the eve of christmas eve

the-crap-o-merry-christmas-craps-ONE!

President Barack Obama on a phone call in the Oval Office on December 21, 2010. (Photo: Pete Souza / whitehouse.gov) -->

Jim Hightower | Obama to the Corporate Powers: I Feel Your Pain

Jim Hightower, Truthout: "Guess who's whining the loudest these days, wailing that they're getting a raw deal from Barack Obama. Not the unemployed and barely employed - even though the White House has blithely ignored their critical need for a national jobs program. Not the poor, even though their ranks are swelling as millions of Americans fall out of the middle class."

Read the Article

misty grey sunday

Crap-A-Pop!!!

A group of Afghans outside a market in Bamiyan province, Afghanistan, on June 8, 2008. Public opinion polls show that support for the U.S. military is only slightly higher than support for Osama bin Laden. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Two young Afghan boys watch a group of armored vehicles. (Photo: MCpl Kevin Paul / lafrancevi)

Afghans Overwhelmingly Want US Troops Out - and Soon
Jean MacKenzie, GlobalPost: "More than half of all Afghans - 55 percent - want U.S. forces out of their country, and the sooner the better. Add it all up, and it is pretty bad news for the U.S. military as it examines its options ahead of next week’s Afghanistan strategy review.... The poll ... shows a nation yearning for an end to hostilities."
(Read the Article)

<-- Shibuya, Tokyo. (Photo: - reuben -)

Reconsidering Japan and Reconsidering Paul Krugman
Sunday 12 December 2010
by: Steven Hill, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

Steven Hill, Truthout: "The New York Times is doing a series on Japan, which the Times describes as an examination of 'the effects on Japanese society of two decades of economic stagnation and declining prices.' Reading the series is about as cheery a task as rubbernecking at a car wreck on I-95, but, unfortunately, the Times series simply repeats the 'conventional wisdom' about Japan put out by the same economic experts who missed an $8 trillion housing bubble in the United States, and, in fact, have been wrong on most of the big economic issues over the past two decades."
(Read the Article)

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rainy sun-day

Crap-O-Day !!

(Photo: Nataraj Metz)

9.8 Percent: The Number That the Deficit Commission Left Out

Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future: "Congress clearly doesn't see what the rest of us see. If they did, how could they possibly do the things they are doing? There is an absolute emergency going on in the country and Congress refuses to even see it. With 9.8 percent of us jobless - that is the official rate, not counting the people who have given up or are 'under' employed or took pay cuts or whatever - Congress is debating tax cuts for the rich and cutting back on programs for the rest of us."

(Read the Article)

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deafening sunday

Crap-A-Economy !!

Let's Build the New Economy
Sunday 21 November 2010
by: Joe Brewer, Cognitive Policy Works | Report

I say let the U.S. economy collapse. It’s not serving us anyway. Now before you go off and think I’m just a heretic who hates this country, please hear me out.

We need to build a new economy, one that promotes widespread prosperity while protecting us against ecological disaster. The problem is that the current economy has been structured explicitly to extract wealth from the global commons and accumulate it in the coffers of an extremely powerful elite. And it is standing in our way.

The current economy is designed to: (Read the Article)

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Beuteful Saturaday

Businesses Do Not Create Jobs
(Businesses Want To Kill Jobs, Not Create Them)

Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future: "Many people wrongly think that businesses create jobs. They see that a job is usually at a business, so they think that therefore the business 'created' the job. This thinking leads to wrongheaded ideas like the current one that giving tax cuts to businesses will create jobs, because the businesses will have more money. But an efficiently-run business will already have the right number of employees."

Businesses do not create jobs. In fact, the way our economy is structured the incentive is for businesses to get rid of as many jobs as they can.

