“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Hillary Clinton declared to an early morning audience on Good Morning America. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”
Not quite what I want to wake up hearing. What the fuck. She may as well have sang it as McCain did, “Bomb, bomb, bomb. bomb-bomb Iran.”
It’s official. I despise her.
But at least she’s now being honest about how hateful she really is. No more of those silly lies about diplomacy and measured action. Is this truthfulness a new shift in her campaign strategy?
Next up: “I supported and still support NAFTA - it was good for my friends at Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods and other former clients.”
Yesterday during a radio interview, Bill Clinton said, “[Obama and his campaign] played the race card on me.” Right, because black people have a special card - not only does it help them win the presidency (so successful in the past!), but it can also get them out of jail free and let them off with a warning when police pull them for speeding.
Come on, Billary, stop being such a supercilious racist. Race privilege doesn’t mean that black people have a card they can pull, but that white people have a knapsack full of shit they didn’t earn.
“Hold on a second,” Obama responded when asked about Clinton’s recent remarks. “So former President Clinton dismissed my victory in South Carolina as being similar to Jesse Jackson and he is suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it?
“You better ask him what he meant by that. I have no idea what he meant. These were words that came out of his mouth. Not words that came out of mine.”
His words? Bill says they’re not. Billary’s now denying he made the comments that he made while on-air. Frankly, by now, he should know the futility of disavowing something recorded. Ridiculous.
A recent poll found that 35 percent of corporate executives think the heads of their companies are paid too much. Last year, 21 percent said the same. The median compensation for a CEO of a large U.S. company is $8.8 million.
Over the past decade, CEO pay (for the companies of the Dow Jones industrials) increased at a whooping annual rate of 15.1 percent - while the median household income rose at a rate of 0.68 percent annually from 1996 to 2006.
Today the Haartz editorial board spoke against Israel’s boycott of Jimmy Carter - who Israel PM Ehud Olmert refused to see because of his visit with a Hamas leader - declaring that “he deserves the respect reserved for royalty for the rest of his life.”
More to the point, Haartz agreed with Carter’s characterization of the situation in Palestine and acknowledged that it “begs” such a comparison to Apartheid South Africa: “the system of separate roads for Jews and Arabs, the lack of freedom of movement, Israel’s control over Palestinian lands and their confiscation, and especially the continued settlement activity, which contravenes all promises Israel made and signed.”
Facebook. Officials in Israel Defense Forces have identified a “new threat to Israel’s national security - the popular social networking Website Facebook.”
Jimmy Carter. Carter - you know, the Nobel Peace Prize winner - is meeting with Hamas officials, whereas Obama said he would never “until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements.” But he at least wouldn’t condemn Carter, “I’m not going to comment on former president Carter.”
Whereas, Condi Rice has no qualms taking on the Nobel Peace Prize winner saying, “Hamas is in fact the impediment to peace.” And she has previously characterized the party - that holds a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority - as a “terrorist organization.” But as it goes, it was IDF that has killed 16 people in the last two days - including four teenagers and two children.
Who’s the terrorist? Brothers and sisters of twelve-year-old Riad Al-Oweisi, sit next to his body at his family house in al-Bureij refugee camp in the middle of Gaza Strip, April 11, 2008. Israeli forces launched air strikes and a ground raid on Gaza Friday, trading fire with fighters in clashes that killed seven Palestinians including the 12-year-old boy, Palestinians said. The deaths drove the Palestinian death toll to 15 in Israeli strikes retaliating for a fighter attack that killed two Israeli civilians at a vital Gaza fuel depot Wednesday. MaanImages/Wissam Nassar.
And who’s kissing some Israel booty?
Obama. He launched a Hebrew blog today in Israel. The blog declares his staunch support of Israel’s security.That’ll show you, LA Times. Launching it the day after the times accused him of having Palestinian friends (oh no!) was no strange coincidence.
20 percent of scientists polled by Nature Magazine use either ritalin (66 percent of users), provigil or beta blockers (this was just an April Fool’s Day joke)
Republicans boo latest addition to the U.S. Congress - Jackie Speier (D-CA).
