Liberal Repercussion

Richard Clarke just said that Frist was on puppy uppers

BWAHAHA!

you gotta listen to

http://www.airamericaradio.com

posted by Rei Toei @ 12:53 p.m.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0414/mondo6.php

Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
U.S. Turns to Mercenaries
April 1st, 2004 2:30
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The four "civilians" killed, burned, and dragged through the streets of Fallujah, Iraq, on Wednesday morning weren’t really civilians. Or were they? They were employees of Blackwater Security Consulting, a rural North Carolina subsidiary of Blackwater USA , one of several dozen firms taking over the duties of the regular American military in Iraq, protecting buildings and grounds as well as officials.

In fact, Blackwater itself is in charge of protecting L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, the U.S. official who now runs Iraq as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. In the coming weeks, hundreds of American civilian workers who really are civilians will be entering Iraq to work on private contracts let by the Bush government. Their security will be provided by guards (like the Blackwater men killed yesterday) from a variety of security firms, often consisting of former U.S. military special ops people.

The use of private military forces raises tricky questions for the U.S. government. The most important one is why is the Bush administration is recruiting civilians to work there when our government can't possibly guarantee the security of the area. Another question: Why aren't these jobs in combat zones being carried out by American military forces, instead of mercenaries?

Building up a surrogate military force, along the lines of the French Foreign Legion or the Gurkhas, has been the ambition of conservatives for many years. The thinking is that future wars will be characterized by "low-intensity," or guerrilla, warfare. If the fighting is done by a force of irregular surrogates, people won't question their casualties as they would those of regular military personnel. The contras in Nicaragua were an example of what a surrogate fighting force might look like, and special ops types from South Africa’s former apartheid regime have long been involved in fighting in southern Africa.

The latest incident involving one of these relatively new mercenary companies occurred in Haiti. There the Steele Foundation, a private security firm based in California, was protecting the palace when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was summarily rushed to the airport at Port-au-Prince and onto a mysterious plane that took off with no listed destination—raising the inevitable question of their involvement with American intelligence. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Aristide feared that the Steele people would abandon their jobs and leave him to be killed by the rebels. Subsequent press reports noted that an extra detail of Steele people requested by Aristide for added protection were blocked by American officials from leaving California for Haiti.

In Iraq, Blackwater provides security not only for Bremer but also for food shipments in the turbulent Fallujah area.

posted by Rei Toei @ 4:10 p.m.

"Letterman video from both nights -- put down your coffee"
In response to Reply #0




and you might also want to use the john before you watch the kid video. I had tears running down my face. All perfect reactions to His Chimpness chimpinating in front of him.


Maybe Dave and Howard will join forces. I'd be surprised if Dave ever cuts them any slack again.

http://tinyurl.com/2s3lb

posted by Rei Toei @ 2:18 p.m.

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_5796.shtml

March 17, 2004 - The subject line on yesterday’s email read: “Another
mysterious accident solves a Bush problem. Athan Gibbs dead, Diebold
lives.” The attached news story briefly described the untimely Friday,
March 12th death of perhaps America’s most influential advocate of a
verified voting paper trail in the era of touch screen computer voting.
Gibbs, an accountant for more than 30 years and the inventor of the
TruVote system, died when his vehicle collided with an 18-wheeled truck
which rolled his Chevy Blazer several times and forced it over the
highway retaining wall where it came to rest on its roof.

Coincidence theorists will simply dismiss the death of Gibbs as a tragic
accident –
**snip***

Gibbs’ death bears heightened scrutiny because of the way he lived his
life after the 2000 Florida election debacle. I interviewed Athan Gibbs in
January of this year. “I’ve been an accountant, an auditor, for more than
thirty years. Electronic voting machines that don’t supply a paper trail go
against every principle of accounting and auditing that’s being taught in
American business schools,” he insisted.

“These machines are set up to provide paper trails. No business in
America would buy a machine that didn’t provide a paper trail to audit and
verify its transaction. Now, they want the people to purchase machines
that you can’t audit? It’s absurd.”

