Way to Go PRO-LIFERS

Dear Pro-lifers, one of your own has finally done what you have wanted done for years.

Dr. George Tiller, whose Wichita, Kansas, women's clinic has been the target of anti-abortion protests for years, was shot and killed at his church Sunday morning, his attorneys said.

That killing will show the world your compassion and respect for life.

THIS JUST IN: Operation Rescue's response on their Web site:

"Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning. We pray for Mr. Tiller's family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ."

Yeah right, bla bla bla bla. Meanwhile at Operation Rescue Headquarters it is all high fives and popping open the champagne.

For confirmation of that, check out what Randall Terry, the chief Nut Bag of the "pro-life" crowd, said.

Dear Bill Clinton, Would You Have Sat Down With Hitler?

Bill Clinton relaxing in his easy chair with George W. Bush in Toronto for a nice polite public chat that avoided any embarrassing reference to the fact that Bush should be in prison awaiting trial as a war criminal.

They each got more than $150,000 for the appearance. The shot comes from the NYT

California Supreme Court Decision on Prop 8 Sets up a Win for Gay Marriage Advocates

Dear Bigoted Republicans. You have lost the gay marriage debate. You may as well fold your tents and toss your slogans--"Marriage is valid only between a man and a woman" -- into the recycling bin.

To begin with, Proposition 8 was tricky. To vote FOR the right of gay people to marry, you had to vote NO. To vote AGAINST gays, you had to vote YES. And the thing only passed by 50 to 51 points. So the California Supreme Court took it up. And they upheld it, meaning in California, it is unconstitutional for gay people to marry. But wait. The Court also let stand the 18,000 gay couples already married. Which sets up a win for people in favor of allowing gay couples the same right heteros have, the right to marry. And here is why:

Equal protection under the law. The equal protection clause under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" California can not, at this point undo the marriages of the 18,000 gay couples already joined in civil unions. But it leaves those forbidden to marry behind the wall constructed by the California Supreme Court decision on Prop 8. When it goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Justices will have no choice but to overrule the California decision on grounds that it violates the Fourteenth Amemendment.

This is delicious. Whether they meant to or not, the California Supremes set up a situation in which gay marriage will be validated nationwide by the U.S. Supremes. No more state-by-state legalization. Game over. And the bigoted Republicans can scream all they want about destruction of family values and insult to hetero jurisdiction over the institution of marriage, the fact will be that gay couples will have the right, validated by the highest court in the land to marry and be as miserable or happy as the rest of us to enjoy the benefits of marriage.

Which is as it should be. Take that, Limbaugh and Hannity and all the rest of you idiot bigots. Get used to it. Marriage has been redefined, and all for the better. Gay marriage opponents are on the wrong side of history. There is no way to stop it now.

She's In...

Sotomayor will be our next and newest Supreme Court Justice. Obama has not only nominated a woman, she is the first Latino ever nominated to the Court. And it puts the GOP, which would like to oppose her, in a real bind. They have been courting Latinos. Now they face the prospect of voting against a Latino and losing all that hard work recruiting Latino voters going down the drain. Even El Rushbo (the anal cyst) has raised the White Flag:

"

Should the Republican Party oppose Sonia Sotomayor?" and I will restate what I said in the first hour: Yes! Because opposing Sonia Sotomayor is how you tell the nation who Barack Obama is and isn't. That really what we're interested in having happen. Aren't we interested in having the American people figure out who it is they really voted for? Well, Sonia Sotomayor illustrates who Obama is, and that's the primary reason to oppose her because I don't think she can be stopped. She's got the votes in the Senate. So does Obama. It's a cliche, but elections have consequences.

In other words, all the Republicans can do is throw a hissy fit and throw themselves down on the carpet and beat their little fists and screech.

It will be interesting to see what kind of Justice she will be.

Alternet Reports NYC "Terrorist Plot" Against Synagogue is Bogus

Here's one paragraph from the piece on Alternet:

n this case, the alleged perps -- Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen -- were losers, ex-cons, drug addicts. Al Qaeda they're not. Without the assistance of the agent who entrapped them, they would never have dreamed of committing political violence, nor would they have had the slightest idea about where to acquire plastic explosives or a Stinger missile. That didn't stop prosecutors from acting as if they'd captured Osama bin Laden himself.

