Keith Olbermann On The Neocon Job

Below is the transcript from the special comment on the Neocon Job from the December 6, 2007 Countdown with Keith Olbermann Show on MSNBC. Video of his special comment is available from MSNBC, YouTube, and Crooks and Liars:

Finally, as promised, a Special Comment about the President’s cataclysmic deception about Iran.

There are few choices more terrifying than the one Mr.. Bush has left us with tonight.

We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole — or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked — at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so — whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.

A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency: an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself.

After Ms Perino’s announcement from the White House late last night, the timeline is inescapable and clear.

In August the President was told by his hand-picked Major Domo of intelligence Mike McConnell, a flinty, high-strung-looking, worrying-warrior who will always see more clouds than silver linings, that what “everybody thought” about Iran might be, in essence, crap.

Yet on October 17th the President said of Iran and its president Ahmadinejad:

“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War Three, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon.”

And as he said that, Mr.. Bush knew that at bare minimum there was a strong chance that his rhetoric was nothing more than words with which to scare the Iranians.

Or was it, Sir, to scare the Americans?

Does Iran not really fit into the equation here? Have you just scribbled it into the fill-in-the-blank on the same template you used, to scare us about Iraq?

In August, any commander-in-chief still able-minded or uncorrupted or both, Sir, would have invoked the quality the job most requires: mental flexibility.

A bright man, or an honest man, would have realized no later than the McConnell briefing that the only true danger about Iran was the damage that could be done by an unhinged, irrational Chicken Little of a president, shooting his mouth off, backed up by only his own hysteria and his own delusions of omniscience.

Not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr. Bush.

The Chicken Little of presidents is the one, Sir, that you see in the mirror.

And the mind reels at the thought of a Vice President fully briefed on the revised Intel as long as two weeks ago — briefed on the fact that Iran abandoned its pursuit of this imminent threat four years ago — who never bothered to mention it to his boss.

It is nearly forgotten today, but throughout much of Ronald Reagan’s presidency it was widely believed that he was little more than a front-man for some never-viewed, behind-the-scenes, string-puller.

Today, as evidenced by this latest remarkable, historic malfeasance, it is inescapable, that Dick Cheney is either this president’s evil ventriloquist, or he thinks he is.

What servant of any of the 42 previous presidents could possibly withhold information of this urgency and gravity, and wind up back at his desk the next morning, instead of winding up before a Congressional investigation — or a criminal one?

Mr. Bush — if you can still hear us — if you did not previously agree to this scenario in which Dick Cheney is the actual detective and you’re Remington Steele — you must disenthrall yourself: Mr. Cheney has usurped your constitutional powers, cut you out of the information loop, and led you down the path to an unprecedented presidency in which the facts are optional, the Intel is valued less than the hunch, and the assistant runs the store.

The problem is, Sir, your assistant is robbing you — and your country — blind.

Not merely in monetary terms, Mr.. Bush, but more importantly of the traditions and righteousness for which we have stood, at great risk, for centuries: Honesty, Law, Moral Force.

Mr.. Cheney has helped, Sir, to make your Administration into the kind our ancestors saw in the 1860’s and 1870’s and 1880’s — the ones that abandoned Reconstruction, and sent this country marching backwards into the pit of American Apartheid.

Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland…

Presidents who will be remembered only in a blur of failure, Mr.. Bush.

Presidents who will be remembered only as functions of those who opposed them — the opponents whom history proved right.

Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland… Bush.

Would that we could let this President off the hook by seeing him only as marionette or moron.

But a study of the mutation of his language about Iran proves that though he may not be very good at it, he is, himself, still a manipulative, Machiavellian, snake-oil salesman.

The Bushian etymology was tracked by Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post’s website.

It is staggering.

March 31st: “Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon…”

June 5th: Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear weapons…”

June 19th: “consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon…”

July 12th: “the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons…”

August 6th: “this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon…”

Notice a pattern?

Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.