Demand Creates Jobs

A job is created when demand for goods or services is greater than the existing ability to provide them. When there is a demand, people will see the need and fill it. Either someone will start filling the demand alone, or form a new business to fill it or an existing provider of the good or service will add employees as needed. (Actually a job can be created by a business, a government, a non-profit organization or just a person doing the job, depending on the nature of the good or service that is required.)

(Read The Article)

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nausiac friday

Valerie Plame Wilson. (Photo: Red Maxwell / Flickr)

After Valerie Plame: Obama Makes "Fair Game" of Today's Whistleblowers

Art Levine, Truthout: "This week, the taut but surprisingly emotional thriller, 'Fair Game,' hits selected theaters. It's about the Bush administration's retaliation against CIA operative Valerie Plame and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson because he exposed the administration's lies about Iraq buying uranium 'yellow cake' from Niger. But although Wilson and his wife recently returned in triumph to the AFI Theater in Silver Spring for its Washington-area premiere, the event served as a reminder that the damage inflicted on Wilson and Plame continues - both in the form of continuing right-wing smears about them and, some critics say, an Obama presidency that is even worse than the Bush administration in punishing whistleblowers."
Read the Article

sunny sunday again

Crap-O-Day !

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: chrysics, tranchis)

Net Neutrality and Broadband Access: A Civil Rights Issue

"Every man is our brother, and every man's burden is our own. Where poverty exists, all are poorer. Where hate flourishes, all are corrupted. Where injustice reigns, all are unequal."
- Whitney Moore Young Jr.

Max Eternity, Truthout: "The term really refers to the 'gap between those who benefit by the digital economy and those who do not' ... defining what's become known as the digital divide and prompting Nelson Mandela at the Telecom 95 event to say, 'The capacity to communicate will almost certainly be a key human right,' and add that, 'eliminating the distinction between the information-rich and information-poor is also critical to eliminating economic and other inequalities.'"

Read the Article

"Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace It and Why"

Thom Hartmann, Truthout: "This is not the budget deficit that everybody is so hysterical about in the press, and which would go to zero over the next six years if the Obama administration simply let the Bush tax cuts expire in their entirety. Instead, Fletcher is talking about the trade deficit, the difference between what we buy from the world and what we sell to the world."

Read the Article

a long exhaustive thursday

Crap-A-Con-Cussion !!!



Michael Moore | A Boot to the Head
Michael Moore, Michael Moore's Blog

Michael Moore begins: "There she was, thrown to the pavement by a Republican in a checkered shirt. Another Republican thrusts his foot in between her legs and presses down with all his weight to pin her to the curb. Then a Republican leader comes over and viciously stomps on her head with his foot."
READ MORE

Crap-O-Torture-N-de-Human-Experimentation !!

(Illustration: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t)

The Bush administration’s torture program went beyond “waterboarding” and sleep deprivation. The macabre reality is much more terrifying. Truthout has now documented an unprecedented human experimentation program which appears to have been officially sanctioned by top officials in the Bush Department of Defense.

Wolfowitz Directive Gave Legal Cover to Detainee Experimentation Program
Thursday 14 October 2010
by: Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report

In 2002, as the Bush administration was turning to torture and other brutal techniques for interrogating "war on terror" detainees, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz loosened rules against human experimentation, an apparent recognition of legal problems regarding the novel strategies for extracting and evaluating information from the prisoners.

(Read More)

saturday again

Crap-O-Day ! O - Soul-Sisters-N-Brothers !

Michael Moore speaking at San Jose State, 10/15/10. (frame: Student Video/YouTube)

'In the Souls of the People'
By Michael Moore, Michael Moore's Blogs
16 October 10

This is video of Michael Moore's acceptance speech, given at San Jose State University, of the John Steinbeck Award. Mike's talking revolution here. Non-violent of course.

Videos (YouTube):

Part 1

Part 2

monday monday

Crap-O-Small-Spender !!!