“The process to bring the troops home must begin immediately,” she told Pelosi. “The president wants to stay the course and a man who wants to replace him suggests we could be in Iraq for 100 years. But Madam Speaker, history will not judge us kindly if we sacrifice four generations of Americans because of the folly of one.”
She’s not particularly different from other democrats, so why the hostile reception? If anything, her life is just tragic.
including parts for F-14 fighter jets, unused chemical-biological canister and a used Nuclear Biological Chemical protective suit, all stolen from the Department of Defense, of course.
Obama is a friend of Palestine? So says an article on the front page of the L.A. Times.
The Nation implies it is poor and misleading reporting on the LA Times part, and I agree. By hyping up the article and catering to Anti-Palestinian groups, the author confounds the facts and obscures the truth.
The evidence that Obama supports Palestine? He attended events with prominent literature professors and scholars of Arab history - Edward Said [an influential critical theorist and major contributer to the founding of postcolonial theory] and Rashid Khalidi [the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University].
From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 [TEN YEARS AGO] Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. Electronic Intifada
I think it’s great that Obama heard lectures from the late Edward Said - I wish I could have! Said as “a Palestinian and a leading American intellectual” wrote one of the most important critiques of Western constructions of the East - Orientalism. (more…)
Apparently, the punishment for corporate fraud is further bribery in Bush’s Department of Justice, according to a recent NYT article.
When facing charges for bribery and fraud, corporations can sideswipe criminal indictment by merely paying small token fees - “peanuts” compared to damages paid after criminal conviction.
For example, a medical supply company [Zimmer Holdings Inc.] avoided criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice by paying up to $52 million to the consulting firm of John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, to act as an “outside monitor.” Sounds like a little conflict of interest, no? or a “a backroom, sweetheart deal” in the words of the chairperson of a House Judiciary subcommittee. (more…)
I like it - the idea behind the ad, that is, not the ad itself.
Today the company pulled it because cranky u.s.ers hate thinking about their violent history and theft of land. I guess people don’t care that the map looked like that a little more than a century and a half ago (1848).
Nevertheless, it was just an ad - meant to capitalize on a popular sentiment.
While U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama leads rival Hillary Clinton in the polls, Palestinians in Gaza are launching their own attempt to boost his campaign.
Isn’t this support a bit bizarre? Obama has made considerable effort over the last year to demonstrate his allegiance to Israel. And in his appeal to U.S. Jewish communities, the deputy speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Josh Shapiro proclaimed Obama’s “100 percent voting record on Israel issues.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Israel is increasingly turning away sick Gazans who seek medical treatment. Several Palestinians die each month because Israel refuses to let them leave Gaza for necessary medical care.
In the last five months, 32 people have died while waiting for travel permits. “All these tragedies could have been easily avoided,” said Ambrogio Maneti, WHO’s head of office for the West Bank and Gaza.
Egypt has allowed some Gazans in for treatment but has agreed with Israel to keep its border largely closed.
A Palestinian carries his sick son as they make their way to Egypt after crossing the destroyed section of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt January 24, 2008. Reuters
Palestinian medical officials in Gaza say more than 100 Gazan patients have died since June after Israel denied them permits to seek medical treatment. That’s really sick.
A medical officer points to a wound on the head of a newborn Palestinian baby, who Palestinian medics said was killed by Israeli forces gunfire, in the central Gaza Strip March 4, 2008. Reuters
This is obviously satire, but I want to point out that their estimate of the Iraq death toll is low. While there are around 90,000 documented deaths, the deaths of many people go unrecorded. A January 2008 study in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that 151,000 Iraqis died violent deaths because of the Iraq war through June 2006.
During the San Francisco antiwar protests on March 19, a security officer outside of a closed Bank of America branch flicked off a protester for taking photographs. The bank was closed because of the protests that marked the five year anniversary of the Iraq War.
I love it. The state protecting capitalism reduced to using the finger against resistance.
Across the country, United for Peace and Justice, CodePink, Students for a Democratic Society and many other antiwar organizations held protests today to mark the 5 year anniversary of the Iraq War. In Washington, D.C., the groups had events planned throughout the day.
The response? Military officials are pushing for extended troop presence in Iraq–a 6-week “pause” of troop withdrawal.