Then, sometime between August 6th and August 9th, those terms are suddenly swapped out, so subtly that only in retrospect can we see that somebody has warned the President, not only that he has gone out too far on the limb of terror — but there may not even be a tree there…

McConnell, or someone, must have briefed him then.

August 9th: “They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium, which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program…”

August 28th: “Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons…”

October 4th: “you should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon…”

October 17th: “until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements aren’t real, yeah, I believe they want to have the **capacity**, the **knowledge**, in order to make a nuclear weapon.”

Before August 9th, it’s: Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.

After August 9th, it’s: Desire, pursuit, want…knowledge technology know-how to enrich uranium.

And we are to believe, Mr.. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003…

And you talked of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program on October 17th…

And that’s just a coincidence?

And we are to believe, Mr.. Bush, that nobody told you any of this until last week?

Your insistence that you were not briefed on the NIE until last week might be legally true — something like “what the definition of is is — but with the subject matter being not interns but the threat of nuclear war.

Legally, it might save you from some war crimes trial… but ethically, it is a lie.

It is indefensible.

You have been yelling threats into a phone for nearly four months, after the guy on the other end had already hung up.

You, Mr.. Bush, are a bald-faced liar.

And more over, you have just revealed that John Bolton, and Norman Podhoretz, and the Wall Street Journal Editorial board, are also bald-faced liars.

We are to believe that the Intel Community, or maybe the State Department, cooked the raw intelligence about Iran, falsely diminished the Iranian nuclear threat, to make you look bad?

And you proceeded to let them make you look bad?

You not only knew all of this about Iran, in early August…

But you also knew… it was… accurate.

And instead of sharing this good news with the people you have obviously forgotten you represent…

You merely fine-tuned your terrorizing of those people, to legally cover your own backside…

While you filled the factual gap with sadistic visions of — as you phrased it on August 28th: a quote “nuclear holocaust” — and, as you phrased it on October 17th, quote: “World War Three.”

My comments, Mr. Bush, are often dismissed as simple repetitions of the phrase “George Bush has no business being president.”

Well, guess what?

Tonight: hanged by your own words… convicted by your own deliberate lies…

You, sir, have no business… being president.

Good night, and good luck.

Links to More Information

Links to the information above as well as snippets from numerous other incredibly assinine misadventures from our leaders can be found below:

Special Comment: Neocon Job article from The News Hole at MSNBC

Special Comment: Neocon Video from MSNBC

Keith Olbermann special comment on the Neocon job – December 6, 2007 video from YouTube

Countdown Special Comment: The NIE Reflects An “Unhinged, Irrational Chicken Little Of A President” article and video from Crooks and Liars:

Statement of Pres. George Bush, Sept. 12, 2001 in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from The Center for Democracy & Technology:

Yet another lie from our president:

“Those in authority should take appropriate precautions to protect our citizens. But we will not allow this enemy to win the war by changing our way of life or restricting our freedoms.”

Democracy in the Americas article from The New York Times:

“I salute you, Hugo Chávez.

Those are words I never thought I’d write. But nor did I think it possible that a Latin American strongman, issued from the barracks, accumulating power through threats, slandering opponents as “traitors,” buying support with $150 million a day in oil money, and bent on a socialist revolution, would accept a marginal electoral defeat.

No, if it came to the humiliation of a 51 to 49 percent rejection of his proposal to end term limits and undermine private property rights and centralize authority, he would surely use a controlled Election Commission to tweak the numbers for Venezuela’s glorious march to socialism.

And yet, there was a glum Chávez declaring in the unadorned language no totalitarian system can abide that: “The people’s decision will be upheld in respect of the basic rule of democracy: the winning option is the one that gets most votes.”

The United States might ponder those words – not just because of what happened in the presidential election of 2000; not just because the arithmetic of voting has proved unpalatable in Palestine; not just because of the past U.S.-abetted trampling of elected Latin American leaders in Chile and elsewhere – but because democracy was alive and vital in Venezuela on Sunday in a way foreign to President Bush’s America.”

Darth Vader blogging article from The New York Times:

“Back when Hillary Clinton described Dick Cheney as Darth Vader, a number of people pointed out that this was an unfair comparison. For example, Darth Vader once served in the military.