President Barack Obama speaking on the economy in Ohio, 09/08/10. (photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

Paul Krugman | Hey, Small Spender

Paul Krugman, The New York Times

11 October 10

Paul Krugman: "But if they won't say it, I will: if job-creating government spending has failed to bring down unemployment in the Obama era, it's not because it doesn't work; it's because it wasn't tried."
READ MORE

blue and grey thursday

Crap-A-Con-Gress!

Chris Smith carries out his family's belongings during eviction from his foreclosed home in Adams County, Colorado, 02/02/09. (photo: John Moore/Getty Image

Obama's Courageous Stand on Foreclosure
By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
07 October 10

President Barack Obama today made good his pledge to use the power of the Oval Office to help American homeowners. Obama refused to sign legislation specifically crafted to protect lenders involved in record numbers of home foreclosures, and stymie efforts by homeowners and their attorneys to challenge documents in those foreclosure actions.

(Read More)

grey sunday

Crap-O-Slaughtering-Cove!

Dolefins being led into a cove for slaughter in Taiji, Japan. (Photo right: Elora Malama)

"Red October"
Sunday 03 October 2010
by: Elora Malama | A Teenage Activist... This Girl's Soapbox

Elora Malama, A Teenage Activist... This Girl's Soapbox: Truthout is publishing a daily blog by 16-year-old high-school student Elora Malama, who is in Japan covering the annual dolphin slaughter. Each year the sleepy little town of Taiji becomes home to a horrific secret: Dolphins are rounded up and those not chosen for a life of captivity are brutally slaughtered and their mercury laden meat sold to the public. The issue became the subject of the Academy Award winning documentary, The Cove. Moved by the film and her love of the oceans and dolphins, Elora decided to accompany her father (Scott West of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society) to Japan to bear witness to this practice and document it on her blog, A Teenage Activist... This Girl's Soapbox. (Read More)

friday night fever

Crap-O-Double-Standard-Talk !!

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: sunilgarg, kzappaster, ~Brenda-Starr~)

Obama Targets Iran for Human Rights Violations and Shields Bush Officials for Engaging in Same Abuses
Friday 01 October 2010
by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

What a stunning display of hypocrisy.

"The United States is strongly committed to the promotion of human rights around the world, including in the Islamic Republic of Iran," the White House said in a news release following the issuance of the executive order. "As the President noted in his recent address to the United Nations General Assembly, human rights are a matter of moral and pragmatic necessity for the United States."

(ReAd mORe)

Crap-A-Dem-Crash!

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Eduardo Nasi, spanaut)

Five Ways the Democrats Can Avoid a Catastrophe and Pull Off the Mother of All Upsets
By Michael Moore
Today's OpenMike blog

The election is one month from tomorrow and, yes, it looks hopeless. November 2nd -- the day the Dems are expected to crash and burn.
Sadly, it's a situation the Democrats have brought upon themselves -- even though the majority of them didn't create the mess we're in. But they've had over a year and a half to start getting the job done to fix it. Instead, they've run scared ever since they took power. To many, the shellacking they're about to receive is one they deserve.

But if you're of a mindset that believes a return to 2001-2008 would be sheer insanity, then you probably agree we've got no choice but to save the Democrats from themselves.

(rEAd MorE)

Crap-De-American-Values!

(Historian Susan Reverby who unearthed the 1940s U.S. Public Health Services STD experiments in Guatemala | Courtesy: Wellesley College.)

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/01/101473/us-admits-it-infected-guatemalans.html#ixzz11AwcYOAa

US Admits It Infected Guatemalans With Syphilis in 1940s
Friday 01 October 2010
by: Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers | Report

Friday’s acknowledgment sheds new light on US medical experiments that included the infamous “Tuskegee” syphilis study in which scientists observed, but didn’t treat, hundreds of African American men with late-stage syphilis in Macon County, Alabama. (Photo: National Archives and Records Administration)

Mexico City - Exposing a dark page in its history, the U.S. government acknowledged Friday that its scientists had infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis in experiments conducted from 1946 to 1948 in “appalling violations” of medical ethics.

