he's not going to let this crisis go to waste

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Don't forget what kind of willpower drives Rahmbo. That's what sets fuckers apart from plebes after all. Never has there been a better student of the Shock Doctrine than this back room assassin.

Rahm Emanuel was thrown off the ballot for mayor of Chicago Monday by an appellate court panel, a stunning blow to the fund-raising leader in the race. ...

Emanuel, speaking to reporters at The Berghoff in the Loop, said he is confident he will win an appeal and return to the ballot.

“I have no doubt at the end we will prevail,” Emanuel said. “ As my father [a member of Irgun and so would know] has said, nothing is ever easy.”

The Emanuel campaign sent out a text to its supporters asking them to assemble at 5 p.m. at Dearborn and Washington to “rally for Rahm’s right to be on the ballot and let Chicagoans choose.”

Yes, yes, he is the son of a terrorist pediatrician and named after a member of the Stern Gang, but, hey, he can't help his parentage. Just so. But when he spends his life living up to it, and makes Wikipedia take down its entry on his father, I think it is completely fair to mention. I think it is highly unlikely he will be denied.

It seems the opposition in Chicago knows they're toast if he stays on the ballot, NOT because the people will vote him in, but because the only way you can prevent an election being thrown in someone's favor is to make sure he or she is not on the ballot.

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UPDATE:

Lest you doubt me on the matter of Rahmbo's terrible powers:

Chicago's top election official today suggested voters might want to hold off before voting early next week, given the uncertainty surrounding the ballot.

The comments by Langdon Neal, chairman of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, came after the Illinois Supreme Court today reinstated mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel and agreed to hear his appeal that he belongs on the mayoral ballot.

“If the voters have any questions, any doubt, any uncertainty, I would encourage them to wait until the end of the 18 days,” Neal said, noting that early voting ends on Feb. 17. “It’s up to the voters.”

Early voting starts Monday at 51 locations across the city. As of now, Emanuel's name will be on the ballot.

In addition to the pending state Supreme Court case about Emanuel, candidates for alderman in 15 wards also have challenged in court the decisions that knocked them off the ballot, Neal said.

If the Supreme Court rules in Emanuel’s case or lower courts rule in any of the others, early voting would be halted at the affected locations so touch-screen voting machines could be swapped out, most likely overnight, he added.

Neal also noted voters have the option of waiting until Feb. 22 and going to their precinct polling places.

“Some voters vote early in the process because they have to — their personal schedules, their travel, whatever it may be — or they feel they want to take the risk,” Neal added. “It’s an individual choice. And that’s the beauty of early voting.”

A voter education effort will be made.

"We are going to let the voters know, as best we can, that there may be still be a question open," Neal said. "They have 18 days to make their decision. There’s no requirement that they show up on the first day and vote."

The guy doesn't lose, and can't be made to so long as you let fascists continue to run our country.

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love, 99
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the food bubble is inflating

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Bottom line:

The ministers from 48 countries called on the G-20 nations to “fight the abuse and manipulation of prices” in agricultural markets, according to a joint statement handed out at a press conference in the German capital today. ...

“All the member countries in the G-20 have to oppose this price volatility,” Le Maire said in a press conference. “With this text we already have a good starting point.”

World food prices rose to a record in December on higher costs for sugar, grain and oilseeds, the United Nations reported Jan. 4. An index of 55 food commodities tracked by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization gained for a sixth month to 214.7 points, above the previous high of 213.5 in June 2008.

The rising cost of food helped provoke deadly riots this year in Algeria and Tunisia, and at least 13 people died in Mozambique last year in protests against plans to increase bread prices. Surging food prices in 2008 sparked protests and riots in more than 30 countries, including Egypt, Haiti and Cameroon. ...

I hope you don't delude yourself we are being protected from the ravages of this action.

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love, 99
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seems to be one of the primary aims

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Get rid of the unwashed before they screw everything up. I tellz yiz, the corrupt bastards running the government don't want any flak from The People, and they will see to it that any success you might ever enjoy on the public stage will be put down. And, yes, I'm heavily in favor of the plexiglass bubble, just as long as we don't let them back out.