Here’s another reason the comparison is invalid: the contractors Darth Vader hired to build the Death Star actually got the job done.

A State Department project manager banished from Iraq by the U.S. ambassador and under scrutiny by the Justice Department continues to oversee the construction of the much-delayed new American embassy in Baghdad from nearby Kuwait, State Department officials disclosed Thursday.

James L. Golden, a contract employee, is still managing the $740 million project, said Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, the department’s top management official.”

Are These 9/11 Whistleblowers Credible? article from Prison Planet:

Complete with numerous links to back up the facts, definitely worth checking out (not to mention into):

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan (Col. Ronald D. Ray) said that the official story of 9/11 is “the dog that doesn’t hunt” (bio)

Director of the U.S. “Star Wars” space defense program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, who was a senior air force colonel who flew 101 combat missions (Col. Robert Bowman) stated that 9/11 was an inside job. He also said:

“If our government had merely [done] nothing, and I say that as an old interceptor pilot-I know the drill, I know what it takes, I know how long it takes, I know what the procedures are, I know what they were, and I know what they’ve changed them to-if our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. [T]hat is treason!”

U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director, decorated with the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal (Capt. Daniel Davis) stated:

“there is no way that an aircraft . . . would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control … Attempts to obscure facts by calling them a ‘conspiracy Theory’ does not change the truth. It seems, ‘Something is rotten in the State.'”

What Does The First Amendment Really Mean? article written by Ron Paul in 2002:

“The entire nation seemed to condemn last week’s federal court ruling that the pledge of allegiance cannot be recited in schools. The notion that the phrase “one nation under God” renders the pledge unconstitutional is ridiculous to most Americans, who strongly believe that expressions of religious belief should be an integral part of public life. Yet although the public outcry against this terrible ruling is understandable, the real issue of religious freedom has not been addressed by Congress or the media.

The judges who made this unfortunate ruling simply do not understand the First amendment. It does not bar religious expression in public settings or anywhere else. In fact, it expressly prohibits federal interference in the free expression of religion. Far from mandating strict secularism in schools, it instead bars the federal government from prohibiting the pledge of allegiance, school prayer, or any other religious expression. The politicians and judges pushing the removal of religion from public life are violating the First amendment, not upholding it.

It’s important to recognize that the First amendment applies only to Congress. Remember, the first sentence starts with “Congress shall make no law…” This means that matters of religious freedom and expression should be decided by the states, with disputes settled in state courts. The First amendment acts as a simple check on federal power, ensuring that the federal government has no jurisdiction or authority whatsoever over religious issues. The phony “incorporation” doctrine, dreamed up by activist judges to pervert the plain meaning of the Constitution, was used once again by a federal court to assume jurisdiction over a case that constitutionally was none of its business.”

Hayden: Destruction Of Tapes Was ‘In Line With The Law’ Because Torture Advocate Rizzo Said So article and video from Think Progress

Bush loses ground with military families article from The Los Angeles Times:

“A majority disapprove of the president’s handling of the war in Iraq and are more in line with the views of the general public.

WASHINGTON — Families with ties to the military, long a reliable source of support for wartime presidents, disapprove of President Bush and his handling of the war in Iraq, with a majority concluding the invasion was not worth it, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

The views of the military community, which includes active-duty service members, veterans and their family members, mirror those of the overall adult population, a sign that the strong military endorsement that the administration often pointed to has dwindled in the war’s fifth year.”

Huckabee Attacks Huffington for Breaking Story of His Rapist Defense, Ends Up Embarrassing Himself article from AlterNet

If George Bush Unilaterally Declared Himself Dictator, Would Congress be Obligated to Impeach? article from The Democratic Underground:

It brings up several very good examples of Bush’s signing statements trying to change laws passed by Congress, and Bush has had the most in history of all previous presidents combined:

“I mean that as a serious question. Seriously. Bear with me a minute. I and many other DUers have posted numerous articles advocating impeachment on numerous grounds. In this post I’ll discuss a reason that I’ve touched on many times but never discussed in detail: Bush’s numerous “signing statements”. This is the process whereby he signs a bill passed by Congress (rather than vetoing it), thereby officially making it the law of our land, as specified in our Constitution, but he appends a “signing statement” to it, which re-interprets the law as written by Congress.

