Fw: Bomb-Plot Witness Says FBI Sent Him to Terrorist Camp 19 Sep 2010 - Rethinking Palin. It's time to rethink Sarah Palin. From the moment that Republican presidential candidate John McCain plopped her on his ticket, the supreme article of political faith from all pundits, much of the press, most Democrats, and the GOP establishment has been that Sarah Palin is a laughingstock, a sideshow diversion, an ignoramus on the issues, a gossip and celebrity starved media creation, and, of course, a closet race tinged crowd baiter.
The Palin allure is built squarely on elements of these features. But what's now painfully obvious, is the allure has turned Palin into a political force, threat, and danger. The millions of Palin loathers gag at the thought of this. But her string of victories by candidates she endorsed in the primaries, and a flip-flop in some polls that now show more people than not say that she should run, and a more than a few say that she should win, have radically changed the game. The final vote result proved it. Steve King Demands “Blood Oath” From GOP Leadership – For Government Shutdown. By Sandi Behrns Rep. Steve King (R-IA) can always be counted upon to go over the top with his rhetoric.
He’s done it again, this time demanding that Minority Leader John Boehner and the GOP House leadership swear a “blood oath” promising to force a government shutdown over repeal of the Affordable Care Act. (“Obamacare,” as they prefer to call it.) King said the problem in 1995 wasn’t the government shutdown under President Bill Clinton — which occurred after Republicans attached Medicare cuts and other items to spending bills — it was that Republicans blinked when they feared the polls were turning against them. One has to believe that even John Boehner is aware of the disaster this kind of gambit would be for the Republican Party. But the party is already backing itself into a corner.
Of course, all of this is first dependent on the GOP retaking control of the House this November. Values Voters: In Wellpoint We Trust. Rasmussen Reports™: The Most Comprehensive Public Opinion Data Anywhere. 52% of Voters Say Their Views Are More Like Palin’s Than Obama’s. 52% of Voters Say Their Views Are More Like Palin’s Than Obama’s Email this ShareThis Sign up for free daily updates Monday, September 20, 2010 Fifty-two percent (52%) of Likely U.S. Rasmussen subscribers can log in to read the rest of this article. Become a member and get full access to all articles and polls starting at $3.95/month. Rasmussen Reports is a media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion information.
We conduct public opinion polls on a variety of topics to inform our audience on events in the news and other topics of interest. Some information, including the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll and commentaries are available for free to the general public. To learn more about our methodology, click here. Jeremy Scahill on Wikileaks | The LA Progressive.
Why some economists see a looming US-China trade war - NewsTrust.net. The storm clouds gathering over America’s trade relations with China darkened this week, prompting some observers to warn of a coming trade war between the world’s two largest economic powers. Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition As Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner openly criticized China for keeping its currency undervalued, angry congressmen urged legislation that would punish China for artificially boosting its exports. Adding to the threatening drumbeat, Washington lodged two new complaints against China at the World Trade Organization (WTO), charging that “China is breaking its trade commitments to the United States and other WTO partners,” according to a statement by US Trade Representative Ron Kirk. [Editor's note: The original version misidentified Mr. Pettis's current job title.]
Mr. Skepticism that a stronger RMB would reduce trade deficit Even so, Prof. Members of U.S. platoon in Afghanistan accused of killing civilians for sport - NewsTrust.net. AT JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, WASH. The U.S. soldiers hatched a plan as simple as it was savage: to randomly target and kill an Afghan civilian, and to get away with it. 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. 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.
The subsequent investigation has raised accusations about whether the military ignored warnings that the out-of-control soldiers were committing atrocities. The 'kill team' How Right-Wing Billionaires and Business Propaganda Got Us into the Economic Mess of the Century. September 15, 2010 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Editor's note: AlterNet is proud to present this excerpt from senior writer Joshua Holland's new book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy (And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America). Holland's research-rich but entertainingly written book slices and dices the latest talking points, explaining the issues with depth and nuance. The book tells an important story about the American economy that you won't read in the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal . The Great Recession that began in 2008 wiped out $13 trillion in Americans' household wealth —in home values and stocks and bonds—stoking the kind of anger we’ve seen from pissed off progressives and from the Tea Partiers who dominated the news in the summer of 2009.