Under the experiments, U.S. scientists sent prostitutes infected with syphilis into a Guatemalan prison, mental health hospital and army barracks to test possible cures.

(reaD mOre)

indian summer 2010: one hot san franciscan monday

Crap-O-Ameri-Cons!

Republican Economics as Social Darwinism
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2010

John Boehner, the Republican House leader who will become Speaker if Democrats lose control of the House in the upcoming midterms, recently offered his solution to the current economic crisis: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. People will work harder, lead a more moral life.”

Actually, those weren’t Boehner’s words. They were uttered by Herbert Hoover’s treasury secretary, millionaire industrialist Andrew Mellon, after the Great Crash of 1929. (Read On, Americans)

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last september sunday

Crap-O-GOPuppets!

Downhill With the G.O.P.

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 23, 2010/The New York Times

Once upon a time, a Latin American political party promised to help motorists save money on gasoline. How? By building highways that ran only downhill.

I’ve always liked that story, but the truth is that the party received hardly any votes. And that means that the joke is really on us. For these days one of America’s two great political parties routinely makes equally nonsensical promises. Never mind the war on terror, the party’s main concern seems to be the war on arithmetic. And this party has a better than even chance of retaking at least one house of Congress this November.

Banana republic, here we come.

(Read More)

a sunday of dark age

Crap-O-Christian-inSanity !

(Agora of Tyre/Wikipedia. to see photo in higher resolutions)

Hypatia and the Clash of Civilizations in Late Antiquity
Sunday 19 September 2010
by: Evaggelos Vallianatos, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

When the Greeks spoke of "agora," they meant a place for political discussion, jury trials, and a market. In other words, agora was the center of Greek life.



In October 9, 2009, the Spanish movie producer, Alejandro Amenabar, released a film he pointedly named "Agora," in which he zeroed in the clash of Greek and Christian civilizations in the fourth and fifth centuries in Alexandria, Egypt.

(Right: poster of "Agora" from IMDB.com)

(Left: Hypatia as imagined by Raphael-Wikipedia)

The violent Christianization of polytheistic Greece even redefined agora as just a place for trade, eventually becoming the "free market" of today. (Read More)

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monday monday

Crap-O-Dem0-AmeRica !

Do Not Pity the Democrats
Monday 13 September 2010
by: Chris Hedges | Truthdig | Op-Ed

Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "There are no longer any major institutions in American society, including the press, the educational system, the financial sector, labor unions, the arts, religious institutions and our dysfunctional political parties, which can be considered democratic.... The menace we face does not come from the insane wing of the Republican Party, which may make huge inroads in the coming elections, but the institutions tasked with protecting democratic participation.... Investing emotional and intellectual energy in electoral politics is a waste of time. Resistance means a radical break with the formal structures of American society. We must cut as many ties with consumer society and corporations as possible. We must build a new political and economic consciousness centered on the tangible issues of sustainable agriculture, self-sufficiency and radical environmental reform."
(Read Article)

(Photo: Concentrated Passion)

Marijuana "Prohibition" on California's Ballot
Monday 13 September 2010
by: Kevin Zeese | Consortium News | Op-Ed


Note: Families all across America have been touched in one way or another by the 37-year-old drive to eradicate marijuana use. Beyond the prison overcrowding that has resulted, many young people with promising futures have had criminal convictions stuck on their permanent records.

And, while costing the taxpayers' billions of dollars, the prohibition effort has also strengthened organized crime, much as Prohibition on alcohol did nearly a century ago, factors that have led California to consider a retreat in this "war," as "prohibition" opponent Kevin Zeese notes in this guest essay:

Since the founding of the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973, 15 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana.

