Beheaded and Put on Display, Not Cruel and Unusual in Saudi Arabia

Is it cruel and unusual or just and appropriate? Read CNN, Convicted killer beheaded, put on display in Saudi Arabia.

For Mom & Pop Tammy

UPDATE: It seems that greed is out of fashion for now. Read The New York Times, A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality.

Is it the the goal of a business manager to “serve the greater good” and to act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others?

And how long will it last?

As a follow up to a radio program in early May on greed, good or bad, with special guest Mom & Pop Tammy, a regualr listener and frequent caller. Read the Washington Post, Greed's Saving Graces.

What do you think Tammy?

Lies, Fear Mongering, and Hope for the Worst

A pattern is emerging to help understand the Republi-con strategy to win elections -- lies, fear-mongering, and hope for the worst.

And the personification of that strategy: Rusty and the Chicken Hawk.

Here is more evidence of the strategy: The New York Times, Who Is to Blame for the Next Attack and McClatchy Newspapers, Cheney's speech ignored some inconvenient truths.

Be afraid, be very, very afraid! Now, Comrade Republi-Cons, for the party, repeat -- be afraid, be very, very afraid!

Our California Future

Want to know the future of the country? Read The New York Times, Deep Cuts Threaten to Reshape California. I particularly liked this statement:

“Government doesn’t provide services to rich people,” Mike Genest, the state’s finance director, said on a conference call with reporters on Friday. “It doesn’t even really provide services to the middle class.” He added: “You have to cut where the money is.”

I don't agree. Good government services benefit everyone. Roads are a case in point. But I do think that the poorer you are, the more you depend on government. And since the Republi-con war on the middle class has effectively destroyed millions of good paying jobs in this country, what will people do as the government cuts back?

Watch California, because as California goes, so goes the country.

Does the Star-Spangled Banner Wave Over the Land of the Torturers?

UPDATE IX: Is Cheney lying about the effectiveness of torture? Read the CNN, Memos don't show what Cheney says they do, so says Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.


UPDATE VIII: A couple more articles about torture. Read The New York Times, When Israel Confronted and Rejected Torture and the Washington Post, Torture? No. Except . . .

Finally, who is to blame for the policy? We the citizen, who reelected Bush in 2004. Read the Washington Post, Where This Buck Stops.


UPDATE VII: A couple more must read articles about torture (should it be called the torture scandal?). Read The New York Times, Official Defends Signing Interrogation Memos, in which Judge Bybee's defends "the conclusions of legal memorandums he had signed as a Bush administration lawyer" and yet struggles to come to terms with his actions; and A Torturous Compromise, about the 100 or so detainees that have died in U.S. custody, and the decision to expose but not prosecute those responsible for torture.

At one point, as an attorney, I thought that the lawyers involved in providing 'legal justification' for torture should be disbarred. But now I think that if the lawyers would acknowledge violating their oath to uphold the rule of law, the ABA should simply reprimand them.

What do you think?


UPDATE VI: Did torture prevent terrorist attacks? Yes, in the Bush administration's alternate reality. From The New York Times Magazine, Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush:

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''"

Cheney has his own special reality for the torture program, code named 24. Now you can read the Congressional debriefing of Cheney to learn about all the terrorist attacks that Cheney and his torture program prevented in this newly declassified report in The New York Times, Vice's Secret Vice.


UPDATE V: A couple of must read articles about torture.

An article in The New York Times, The Banality of Bush White House Evil, gives a good historical synopsis of the torture debate.

Another in the Washington Post, If Everyone Knew, Who's to Blame? , discusses paradoxes of the torture scandal, including this:

"Republicans from Dick Cheney on down have been unflagging in their arguments that these "enhanced interrogation techniques . . . were absolutely crucial" to preventing "a major-casualty attack." This argument, still strongly supported by a great many Americans, is deeply pernicious, for it holds that it is impossible to protect the country without breaking the law. It says that the professed principles of the United States, if genuinely adhered to, doom the country to defeat. It reduces our ideals and laws to a national decoration, to be discarded at the first sign of danger." [Link to definition of pernicious added.]