I would offer two additional explanations. The Strange Sexual Obsessions Driving the Tea Party Movement. September 19, 2010 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Tea Party advocates and rightwing media pundits were gleeful in the aftermath of this week’s primary election results. They were buoyed by their candidates’ strong showings throughout the country against the Republican establishment, particularly in Delaware and New York.
Amidst all the victory hoopla, stories about the questionable sexual- and race-related attitudes and behavior of two of the Tea Party’s principal proponents, Delaware’s senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell and New York’s gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, have garnered as much notoriety as their often-questionable policy pronouncements. Delaware candidate O'Donnell proposed in a 1996 MTV program and again in a 1998 article, “The Case for Chastity,” that masturbation is sinful and that looking at pornography is equivalent to adultery.
Over the last few years, Republicans like Sen. Michael Klare, China Shakes the World. The year 2009 was a bad one for the United States. And no, I’m not talking about unemployment , or poverty , or home foreclosures , or banks too-big-to-fail, or any of the other normal bad news. I’m talking about something serious. As the world’s leading maker of things that go bang in the night (and I don’t mean Hollywood films), we took a hit last year. A big one. The planet’s leading arms-maker and dealer -- that’s us by a country mile -- with a 68.4% cut of the global market in 2008, had the value of its arms deals drop by almost $16 billion in the gloomy economic times of 2009. For a whopping $60 billion -- yes, Virginia, that is “billion” -- the Saudis, according to Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service, have agreed to buy 84 F-15s and 175 helicopters as part of the largest arms deal in U.S. history.
Consider it then a rescue package in tight times, part of a spectacle in which the U.S. and some American jobs are being saved from the brink by client states. Copyright 2010 Michael T. Has America gone mad? Progressive, Liberal United States and International News, Opinion, Op-Eds and Politics. TEAR DOWN THE STATUE OF LIBERTY. It seems that the Statue of Liberty has lost its meaning and so might as well be razed and the island on which it stands can be put to better use, something like another huge amusement park for the enrichment of Disney or some other large entertainment corporation. If you doubt that this is true, try reading and really thinking about the words from Emma Lazarus' 1883 poem, "The New Colossus," engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the Statue of Liberty... "Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
" Does that make sense to you? As if we didn't have enough tired, poor, and wretched refuse of our own! Why should we import more? There just isn't enough money to keep them alive but they would be better off dead, right? Just ignore them and let God handle the problem. Republicans are Bums! Did U.S. Soldiers Create Afghan Killing Club?: Information Clearing House: ICH. Jann Lipka. Bill Would Give Justice Department Power to Shutter Piracy Sites Worldwide | Threat Level.
Lawmakers introduced legislation Monday that would let the Justice Department seek U.S. court orders against piracy websites anywhere in the world, and shut them down through the sites’ domain registration. The bipartisan legislation, dubbed the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, (.pdf) amounts to the Holy Grail of intellectual-property enforcement. The recording industry and movie studios have been clamoring for such a capability since the George W.
Bush administration. If passed, the Justice Department could ask a federal court for an injunction that would order a U.S. domain registrar or registry to stop resolving an infringing site’s domain name, so that visitors to PirateBay.org, for example, would get an error message. “In today’s global economy the internet has become the glue of international commerce –- connecting consumers with a wide array of products and services worldwide,” said Sen. Things may be different under President Barack Obama. Rallies planned for soldier charged in WikiLeaks case. By the CNN Wire Staff September 17, 2010 6:27 a.m. EDT Bradley Manning is accused of leaking classified military information to the Wikileaks website. Bradley Manning is being held at a Virginia detention facilityHe has been charged with leaking a videoDemonstrations are planned in about 19 cities, organizers say (CNN) -- Supporters of Bradley Manning will rally in several cities Friday to urge the U.S. government to drop charges against the soldier accused of leaking an Iraq war video to the WikiLeaks website.
Organizers say demonstrations will occur in about 19 cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Toronto. Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, is being held at a Quantico, Virginia, detention facility. Manning, 22, has been charged with illegally transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system in connection with the leaking of a video of a helicopter attack in Iraq in 2007. » Penatgon Papers’ Daniel Ellsberg on Wikileaks & Bradley Manning NEGOTIATION IS OVER! Map of the Day: DC Mayoral Primary Highlights Cultural and Racial Divides - Patrick Ottenhoff - Politics. The District of Columbia is a blanket of blue on the electoral map, but the 2010 Democratic primary for mayor revealed some cultural and racial divides that are as sharp as any of the states south of the Potomac. Mayor Fenty won all the white areas and ran well in Capitol Hill, Georgetown, Woodley Park, Cleveland Park, and Tenleytown.