George Bush has committed numerous impeachable offenses in addition to his use of signing statements to evade his responsibility to enforce and abide by the laws that Congress enacts. His use of signing statements is no worse than many of his other high crimes and misdemeanors, including lying to Congress and the American people to justify a war of aggression and the routine use of torture.

One advantage of pursuing his signing statements on the road to impeachment is that that particular offense shouldn’t require much of an investigation at all, since it is all a matter of public record. Congress only needs to decide whether or not the President is required by our Constitution to enforce the laws that Congress enacts and abide by them. If Congress doesn’t have enough respect for the laws that it enacts to take the only measure left open to it to ensure that those laws are obeyed, then what are we paying them for?”

Getting Past “Oh!” Why Americans Misunderestimate the Depravity Of the President They Hate article from The Regressive Antidote

Talking Points Memo – Shag-ier and Shag-ier article and video from TPMmuckraker:

“Imagine that. Rudy’s caught in another lie about the tax-payer funded valet service he had New York City provide for Judi Nathan while she was still his mistress. Up until yesterday Team Rudy had claimed that the NYPD only started providing Nathan with an around-the-clock security detail after December 2000, after their adulterous relationship became public. This was in response to a never-disclosed “threat” Nathan received on a street corner near her home. There’s never been any details or evidence that the threat existed. But then-Police commissioner Bernie Kerik said it checked out. So please stop asking any more questionsImagine that. Rudy’s caught in another lie about the tax-payer funded valet service he had New York City provide for Judi Nathan while she was still his mistress. Up until yesterday Team Rudy had claimed that the NYPD only started providing Nathan with an around-the-clock security detail after December 2000, after their adulterous relationship became public. This was in response to a never-disclosed “threat” Nathan received on a street corner near her home. There’s never been any details or evidence that the threat existed. But then-Police commissioner Bernie Kerik said it checked out. So please stop asking any more questions.”

Secrets of the Federal Reserve from The American Patriot Friends Network

Lots of interesting and worrisome information regarding the Federal Reserve.

Sen. Whitehouseo Reveals Secret DoJ Legal Memos: Bush Determines What Is Constitutional article and video from Think Progress:

“This morning, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) delivered an impassioned floor speech to help frame the debate over FISA reform. Using his privilege as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Whitehouse said he has “spent hours poring over” secret opinions issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) – and he took notes.

Whitehouse is a lawyer, a former U.S. Attorney, a former legal counsel to Rhode Island’s Governor, and a former State Attorney General. He said he sought and received permission to have his notes declassified because he wanted to show the public “what the Bush administration does behind our backs when they think no one is looking.”

“To give you an example of what I read,” Whitehouse said on the Senate floor, “I have gotten three legal propositions from these secret OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note-taking could reproduce them from the classified documents”:

1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.”

It’s time for this bad joke to come to an end once and for all, and all the corrupt, unethical pieces of you-know-what that have helped him, including the ‘supreme court’ that appointed him in the first place.

Ron Paul fires back at Newsweek ‘hit’ piece article from LibertyPost.org:

“In an exclusive interview with WND, Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul fired back at Newsweek for an article labeling the NAFTA Superhighway a baseless conspiracy theory.

“It’s the same old story,” Paul said. “If Newsweek can’t discredit the message, they have to discredit the messenger.”

The Newsweek article, by Gretel C. Kovach, keyed off an answer the Texas congressman gave during the Nov. 28 CNN presidential debate. A YouTube.com question asked him about a “conspiracy theory regarding the Council [on] Foreign Relations and some plan to merge the United States with Canada and Mexico.”

Paul told WND the problem Newsweek and CNN have is that “it’s not just me” talking about it.