Gibbs was in Columbus, Ohio proudly displaying his TruVote machine that
offered a “VVPAT, that’s a voter verified paper audit trail” he noted.
***snip***

Gibbs’ TruVote machine is a marvel. After voters touch the screen, a
paper ballot prints out under plexiglass and once the voter compares it to
his actual vote and approves it, the ballot drops into a lockbox and is
issued a numbered receipt. The voter’s receipt allows the track his
particular vote to make sure that it was transferred from the polling place
to the election tabulation center.

My encounter with Gibbs led to a cover story in the Columbus Free Press
March-April issue, entitled, “Diebold, electronic voting and the vast
right-wing conspiracy.” The thesis I advanced in the Free Press article
(www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/834) is that some of the
same right-wing individuals who backed the CIA’s covert actions and
overthrowing of democratic elections in the Third World in the 1980s are
now involved in privatized touch screen voting. Additionally I co-wrote an
article with Harvey Wasserman that was posted at MotherJones.com
(www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html) on
March 5, 2004. Both articles outlined ties between far right elements of the
Republican Party and Diebold and ES&S, which count the majority of the
nation’s electronic votes.

As I wrote in the Free Press article, “Proponents of a paper trail were
emboldened when Athan Gibbs, President and CEO of TruVote
International, demonstrated a voting machine at a vendor’s fair in
Columbus that provides two separate voting receipts.”

In an interview on WVKO radio, Gibbs calmly and methodically explained
the dangers of “black box” touch screen voting. “It absolutely makes no
sense to buy electronic voting machines that can’t produce a paper trail.
Inevitably, computers mess up. How are you going to have a recount, or
correct malfunctions without a paper trail?

Now, the man asking the obvious question, and demonstrating an obvious
tangible solution is dead in another tragic accident, a week after both
articles were in circulation.
***snip***

Gibbs’ last words to me were “How do you explain what happened to
Senator Max Cleland in Georgia. How do you explain that? The Maryland
study and the Johns Hopkins scientists have warned us against ‘blind
faith voting.’ These systems can be hacked into. They found patches in
Georgia and the people servicing the machine had entered the machines
during the voting process. How can we the people accept this? No more
blind faith voting.”

***snip***

posted by Rei Toei @ 3:40 p.m.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/

A political hate crime
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Now comes a fairly clear-cut case of a politically inspired assault by right-wingers on a gay man in Atlanta -- in fact, it appears they drove all the way from at least Kansas to commit the crime.

The assault -- which included raping the man with a sawed-off broomstick and holding a knife up to his scrotum and threatening to cut it off -- was in apparent retaliation for a LiveJournal post in which the victim, an Atlanta artist, depicted (through the wonders of Photoshop) George W. Bush as a Grand Dragon at a Klan rally. Using information they gathered from the Web, they stalked him and brutalized him into unconsiousness, leaving him for dead in an alley.

A fellow named spatula at morons.org pieces together most of the details from the victim's continuing LiveJournal posts:

So they stalked him using information they gathered from LiveJournal, attacked him outside an Atlanta restaurant, cut his hand so as to inflict nerve damage (apparently to prevent him creating any more art their found offensive), sexually assaulted him with a sawed-off broom handle and left him naked and bloody in an alley.

All this because they were so weak and pathetic that they just couldn't cope with a Photoshopped jpeg image. And they had a gang of them against one small guy, hitting him over the head first so he couldn't fight back.

From what he could remember, authorities were able to locate a van that had been stolen from a used car lot in Topeka, Kansas in which [the victim's] blood was found. If Topeka sounds familiar to you, it may be because that's where Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church who bring us GodHatesFags.com are located. It's far too early to say whether Phelps and his clan had anything to do with this assault, but detectives have found [the victim's] name posted on several sites of similar ilk.

posted by Rei Toei @ 10:59 p.m.

My Republican friend sent me a talking points memo. His memo in italics, my friend helped me with the response, interspersed.