That is more people than live in California's 25 largest cities – millions more than live in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Illinois.
(Read More)

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saturday, the 9th 911 day

An Open Letter From a Liberal to The Tea Party

by rjw78741
Sat Sep 11, 2010 at 01:18:57 PM PDT

Dear Tea Party:

I heard you've been studying the Constitution. That's great! The Left loves the Constitution. We have some common ground there. In fact, liberals have been talking a lot about the Constitution for the last ten years. (You might want to check out a short book by Naomi Wolf called "The End of America: Letters to a Young Patriot," published in 2006.)

I can tell you that the Left is feeling frustrated these days, just like you. Believe it or not, we're not well-represented in Washington. We wanted a green energy policy but that has largely been ignored. We wanted a public health insurance option but that was completely excluded from the health care debate. We wanted secret detentions to stop but they haven't. We wanted out of Iraq and Afghanistan but Obama's digging in deeper. We wanted the people who caused the Great Recession to be brought to accountability but they're still being coddled. We wanted to take back government from corporate control but that hasn't happened. They're just not listening to us liberals in Washington!

rjw78741's diary :: ::

I know many of you are hurting from the financial collapse. You've lost your homes, your jobs and your businesses. Many liberals have suffered the same, and we want to do something about it. You are not happy with the way Washington is operating, and neither are we. We feel your pain.

We have so much in common – where we differ is on the facts. But that's good news, too, because the facts can be ascertained if we just put some effort into finding them. You know what? We should work together. Rarely have so many outsiders had so much motivation to effect change.

But before we can work together, we have to settle four major areas of difference: (Read More)

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a lay-back friday in america

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: The U.S. Army, Kevin Dooley, Andrea Campi)

Iraq: The Democrats' War
Friday 10 September 2010
by: Stephen Zunes, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

"With all the attention on the supposed withdrawal of US combat forces, it is important to acknowledge the forces that got us into this tragic conflict in the first place. It was not just George W. Bush.... The responsibility for the deaths of over 4,400 American soldiers, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the waste of nearly one trillion dollars of our national treasury and the rise of terrorism and Islamist extremism that has come as a result of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq rests as much in the hands of the members in Congress who authorized the invasion as it does with the administration that requested the lawmakers' approval." (Read More)

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after the bar-b-q, for some

Crap-O-Crap-O-Lad!!!



The Wealthy Public-Sector Worker: A Myth Debunked
Thursday 09 September 2010
by: Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.

Whenever the subject of state and local governments' fiscal plight comes up here in the United States, conservatives engage in spittle-flecked denunciations of unions and their crazy pay packages.... I looked at finance data from the U.S. Census and got the composition of nonfederal government spending shown in the graphic on this page. You'll see two things. First, wages and retirement benefits don't take up an unreasonably large piece of the pie. Second, subtracting a few percentage points either in pay or retirement benefits would not actually make a big difference. In the end, this is a phony issue. (ReAd MOre)

HHS to insurers: Don't blame us for your rates
RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
From Associated Press

September 09, 2010 8:44 PM EDT


WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's top health official on Thursday warned the insurance industry that the administration won't tolerate blaming premium hikes on the new health overhaul law.
"There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a letter to the insurance lobby.
"Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections," Sebelius said. She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law. They'd lose out on a big pool of customers, as many as 30 million people nationwide. (REaD MoRE)

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The Labor Day Again

Crap-O-Econo-Foes!

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

1938 in 2010

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: September 5, 2010

Paul Krugman: "It's slightly sickening to realize that the big winners in the midterm elections are likely to be the very people who first got us into this mess, then did everything in their power to block action to get us out." (Read More)

The Labor Day

Crap-O-Labor-Day 1

Hilton workers protested late last month, demanding that the corporation negotiate a new contract with their union. (Photo: David Bacon)

The Face of Labor In the Streets (Photo Essay)
Monday 06 September 2010
by: David Bacon, t r u t h o u t | Report


San Francisco - This Labor Day the faces in the streets in cities across the U.S. are those of hotel workers, picketing some of the world's most luxurious establishments. In San Francisco, cooks, room cleaners, housemen and laundry workers laid siege to the Downtown Hilton recently, demanding that the corporation negotiate a new contract with their union, UNITE HERE Local 2.