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love, 99
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the immortality of hubris

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Is what keeps me pining for benevolent monarchy. I'd die for King Arthur. I'd do anything never to have to find evidence of capitalist fuckers again. We probably have yet to solve this because this stuff just keeps making decent people go limp with its deathlessness continuing to grind on our every dream.

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love, 99
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making headlines across the globe

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I so don't want to bother cleaning up another Salon post, but, as you must know already, the DoJ has subpoenaed Twitter for all their records on Julian Assange, Jacob Appelbaum, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Rop Gonggrijp and Bradley Manning. It started out being a sealed order [here], but Twitter fought the confidentiality of it so they could notify their account holders of the subpoena, and won [here]. Here is the statute under which the subpoena was made.

As discussed relative to the Daley appointment, "the absolute stranglehold large-scale corporate interests exert over virtually all realms of government policy", the capture of our entire government by the very people who have caused and profit from the activities WikiLeaks exposes is complete. Here, clearly, is proof, if you yet needed any, they, not we, own the DoJ.

A snippet from Glenn's piece runs:

...all of this extraordinary probing and "criminal" investigating is stemming from WikiLeaks' doing nothing more than publishing classified information showing what the U.S. Government is doing: something investigative journalists, by definition, do all the time.

And the key question now is this: did other Internet and social network companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) receive similar Orders and then quietly comply? It's difficult to imagine why the DOJ would want information only from Twitter; if anything, given the limited information it has about users, Twitter would seem one of the least fruitful avenues to pursue. But if other companies did receive and quietly comply with these orders, it will be a long time before we know, if we ever do, given the prohibition in these orders on disclosing even its existence to anyone.

Indeed, Julian Assange has the same concern, and Glenn will have more on all this tomorrow..

I'm hoping he doesn't stick merely to bellyaching about this, but begins exhorting his fellow prominent proponents of the rule of law to DO SOMETHING dispositive about our government's CRIMINAL activity.

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There are other concerns that need addressing:

Marc Rotenberg, president of the online watchdog the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) in Washington, said it appeared the US justice department was looking at building a case against WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, over its publication of secret US documents.

EPIC has already requested that the US authorities hand over information about their investigations into people who have donated to WikiLeaks via Mastercard, Visa or PayPal.

"The government has the right to get information, but that has to be done in a lawful way. Is there a lawful prosecution that could be brought against WikiLeaks? It seems unlikely to me. But it's a huge question here in the US," said Rotenberg.

This HAS TO BE stopped. We can't stump for the impeachment of Obama because the people who would be doing the impeaching need to be impeached themselves. Snap out of it! WE HAVE TO STOP THEM.

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love, 99
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what whale diplomacy?

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Whose side are they on?

3 January 2011
By Yoree Koh

In the first set of cables leaked by WikiLeaks that originate from the U.S. embassy in Tokyo, Japan asked the U.S. to take action against an anti-whaling activist group for harassing Japanese whalers, including taking away the group's tax-exempt status. The cables were sent two months before a Japanese harpoon vessel collided into one of the Sea Shepherd boats, destroying the activist’s boat.

A total of four U.S. diplomatic cables — three originating from Tokyo, one from the State Department — show a push and pull effort from both countries to nudge Japan towards a more compromising position towards its controversial whale hunting activities. Japan’s escalating problems with the U.S.-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society group are repeatedly mentioned from the Japanese side as a thorn in negotiating efforts.

Fisheries Agency Deputy Director General Masayuki Yamashita explained to U.S. officials that the Sea Shepherd’s actions held Japan back from fulfilling its quota for the last several years in a cable dated January 27, 2010. He implied that the confrontations were causing domestic political embarrassment for the Japanese government, making it hard for officials to negotiate with other countries.

Indeed, Japan’s troubles with the Sea Shepherd group had been highlighted early on. Referencing a discussion with an official in Japan’s fisheries ministry, the first confidential cable dated Nov. 2, 2009 indicates the Sea Shepherd was hampering its ability to curtail annual whale hunts.