Sometimes I feel like beating a Republican to death with a college history book. God help me.

Just the Facts

Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) led us into World War II Germany never attacked us: Japan did. From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost, an average of 112,500 per year.

Hitler declared war against us Dec. 11 1941. we did not formally attack them before this date. Germany was allied with Japan; when we declared war on Japan, we declared war on Germany and Italy as well.

But what I find curious, is that the author of this claptrap blastfax disagrees with the US going to War with Nazi Germany EVEN THOUGH they declared war on the U.S., conquered almost all of continental Europe, began mass exterminations of the Jews, attacked Russia and began an aerial bombardment of England with the intention of invading and conquering England as well?

Just checking.

After all, Hitler didn't have ANY plans to dominate the whole world; after the dust settled, we'd get along with him and his murderous Aryan horde just fine. After all, he behaved so... Republican.


Truman (Democrat) finished that war and started one in Korea. North Korea never attacked us. From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost, an average of 18,333 per year.

Korea was an ally, through what became SEATO. Lousy stupid war, but what the hell. We got M*A*S*H* out of it, at least.

I believe that the Republican party overcame their well-known aversion to all things military and were 100% behind this war. I'm sure that Joe McCarthy and all those Soft-on-Communism Repugs really wanted to see South Korea become Communist.

(extreme sarcasm alert) After all, Republicans REALLY HATE Sun Myung Moon and everything he does, and they certainly don't want to see American manufacturing jobs exported to third-world dictatorships masquerading as democratic countries.


John F. Kennedy (Democrat) started the Vietnam conflict in 1962. Vietnam never attacked us.

ACTUALLY, EISENHOWER STARTED IT. by voiding the 1957 elections, using the US to set up a partition, THEN SENDING IN CIA AND SPECIAL OPS FORCES. WE HAD OUR PEOPLE IN NAM FROM BEFORE DIENBIENPHU.

The Republican position at that time was not "let's not attack Vietnam." The Republican position was "let's use atomic bombs."



Johnson (Democrat) turned Vietnam into a quagmire. From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost, an average of 5,800 per year.

Kennedy sent advisors to 'Nam. It was Johnson (basically a good man, but could not see straight where the issue of "manliness" came into question) that turned Viet Nam into a bloodbath. He was, however, man enough to admit his error. He declined the Democratic Party nomination in 1968 and stepped down.

Do you remember 1968? I do. Seems President Richard Nixon (R) stated that "Any president who could not get out of Viet Nam in four years didn't deserve a second chance". Funny - that didn't seem to keep him from running again in 1972...

Quiz: Who was President from 1968 to 1975?

Extra Credit 1: a) Who invaded Cambodia and Laos? b) Did they attack us?

Extra Credit 2: What National Security advisor attempted to scuttle peace talks with the North Vietnamese in order to help his boss become President?



Clinton (Democrat) went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent Bosnia never attacked us.

Correct. It was a NATO action. We did not need FRENCH or UN approval. We are members of NATO and as a member, joined in the ending of ethnic slaughter and cleansing.

Repeat: Kosovo was a NATO action that stopped a holocaust in progress. I keep forgetting how much Republicans like Genocide.

Ethnic cleansing was halted.
1.5 million ethnic Albanians returned to their homes.
An al-Qaida take over of Bosnia was prevented.
Not a single US soldier was killed in combat.
It was a proud moment in our history. We haven't had any of those since January 2001.

Note to the author of this witless hunk of Republican propaganda: HOLOCAUSTS ARE BAD.

He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three times by Sudan and did nothing.

Bullshit. As explained in Clarke's book, and independently verifiable if you do NEWS, the Sudanese were allied with Bin Laden and had no intention of giving him up.

Clinton tried for years to get Osama, but did not want to kill vast numbers of innocent bystanders.

Speaking of doing nothing, I got two words for Bushies: ANTHRAX TERRORIST. (But since that "terrorist" only mailed to Dems, he must not be a priority.)