This fall, the conflict between the union and the hotel corporations is spreading to over 40,000 workers in at least nine cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Minneapolis, Monterey, Vancouver, Honolulu, and Washington DC.

(Read More)

Crap-O-Labor-Day 2

(Photo: Elyce Feliz / Flickr)

A Labor Day Commitment to the Common Good
Thursday 09 September 2010
by: Jim Hightower, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed


America's corporate chieftains must love poor people, for they're doing all they can to create millions more of them.

They're knocking down wages, offshoring everything from manufacturing jobs to high tech, reducing full-time work to part-time, downsizing our workplaces, busting unions, cutting health care coverage and canceling pensions -- while also lobbying in Washington to privatize Social Security, eliminate job safety protections, restrict unemployment benefits, kill job-creating programs and increase corporate control of our elections.

(Read More)

Labor day sunday

GOP's CRAP-ON-Obama Stimulus!

The Real Story

Paul Krugman, The New York Times
03 September 10

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

Next week, President Obama is scheduled to propose new measures to boost the economy. I hope they're bold and substantive, since the Republicans will oppose him regardless - if he came out for motherhood, the G.O.P. would declare motherhood un-American. So he should put them on the spot for standing in the way of real action.

But let's put politics aside and talk about what we've actually learned about economic policy over the past 20 months.

When Mr. Obama first proposed $800 billion in fiscal stimulus, there were two groups of critics. Both argued that unemployment would stay high - but for very different reasons.

One group - the group that got almost all the attention - declared that the stimulus was much too large, and would lead to disaster. If you were, say, reading The Wall Street Journal's opinion pages in early 2009, you would have been repeatedly informed that the Obama plan would lead to skyrocketing interest rates and soaring inflation.

(Read More)

Crap-O-il-BP!!

Crab-trap builder Shawn Platt's traps idle, Hopedale, Louisiana, 05/13/10. (photo: Getty Images)

BP Threatens to Cut Aid to Spill Victims If Not Allowed to Drill
By Joel Schectman, Newsweek
04 September 10

n what could be a new low at BP, the company said it may not be able to pay for the damages from the Deepwater Horizon if Congress prohibits it from drilling offshore. BP appears to be betting that the threat to renege on its cleanup and compensation promises will pressure Congress to allow the company to continue drilling in the gulf, despite having created the worst environmental catastrophe in history.

The House passed a bill in July that would prevent companies with more than 10 deaths at their facilities from getting permits to drill on the outer continental shelf. Only BP's record was poor enough to reach the threshold.

BP did not return calls for comment, but a spokesman told The New York Times: "I am not going to make a direct linkage to the $20 billion [compensation fund], but our ability to fund these assets and the cash coming from these assets that are securing these funds would be lost" if the House bill were enacted by the full Congress.

The oil giant's expectation that Congress will be cowed by the apparent intimidation tactic may be correct, as response from the Hill to the threat has so far been muted. "It's like Bonnie and Clyde saying we are not going to pay back the money we stole unless you let us keep robbing banks," Democratic Rep. George Miller of California, who added the language to the bill, told NEWSWEEK. "We need to be able to assure people in the gulf that the companies getting permits are safe. But this is absolutely a rogue company in how they ignore both safety and environmental regulations."

BP had $16.6 billion in profits in 2009.

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Fart Tuesday

Crap-O-Torture-Tapes !

In this undated photo provided by global security research and analysis enterprise Flashpoint Partners, a man who Flashpoint has identified as confessed 9/11 architect Ramzi Binalshibh is shown. Binalshibh is being held pending trial at a U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (AP Photo - Flashpoint Partners)

AP Exclusive: Terrorist interrogation tapes found

ADAM GOLDMAN

From Associated
Press

August 17, 2010 10:19 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA has videotapes, after all, of interrogations in a secret overseas prison of admitted 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh.

