no accountability for the CIA’s actions or for Director Brennan’s failure of leadership. Despite the facts presented, the president has expressed his “full confidence” in Director Brennan, and demonstrated that trust by making no effort at all to rein him in. The president stated that it wasn’t “appropriate” for him to wade into the issues between the Committee and the CIA. […]

The White House has not led on this issue in the manner we expected when we heard the president’s campaign speeches in 2008 and read the executive order he issued in January 2009. To CIA employees in April 2009, President Obama said, “What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and ideals even when it’s hard—not just when it’s easy; even when we are afraid and under threat—not just when it’s expedient to do so. That’s what makes us different.”

This tough, principled talk set an important tone for the beginning of his presidency. However, fast forward to this year, after so much has come to light about the CIA’s barbaric programs, and President Obama’s response was that we “crossed a line” as a nation, and that, quote, “hopefully, we don’t do it again in the future.”

That’s not good enough. We need to be better than that. There can be no cover-up. There can be no excuses. If there is no moral leadership from the White House helping the public understand that the CIA’s torture program wasn’t necessary and didn’t save lives or disrupt terrorist plots, then what’s to stop the next White House and CIA Director from supporting torture?"

Excellent question!

Senator Udall is damn right. If nobody is punished for this, and some are even allowed to keep their jobs, then there is NOTHING to prevent this same thing from happening again the next time the terrorists successfully attack us here at home.

Which I think we all know id bound to happen at some point.

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