Torture -- does it provide good information?

Lately in interviews on TV news programs, some former interrogators have provided an intelligent experiential perspective on enhanced interrogation techniques (torture) and the kind of information provided--or not provided--by such tactics. A short online video tells why torture techniques don't work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5G7MOHZp48    Note one of the sentences in the following report: In a 2006 study by the National Defense Intelligence College, trained interrogators found that traditional, rapport-based interviewing approaches are extremely effective with even the most hardened detainees, whereas coercion consistently builds resistance and resentment. 

TORTURE TACTICS MAY HAVE SLOWED HUNT FOR BIN LADEN, NOT HASTENED IT
By Dan Froomkin

Torture apologists are reaching precisely the wrong conclusion from the back-story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, say experienced interrogators and intelligence professionals.

Defenders of the Bush administration’s interrogation policies have claimed vindication from reports that bin Laden was tracked down in small part due to information received from brutalized detainees some six to eight years ago.

But that sequence of events -- even if true -- doesn’t demonstrate the effectiveness of torture, these experts say. Rather, it indicates bin Laden could have been caught much earlier had those detainees been interrogated properly.

"I think that without a doubt, torture and enhanced interrogation techniques slowed down the hunt for bin Laden," said an Air Force interrogator who goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander and located Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, in 2006.

It now appears likely that several detainees had information about a key al Qaeda courier -- information that might have led authorities directly to bin Laden years ago. But subjected to physical and psychological brutality, "they gave us the bare minimum amount of information they could get away with to get the pain to stop, or to mislead us," Alexander told The Huffington Post.

"We know that they didn’t give us everything, because they didn’t provide the real name, or the location, or somebody else who would know that information," he said.

In a 2006 study by the National Defense Intelligence College, trained interrogators found that traditional, rapport-based interviewing approaches are extremely effective with even the most hardened detainees, whereas coercion consistently builds resistance and resentment. 

For rest of article, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/06/torture-may-have-slowed-h_n_858642.html

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Latest BS from the birthers -- and correct information

Not that it will make any difference to most of the birthers, but the following info. messes up their latest story about Obama's "fake" birth certificate. They're trying to make everyone believe Kenya wasn't known as "Kenya" at the time of his birth. (Wrong!) Also, they say the name of the hospital on his long form birth certificate is incorrect. (Once again, they are wrong.) But these are people who don't accept facts. They prefer "truthiness" (i.e. Lies) from FOX noise and Rush Limbaugh.

East Africa Protectorate (also known as British East Africa) was an area of East Africa occupying roughly the same terrain as present-day Kenya (approximately 246,800 mi² / 639,209 km²) from the Indian Ocean inland to Uganda and the Great Rift Valley. It was controlled by Britain in the late 19th century; it grew out of British commercial interests in the area in the 1880s and remained a protectorate until 1920 when it became the colony of Kenya.

It's always been known as Kenya - even before the independence. The Kenya African Union political party was formed in 1947, eliminating all doubt about the word Kenya in relation to the territory, which was named after a local mountain. it's not unusual for someone from Kenya to use their name for the country rather than the official British name - especially in a time when they were on the verge of their own independence.

As for the hospital's name, I found the following bolded info. online. Am sure if anyone is interested to search for other Honolulu birth certificates issued before 1978, they will find the hospital's name listed as it is on Obama's birth certificate. The information posted is incorrect in at least one area. I am holding my husband's birth certificate from Honolulu, Hawaii in the year 1964 at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital. Don't know where they got their information, but they are wrong about the 1978 name change date. In addition, the Advertiser reported that the first published mention of the future president appeared in a Sunday Advertiser birth announcement that ran on Aug. 13, 1961:

"Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy., son, Aug. 4."

The identical announcement ran the following day in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Birthers wave off those birth announcements, saying that Obama family members 48 years ago could have phoned in false information to both newspapers.

Such vital statistics, however, were not sent to the newspapers by the general public but by the Health Department, which received the information directly from hospitals.

Birth announcements from the public ran elsewhere in both papers and usually included information such as the newborn's name, weight and time of birth.

In order to fake the birth notices, it would have required the complicity of the state Health Department and two independent newspapers — on the off chance this unnamed child might want to one day be president of the United States.