“Yamada inquired about an investigation into the tax status of the U.S.-based NGO Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and repeated Japan's request for the U.S. to take action against the organization, which he said created a very dangerous situation on the seas,” according to the cable written by U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos in reference to Shuji Yamada, the vice minister of international affairs in the ministry of agricultural affairs, forestry and fisheries.

The ambitious activist group’s campaign against Japanese whalers has evolved into a high-seas drama of sorts in recent years. The group tails the large harpoon vessels during the whale hunts and hurls objects at the ships. The Sea Shepherd’s increasingly aggressive tactics resulted in multiple confrontations during the 2009-2010 whale hunting season. In January 2010, one of the Sea Shepherd's vessels crashed into a Japanese whaling ship in the Southern Ocean, destroying the activist group’s boat, which prompted the brazen skipper Paul Bethune to later board the vessel in an attempt to make a citizen’s arrest of the ship’s captain.

Japan has drawn international criticism for continuing whale hunting missions despite a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling set by the International Whaling Commission. Japan has said it is conducting “whale research," a crack in the ban that allows whales be caught for research purposes. Japanese whaling fleets depart for annual whaling hunts in the Southern Ocean in mid-November citing scientific research purposes. Critics say the real motive is to sell whale meat. The Japanese vessels kill over 500 whales each season.

Another cable sent from the Tokyo Embassy a week later — on Nov. 9, 2009 — cites the director general of the Fisheries Agency of Japan as saying U.S. action regarding the Sea Shepherd group would “positively influence Japan's negotiating position in the Future of the IWC [International Whaling Commission] process,” underscoring just how nettlesome the Sea Shepherd’s presence on the high seas has become for Japan’s whalers.

In response, the U.S. representative to the International Whaling Commission Monica Medina is cited as saying “she believes the USG can demonstrate the group does not deserve tax exempt status based on their aggressive and harmful actions.”

It's unclear whether the U.S. government ever did anything. Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd, said “we have had our tax status since 1981, and we have done nothing different since then to cause the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) to change that,” according to the Associated Press on Monday.

At its June 2010 annual meeting, the IWC failed to reach a compromise that would have resolved a longstanding impasse between the pro-whaling nations that include Japan, Norway and Iceland, and those against it. The IWC launched negotiations three years ago to find consensus among the member states that was set to conclude at the June meeting in Morocco, determining the long-term future of whale conservation. An embassy cable dated November 14, 2009 originating from the U.S. State Department urges U.S. negotiators to press for some agreement to reduce Japan’s catch levels.

A proposal to allow Japan to resume limited commercial whaling in its coastal waters in exchange for a reduced catch was floated in March. The commission decided to defer the proposal until 2011.

Read the WikiLeaks cables discussing Japan’s role in whale conservation here:

Nov. 2, 2009 cable from the U.S. embassy in Tokyo

Nov. 9, 2009 cable from the U.S. embassy in Tokyo

Nov. 14, 2009 cable from the U.S. Secretary of State

January 27, 2010 cable from the U.S. embassy in Tokyo

Hint: Not ours.

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love, 99
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DADT is NOT repealed

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READ it. Obama has declared his glee over signing something that may someday, but certainly not immediately, take effect. It's really just a document that allows the impression that the president has fulfilled ONE of his campaign promises.

H.R.2965

One Hundred Eleventh Congress
of the
United States of America

AT THE SECOND SESSION

Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday,

the fifth day of January, two thousand and ten

An Act

To amend the Small Business Act with respect to the Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Small Business Technology Transfer Program, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010’.

SEC. 2. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE POLICY CONCERNING HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE ARMED FORCES.

(a) Comprehensive Review on the Implementation of a Repeal of 10 U.S.C. 654-

(1) IN GENERAL- On March 2, 2010, the Secretary of Defense issued a memorandum directing the Comprehensive Review on the Implementation of a Repeal of 10 U.S.C. 654 (section 654 of title 10, United States Code).