The media, including the L.A. TImes has been breathlessly reporting it as a "home grown terror plot" thwarted by the vigilant FBI. Turns out it was an FBI agent-provocateur who supplied them with an inoperable Stinger missile supposedly to shoot down military aircraft. According to the Alternet story, the four losers involved would have had no idea how to go about an attack or where to get explosives or weapons without the FBI agent's help.

And the politicians were all celebrating the bust as if another 9 / 11 had been stopped before it happened along with reminders about how close we all are to Annihilation by "Islamofaschists".

Right Wing Radio Host Changes His Mind Under Torture

Like all the Wingnut radio talkers, Chicago radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller has derided waterboarding as merely an "enhanced interrogation technique" and no big deal. Certainly not torture. So to prove his point, he decided to get waterboarded himself. He lasted just six or seven seconds and declared the experience to be torture. Watch the video:

"It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke," Mancow told listeners. "It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back...It was instantaneous...and I don't want to say this: absolutely torture."

And unlike the victims who were tortured in our offshore prisons, Muller had the option of stopping the waterboarding immediately and sitting up.

Putting 9 / 11 Into Perspective

To Anyone Supporting Torture and War to Keep America Safe:

A climate of FEAR has spread throughout the land since the World Trade Towers were brought down in September 2001. We lost over 3,000 Americans that day. Seems to me 9 / 11 ought to be put in perspective. We lose more than 44,000 smokers in the U.S. every year. More than 37,000 Americans died in auto accidents in 2008. That alone is more than ten times the number who died in the Twin Towers attack. The percentage chance of being killed by a terrorist on that day works out to .0000098. Check the math. The population of the U.S. is approximately 306 million.

Seems to me the climate of FEAR is way, way overblown.

And by the way, the Republicans quaking in their boots and running around starting wars and torturing people are the real Wimps. Cowards. As evidenced by the way both Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and many of the rest of them avoided military service.

The New Credit Card Law

The new law that the House and the Senate have passed is too little, too late. It doesn't limit interest rates. And it doesn't go into effect for more than a year. It gives the credit card companies plenty of time to screw us and think up more scams to get around the law. Too little, too late.

Correction

It has been widely reported that Rush Linbaugh got a deferment from military service because he had an anal cyst. This is incorrect.

Rush Limbaugh got his deferment because he IS an anal cyst.

We regret the error in the earlier report.

Note to my foreign visitors: Rush Limbaugh is a fat, overpaid drug-addled fascist radio talker here in the United States.

OK, OK, I Give Up!

No more Gitmo photos. No more Abu Ghirab.

I know, I posted that I was going to post one every day until I ran out of pictures. But the photos are so horrendous, I am sick of them. I can't look at them anymore. I can't post any more. These photos are a kind of torture in their own right.

Imagine what the detainees endured. And imagine what the military and civilians endured, those whose job it was to "break" these prisoners. I can only begin to imagine the horror of being held in Gitmo or Abu Ghirab or some CIA secret prison somewhere and being treated the way these people were treated. And I can only imagine being the people who were ordered to deal with the prisoners in such a cruel, inhuman way.

I would bet that prisoners and torturers alike have nightmares for the rest of their lives. For those of you who with to see what has been done to other human beings by official representatives of the United States of America, go to the Raw Story site. It is beyond disgusting.

Tuesday Torture Photo

Dear World:

As I wrote in an earlier post, I intend to post all the leaked torture photos from the Raw Story series, one each day. Here is the latest one.

We are posting them to do our small part in making people fully aware of the horror of the Bush torture policy. It is our belief that a perfect storm of beliefs, fears, arrogance and delight in hurting people converged to form the Bush torture policy.

Some in government at the time believed that torture would help keep us safe from terrorism. Torture was part of the War on Terror. Or at least, that is what they told us. Torture was driven by craven fear. The likes of Bush and Cheney, who avoided military service during the Vietnam war, were clearly terrified of facing combat, even as they supported the war. Bush and Cheney are cowards, and torture appeals to cowards. I believe that Cheney manipulated Bush, which was probably fairly easy, because George W. Bush appears to be easily manipulable, and because he is a psychopath in his own right. There are stories of the young George W. Bush as a child, torturing small animals. I believe those stories, although the mainstream press was too polite to bring them up. And there was the story of Carla Faye Tucker, who Bush had executed. He publicly mocked her pleading for her life. As governor, Bush executed a record number of Texas prison inmates during his administration. And he started an unnecessary war which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. Throgh it all, Bush has been a happy man, sleeping well, with none of the angst of war that plagued presidents such as Lincoln and Roosevelt.

