QUO VADIS?
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Posted By: June Posted on: Apr. 24, 2009 at 12:00 PM  66 Comments
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Apr. 24, 2009 at 03:36:55 PM
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| This commdng editor is messing formats up sometimes when:
It is not WYSIWYG, and it seems degraded from previous revision levels.
In the foregoing case both things happened and the format you see is not the format I published.
Anyone else running into those problems?
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Apr. 25, 2009 at 06:32:05 AM
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June err JoanExcellent point all. Does seem something is a little fishy.May I share some cut & paste questions that need to be answered from a GOPers point of view?While he’s at it, Obama ought to release : ** the photos of the carnage caused by his but Billy “The Bomber” Ayers, ** The photos of the Tate - Labianca Manson Murders that his buddyette Dorhn admired so much ** The victims of Fidel Castro’s Regime - You know the guy commie he has been sucking up to ** Photos of the abuse by the Saudi Government.. ie the schoolgirls who burned to death because the religious police wouldn’t let them exit a burning building, under the king he bowed to. ** Photos of the Abuse by Hugo Chavez… The guy who got a hearty Handshake by Obama ** Photos of Mary Jo Kopechne in Teddy’s Oldsmobile. ** Photos of all the people murded by Islamic goons in the last couple of years, Daniel Pearl, the schoolgirls, etc. ** Photos of the dead from the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Flight 93 Yep, Obama ought to get himself a FLIKR account and post all that stuff. Do we really want to make policy decisions made by people, I believe, trying to protect their country illegal in order to score political points? |
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Apr. 25, 2009 at 08:45:11 AM
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[This is a reply to comment by postman on Apr. 25, 2009 at 06:32:05 AM]
postman
Apr. 25, 2009 at 06:32:05 AM June err Joan Excellent point all. Does seem something is a little fishy. May I share some cut & paste questions that need to be answered from a GOPers point of view? While he’s at it, Obama ought to release : ** the photos of the carnage... View this Comment Do we really want to make policy decisions made by people, I believe, trying to protect their country illegal in order to score political points?Ok, first, so people in the past have killed, maimed and murdered, so that makes it OK for Bush? Cain killed Abel, so that makes all the rest of the killing since legal and moral? If that's the case, then can Democrats go on murder sprees, without fear of any legal action? Probably not.As for the 2nd, I want people making policy decisions with the understanding that the rule of law applies to everyone in the USA, even the President and his advisors. No one in America is above the law. |
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Apr. 25, 2009 at 08:50:43 AM
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[This is a reply to comment by postman on Apr. 25, 2009 at 06:32:05 AM]
postman
Apr. 25, 2009 at 06:32:05 AM June err Joan Excellent point all. Does seem something is a little fishy. May I share some cut & paste questions that need to be answered from a GOPers point of view? While he’s at it, Obama ought to release : ** the photos of the carnage... View this Comment Just more GOPher rhetoric. Torture is illegal; Waterboarding is torture; The CIA waterboarded. Ergo... As signatory to several international pacts, the US has agreed to prohibit torture under any conditions. Furthermore, the United States has a record of regarding waterboarding as torture and individuals have been prosecuted and convicted for using the technique. Now, if you want abandon the principles of democracy and the rule of law by arguing that, regardless of Congressional intent, the Executive Branch is entitled to interpret and implement law as it sees fit - whether through Signing Statements or the DOJ Torture Memos - that's your right. Plus, it's more to the point than adaming the issue! |
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Apr. 25, 2009 at 08:59:51 AM
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Plus, I didn't write this article to debate the torture issue all over again - I ASKED: CAN ANYONE MAKE SENSE OUTTA WHAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND THE GOPHERS ARE DOING - RIGHT NOW, TODAY, IN THE HERE AND NOW?Is the Administration slowly fanning the flames for prosecution while the GOPhers blow on the coals? Any alternative scenarios?
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Apr. 25, 2009 at 09:32:20 AM
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[This is a reply to comment by June on Apr. 25, 2009 at 08:59:51 AM]
June
Apr. 25, 2009 at 08:59:51 AM Plus, I didn't write this article to debate the torture issue all over again - I ASKED: CAN ANYONE MAKE SENSE OUTTA WHAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND THE GOPHERS ARE DOING - RIGHT NOW, TODAY, IN THE HERE AND NOW? Is the Administration... View this Comment The EXACT one he has stated for torture and the banking/government demotardic corruption.... Let's look forward..... Let's redefine 'enemy combatant' and 'demotardic government corruption selling out to banking' Let's redition prisoners to Syria and Egypt and other countries who have tortured for us before, lets pour tillions and trillions and trillions of taxpayer dollars into Summers, Gensler's and Geithners MASSIVE Ponzi scheme... There is nothing to be gained by learned WHO did WHAT, let's just change the way we talk about it and LOOK FORWARD.... SAME OLD, SAME OLD...... Pelosi Knew About the Torture?! Submitted by davidswanson on Sun, 2007-12-09 19:32. Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002 In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk. Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said. "The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange. Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup. Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge. With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan). Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement." Thievery under TARPTruthDig By Robert Scheer
April 22, 2009Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig, where this article originally appeared. His latest book is The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America(Twelve). We are being robbed big-time, but you can't say we haven't been warned. Not after the release Tuesday of a scathing report by the Treasury Department's special inspector general, who charged that the aptly named Troubled Asset Relief Fund bailout program is rife with mismanagement and potential for fraud. The IG's office already has opened twenty criminal fraud investigations into the $700 billion program, which is now well on its way to a $3 trillion obligation, and the IG predicts many more are coming.