(2) OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE OF REVIEW- The Terms of Reference accompanying the Secretary’s memorandum established the following objectives and scope of the ordered review:

(A) Determine any impacts to military readiness, military effectiveness and unit cohesion, recruiting/retention, and family readiness that may result from repeal of the law and recommend any actions that should be taken in light of such impacts.

(B) Determine leadership, guidance, and training on standards of conduct and new policies.

(C) Determine appropriate changes to existing policies and regulations, including but not limited to issues regarding personnel management, leadership and training, facilities, investigations, and benefits.

(D) Recommend appropriate changes (if any) to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

(E) Monitor and evaluate existing legislative proposals to repeal 10 U.S.C. 654 and proposals that may be introduced in the Congress during the period of the review.

(F) Assure appropriate ways to monitor the workforce climate and military effectiveness that support successful follow-through on implementation.

(G) Evaluate the issues raised in ongoing litigation involving 10 U.S.C. 654.

(b) Effective Date- The amendments made by subsection (f) shall take effect 60 days after the date on which the last of the following occurs:

(1) The Secretary of Defense has received the report required by the memorandum of the Secretary referred to in subsection (a).

(2) The President transmits to the congressional defense committees a written certification, signed by the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stating each of the following:

(A) That the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the recommendations contained in the report and the report’s proposed plan of action.

(B) That the Department of Defense has prepared the necessary policies and regulations to exercise the discretion provided by the amendments made by subsection (f).

(C) That the implementation of necessary policies and regulations pursuant to the discretion provided by the amendments made by subsection (f) is consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces.

(c) No Immediate Effect on Current Policy- Section 654 of title 10, United States Code, shall remain in effect until such time that all of the requirements and certifications required by subsection (b) are met. If these requirements and certifications are not met, section 654 of title 10, United States Code, shall remain in effect.

(d) Benefits- Nothing in this section, or the amendments made by this section, shall be construed to require the furnishing of benefits in violation of section 7 of title 1, United States Code (relating to the definitions of ‘marriage’ and ‘spouse’ and referred to as the ‘Defense of Marriage Act’).

(e) No Private Cause of Action- Nothing in this section, or the amendments made by this section, shall be construed to create a private cause of action.

(f) Treatment of 1993 Policy-

(1) TITLE 10- Upon the effective date established by subsection (b), chapter 37 of title 10, United States Code, is amended--

(A) by striking section 654; and

(B) in the table of sections at the beginning of such chapter, by striking the item relating to section 654.

(2) CONFORMING AMENDMENT- Upon the effective date established by subsection (b), section 571 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 (10 U.S.C. 654 note) is amended by striking subsections (b), (c), and (d).

Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Vice President of the United States and
President of the Senate.

Fine to call it the DADT Repeal Act, but that ain't precisely what it is... not for years, if ever, and that's assuming everything is done to comply with the conditions for enactment. The highlighted text above means, unequivocally, that this document is NOT a repeal of anything.

What the hell is going on here?

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I think this also means that Rachel Maddow is a fascist stooge who can't READ because I just heard clips of her gushing about this repeal that's not a repeal.

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Yeah, "months". Yeah, that's the ticket:

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates is warning troops that the law allowing gays to serve openly in the military is not officially in effect yet.

Though President Barack Obama has signed the law repealing the "don't ask, dont' tell" policy, the change is not expected to be in place for a number of months. The Pentagon issued a memo that Gates sent Wednesday night to armed forces branch heads and other officials explaining the timing and stressing that troops can still run afoul of the old law.

Aubrey Sarvis of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network says the advocacy group has received dozens of phone calls from troops confused about the timing and wanting to make sure when they may legally begin talking about the fact that they're gay.

Bloody hell. Not nearly normal yet after all, but you could look at it THIS way....

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love, 99
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WTF

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OMG

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love, 99
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now yer talkin'

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Courage is contagious.

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You are SO not going to get anywhere with our fascist-puppet legislatsters. Fucking hell.

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love, 99
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note the damn date

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Supposedly some damn private in Iraq has access to this information, but Barney Frank doesn't? I do not actually believe it, but any way you look at it, it's beyond rotten. Waaaaay beyond rotten. Felonies in high places, every which way you turn, and NOTHING being done about it except screaming for the head of the guy who dared get the truth out.