UPDATE IV: Read the new Senate Armed Services Committee report, which includes testimony from an Army psychologist at Guantanamo Bay who described increasingly relentless pressure from Washington in the summer of 2002 to prove a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq:

"[T]his is my opinion, even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between AI Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link...there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Sort of ironic if you think about it. American the land of liberty and freedom, abandoned its core values to torture prisoners, adopting "methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans," to get information to justify an war which turned out to be a debacle.

Sounds like a Shakespearean plot.

BTW, these recent revelations placing the conduct at Abu Ghraib in a new context. Maybe the soldiers, who Rumsfeld called "a few bad apples," were following orders of higher-ranking military officers or the CIA. Of course who cares? As the war showed, Republi-cons don't mind sacricing a few soldiers for political purposes. The convicted soldiers were just collateral damage necessary for Bush's reelection.

But the soldiers are starting to realize that they were just scapegoats. Read CNN, Abu Ghraib head finds vindication in newly released memos.

UPDATE III: Read the Red Cross report on the CIA's handling of fourteen 'high-value' detainees, which describes the brutal tactics used on detainees, and concludes that the treatment amounted to torture.


UPDATE II: Bush sold America's soul, the Constitution, to the devil, and for what -- lies -- or more accurately false leads procured by torture. Read the Washington Post, Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots.

Time to disbar Bush's lawyers, if the Spanish don't prosecute them first. Read The New York Times, Spanish Court Weighs Inquiry on Torture for 6 Bush-Era Officials.


UPDATE: Read Washington Post, Cleanup Task for a Shining City. For America is to remain that "shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere," there must be a public reckoning of the Bush administration's dark legacy.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States of America. The final two lines of the first verse are: "O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave/O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

Read this article and tell me if you think that is still true: The New York Review of Books, US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites.

Makes ya wonder if OBL won.

Tape Replay Today at NoBullU on WEBY

Usually on Fridays you can listen to me, the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- no political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

But I can't make it today so tune in and enjoy a replay of last week's show. Until the next show, post a comment or two.

Unhappy Anniversary

For a good reminder about how the current economic mess began, read the Washington Post, An Unhappy Anniversary for the Financial Crisis.

As the old saying goes, may you live in interesting times.

It's a Republi-Con Cat Fight

UPDATE II: Darn, he gave them good advice. Read the Washington Post, Powell, Answering Critics, Urges GOP to 'Reach Out'.

The only thing a true Republi-con wants to do is reach out and chock ya if you don't agree.


UPDATE: Read the Washington Post, In TV Appearance, Powell Plans To Answer Right-Wing Critics. Here is a preview:

"The Republican Party is in deep trouble," Powell told corporate security executives at a conference in Washington this month, according to the National Journal. The party should realize that the country has changed, he said, adding: "Americans do want to pay taxes for services. Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less."

He said of Limbaugh, "I think what Rush does as an entertainer diminishes the party and intrudes or inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be better to do without."

Who's the real Republi-con?

Read CBSNews, After Criticism From Cheney And Limbaugh, Powell Returns Fire.

Class Friday at NoBullU on WEBY

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- No political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will broadcast today from 4:05 to 6 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line, courtesy of Cyber Smart Computers.

Topics:

Local and regional: why was a poor black kid prosecuted without any evidence, and why did the PNJ disable comments on the story, and are you having problems with the NoBullU website?; and

Nation and international: Cheney disses Bush not Obama, and China's threat to American sovereignty.

But I'll discuss anything. (Disclaimer: the host reserves the right to end any discussion and hang up on you.)

So tune-in, call-in, but only if you can handle the truth!

WARNING: You may not want to call in if you have veritasphobia, especially if you are a certain veritasphobic politician.

Why Was a Poor Black Kid Prosecuted Without Any Evidence?

The question answers itself.

The State knew there was inadequate evidence to prosecute Jamal Lee. Read comments made by the prosecutor just a few days ago at the Pensacola New Journal, Lee goes to trial.

So the Judge was forced to dismiss the case. Read the Pensacola News Journal, Jamal Lee goes free.

More telling is that the newspaper disabled comments by readers on the story. If you read comments on earlier stories, you'd know why.

UPDATE: For a full account of the trial, read the Pensacola News Journal, Judge acquits Lee of murder. Still no comment allowed.

UPDATE II: A comment from another blog: "I’m guessing the PNJ disabled the comments for that story because they knew it’d be like a KKK rally on there. All the racists that post on there would be up in arms, much like they were for the fights at the beach by the folks from Mobile this past weekend."