He pointed to the example of AIG, which has acted as a conduit of funds to the banks it had insured without being required to tell the government what it is doing: "Failure to impose this requirement with respect to the injection of yet another $30 billion into AIG would not only be a failure of oversight, but could call into question the credibility of the government's efforts." ... As with the entire banking bailout, the new plan of Obama's treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, is likely to enrich the very folks who impoverished the rest of us, as the report notes: "The significant government-financed leverage presents a great incentive for collusion between the buyer and seller of the asset, or the buyer and other buyers, whereby, once again, the taxpayer takes a significant loss while others profit." At the heart of this potentially massive fraud was the original decision of Henry Paulson, President Bush's treasury secretary and a former Goldman Sachs chairman, to not require the recipients of the bailout, such as his old firm, to account for how the money was spent. Unfortunately, President Obama's administration continued that practice. The only difference is that the amount of public money being put at risk is now far greater, and the hedge funds, which are totally unregulated, have been brought in as the central players. One of the largest of those hedge funds, D.E. Shaw, carried Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, on its payroll to the tune of $5.2 million last year. He may have reason to trust these secretive enterprises that operate beyond the law, but the public does not. About Robert ScheerRobert Scheer, a contributing editor to The Nation, is editor of Truthdig.com and author of The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America (Twelve) and Playing President (Akashic Books). He is author, with Christopher Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry, of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq (Akashic Books and Seven Stories Press.) His weekly column, distributed by Creators Syndicate, appears in the San Francisco Chronicle. more... So it Demotards tell the TRUTH, they indict themselves.....and expose their own complicite behavior.... You have NO OTHER option, but to try and SWEEP IT UNDER THE RUG, BLAME it on the NONPARTICIPANTS, and keep shouting LOOK FORWARD..... |
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Apr. 25, 2009 at 09:35:37 AM
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[This is a reply to comment by June on Apr. 25, 2009 at 08:59:51 AM]
June
Apr. 25, 2009 at 08:59:51 AM Plus, I didn't write this article to debate the torture issue all over again - I ASKED: CAN ANYONE MAKE SENSE OUTTA WHAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND THE GOPHERS ARE DOING - RIGHT NOW, TODAY, IN THE HERE AND NOW? Is the Administration... View this Comment The R's are in a pickle. As the information on what was done in America's name in the Bush administration becomes clear and more and more ugly, more average American's are going to become appalled. I don't think we know the half of it. For example, the Abu Garib photo's that were first published resulted in outrage. The Bush administration called it the work of a few bad apples. That was bought hook, line and sinker by many Americans. However, it is becoming evident that what happened there was happening elsewhere and was condoned by high members of the Bush administration and was not some sick action by a few sick soldiers. Various dodges are being attempted. "It is not torture" "Few bad apples" "Torture worked" "Bush kept us safe" "Not necessary to look back" are but a few. They are throwing anything to see what sticks. The problem they are having is that it only sticks to their 20% base. This poses a huge problem for them in 2012. What side does their Presidential candidate take? Disavow torture? This would fly in the face of everything they have harped on--"Bush kept us safe" and "Obama is putting us at risk" Say that waterboarding is not torture? That too poses a problem because many R's say it is, and if we executed Japanese soldiers for doing it, how can we now say it is ok? Also, that kind of talk turns off moderate democrats and independents. Agree with Cheney that we have to go to the Dark Side? That was pretty much rejected with the election of Obama...he ran on fixing America's reputation in the world. And Cheney left office a despised man with a 20% approval rating. Or they are reduced to the Sean Hannity Great Hope. America gets attacked again and they can blame Obama. The cat is outta the bag and marking its territory. The cat is not going back in the bag. So the GOP has to decide--simply mask the stench? Or remove the stain? The Republicans are in a pickle. |
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Apr. 25, 2009 at 09:49:17 AM
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[This is a reply to comment by adam on Apr. 25, 2009 at 09:32:20 AM]
adam
Apr. 25, 2009 at 09:32:20 AM The EXACT one he has stated for torture and the banking/government demotardic corruption.... Let's look forward..... Let's redefine 'enemy combatant' and 'demotardic government corruption selling out to banking' Let's... View this Comment a-dumb - please write an article, perhaps two or three!You can cut and paste, call anyone any obscenity you wish, rave on to your heart's delight. That way the rest of us can ignore you and discuss issues that interest us. |
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Apr. 25, 2009 at 09:52:11 AM
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[This is a reply to comment by June on Apr. 25, 2009 at 09:49:17 AM]
June
Apr. 25, 2009 at 09:49:17 AM a-dumb - please write an article, perhaps two or three! You can cut and paste, call anyone any obscenity you wish, rave on to your heart's delight. That way the rest of us can ignore you and discuss issues that interest... View this Comment Amen Sister!!!
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President Obama asks us to look forward and not be distracted from the necessary work to be done on the economy, two wars, health care and education. Toward that end, he's opposed to a "truth commission" envisioned by Pelosi and Leahy.
Important battles to be sure on a warfront that is vast in nature and in which the fight must be waged on multiple fronts simultaneously.
The denizens of darkness however want to hold that necessary work hostage, the ransom being to hide the obscenity of torture way back on the shelf where they hope it will be forgotten.
The Arizona Republican is a case in point:
Obama shouldn't torture nation with witch huntApr. 23, 2009
The Arizona Republic
[…]
Health-care reform . . . tax reform . . . the many and sweeping social policies that the new president envisioned prior to his election . . . all of it could be consumed in the grand, spiraling, political spectacle that surely will erupt should hearings and investigations commence.
[…]
There is an insidious effort by such as these to sidetrack and derail the thundering locomotive of gaining a head of steaming outrage at the attack from within by a president, vice-president and minions on our Constitution.
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