Please. Get the courage to bark down anyone you hear dissing Wikileaks or Assange. It's poison.

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love, 99
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fine idea

[click image — looking spookily more like Ronnie every day... wish he'd knock off the hair dye... looks stupid....]

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I think this is one area where he has been good, actually did some good governating. Lort knows they could use someone with some GONADS over there.

Schwarzenegger could see himself in Washington
December 17, 2010 | 4:25 pm

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told The Times on Friday that he hadn’t had time to think about his next move. But he certainly sounded like someone with a job description in mind.

Gov.-elect Jerry Brown will be inaugurated in less than three weeks. Still, when Schwarzenegger was asked in a meeting with Times editors and editorial writers what he planned to do once his term ends, he initially said, "There’s no rush.... It’s not like I have something in my mind."

Then, asked if he would consider a post in the Obama administration, he said yes and began to riff on his credentials. "I’m a very big believer in environmental issues," said the governor, who considers legislation to combat global warming one of his major achievements in office. "I’ve traveled the world.... I’m very familiar with the world."

The governor went on to say that he would like to work on public policy issues in which he could have an impact "with my celebrity power, and also my knowledge and experience."

Once out of office, he said, he "has plans to go back to Washington with Secretary [George] Schultz and others" to push for a new approach to energy policy. He said the country needs to bring Democrats and Republicans together on energy policies that both sides can agree on in order to reduce dependence on foreign oil and become competitive, "rather than always talking about global warming, which turns some people off."

Schwarzenegger said he has credibility on that issue, and "people are very receptive when I talk about these things because I’m a Hummer driver … not a tree hugger."

Anyone need an energy czar?

—David Lauter in Los Angeles

I mean, we already know it won't be perfect, but, heck, the bar is SO low, all he'd have to do is ONE good thing and, pft, King Arthur Reincarnate... but... well... I wish he'd go back to making stupid movies....

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No. Really.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Hoping other states will follow suit, California regulators overwhelmingly approved the nation's most extensive system giving owners of power plants, refineries and other major polluters financial incentives to emit fewer greenhouse gases.

The Governator has been visibly, tangibly, in favor of our home planet.

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Right, right, frickin' fascist-friendly R-word, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, blah, blah... pfeh. I know it ain't gonna be much, okay? It's just liable to be actually a step up from the performance of our frickin' fascist-friendly D-words. Don't be a jackass.

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And Moonbeam is just around the corner. For you youngsters who weren't around when he was governor before, he did a good job. The farmers got pissed as hell over him being a pansy about pesticides and pitched a purple polkadotted hissy, yelled and screamed and hopped up and down and called him that goddam hippie "Governor Moonbeam" — you really, really don't want to piss off the California Farm Bureau guys, noosirreebob, you don't — not healthy — but he was a good governor. I think he will be again. I don't even think it's possible to be good enough in public office anywhere in America anymore, but Moonbeam will do it if it's humanly possible.

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love, 99
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GET THIS THROUGH YOUR HEADS!

[click image of your descent into the bottomless pit]

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PETITIONS DON'T WORK.

THEY IGNORE THEM!

Was it Einstein who said that doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting a different result was the definition of insanity? Or does he just get the credit because

IT SHOULDN'T TAKE AN EINSTEIN TO FIGURE THIS OUT?

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love, 99
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evil prevails when good men do nothing

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I am grateful for John Pilger. I really hope my wealthy socialist gentleman, wherever he is, will be contributing to this, because my donations are going to be laughably small... but steady.

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love, 99
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perspective

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I wish there were a pill for perspective, for keeping the actual in mind and having a lucid perspective.

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A perspective pill from this last summer....

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And if THIS perspective pill doesn't do it for you, well, yer probably past helping....

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Yes, I'm making the people on the feed suffer....

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I just wrote to Amazon to tell them that if I didn't see a vivid and public act of contrition for their spineless and unAmerican behavior, I ain't buyin' nuthin from them again.

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ATTENTION ATTENTION SAM!

