Diatribune - abuse of power - Comments

Short and sweet!

epppie — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:38:33 -0600

Short and sweet!

it's perfect for emailing,

fake consultant — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:45:24 -0600

it's perfect for emailing, though...and i'm sending out the link tonight.

Too short!

epppie — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:52:51 -0600

Too short!

Which of us impure ones can

epppie — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:51:30 -0600

Which of us impure ones can hope to understand the ways of the Saints?

But she's such a snarkster

epppie — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:50:06 -0600

But she's such a snarkster and I think that's really important in a Veep. I mean, look at all the good the surly Dick Cheney has done for us. Now, I guess we don't know yet if she has what it takes to lay the f-word on a Senator, but I have a feeliing she does.

accidental double

fake consultant — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:45:24 -0600

accidental double post--oops.

to fill the space, i offer this hilarious video that was run as a commercial in the twin cities this week for the benefit of the visiting delegates.

i'm watching the

fake consultant — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:41:18 -0600

i'm watching the "invocation" of john mccain's wife at this moment...and somehow, among all the words being used to describe her to the moral majority, neither "homewrecker" nor "dumped" nor "first wife" have come up.

fascinating.

we will hear a lot about

fake consultant — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:32:40 -0600

we will hear a lot about experience...

...and apparently one experience she does not have is dealing with people who look up her actual record...and are not "living the ideology" in a heavily pro-republican state.

makes you wonder what kind of weak diplomat she will make--oh, wait, i forgot...mccain will handle the diplomacy, so there's nothing to worry about there, eh?

What a speech Palin gave!

epppie — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:05:59 -0600

What a speech Palin gave! America is always right. Winning is everything. Rights don't matter. America = Oil. Democrats = taxes. Taxes are always bad.

My favorite part was the part where she claimed to have balanced the budget in Alaska, and then later in the same speech, without batting an eye, let on that it was the high price of oil that balanced the budget and even created a surplus.

When war drives the price of oil high and your state budget depends on the price of oil - who wouldn't be all for more war!!

These repugs sure have

kerry — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:55:58 -0600

These repugs sure have responsibility avoidance down to a fine art don't they. File an ethics complaint against yourself so you can head the investigation. I love it. She can find herself guilty and pardon herself. The ultimate absurdity. Only a republican could come up with this kind of twisted justice. My only problem with the whole scam is that she couldn't define ethics so how is she going to know whether she did anything wrong?

It takes amazing courage to

epppie — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:25:51 -0600

It takes amazing courage to be a whistleblower - to lose everything, maybe even your freedom or your life - and to have no one listen anyway, most of the time.

What say you? (n/t)

Mentarch — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:28:30 -0600

What say you? (n/t)

A "Half-Truth"

Jacob Freeze — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:35:03 -0600

A "Half-Truth" Commission?

Most Americans who favor holding politicians accountable for real crimes stop short of talking about sentencing. We hanged war criminals at Nuremberg, and if we start hanging politicians for crimes against humanity, Democrats may see some familiar faces on the scaffold.

Bill Clinton ran genocidal sanctions against Iraq, as exhaustively demonstrated by Joy Gordon in Cool War. Is Kucinich ready to hang Bill Clinton?

George W. Bush killed over a million Iraqis as a foreseeable consequence of the occupation of Iraq, as practiced by Bremer, Abizaid, et al. It's one thing to impeach Bush and Cheney, and something completely different to hang a couple of guys who were actually re-elected against Kerry with an absolute majority of votes, if you happen to believe the numbers that electronic voting machines produce.

Harry Truman annihilated Nagasaki and most of the women, children, and elderly non-combatants in it. Should the former general Eisenhower have hanged Truman and four or five of the generals in our Pacific command? We hanged General Seishiro Itagaki for war crimes in 1948, but neither Republicans or Democrats suggested hanging General MacArthur for Nagasaki.

Most countries that have successfully emerged from a criminal regime succeed because of forgiveness... because of amnesties instead of accountability. Argentina after the rule of the generals, Greece after the rule of the colonels, and Chile after Pinochet are typical of this process of oblivion and progress.

Unless Democrats really want accountability with appropriate sentences for enormous crimes committed by politicians of both parties, forgiveness is probably our best alternative, and all the other choices turn out to be unthinkable, after just a little thought.

A toothless "Truth Commission" that ignored the crimes of previous Democratic administrations would be just as partisan as the current White House and Congress, and we might just as well call it a "Half-Truth Commission," and forget it.

The 9/11 Report was a "truth

Catzoned — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:39:31 -0600

The 9/11 Report was a "truth commission" and totally ignored by the Bush administration and Republicans. A soul searching mission for those without souls would be pointless. Go directly to impeachment.

Didn't it tip you off that I

Jacob Freeze — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:37:23 -0600

Didn't it tip you off that I might not be a "narrow-minded prohibition supporter" when I talked about 250,000 Americans "wasting long years of their lives in prison" because of "ridiculous drug laws?" How do you expect to write anything worthwhile if you can't quite read?

Adolescent cop-bashing is just a distraction from the infinitely more serious consequences of draconian drug laws written by soulless right-wing legislators and supported by spineless Democrats.

250,000 Americans are serving a total of more than a million years in prison for silly marijuana busts, more than fifty million weeks of hard time, and there aren't many of those inmates who wouldn't take a minor slap-down in return for getting out of prison just one week sooner.

In spite of the elevation of your diatribe on BuzzFlash, it's really worse than worthless, because it confirms the right-wing stereotype that the only critics of our miserable drug laws are cop-bashing teenagers.

But for any intelligent high school kids who happen to read this exchange, I can suggest a much better subject for an essay, and that's the thousands of teenagers whose lives have been destroyed by drug busts in states like Nevada, where possession of one seed automatically classifies you as a dealer.

A low-rent marijuana habit didn't prevent Barack Obama from making good grades and getting into Harvard, but if he had ever been busted with just barely enough weight to classify him as a dealer, he could have ended up just like his homeless friend Keith Kakugawa.