“We have some 14 states passing resolutions to oppose the North American Union and NAFTA Superhighways, amendments passed in Congress have taken away funds for North American integration projects and Virgil Goode has some 50 sponsors for his bill in the House,” Paul explained. “There are millions of Americans who oppose this globalist agenda.”

“Missing” evidence is familiar Bush pattern article from Salon News:

“The latest revelations of obstruction of justice involve two familiar ingredients: Deliberate destruction of evidence and acquiescence by key congressional Democrats.

Dec. 07, 2007 | The New York Times’ revelation that “the Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody” conclusively demonstrates obstruction of justice which, if Michael Mukasey has an ounce of integrity or independence, will be the subject of a serious and immediate criminal investigation. While the revelation is obviously significant, it is also is part of a long-standing pattern of such obstruction.

In April, I compiled a long list of the numerous court proceedings and other investigations which were impeded by extremely dubious claims from the Bush administration that key evidence was mysteriously “missing.” Much of the “missing” evidence involved precisely the type of evidence that the CIA has now been forced here to admit it deliberately destroyed: namely, evidence showing the conduct of its agents during interrogation of detainees.

The most glaringly similar case was when, during the trial of Jose Padilla, DOJ prosecutors told the federal court that key videotapes of Padilla’s interrogations by DOD agents, including the last interrogation they conducted of him, could not be located, a claim which — for obvious reasons — prompted expressions of incredulity from the Bush-appointed federal judge and virtually everyone else:”

Dems Call for Inquiry in CIA Tapes Case article from WTop News

Obstruction of Justice at the CIA article from Harper’s Magazine:

“The Bush Administration has had a consistent practice of destroying evidence which would document serious crimes perpetrated with the connivance or consent of senior officials, particularly including acts of torture and abuse performed on detainees in connection with what President Bush calls the “Program.” Some of the strongest evidence to date of this practice has just entered the the public record. Prosecutors take note.

The second question is: Where has Congress been throughout this period?

The Associated Press now has a story up which raises even more troubling prospects. In it, General Hayden suggests that the Agency notified Congressional oversight and they expressed no objection to the destruction of evidence.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed of the existence of the tapes and the CIA’s intention to destroy them. He also said the CIA’s internal watchdog watched the tapes in 2003 and verified that the interrogation practices were legal.”

Obviously the CIA police themselves as well as the FBI, meaning it doesn’t. Simply Frigging Amazing. Congress needs to start doing something besides holding endless useless circle jerks and writing letters. Actions sometimes speak louder than words.

It’s Not Torture They’re Covering Up, It’s the Results article from Daily Kos:

“The automatic assumption about the CIA’s destruction of the interrogation tapes of Abu Zubaydah is that the tapes exposed methods everyone would agree amounted to torture, and they were destroyed to prevent that proof being exposed. It’s quite likely that what was being covered up was the results of that torture.

Gerald Posner has a piece (see the link directly below this one) at HuffPo drawing from his 2003 book that is worth a read:

He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan’s air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King’s nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.

It wasn’t the fact that he was tortured that needed covering up, it was what he said.”

Gerald Posner: The CIA’s Destroyed Interrogation Tapes and the Saudi-Pakistani 9/11 Connection article from The Huffington Post

Former Cheney Aide’s Efforts To Discredit Iran NIE Are Contradicted By Cheney Himself article from Think Progress

One of the biggest problems with lying is that once you start, it’s impossible to stop, especially the longer you continue to do it.

9/11 – Your Day Is Coming article and video from WakeUpFromYourSlumber

We Must Get A “Read The Bills Act Passed” article from OpEdNews

Bush Reaction to NIE Reveals Him as World Warmonger No. 1 article from The Smirking Chimp:

“So, just how much are the American people supposed to take? Here we’ve got a president who lied us into making war on Iraq and who, despite a new National Intelligence Estimate(NIE), is stubbornly trying to lie us into another war against Iran.