THE OTHER DAY YOU WERE ASKING WHAT USE COLEEN ROWLEY HAS BEEN. HERE'S PART OF YOUR ANSWER.

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Remember when you pitched a purple spotted hissy over Ashcroft's snitch hotline idea? Contemplate now how many orders of magnitude worse THIS is. Think of all the guys rotting in Gitmo and Bagram because a neighbor didn't like them. Then go nuts with paranoia and cower in your bedroom closet... since you won't stand up....

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While Chossudovsky hedges, bobs, and weaves to please the conspiracy crowd, Pilger remains immovably supportive of decency, of all living things.

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Fraud is America's business model....

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Uhhhm, I'm pretty sure Genghis Yoo and Groucho Holder are aware of this already.

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I will be driving all day tomorrow, Wednesday, and will try to check in as soon as possible.

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HERE, have a little Gilad Atzmon while I'm out going nuts.

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love, 99
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i've had to resort to ibuprofen

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My head is right in the middle of liftoff. The house is full of rocket fuel fumes. Don't click that image unless you are a Zen master or your IQ is SO low you can't understand.

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love, 99
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i'm getting into my not-a-tub

[click image]

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Try not to think about it....

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No. Really.

Officials: US drops demand for settlement freeze
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press – Tue Dec 7, 5:38 pm ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has abandoned attempts to persuade Israel to slow West Bank settlement activity, officials said Tuesday, dealing a major blow to the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and one of the president's top foreign policy initiatives.

After months of trying to broker a formula under which Israel would impose a new, temporary settlement freeze in return for U.S. promises and incentives, two American officials said the administration has concluded that course won't work. The decision was expected to be announced later Tuesday.

Talks stalled in September, barely a month after they started. The Palestinians refused to return to direct negotiations until a new freeze was in place following the expiration of an earlier, 10-month Israeli slowdown in settlement expansion.

Now, said the U.S. officials, American pressure for a three-month moratorium and the U.S. incentives package, which included political, diplomatic and security assurances for Israel, are off the table. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The White House's bid for a Middle East peace settlement was a longshot from the start, but its apparent breakdown comes at a time when the administration is struggling on a number of fronts abroad. There is slow progress in the Afghan war, increasing friction with China and the embarrassing deluge of confidential diplomatic cables released by the website WikiLeaks.

The U.S. officials said the administration was not giving up efforts to broker a peace deal and noted that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will visit Washington next week for consultations.

The U.S. will be talking with both sides in the coming days, one of the officials said, while Arab states and other interested countries also will be consulted.

However, the administration's decision to drop support for the Palestinians' key demand could mean the end of the moribund peace process.

Obama had made Israeli-Palestinian peace a major goal of his administration, appointing seasoned peace negotiator George Mitchell as his special Mideast envoy on his second day in office.

Mitchell made dozens of trips to the region to get the parties to agree to direct talks. In early September, with the expiration of the initial slowdown looming, Obama brought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas along with the leaders of Jordan and Egypt to launch the face-to-face discussions, which failed.

Neither Israeli nor Palestinian officials would comment on the developments in Washington before their official announcement.

Earlier Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the U.S. had halted talks with Israel on settlement activity because Washington was distracted by the WikiLeaks release of secret documents.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley responded by saying that Israel may have been preoccupied with putting out a huge forest fire that burned until Sunday.

The U.S. had been pressing Israel to renew a moratorium on new settlement construction in exchange for security guarantees and diplomatic assurances of support. Israel wanted those in writing, as well as a pledge that east Jerusalem would be exempt from the moratorium.

The Palestinians refused to return to the peace talks unless Israel halted all building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem — lands they want for part of their future state.

Peace talks began in September but ground to a halt three weeks later after Israel's original moratorium on new West Bank construction expired.

Netanyahu returned from a November trip to the U.S. with a list of guarantees, including 20 next-generation stealth fighter planes and U.S. pledges to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, according to Israeli officials.

In exchange, Israel was asked to renew the expired limits on settlement construction.