This Honolulu Advertiser announcement of Barack Obama’s Aug 4, 1961 birth was published August 13, 1961 on page B-6. It is available only on microfilm in Hawaii libraries. The announcement is 4th from the bottom of the left hand column. The identical announcement appeared the next day in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Obama's Birth announcement in Hawaii newspaper taken from library microfilm -- http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/dailypix/2009/Jul/28/hawaii907280345V4_b.jpg

Seems an elaborate scheme that if Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii they would have put a birth notice in the paper there. Of course, they were probably planning a conspiracy all along because they knew there was a good chance their bi-racial baby would grow up to become president. Since the state of Hawaii’s word doesn’t seem to be good enough for the loonies and the sham lawyers who filed the frivolous lawsuits, it’s nice someone took the time to hunt this down. Of course, the wackos will say this too was invented.

Still not convinced, birthers? Fine, it’s true. Obama is NOT from the U.S. Read HERE.

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Ah yes --- more common sense and truth, but who is listening?

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-rivers-pitt/35881/making-the-case-from-a-different-place

Making the Case from a Different Place
By William Rivers Pitt

A trio of ongoing and savagely expensive wars. A catastrophically expensive health care "system." A national infrastructure collapsing into rack and ruin even as millions go without jobs. Hundreds of tornadoes tearing the country apart from Oklahoma to Birmingham to Richmond to Washington DC, yet another blow to an already fragile economy that seems to be heading inexorably toward a double-dip recession. A brazen, headlong conservative plunge towards the annihilation of the social contract. A game of political chicken over the debt ceiling that could blast the country apart.

And what are we talking about?

Birth certificates.

Welcome, my friends, to the show that never ends.

...Consider this, also: you almost certainly have a friend, a spouse, a family member, or a neighbor who has been gulled into believing that anything liberal or progressive is by definition heretical to the idea that is America. They vote for the politicians who screw them and support a system that steals from them, but cannot be convinced to turn away from either.

Perhaps those people you know would find themselves receptive to a progressive argument made by a Marine officer and a Naval officer who both work in the Pentagon. We are, after all, a culture that attaches great significance to military service. Here are two service members speaking to the needs of the future while wearing the uniform. Here is a progressive perspective wrapped securely in the flag.

Give it a read, and share it around. See what happens. Maybe these messengers are just different enough to make a difference. » article continues...

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Why Hard Line Right Wingers Never Change Their Minds

For some, ideological fiction is preferable to proven facts. 

Trying to Reason with GOP Ideology Is Not Possible
By Brendan Nyhan

(CNN) -- Recent polls have found that as much as 15% to 20% of the public, including about 30% to 45% of Republicans, falsely believe that President Barack Obama was not born in this country. Will Wednesday's release of Obama's long-form birth certificate put an end to the birther myth?

The odds aren't good. The problem is that people can be extremely resistant to unwelcome factual information. In 2005 and 2006, I conducted a series of experiments to study this problem with Jason Reifler, a political scientist at Georgia State University.

In these studies, undergraduate participants were given news articles in which a political figure made a misleading claim. In some cases, this claim was followed by a correction that set the record straight. Disturbingly, we found that corrective information in news articles often fails to reduce misperceptions among the ideological or partisan group that is most vulnerable to the false belief.

In some cases, corrections even made misperceptions worse -- a result we call a "backfire effect."

Unfortunately, this sort of response is typical. Many other studies have found that people tend to resist or reject information, including scientific evidence, that contradicts their pre-existing views.

In research that is under way, Reifler and I provide evidence that this defensive response is driven by the threat that contradictory information poses to people's self-concept. When we first affirm individuals' self-worth, those who are most likely to be misinformed report substantially lower misperceptions.

In this case, the birther movement has grown to its current prominence despite the release of a certification of live birth and the discovery of contemporaneous announcements of Obama's birth in two Honolulu newspapers.

Given how much evidence is already available, it's hard to see why a long-form birth certificate would suddenly change the minds of people who are predisposed to believe in the myth. The hardcore are already shifting to new rationales for questioning Obama's right to hold office and deconstructing the PDF released by the White House for supposed evidence of forgery.

What's sad is that this myth should be relatively easy to quash -- a paper trail exists that definitively establishes Obama's place of birth. By contrast, many misperceptions cannot be directly disproved.

For instance, though the best available evidence shows that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction immediately before the U.S. invasion, it was not possible to prove that they weren't moved or hidden to the 50% of Americans who believed he did as late as 2006.

Similarly, though Obama is a practicing Christian, no one can prove that he is not secretly a Muslim, as some Americans have said to pollsters.