Discovered in a box under a desk at the CIA, the tapes could reveal how foreign governments aided the United States in holding and interrogating suspects. And they could complicate U.S. efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, who has been described as one of the "key plot facilitators" in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks... (Read More)

Sunday Qualm

(Photo: John Wigham / Flickr)

The Climate Agency: A Letter to President Obama
Sunday 15 August 2010
by: Peter G. Cohen, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Mr. President, I urge you to declare a climate change emergency. The American people have seen enough of violent storms and freezing cold, of sweltering heat and drying rivers to know how urgent it is that our climate be controlled. Once you have declared this emergency, it will be possible to create the Climate Change Agency to plan and direct a smooth changeover from fossil fuels to alternative energies. This giant task will require people with authority and a profound understanding of the issue. (Read More)

Hot San Franciscan Week

Crap-O-Gaza-Prison!!!

Israel Chokes Gaza Despite Announced Easing
Thursday 15 July 2010
by: Mel Frykberg | Inter Press Service | Report

RAMALLAH, Jul 15, 2010 (IPS) - Israel has received international praise for its decision to ease its crippling blockade on Gaza following the country's deadly assault on a humanitarian flotilla trying to bring desperately needed humanitarian aid to the coastal territory. But according to the UN and human rights organisations, the easing of the blockade is insufficient in meeting Gaza's needs. (Read More)

Monday, the longest day of the year

Crap-O-Humanity!!



There Will Be War

Reza Kahlili, 06.21.10, 07:20 PM EDT

The time to support Iran's people is now.

Last week, Iran's opposition leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi canceled anti-government demonstrations timed to commemorate the anniversary of last year's disputed presidential election. Secretary of the State Hillary Clinton called the cancellation "regrettable," but missed the larger point. The reform these two men offer is not what the majority of Iranians want: They want an end to the current Islamic regime.

One year ago, the Obama administration missed an opportunity to support Iran's uprising. They mistakenly calculated that back-door negotiations with Iran's clerics and promises made by its rulers would bring cooperation on the nuclear issue. The Americans were duped and now find themselves grasping for another chance to support an Iranian uprising.

(Read More)

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a long hard summer begins

Crap-O-Week!!!

Protesters Demand Problem-Solving, Not Demonization
Saturday 05 June 2010
by: Sarah Lazare, t r u t h o u t | Report

(Photo: evan.finn / Flickr)

Vietnam War-era veteran and member of the Phoenix Veterans for Peace chapter, David Winkler, was one of 50,000 people who converged in Phoenix on May 29th to protest Arizona Senate Bill 1070. "In Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as on the U.S.-Mexico border, the U.S. is attempting to use the military to solve social problems," he said. "Immigration is not a military problem, and it should not be dealt with by the military." (Read More)

Pariah Nation
Friday 04 June 2010
by: Alexander Cockburn, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Photo: freegazaorg)

As the TV networks give unlimited airtime to its apologists, the message rolls out that Israel is permitted every illegal act in the lexicon of international law, from acts of violence against a civilian population (the people of Gaza, starved under permanent blockade) to piracy on the high seas, in the lethal attacks by Israeli commandoes on the relief flotilla. The guiding rule in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should be brainwashed into thinking Israel somehow has the right and the duty to act at will as the mad-dog of the planet. (Read More)


Former UN Official Urges Irish-Americans to Defend the Rachel Corrie
Thursday 03 June 2010
by: Robert Naiman, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

Former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday said it was imperative that the Obama administration supported Ireland's call on the Israeli authorities to ensure safe passage for the Irish-flagged Rachel Corrie to carry humanitarian aid to Gaza, the Irish Times reports. (Read More)

a warm sunny sunday

Crap-O-War-Machines!