Days later the deal snagged after members of Netanyahu's Cabinet demanded a written pledge from the U.S. that the moratorium would exclude east Jerusalem. Such a pledge never materialized.

The U.S. had wanted a moratorium in the hopes that it would allow Israel and the Palestinians to make enough progress in drawing their future borders to make the settlement question irrelevant.

With borders determined, Israel could resume building on any territories it would expect to keep under a final peace deal.

But Israeli officials said Tuesday that short of an understanding on borders, a crisis could erupt if Israel agreed to the freeze sought by the U.S.

Now, said Israeli officials, insisting on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the contacts, the U.S. and Israel have agreed on a statement that "in the coming days and weeks, efforts will continue toward finding ways to renew the direct negotiations in order to reach a framework that would lead in the end to an agreement between the two sides."

I can barely move for the wrath shooting ice crystals through my veins!

Mister North has NOT come through with my barn loft and clawfoot tub. I'm probably going to be dead first.

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I think I will look at it this way: Maybe it will get the anti-Israel profiteers to stop masturbating on Julian Assange.

I have to look for the silver lining. Maybe that will crash JP Morgan too.

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love, 99
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mirror list now on my blog footer

[click image]

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I am trying to help make sure you can always get to it if you want it. There are 355 listed right now and maybe thousands to come. I'm staying on this... and would appreciate comments or emails alerting me to updates in the matter of what's up or down with Wikileaks. I'm supposing it's just too much to hope that they can have their regular site back, all their funding sources restored and a damn apology from our criminal government....

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love, 99
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no, she should be arrested

[click image]

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Fat chance.

Hillary Gets Wiki-Served
Posted on Nov 30, 2010
By Robert Scheer

Hillary Clinton should cut out the whining about what the Obama administration derides as “stolen cables” and confront the unpleasant truths they reveal about the contradictions of U.S. foreign policy and her own troubling performance. As with the earlier batch of WikiLeaks, in this latest release the corruption of our partners in Iraq and Afghanistan stands in full relief, and the net effect of nearly a decade of warfare is recognized as a strengthening of Iran’s influence throughout the region.

Do we as voters not have a need to know that our State Department says that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half brother of the Afghan leader we are backing and himself the head of government in the most contested province, “is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker”? Or that authorities working with our Drug Enforcement Administration discovered Afghanistan’s then-vice president smuggling $52 million in cash out of his country, a nation that U.S. taxpayers are bankrolling?

In the cable discussing Ahmed Wali Karzai, or AWK as he is called, there is a pithy description of the basic folly of our attempt to control the uncontrollable land of Afghanistan: “The meeting with AWK highlights one of our major challenges in Afghanistan: how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt.”

The cables make a hash of claims that our invasion of Iraq—where al-Qaida could not operate when Saddam Hussein was in power—was helpful in the war on terror. Recall that 15 of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Yet the WikiLeaks documents reveal, as The New York Times reported, that “Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the ‘worst in the region’ in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December.”

While the great threat is now said by Clinton’s State Department to emanate from Iran, the cables make clear that Iranian power was much enhanced by the U.S. overthrow of Saddam, who had fought a long, bloody war against the ayatollahs. The result of our invasion is an Iraqi government run by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, described in the cables as being much under the influence of Iran, which orchestrated his deal with the Iranian-backed Sadrists that kept him in power. The cables report King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia dismissing Maliki as no more than an “Iranian agent.”

This material refutes the stated anti-terrorist purposes of the two wars we are fighting, and that is the prime reason it is classified. If any of the information was so sensitive, why was none of it labeled “top secret” as is the practice with content that would risk our nation’s security? And why was this vast trove placed in computer systems to which low-ranking personnel had access? The real problem with the release of the dispatches, particularly the kind labeled “noforn,” meaning it shouldn’t be shared with foreign governments, is that it is politically embarrassing—which is why we, the public, have a right to view it. That is certainly the case with the revelation that Secretary Clinton destroyed the once-sacred line between the legitimate diplomat deserving of universal protection and the spies that governments could be justified in arresting.