Osama has attacked us on multiple occasions. In the two years since terrorists attacked us, President Bush has liberated two countries,

Bush has yet to liberate any nation. I'd hate to call the network of crime-lords running Afganistan and Iraq "governments of the people." YOU DEFINE ANARCHY IN IRAQ AS LIBERATION? HAHAHAHA.

crushed the Taliban, crippled al-Qaida,

We have military control of Kabul. Afganistan is not under control other than Kabul and could be hardly be deemed a total success.

al-Qaida is stronger than ever and has morphed into multiple independent organizations which can operate without central control. In western Pakistan, the most popular name for a newborn boy is "Osama."

al-Qaida seems to be quite healthy; ask the Spaniards if there is any doubt. Hundreds have been killed by al-Qaida since Afganistan.

Is the Taliban truly gone? Why doesn't Bush do a few more photo ops there. Has ANYONE complained about kicking the Taliban's butt? Anyone? Bueller? (I guess it was embarassing for the Bush administration, having given the Taliban a huge cash grant immediately before the attacks.)


...put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran and North Korea without firing a shot,

Pakistan has spread nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea and possibly to al-Qaida.

North Korea played a game of high-stakes poker while we were engaged elsewhere, and seems to be winning

Libya saw what kind of a windfall could be had and decided to swap their black hat for a white one.



and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.

That "terrorist" must be Saddam - I am certainly not going to defend THAT piece of shit, but let's point out that Republican businessmen and Republican administrations not only sold him the technology of death, but conveniently turned their heads while he gassed his own people.

Bush II used Osama as an excuse to invade Iraq - where Osama WASN'T - and has KILLED over 10,000 CIVILIANS -- including women, children and elderly. He LIED us into a war that has created a thousand thousand bin Ladens, for no legitimate reason, apart from lust for oil and regional power.

There was no current rational reason to invade Iraq. They were contained by no fly zones and sanctions. Inspections were underway, leaving little, apparently NO opportunity for any weapons development.



We lost 600 soldiers, an average of 300 a year. Bush did all this abroad while not allowing another terrorist attack at home.


How many did American lives did Clinton lose? How many did Carter lose?

Republicans SCREAMED BLOODY MURDER when a handful of Special Forces troops were killed in the "Blackhawk Down" incident. But killing HUNDREDS of troops is somehow better?? Was another attack attempted on Clinton's watch? I don't think so...


Worst president in history? Come on!

You got it. Bush is the worst President in America's short history, bar none! Bush has done more to restrict liberty, assault the environment, and alienate the rest of the world than any president since, um, well, I'm sure there was one ALMOST as bad. Hoover was arguably worse.

There was some guy named Pierce, too, and Grant was passed out cold for his entire four years. It is possible Bush might do less harm if he WERE passed out cold, but I digress.

Bush certainly has the worst record of any Presiden since Hoover. Remember? The REPUBLICAN guy who steered us into the Great Depression, (which a Democrat got us out of.)

The short-sighed, ineffectual and greedy economic policies of the Bush Administration have lost MILLIONS OF JOBS HERE in the United States. And we haven't even talked in depth about his looting of the treasury yet.

On the plus side, things are great at Haliburton (*coff larcenous overbilling) and the Carlyle Group (particularly Poppy's secret Arabia Division.) Congratulations, that is truly a victory for the average American.

The entire world hates us. Our allies don't trust us. By conquering Iraq as Bin Laden predicted, we have played right into Al Queda's hands. In many countries, 90% of the population has a very unfavorable opinion of the US. AHEM, AND DID I MENTION JOBS?

Oh, and does it still sting when you think about the balance sheets of your 401K from the Clinton years? I thought so. Republicans got burned worse than us povs when Bush and Cheney talked down the market for their own cheap devices. I would think that once your wallets start weighing in, you guys would finally wise up and avoid the Kool-Aid.

posted by Rei Toei @ 10:30 p.m.