The Worst Slide Story

Really cute, especially if you are a fan of West Side Story:

Check out these other editorial cartoons by Pulitzer Prize winning and nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist Walt Handelsman, including Republicans Sing the Blues.

Who's Drinking the Kool-Aid Now

First "the well-trained Republican loyalists who danced like organ grinder monkeys every time their leadership played a new tune. But [you] hear that organ grinder warming up for the Democrats."

Read the Pensacola News Journal, Democrats should not drink the Kool-Aid.

Class Today at NoBullU on WEBY

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- No political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will broadcast today from 4:05 to 6 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line, courtesy of Cyber Smart Computers.

Topics:

Local and regional: is it contempt of court, or contempt for God, with guest Matthew Cotton, founder of OK2Pray.org. and are you having problems with the NoBullU website?; and

Nation and international: the Republi-con family feud, with a poll, would you vote for Crist or Rubio in the 2010 Senate race, or just watch to see if the party implodes, and China's threat to American sovereignty.

But I'll discuss anything. (Disclaimer: the host reserves the right to end any discussion and hang up on you.)

So tune-in, call-in, but only if you can handle the truth!

WARNING: You may not want to call in if you have veritasphobia, especially if you are a certain veritasphobic politician.

Don't Confuse the Stimlus With Bailouts

Republi-consare now, as true hypocrites, criticizing any deficit spending. But they are only half right. Don't confuse government bailouts with stimulus spending. Bailouts are generally unnecessary, while spending designed to stimulate the economy is, thanks to the Republi-cons' war on the middle class, now necessary.

To understand why, read Time, If Consumers Won't Kick-Start the Economy, What Will?

Thriving Socialism

You hear it said everyday by the Republi-cons, socialism will bankrupt the country. But maybe it ain't true. Read The New York Times, Thriving Norway Provides an Economics Lesson, which points out an interesting fact:

"[I]n the midst of the worst global downturn since the Depression, Norway’s economy grew last year by just under 3 percent. The government enjoys a budget surplus of 11 percent and its ledger is entirely free of debt.

By comparison, the United States is expected to chalk up a fiscal deficit this year equal to 12.9 percent of its gross domestic product and push its total debt to $11 trillion, or 65 percent of the size of its economy."

Republi-Con Desperation, Delusion, and Hatred

First, I heard Open Mike talk about an Obama takeover of Cheerios. Apparently Obama is personally responsible for anything that the government does wrong (but not what it does right of course), like an unannounced Air Force flyover of New York City.

Then I heard about an article on Bush moving to Dallas in D Magazine, in which David Feherty wrote;

"From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death."

The new Republi-con strategy is desperation, delusion, and hatred.

It won't be any more successful than fear, anger, and hatred.

Talking about the events above today, even Boortz realizes it is a loser strategy. He referred to an article at Salon.com, Radio rage.

It's almost as if the Republi-cons are determined to lose the next election. Don't believe me? Then read the Washington Post, A Driving Desire To Lose, written by Michael Gerson, a former Bushie.

At this rate, the Naive-crats won't even have to campaign.

Republi-Con Gun Control

No guns once the government designates you a suspected terrorist. See H.R. 2159, sponsored by four Republi-cons: Rep. Peter King [R, NY-3], Rep. Michael Castle [R, DE-0], Rep. Mark Kirk [R, IL-10], Rep. Christopher Smith [R, NJ-4].

And who is a 'suspected terrorist? Anyone the government says is a 'suspected' terrorist.

"In any case in which the Attorney General has denied the transfer of a firearm to a prospective transferee pursuant to section 922A or has made a determination regarding a firearm permit applicant pursuant to section 922B, an action challenging the determination may be brought against the United States. The petition must be filed not later than 60 days after the petitioner has received actual notice of the Attorney General’s determination made pursuant to section 922A or 922B. The court shall sustain the Attorney General’s determination on a showing by the United States by a preponderance of evidence that the Attorney General’s determination satisfied the requirements of section 922A or 922B. To make this showing, the United States may submit, and the court may rely on, summaries or redacted versions of documents containing information the disclosure of which the Attorney General has determined would likely compromise national security. On request of the petitioner or the court’s own motion, the court may review the full, undisclosed documents ex parte and in camera. The court shall determine whether the summaries or redacted versions, as the case may be, are fair and accurate representations of the underlying documents. The court shall not consider the full, undisclosed documents in deciding whether the Attorney General’s determination satisfies the requirements of section 922A or 922B.’."

