duh

Nice to see that some congressmen are standing up to the president on this wiretap issue.. I wish I could say the same for our US Senators (even ones I voted for!)

If our nation is left vulnerable in the coming months, it will not be because we don’t have enough domestic spying powers.  It will be because your Administration has not done enough to defeat terrorist organizations – including al Qaeda — that have gained strength since 9/11.  We do not have nearly enough linguists to translate the reams of information we currently collect.  We do not have enough intelligence officers who can penetrate the hardest targets, such as al Qaeda.  We have surged so many intelligence resources into Iraq that we have taken our eye off the ball in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As a result, you have allowed al Qaeda to reconstitute itself on your watch.
You have also suggested that Congress must grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies.  As someone who has been briefed on our most sensitive intelligence programs, I can see no argument why the future security of our country depends on whether past actions of telecommunications companies are immunized.

Um Yup! from a letter to GWB from Congressman Reyes of Texas.

Am I the only one who has noticed that there is something wrong with GWBs right hand/arm? Every time I see the guy walking around he always has his right arm stiffened up like it’s not even his.. It looks like a fake arm. When he moves his right hand it is slow and fake looking as well. I wonder what this could be? Anyone seen this?

I’ve been telling anyone who would listen for about 3 years now about the fraudulent recount effort of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio that would (in my opinion) have proved that the election was stolen by the evil slimy Bush bastards. It was also recounted quite well in the HBO documentary “HackingDemocracy“. Well, two of the election workers involved were charged with rigging the recount and they have been found guilty and sentenced to 18 months in jail. This is good news. The bad news is multi-faceted. First I’m upset that they only got 18 months. Clearly what they did was tantamount to treason and they should have at least gotten life in prison for subverting our constitution. Second I’m upset becasue you won’t find anywhere in the MSM this story.. I looked with no luck and I’m sure you won’t see this on TV. Lastly, I’m most upset because this does nothing to remove Bush from the White House.. at the least, congress could investigate.. According to Bradblog only 6 Kerry votes in each Ohio precinct would have made him the winner. oh wait.. the ballots have been destroyed even though a Judge ordered them saved.. hmn.. interesting. Fuckers. Why aren’t more of us upset about this?

So, according to NSPD-51 the president can skip the constitution, ignore congress and take over state and local govts. and private companies in the event of an “emergency” (which the president can define) for as long as he wants! So he could either declare an emergency or perhaps stage a fake terrorist attack and then take over the govt, dissolve congress and become supreme leader.. scary stuff! What kind of nation do we have that allows the president to simply declare stuff like this and get away with it? Why does our media ignore this? People, pay attention!

Here’s a video about it. Also, here’s a nice written piece about it.

Lastly.. in slate we see an article that at first appears skeptical but eventually you see that they are really paying attention :

I wish I did, but I see nothing in the document to prevent even a “localized” forest fire or hurricane from giving the president the right to throw long-established constitutional government out the window, institute a number of unspecified continuity policies, and run the country with the guidance of the “National Continuity Coordinator” and with the “Continuity Policy Coordination Committee” for as long as the president sees fit.

This order has been issued by executive fiat and has not been subjected to any public examination by the other two branches, which have behaved in a supine way that suggests how they’ll behave when comity time arrives and urgent decisions on the fate of the nation and perhaps the world (nuclear retaliation being what it is) need to be made immediately.

The fact that Congress has not scrutinized and challenged the potential here for an emergency-situation power grab is scandalous, unacceptable.

Go here. sign the petition!

http://impeachcheney.org/

The Blog | Tom Tomorrow: What They Said | The Huffington Post

Does anyone care that on any given day 33 people die in the Sudan or that 33 people (a good portion american) die in Iraq? Does anyone care that the executive branch of the US govt. is under congressional investigation? Or that the Secretary of State may be be facing a subpoena soon? You wouldn’t think so if you watched or read the news lately. When I come in to work, the lobby of my building has CNN on a big flat screen TV. For the past 3 days the only thing I’ve seen on it (and I’ve walked past it quite a bit) has been this shooting incident at GT. Look, it’s pretty sad that this happened and innocent people died, but guess what? It’s over and its time to report on real news.. stuff that is happening right now..

Yea yea, we need time to grieve.. Blah Blah Blah. Grieve about the other deaths around the world that either we caused directly or by our inaction allowed and allow to happen all the time. Lets grieve about that. Lets grieve about how badly we ruined the environment and how we still have no plan on how to fix it. Lets grieve about New Orleans and how it isn’t much better than it was 2 years ago. And the list goes on.

We need to start questioning why nobody is standing up and pushing back against the fact that our media is failing us, that it is feeding us useless shit every day and we just eat it up. We need to complain. We need to stand up and demand that the media start focusing on things that are important. Don’t you all see where this is headed?

Not sure if he’s presidential material, but I sure like the guy a lot..

The Raw Story | Kucinich video asks if it’s time to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush

So. Is it possible to be happy about the world we live in today? I’m not sure.. Everything seems so fucked up. I write about here all the time.. I wonder if maybe I think this way because I’m critical of the world and if I just put on my happy person blinders and gave in to society I would feel a lot better. If I wanted to I could come up with 10 fucked up stories a day and post them here. Here’s one. Here’s another. I mean, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. When I was younger, the world was full of promise. The future was a place we wanted to get to.. Now, the future scares me. Well, actually it used to scare me. I’ve become resolved to our demise. Now I look forward to the decay of our civilization. I look forward to the day when people look back and say “what the hell have we done?”.. or maybe that day will never come. Maybe we will simply forget our potential and become complacent in our mediocrity.

Will we ever start treating each other as equals? Will we ever give up the endless pursuit of pointless things? Will we ever decide as a species to improve ourselves? Will we ever stop and realize that we could be doing so much more? Will we ever stop killing? Will we ever stop exploiting? Will we ever care for our planet? Will we ever think beyond the next earnings cycle? Or the next election?

I sure don’t think so.

I’m not always in 100% agreement with Brendan (Brendan Calling) but in this post he is totally correct. Anyone in our military that was part of torture of prisoners deserves any and all that come to them as a result. Years ago when we were in Gulf War I, I remember hearing stories of Iraqi soldiers giving up just so they could spend some time as POWs in our care. They got good food, beds, clothes and were cared for psysically.. I was proud to be an American. I thought something like “see, that’s why we’re a superpower, we care about people and even when we have to resort to war, we still play with honor”. Wow we’ve come a long way from that haven’t we? That GWB and Rummy aren’t being brought up on war crimes is simply repulsive to me!