Instead of disparaging the motives of the leakers, Hillary Clinton should offer a forthright explanation of why she continued the practice of Condoleezza Rice, her predecessor as secretary of state, of using American diplomats to spy on their colleagues working at the United Nations. Why did she issue a specific directive ordering U.S. diplomats to collect biometric information on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and many of his colleagues?

As the respected British newspaper The Guardian, which obtained the WikiLeaks cables, said in summarizing the matter: “A classified directive which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clinton’s name in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications system used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.”

The Guardian pointed out that the Clinton directive violates the language of the original U.N. convention, which reads: “The premises of the United Nations shall be inviolable.” The spying effort derived from concern that U.N. rapporteurs might unearth embarrassing details about the U.S. treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the directives demanded “biographic and biometric” information on Dr. Margaret Chan, the director of the World Health Organization, as well as details of her personality and management style. Maybe she’s hiding bin Laden in her U.N. office.

Chutzpah is the name of the game, and people who ought to be able to see through it and DO something about it AREN'T.

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And for emphasis:

Amidst all of this apparent misdirection two clear possibilities emerge: either the secretary of state did know about the instructions and they were issued with her authority - in which case she has solicited criminal action - or she did not know about the instructions sent in her name in which case she could be accused of gross incompetence or negligence.

Whichever way one looks at it, the cable raises huge issues about the probity or competence of the secretary of state – and the matter will not go away.

You can say that again!

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HUNNERTS OF WIKILEAKS MIRRORS....

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love, 99
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my sentiments pretty much exactly

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It always makes me feel just a jot less alienated when someone comes out and says my piece for me. We think in a too American-centric way, not considering so much the effects of this information on other populations, and the newspapers are not going to be instantly reformed from their sensationalizing and propagandizing even when they finally have access to real information. Some of the journalists now have firm footing on matters they couldn't speak about before. This will be a real help to the few who are left determined to do real work. The main help is that WE have direct access to it.

Of course, this means people will be free to make of it what they want and we will see plenty of weasels making political hay out of it, but it can't be denied that thinking people now have a chance to work off actuality, off the actual crap generated by those who purport to be acting in our interest. It's a real way for very smart people to find real ways to strike at the heart of the fascist conspirators operating our officials and diplomats.

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love, 99
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i'm a bit mystified by the amount of skepticism in lefties

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I understand it a little too well, on the one hand, but can't hang with it, on the other, because the FACT of the content of the "mega-leaks" cannot be ignored... except, I guess, if you never LOOKED at any of it.

The recent mega-leaks are especially jarring because of the extreme contrasts between the U.S. government’s public pretenses and real-life actions. But the standard official response is to blame the leaking messengers.

Then I tell myself to just hold my horses because most people do not have the kind of experience with monster document dumps that I do, are just immediately overwhelmed by them, throw up their psychic hands and simply discount or uphold their completely unexamined contents according to the influences they already want to trust. It's too hard.

This is intimately to do with WHY I couldn't stop crying for an entire year, even in my sleep; and had to drive to everything beautiful; couldn't stay inside a room or a house for more than a few minutes without a panic of desperation to bolt overcoming me; and appalled myself into a monastery with the realization that I in fact did wish the very most to just drive my car off a cliff and have done with it. This last was completely unacceptable, of course, and so I would always scan my sodden mental resources for an acceptable alternative and the only one I could come up with was to go rob a bank or something to get myself arrested. I tried very hard to understand THAT logic and, well, I never did go out to get myself arrested because I still can't parse it. I left the world instead, and dove into the ancient masters in a MAJOR way. This means I should not wonder about this stuff. I should know it like the back of my hand in advance, and, well, I do, but I don't HEED myself. I'm too used to the same idiocy I work so hard to help you transcend. The HABIT of it is supremely hard to break.

Nevertheless, it must be done.

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Pay attention to your feelings. Anything in you down with any of this? No. Not a bit of it. Barnswoggle. READ a few of the cables. Does this disquisition bear on their contents at all? It does not. It's as lacking in veracity as any speech by Condoleezza Rice ever was.

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HUNNERTS OF WIKILEAKS MIRRORS....

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love, 99
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