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: United States Marine Corps Official Page, D Sharon Pruitt)

Will Pitt | How to End the Recession... Forever

William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "I found myself walking all over downtown Boston on Thursday to take care of some personal business. It was a beautiful day to walk the city. The sun was shining, everything was in full bloom, the air was warm with a cooling breeze, thousands of people were out and about, and the city was filled with unbelievably powerful and dangerous weapons of war. Wait, what?"
Read the Article

Let's Work Together! Americans!

leaking ceiling in basement

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Stewf, lintmachine, Patrick Hoesly)

Crappy-O'l-Middle-East-Crap!

Noam Chomsky | A Middle East Peace That Could Happen (but Won't)

Noam Chomsky, TomDispatch.com: "The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world's conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders - with 'minor and mutual modifications,' to adopt official US terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970's."
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Crap-O-Crap!!

(Photo: elfsternberg / Flickr)

Marjorie Cohn | Arizona Legalizes Racial Profiling

Marjorie Cohn, Jurist: "The conservative 'states' rights' mantra sweeping our country has led to one of the most egregious wrongs in recent U.S. history. New legislation in Arizona requires law enforcement officers to stop everyone whom they have 'reasonable suspicion' to believe is an undocumented immigrant and arrest them if they fail to produce their papers. What constitutes "reasonable suspicion"? When asked what an undocumented person looks like, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who signed SB 1070 into law last week, said, 'I don't know what an undocumented person looks like.'"
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Crap-O-neo-tea-party!

A Tea Party protest in Hartford, Connecticut, on April 15, 2009. (Large 800x533) (Full-Res.)

Rage and Rebellion: How Will the Left Respond?

Bernard Weiner, Truthout: "Like a lot of progressives, I've been puzzling over the Tea Party phenomenon. Many on the left choose to believe that the hundreds and sometimes thousands who attend the group's rallies are the same old extreme rightwingers who always have been around - usually content to remain isolated individuals or small groups in the shadows but this time encouraged out in the open by incitement from the Far Right media."
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A Cold April Day

A Crap-O-Crack-Justice

Alexander Cockburn | The Cover-Ups That Exploded Alexander Cockburn, Truthout:

"The Pentagon is reeling after two lethal episodes uncovered by diligent journalism show trigger-happy U.S. Army helicopter pilots and U.S. Special Forces slaughtering civilians, then seeking to cover up their crimes....The World Wide Web was transfixed Monday when Wikileaks put up on YouTube a 38-minute video, along with a 17-minute edited version, taken from a U.S. Army Apache helicopter, one of two firing on a group of Iraqis in Baghdad at a street corner in July 2007. Twelve civilians died, including a Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and a Reuters driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40." (Read the Article)

(Photo: The U.S. Army; Edited: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t)

Marijuana Legalization: The Pay-Any-Price Principle David Sirota, Truthout: "When choosing between frugality and security, history shows that America almost always selects the latter. To paraphrase President Kennedy, we'll pay any price and bear any burden to protect ourselves....No doubt this was why the economic case against the Iraq invasion failed. To many, the war debate seemed to pose a binary question: debt or mushroom clouds? And when itís a scuffle between money arguments and security arguments (even dishonest security arguments), security wins every time."

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(Photo: ilmungo / Flickr)

morning after my birthday

Reagan Redux Could Pay for Health Care
Sunday 28 March 2010
by: Gerald E. Scorse, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

"A fiscal Frankenstein"; so said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) about the health care bill just passed by the Congress. Soulmate Republicans echoed his warning, predicting budgetary doom.

But GOP legislators who cry fiscal wolf are twice trapped. For eight years, they aided and abetted as President Bush turned a budget surplus into a $1.2 trillion deficit. Even more, an inconvenient truth has inconveniently surfaced: a tax policy passed by right-wing icon Ronald Reagan could pay for Barack Obama's health care reform.

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