Mayor-elect Gray won all the black areas and ran well in Anacostia (particularly Ward 8) and Northeast. The battleground neighborhoods were U Street, Shaw, and downtown. I don't know enough about Gray to provide an educated analysis of his constituency, but I do know that Fenty represents the white-collar, socially liberal wing of the Democratic Party. He is perhaps known best for riding his bike around the city and hiring Michelle Rhee to scrap the failed programs and entrenched interests in the school system. These are winners with the new, white-collar, professional class in D.C., but I'm not sure they're too popular with old-school District residents. Right Wing Round-Up. Right-wing media attack Michelle Obama for fighting childhood obesity. Conservative media figures are attacking Michelle Obama over her efforts to encourage healthy eating and reduce childhood obesity, baselessly claiming that Americans "will be reported" or be "jail[ed]" for eating french fries.
Fox News figures attack Michelle Obama's efforts to reduce childhood obesity Beck fearmongers that philosophy behind offering children healthy food choices will lead to riots, imprisonment, and global government. On the September 14 edition of his Fox News show, Glenn Beck suggested that Michelle Obama's initiative would lead to imprisonment for eating french fries: You're going to have to tax, you're going to have to make it more and more difficult.
But when those options don't work, how do you get people to stop eating french fries, because french fries still beat carrots. What's left? Well, now you have to start thinking about punishments -- maybe a fine, maybe even jail. [W]e've just been shown another example this week of nudging with Michelle Obama. Mr. Wash. Toronto Sun corrects Soros-Nazi smear. How To Spot A Whitewash In Army’s Death-Squad Inquiry | Danger Room. According to Army investigators at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State, soldiers in the 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment of what’s now the 2nd Stryker Brigade hunted and killed Afghan civilians for sport. If this gruesome tale turns out to be true, then it means American soldiers in Afghanistan became something we associate with the worst of all war crimes, something that we’d like to believe simply doesn’t exist among our troops: a death squad.
A small group of soldiers in the platoon, report the Washington Post and the Army Times before it, hatched a plot to target Afghan civilians for death. Three alleged murders occurred between January and May in Kandahar at the hands of the self-described “Kill Team” headed by a staff sergeant in the platoon who apparently boasted of getting away with abuse in Iraq. Details surrounding the alleged death squad are subject to dispute and counter-accusation as the Army’s investigation proceeds. 1. 2. 3.
March to Keep Fear Alive Announcement - The Colbert Report - 9/16/10. Jon Stewart plans D.C. rally - PATRICK GAVIN | POLITICO CLICK. For weeks, "Comedy Central"'s Jon Stewart has been teasing a "big announcement," and he finally revealed it Thursday night: In response to the political spectrum's extremes, Stewart will spearhead a rally in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 30. The event, called "The Rally To Restore Sanity," (or as he later called it, a "Million Moderate March"), aims to bring together those turned off by political shenanigans on both the right and the left.
On the right, Stewart rejected those who question Obama's citizenship and patriotism and, on the left, he knocked those who called President George W. Bush a war criminal. Stewart's "Comedy Central" colleague, Stephen Colbert, is also set to appear, killing two birds with one stone: There have already been a grassroots movements underway to encourage Colbert to stage a Washington, D.C. event of his own in the wake of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally in August. Summation of Robert Jackson in the Nuremberg Major War Figures Trial. Tony Blair's Journey: Questions Before Charge of War Crimes in International Court By David Halpin. The “Right Thing” in Iraq? Primaries Over, Focus Turns To Midterms. With 2012 Plans in Limbo, Palin Steps Into Kingmaker Role | PBS NewsHour | Sept. 20, 2010.
Mitt Romney Could Be The Hillary Clinton Of 2012 : It's All Politics. The Plum Line - Tea Party candidates at odds with top GOP figures on homosexuality. Two views: Should GOP get behind the tea party? | Georgia Elections News. US Democrats are having their own struggle with union power.