Bush was at the top of the torture chain of command. And it does not matter that Republicans are now trying to change the subject by indicting Nancy Pelosi; the fact remains that torture is a war crime, as defined in the Nuremburg trials. War crimes should be punished. The public should demand it. The public needs to know the extent of these war crimes. And that is why we post these photos.

Another in Our Series. Monday

These photos were leaked three years ago and never got much play in the MSM, if any at all. As Americans, this was done in our name,

Sunday Torture Picture

Hard to tell what this one is about. But it looks grim to me. THis is from Abu Ghirab.

The Torture Pictures

This is my second day of re-publication of these photos. These pictures, depicting torture n a US military prison, were first brought to light in Australia, and may be among those a judge has ordered released in response to an ACLU lawsuit.

Frank Rich, of the NYT, has written an excellent piece arguing for official release of the photos sought by the ACLU. Read it here:

"...the president’s flip-flop on the release of detainee abuse photos — whatever his motivation — is a fool’s errand. The pictures will eventually emerge anyway, either because of leaks (if they haven’t started already) or because the federal appeals court decision upholding their release remains in force. And here’s a bet: These images will not prove the most shocking evidence of Bush administration sins still to come."

Torture Photos -- What Bush and Obama Don't Want the World to See

The Raw Story released a group of very graphic torture photos three years ago. These leaked photos may be among those the ACLU sued to have made public. They won their case and a judge ordered them released but President Obama violated the court order and ordered them held in locked files somewhere.

Starting today, I aintend to feature the photos one at a time each day on this blog. The photos were originally released by an Australian TV station, not an American news outlet. They are very graphic, and they are almost guaranteed to make you want justice for the criminals who ordered the torture, the criminals who justified it, and those who carried it out in Abu Ghirab, Gitmo and CIA secret prisons around the world.

I think it is important that these photos be widely published. Never again should this nation engage in this kind of brutal behavior. Torture is a crime, and the spotlight should be turned on the crimes that were done in our name. There should be no debate about whether the criminals should be prosecuted. There is never any debate about whether murder should be prosecuted, and apparently in too many cases, torture in U.S. prisons outside the U.S. resulted in death., We need to know the whole story, and we need prosecution, to make sure this never happens again. America is supposed to be the leader in human rights, not a criminal rogue nation, as much of the world now regards us.

If these photos do not make you angry and want to demand justice, you have not been paying attention.

Dear Congress and the Credit Card Companies, this is an open Love Letter to You, you filthy greedy sons of bitches:

The Senate has screwed us, the American people, again. The banking and credit card industry has used our taxpayer money in the millions of dollars to lobby (that's the polite word for bribe) our Senators. And our Senators, way too many of them jumped through the hoop and voted down a bill that would have limited credit card interest rates to 15 percent.

The banks are charging as high as 30 percent and more. It used to be that this kind of rate was illegal and was practiced by guys we called loan sharks, who would come around and break your legs if you didn't pay. The banks don't do anything nearly that crude if you don't pay. They just take away your house, and ruin your credit and your marriage. And they do everything they can to make sure you live in a Kelvinator carton down on Skid Row.

But the banks are engaged in the same kind of criminal enterprise as those old mob guys we called loan sharks. So the next time you see your friendly neighborhood banker, what you are really seeing is a local goombah, whose allegiance is to the consigliore, the big mobster whor rnss the show, courtesy of the United States Congress, the best Congress money can buy.

Obama Backs Down -- No Transparency After All

President Obama said his would be a transparent administration. No more of the lies and coverups that characterized the Bushies. But it is not to be.

The ACLU successfully sued under the FOIA to get dozens of torture photos released to the public, in order to finally bring the spotlight squarely on places other than Abu Ghirab and Gitmo where prisoners were tortured. Reportedly, General Petraeus urged that some 2,000 photos be released. A judge agreed with the ACLU and ordered the pictures released. But Obama decided to violated that court order. It appears that President Obama has taken classes at the George W. Bush School for Operation of the Presidency.

The ACLU wanted the shots released on the theory that sunshine is the best disinfectant, and that release would demonstrate to the world and our own citizens that we have fully repudiated torture and are ready to turn a new page on the practice and on accountability.

We should have had some hints about Obama's intent the day he announced that CIA agents who tortured would not be charged and prosecuted. In plain language, President Obama signed off on War Crimes.

The coverup has begun. The memory hole is expected to do the rest.