The 1972 Vietnam Winter Soldier received no coverage from major news outlets. But this past weekend’s had a better reception.
MSNBC: “War stories echo an earlier winter” Boston Herald: “Testimony from vets in D.C. fires up local protesters” Boston Globe:”Veterans recall horrors of war in live broadcast” Washington Post: “War Stories Echo an Earlier Winter” AP: “‘Winter Soldier’ Hearings on Iraq Open — Vets Detail Misconduct”
The future–meaning the past–of border control is being dug in Yuma, Arizona. Part of a greater Medieval revival in the US (torture, church & state, oligarchy), the city is borrowing from 14th century Europe in attempt to deter immigration through increased risk of death by drowning.
“The moats that I’ve seen circled the castle and allowed you to protect yourself, and that’s kind of what we’re looking at here,” Yuma county sheriff Ralph Ogden told the Associated Press.
The city is building a “security channel” along the border by replenishing a two-mile stretch of the Colorado river. The excavated soil would form two 15-foot high walls on both sides of the 400-foot wide area.
Dirty water given to the military Dozens of U.S. troops in Iraq became ill after using “unmonitored and potentially unsafe” water for washing, bathing, cleaning, and shaving. The problems did not extend to drinking water. But soldiers have experienced many illnesses including skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, and diarrhea.
A military contractor owned by Cheney’s Haliburton, KBR Inc. supplied the discolored, smelly water. (more…)
I stumbled upon the site of a conservative blogger (via Jezebel).
One of her more recent entries is about yesterday’s shooting of French police. While the struggle against police harassment is nothing new in France, the interesting thing about her post was the term she used to describe the people resisting the police; she called them “Punk Jihad.”
My first thought was: Punk music. Resistance. Struggle. France. Those kids are way too cool for me.
Live streaming video of the testimony from U.S. veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground.
and even to reduce the way they distort the Earth’s magnetic field.
The next generation of warships would truly invisible by exploiting metamaterials. Metamaterials are engineered to have specific electromagnetic properties that are not found in nature: they make an object appear invisible by bending light around it so the waves seem to pass through empty space. (more…)
The IDF injured more than 20 people and shot a person from the US in the head. From 1000-2500 people attended the protest marking the third year of resistance to the apartheid wall in Bil’in, Palestine.
Yesterday Palestinian farmers burned flowers in protest of the Israeli blockade on Gaza. The blockade has severely limited the flow of goods to and from the Strip, and it has prevented the farmers from exporting their product to Europe for Valentines Day. Since they couldn’t sell them, the growers dumped two truckloads of flowers at a border crossing; they fed some of the flowers to sheep and the rest they burned in protest of Israel’s oppressive restrictions.
“It is a black Valentine’s Day,” said farmer Majed Hadayed, estimating his seasonal losses at $2.5 million.
Obama is “protective imitation” of Clinton’s “corporate democrat”
He did used to be for a single payer, universal health care plan, but he has since back away to a more conservative (in the international sense of the word) health care plan in response to health industry lobbyists.
Mike: “Nader looks like that character on sesame street who lives in the trashcan.” oscar:
Question: Which issue is most important to you? (n=991 from 4th-5th February, 2008)
Issues (in order of responses, most to least): the economy, the war in iraq, immigration, health care, terrorism, social security, the environment and global warming, education, and gay rights.
There were some interesting age differences in the importance of issues.
Four most important issues to voters by age group.
Brothers and sisters of twelve-year-old Riad Al-Oweisi, sit next to his body at his family house in al-Bureij refugee camp in the middle of Gaza Strip, April 11, 2008. Israeli forces launched air strikes and a ground raid on Gaza Friday, trading fire with fighters in clashes that killed seven Palestinians including the 12-year-old boy, Palestinians said. The deaths drove the Palestinian death toll to 15 in Israeli strikes retaliating for a fighter attack that killed two Israeli civilians at a vital Gaza fuel depot Wednesday. MaanImages/Wissam Nassar.
Apparently, the punishment for corporate fraud is further bribery in Bush’s Department of Justice, according to a 
The future–meaning the past–of border control is being dug in 
I stumbled upon 