The best hope for killing this myth -- or any similar one -- is to create a bipartisan consensus that it is false. If conservative elites speak out aggressively against it, Republicans who are distrustful of Obama and the mainstream media might change their minds. Unfortunately, this seems unlikely -- the political incentives to pander to birthers are still too strong (as Donald Trump has recently demonstrated).

More realistically, the release of the birth certificate may limit elite support for birtherism. Prominent Republicans may make fewer pro-birther statements. Likewise, state-level efforts to require that presidential candidates demonstrate their eligibility for office may lose steam. In this way, the disclosure may reduce the media coverage that helps keep the myth alive.

But regardless of how events play out, the release of Obama's birth certificate should still be seen as a victory for misinformation.

A baseless charge has forced the president of the United States to go to unprecedented lengths to prove he is legally qualified to hold office -- a concession that seems likely to encourage the creation of more myths in the future.

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Shocking truth about Donald Trump's hair revealed?

I've often wondered how Trump gets his hair to look the way it does.  Does he let it grow really long in the back and then bring it up and over the top of his head?   Well, a hairdresser may have finally found the answer to the mystery:  http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/03/shocking-truth-behind-donald-trumps-hair-revealed.html     Personally, I think he'd look better with a hairpiece.  The comb over makes him look ridiculous -- and he doesn't need any help in that direction.  He does that quite well all by himself.

Donald didn't seem to like the verbal thumping he got at last night's White House annual correspondents' dinner.  Whooee...did he ever look angry!   He likes to dish it out but that giant ego just can't take it...

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Obama's original birth certificate

To finally shut up all the nutcases, Obama allowed the state of Hawaii to release his original birth certificate.  You can see it in its entirety at: http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2011/04/politics/interactive.obama.birth.certificate/index.html?hpt=C1

But don't expect this to satisfy the fanatical right wing, which is full of crazies who ought to be institutionalized.  I can hear them now: "It's a forgery!" "The paper isn't the right kind of paper!" "The seal isn't quite right!" and on and on and on...

All the while our country is dying.  The right wing would rather have it die than accept a half-black man in the White House.  Disgusting...racist...and low-consciousness  -- but true.  Now that the birth certificate has been shown (with the comb-over idiot crowing to the press that he is responsible for it--oh, please, give us a break!), do you think the right wing will let up on their vengeful tactics against Obama? Not on your life!  Now, led by the comb-over egomaniac Trump, they are asking for proof of Obama's college attendance.  OMG!  Beam me up, Scotty!

Sigh ... we are doomed to having to live on the same planet with a right-wing species that looks human, but has unbaked brains.  They listen to raving lunatics like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh for their "news." They espouse to presidential candidates like Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump.  Look at the harm they did in giving us Cheney/Bush!  Yet they are too stupid to remember--or even perceive--the hell hole they threw us into with that choice.  They don't recognize that the Iraq war was entered into on lies, taking us on the downward spiral we are still in today.  They don't recognize that deregulating corporations and reducing taxes on the rich has led to the trillion-dollars budget deficit -- after a huge budget SURPLUS was handed by the Democrats to Cheney/Bush!  No, because of the gigantic blind spots that cover their entire field of vision, they blame the Democrats -- and keep insisting that the wealthiest in our country should remain tax-free, while the middle class is disappearing, with their backs breaking under the tax burden that has shifted to them.  Meanwhile, the rich corporatists are giving themselves bigger and bigger bonuses -- AFTER WE BAILED THEM OUT FROM DISASTER!!  Upside-down, backwards, totally illogical is the world we are living in today, as a result of the crazies taking over the asylum.  The Republican Party is now an appendage to the Tea Party.  I hesitate to ask, "Could it possibly get any worse?"  ... because it always does.

Lord help us -- we are watching the death of a once-great republic.  The rise and fall of empires throughout history should have given us a clue of what not to do -- but we have followed into the same trap that took down those that came before.  Oh, when will we ever learn?--Oh, when will we ever learn?!!

I would like to propose to God, should he/she be listening, that a second planet be designated for earth people to live on, and that the species should be separated according to beliefs.  All right wing types can remain on this planet that has been polluted and will continue to be, because of their short-sighted vision fueled by greed. They would continue to live their lives by the rule: "We've got ours, and we don't care about the rest of you!"   And all left wing types (the hated "lib'rals") could be assigned to live on the new planet, where the golden rule would be practiced.  And the types should be forever separated in this way.  After a few centuries, God could look in on the two planets and see which one is thriving and which one is dying.  I know which one I would bet on.