Bye, Ron

Ron Hunter, a legendary local news anchorman died last summer. I just Googled his name out of curiosity and it came up that he had died in Las Vegas. Ron was the anchor man who gave me my first real chance at an on-air job, and I went on from there to several top markets. Ron did the same. Some say he was the real-life Ron Burgundy of Anchorman. We were doing television at about the same time the Mary Tyler Moore newsroom was on the air, and Watergate. It was a very special newsroom with a lot of really good people, and I have lost touch with all of them. That's the way it was, at least for me, in TV news.

Ron had a huge ego. But at the same time he was very supportive of me and was hugely influential in my career. Due to his belief in me, I eventually landed at the ABC owned and operated station in Los Angeles, and went on to work for the Disney owned station here, as well.

I Got Another One of Those Stupid Nigerian emails

You know the one. They are all variations of the same theme. They come from the Executive Grand Poobah's Chief MuckyMuck of an Oil Ministry who has somehow gotten his hands on millions of dollars due to an overpayment to some other Deputy Oil Minister who has died in a tragic auto accident. And he has no heirs, so naturally in order to smuggle these millions out of Nigeria you have been chosen to effect a scheme to get the money into your US bank account. At first all they need is proof of your employment, and this will be followed up with questions about your finances and bank account which will naturally be needed in order to do the transfer which will result in you getting 10% of $40,000,000. What it will really result in is your bank account being cleaned out by the Executive Grand Poobah. I recently replied to one of these schemers:

Please send us your Social Security number, the routing and account numbers of your bank account and photos of your children immediately. We have a large amount of buried pirate treasure which we would like to turn over to you for no specific reason. Also please send us your mother's maiden name and a complete rundown of your prison record. We will need the name of your parole officer and your exact home address plus a picture of your house, and the numbers, user names and passwords of all your credit cards. Do this immediately and you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams by Tuesday. Thank you.

This One is a Little Late. But Better Late Than Never

Bush the War Criminal. Invading a country just because he could. Bush the Torturer-in=Chief. Inflicting pain, humiliation and death on thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands.

And neither Obama nor Nancy Pelosi want to indict the guy.

Why I am Proud to be a Republican

The following letter was written to Jonah Goldberg, a wingnut columnist who for some strange reason has a regular piece at least twice a week in the Los Angeles Times. No wonder their subscription list is shrinking. Never mind what he wrote today that set me off. It was the usual GOP drivel. I just had to write and here it is:

Mr. Goldberg,

Your columns are so inspirational and so refreshing. I am so pleased to read your comments from a Republican perspective. I, too am a proud Republican.

I am proud that our Republican president, George W. Bush went to war in Iraq to avenge 9/11. I am so proud that his CIA people built secret prisons and tortured those Islamo-fascists who attacked the Twin Towers. I am proud that our Republican president had the fortitude to ignore the Constitution and wiretap millions of Americans. If you don't have anything to hide, there's no problem.

I am proud to be in the same political party with deep thinkers like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck and Sarah Palin. And I am proud to be joining hands with those who would accept the lies of Charles Darwin instead of the Truth of God's Bible.

I am proud that we Republicans have kept millions of embryos out of the hands of scientists who would use their stem cells to do medical research. I am so proud that we defend marriage by denying it to homosexuals and keeping them in their place. And I am proud of the men who have shown women their place as well, by working to outlaw all abortions.

And I can't close without hoping you will write a piece soon attacking organized labor. If someone doesn't like a job, they can just quit. Labor unions and Communists are all the same to me.

Mr. Goldberg, keep up the good work. Every column you write shows the world what Republicans are made of.

Regards,

NEWSGUY

Dear Arlen Specter, our Newest Democrat

I wish you were a specter. The dictionary defines a specter as:
"1.A ghostly apparition; a phantom.
2. A haunting or disturbing image or prospect."

That's you, Arlen Specter, our newest Democrat, a kind of ghost of your former self since you switched parties. At least as a Republican we expected you would act like a complete and total schmuck. Now that you are a Democrat, you are still a complete and total schmuck acting like a Republican.

First you said you would not support the Employee Free Choice Act.

Then you said you would not support further stem cell research legislation.

Now you think Norm Coleman should be seated as Minnesota Congressman instead of Al Franken.

Is there any reason you switched parties except to try to fool actual Pennsylvania Democrats into returning you to the Senate? I hope a real Democrat goes up against you in the primary and beats your ass all the way to South Philadelphia.

Regards,


NEWSGUY