They have already started compiling the list -- 'militia' members, 'disgruntled' military veterans, and 'rightwing extremists' -- to name a few. See the Missouri Analysis and Information Center (MIAC) and Department of Homeland Security reports.

Collapse of the Republi-Con Ideology, and the Party

UPDATE VI: The 2010 Florida Senate race is shaping up to be Washington leadership v. grassroots, whether to moderate the political agenda or go all-in conservative hypocrisy, whether the campaign theme should be hope for the future or fear and loathing, whether the party can include people like "a four-star general who spent his life serving his country" or should be limited to those like a chickenhawk, "who had five deferments himself to get out of going to Vietnam, [and] a blowhard entertainer who has had three divorces and a drug problem (who also avoided Vietnam)."

Read the Washington Post, Fla. Governor's Senate Bid Renews Optimism of Some in GOP and The New York Times, Rogue Diva of Doom.

It should be an interesting campaign.


UPDATE V: The 2010 Florida Senate race will help divine the future of those wild and crazy Republi-cons. It is possible we may witness the implosion of the party. And those of us in NW Florida will have a ring-side seat.


UPDATE IV: This man thinks this man is the future of the Republi-con party. Also read The New York Times, G.O.P. Worries About Sounding a Negative Tone.

Of course, playing in the gutter won't help.

The future ain't lookin too bright for those Comrade Republi-cons.

Maybe they should read the Washington Post, An Anti-Obama Agenda for the GOP.


UPDATE III: Republi-cons are "starting to look like the Federalists of the early 19th century: an embittered, over-the-top, out-of-touch regional party en route to extinction, doubling down on dogma the electorate has already rejected."

Read Time, Republicans in the Wilderness: Is the Party Over?


UPDATE II: Republi-cons, the party of "phony-baloney, dime-store philosophies . . . that doesn’t seem to care about anything other than devotion to a set of so-called principles that never amounted to more than cult-like rhetoric." Couldn't have said it better myself.

Read The New York Times, Out of Touch.


UPDATE: It's extreme makeover, Republi-con edition. Read CNN, Republican Party plans comeback.

But if you listen to rabid right-wing radio, it doesn't seem that the 'fear, anger, hatred' group wants a makeover. Read The New York Times, G.O.P. Debate: A Broader Party or a Purer One?

I don't think it is an issue of purity, it is delusional rabid McCarthist ideology and forty years in the wilderness for the Republi-cons.

Just have faith in the market, while Republi-con policies undermine middle class America. But what happens when people quit believing and start questioning certain assumption? Read the Washington Post, Capitalism's Reality Check and The Financial Times, How libertarian dogma led the Fed astray.

With the collapse of the Republi-con ideology it looks like forty years in the wilderness for the Republi-cons.

Bankrupt America

UPDATE: The title says it all. Read The New York Times, Estimate of Budget Deficit Now Tops $1.84 Trillion.

Holy bankrupt America, bat-taxpayers, that's a lot of money! The government can't even figure out how to cut $100 million from the budget, "about 13 minutes of federal spending, and 0.0029 percent -- about a quarter of one-hundredth of 1 percent -- of $3.5 trillion."

The real question is not how much we want to tax, but how much we want to spend. Read The New York Times, The G.D.P. Question.

Tax reform won't work unless there is spending reform.

PSA for The Arc Santa Rosa

The Arc Santa Rosa, Inc. is inviting everyone in the community to attend the 3rd Annual "Spring Fling" on Saturday, May 9th, from 9:00 am until 2:00. This year's event will again include a PLANT SALE, ARTS AND CRAFTS along with a YARD SALE!

The Spring Fling will be held at the Arc's office and Garden Center in Milton, four miles South of NAS Whiting Field.

The Arc Santa Rosa, Inc. is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing services that allow approximately 200 people with physical and developmental disabilities lead productive and independent lives. The Arc Santa Rosa, Inc. is located at 6225 Dixie Road in Milton. For more information about the Spring Fling, contact Debbie Goss at (850) 995-8806 or The Arc Santa Rosa, Inc. at (850) 623-9320.