Still worse, commander-in-chief Bush has allowed the Pentagon to fire irradiated ammunition (banned by the Geneva Convention) all over Iraq as though it is some kind of paintball playland, radiation that is likely causing cancers, radiation that will poison that unfortunate country perhaps for thousands of years to come— a crime against humanity.”

Inspector General quits at State Department article from MSNBC News

Perino: Congress Knew More About CIA Activities Than Bush, President Not ‘Aware’ Of Torture Tapes article and video from Think Progress

I guess you’d have to be a complete idiot if you’re going to work for one.

State Department retains manager of troubled embassy project article from Yahoo! News and McClatchy News:

More of our tax dollars hard at work paying for federal governmental corruption:

“WASHINGTON – A State Department project manager banished from Iraq by the U.S. ambassador and under scrutiny by the Justice Department continues to oversee the construction of the much-delayed new American embassy in Baghdad from nearby Kuwait, State Department officials disclosed Thursday.

James L. Golden, a contract employee, is still managing the $740 million project, said Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, the department’s top management official.

“Mr. Golden is still . . . our project manager, and still is working with the contractor, at their base in Kuwait,” Kennedy said.

One State Department official with detailed knowledge of the unopened embassy expressed outrage that his superiors haven’t replaced Golden.

“I find it absolutely amazing that State senior management doesn’t seem to think it a trifle odd that two people under investigation . . . are still making all the management decisions under this same contract,” the official said in an e-mail. The official asked for anonymity because he feared retaliation by his superiors.”

Let’s hope there’s enough of this country left to salvage after one more year of corruption at such high levels.

Baer Suggests Saudis Could Stage Terror In America to Instigate Iran Attack article from Prison Planet:

History repeating itself? Links and audio of the interview are available in the article.

“Former CIA veteran Robert Baer has suggested that a withdrawal from the possibility of striking Iran could be reversed if a terror attack was to take place in America – and he fingered America’s ally Saudi Arabia as the most likely perpetrator of any such attack. Baer also questioned why the U.S. and its allies continue to protect individuals who consorted with the alleged mastermind of 9/11 before the attacks.

Baer was labeled “perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East” by Seymour Hersh and his astounding career formed the script for the Academy Award winning motion picture Syriana.

Baer served as a clandestine CIA officer in Madras and New Delhi, India; in Beirut, Lebanon; in Dushanbe, Tajikistan; and in Salah al-Din in Kurdish northern Iraq. While in Iraq, Baer tried to persuade the Clinton administration to back a coup to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

During a June 2006 radio interview, Baer said that the evidence points to 9/11 having an inside job aspect.”

O’Reilly: Progressive blog readers = ‘devil worshippers’ article and video from Think Progress

Blackwater’s Bu$ine$$ article from The Nation

Want Peace? Take Congress in 2008! article from OpEdNews:

As I’ve noted too many times in the past, politics has gotten entirely too corrupt and dirty. Want to change the direction this country is going? Vote and do something about it.

“The peace movement has grown enormously since 2001. Yet the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan continue, and Congress continues to allocate outrageous sums of taxpayer money to these illegal and immoral military adventures. The threats to bomb Iran continue, despite the recent admission that Iran’s program to develop nuclear weapons was discontinued in 2003.

We who want peace number in the millions- we are a majority, if the last election is any clue. We march, lobby Congress, get ourselves arrested, sign petitions, blog, blog, blog, and it seems fruitless. We elect a Democratic Congress, and they seem powerless to stop the war machine, or unwilling, or downright complicit. The House of Representatives has the power to impeach the president and vice president. The House holds the purse strings and could simply refuse to fund illegal military operations. Yet it refuses to do either.

The conventional wisdom of American politics nowadays is that it takes lots of money to buy the media coverage to get known enough to win elections. The money comes from the corporations that profit from war, directly or indirectly. And so candidates sell out to the war machine, in order to get elected. When they get elected, they vote for war funding, in order to fulfill agreements made with their campaign funders, and in order to ensure re-election.”

Huckabee wanted to isolate AIDS patients article from Yahoo! News and The Associated Press:

“LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could “pose a dangerous public health risk.”

As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.”

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