"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ" --Gandhi
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -Theodore Roosevelt
"A little revolution, now and then, is a good thing." -Thomas Jefferson-
"In my lifetime, we've gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. We've gone from John F. Kennedy to Al Gore. If this is evolution, I believe that in 12 years, we'll be voting for plants." -Lewis Black-
"When you're born in the world you're given a ticket to the freakshow; when you're born in America you're given a front-row seat. And some of us in the front row have notebooks and pencils." -George Carlin
YouTube - Sarah McLachlan - Sweet Surrender
Topic: Arts
4:16 pm EST, Jan 30, 2009
So this is something the music companies should have done. Sony and Universal have both put big chunks of their video libraries up on youtube. I realize a decade ago when they were in Napster hell there wasn't a youtube, but they could have done something like this on their own sites.
I'm not sure if I want to get the Katy Perry album, but being able to listen to parts of it this way? I'm a HELL of a lot more likely to than I would have been without it.
Both retired FBI officials asserted that the Bush administration was thoroughly briefed on the mortgage fraud crisis and its potential to cascade out of control with devastating financial consequences, but made the decision not to give back to the FBI the agents it needed to address the problem. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, about 2,400 agents were reassigned to counterterrorism duties.
Here's another casualty of the "War on Terror." The economy got mugged because we were looking the other way.
FindLaw's Writ - Dean: Legal Jeopardy For American Torturers Here and Abroad? A Q & A Session With An Expert on the Issue, Philippe Sands
Topic: International Relations
7:21 pm EST, Jan 27, 2009
My question is how can the Obama Administration not investigate, and, if appropriate, prosecute given the world is watching, because if they do not, other may do so? How could there be "change we can believe in" if the new administration harbors war criminals – which is the way that Philippe Sands and the rest of the world, familiar with the facts which have surfaced even without an investigation, view those who facilitated or engaged in torture?
John Dean (you remember him, White House Counsel to Nixon) pulls no punches here at all. Richard Nixon famously said "I am not a crook," and to a certain level that's probably correct. I don't know that he authorized the Watergate break ins, I find it unlikely, but when he found out about them, he did all he could to cover them up.
This is a bunch of crooks, and it is not partisan to go after people who have broken domestic law and used their office to violate international treaty. The phrase is "Crimes Against Humanity" and while the previous administration may not live up to the standards of some of the prior committers of such acts, they give every appearance of having crossed that line without reservation.
Someone Take Away Thomas Friedman's Computer Before He Types Another Sentence | The Smirking Chimp
Topic: Current Events
1:17 am EST, Jan 24, 2009
First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you're supposed to stop digging when you're in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How does that even begin to make sense? It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if the editors over at the New York Times editorial page spend their afternoons dropping acid or drinking rubbing alcohol.
What role the Bush Administration's downgrading of terrorism as a foreign-policy priority played in the success of the 9/11 attacks cannot be known, but there is no doubting its responsibility for the launching and mismanagement of the unprovoked war in Iraq, with all its attendant suffering; for allowing the justified war in Afghanistan to slide to the edge of defeat; and for the vertiginous worldwide decline of America's influence, prestige, power, and moral standing.
I wonder if there is anyone assessing the Bush Presidency at this moment who is able to do so objectively, without Partisan bias... Who can actually give him credit for the things he did accomplish while acknowledging his failures honestly.
I've always been concerned about his attitudes about constitutional rights and international treaties. Cheney is wrong - history will not look kindly upon what they've done there. Obama stuck a fork directly into that mess during his inaugural speech, so perhaps we're off to progress, but I'm eagerly awaiting actual policies. Some of those problems are easier to talk about than to fix.
The war in Iraq was a mixed bag. We did not get into it in the right way. It blew up in our faces. Finally Bush, in the wake of a failed Congressional election, did the right thing and fired Rumsfeld. We changed course in Iraq, and the situation is better now. This wasn't entirely the result of good fortune.
A number of countries that we considered state supporters of terrorism at the turn of the century are now off the list, although I'm still a little skeptical about North Korea.
I'd argue that they significantly softenned the blow of the stock market crash - of 2002. Few people understand that. When things don't go wrong no one understands what you achieved. They should have popped the housing bubble earlier, but the result would have been depressing regardless of when they did it. The real bubble was blown in the late 1990s. The greater catastrophy was likely averted, no matter how bad things are about to get.
For all the monday night quarterbacking about DHS and its inefficiencies, the US has not been subjected to another domestic terrorist attack.
AlQueda is singificantly weakened. They simply do not have the operational capabilities that they had 8 years ago.
Bush (and his party) failed on two key domestic policy issues: social security and immigration. They were largely unable to achieve the later because of the incongruence between reality and the views of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. Bush is right. He should have just done it. Its not like he would be any less unpopular for having gone through with it.
Quite frankly, the Bush 43 administration has been one unmitigated disaster after another. Without being partisan about it, which I certainly could be, let's just use your list as... [ Read More (0.8k in body) ]