 

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Conning the easily conned--Republican tricksters at work

FIX SOCIAL SECURITY? -- ON WHOSE BACK?
Full article can be read at: http://crooksandliars.com/blue-girl/whose-back

Ever since Social Security became the law over 75 years ago, there have been conservatives who wanted to kill it, finding the very notion that elderly or disabled people should retain any dignity or independence after their productive years have passed anathema. If you're no longer "useful" in their particular definition of the word, then you've got a lot of damned gall even thinking you should be able to stay out of poverty.

What the hell right does Grandma have to a flu shot and a living allowance? There are a lot of ways that money could be better spent, so far as they are concerned. It could be used to pay down the debt, or it could be invested on Wall Street. All Grandma does is spend it on rent and groceries and the like. She just pisses it away on avoiding poverty, the parasite.

Conservatives like to pretend that taxing the rich would keep them from creating jobs. Yet during the Bush years -- and he pushed through two rounds of tax cuts in his first term – American jobs disappeared, not to be replaced, every single year --we didn’t gain them.

Robert Samuelson in his latest post at Real Clear Politics wants to make sure that the deficit problem that Bush and the GOP Congress created gets solved by making the people who have realized no benefit from the Bush tax cuts and can least afford it pick up the tab.  What he is surely smart enough to know, but is betting that his target audience isn't, is that he just made the perfect argument for single-payer healthcare, most easily achieved by expanding Medicare to cover everyone and then allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of medications and assignment schedules. Healthcare is the problem, and we are decades behind the rest of the developed world in coming to that realization and moving away from the ridiculous "market based solutions" that conservatives are so fond of.

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Truth by the bushel-full from David Michael Green

To read this EXCELLENT article in its entirety, go to: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-michael-green/35741/trump-beats-all

TRUMP BEATS ALL
By David Michael Green

EXCERPT: People are dumber now, certainly about politics. That's the reason why the notion of "President Reagan" was a laugh-out-loud joke in 1975 but a source of reverence in 2005. That's why George W. Bush is regarded as a basically benign-but-not-so-brilliant president, as opposed to a walking crime against humanity. That's why people continue to vote for politicians who will assist them in their own looting, and who have successfully carried out the greatest transfer of wealth in all of human history, while pretending to serve the public interest instead. And that's the reason why a Donald Trump kind of buffoon could actually lead in the polls for the presidential nomination of one of the country's two major parties.

It isn't so much a core civics education that is missing, though reading poll data on the public's comprehension of the most basic facts regarding their supposedly revered system of governance will positively singe your eyeballs. (What, senators have six-year terms? No! The Bill of Rights applies to us? Get outta here!) It's more of a kind of street smarts that's missing. More of a sense that people don't any longer have the ability to recognize their enemies - including, all too often, themselves.

To choose just the most obvious example, we live in a world in which unregulated private sector actors, greedily pursuing their boundlessly rapacious instincts, have crashed an entire global economy around our - not their - heads, then turned to governments in order to bail them out. And even though the whole notion of the capitalist system they so vehemently espouse is rooted in the idea of risk, they in fact came to believe retrospectively that they should take none, receiving in many cases full coverage for their obligations from the governments they so often and so vociferously deride, when their bets went south. Keep that in mind as I ask you to ponder when was the last time your heard anyone in American politics say, "Businesses should be run more like the government!"? Wouldn't that make a whole lot of sense, given the very recent history just chronicled? I mean who screwed up royally and who didn't? Who got bailed out and who did the bailing?

I have often noted that it isn't like the disconnect these days between the vast majority of Americans and the elites of the political right is simply a matter of two sets of honest-to-goodness patriots who just happen to have rather different ideas about how to make America a better place. That is an extremely naive view, in its most generous form, and I am positively slayed when I hear the president articulate it, because I sometimes think he actually believes what he's saying. In reality, the difference between these two camps is the difference between victim and criminal. It is an entirely false premise upon which to base any analysis of American politics to believe that the plutocrats and their Republican and Democratic marionettes have any interest whatsoever in the bettering of the country and its citizens. Indeed, their interests are quite to the contrary. Of course, they cannot market themselves that way, so instead do so by pretending to be hyper-patriots, and marching out a series of bogus enemies of the state du jour, whether those are Saddam or Castro or homosexuals or immigrants. Anything to keep the hoi polloi distracted from the fingers rummaging around in their pockets.

Nobody is better off as a group than older white males, and nobody foams at the mouth more about how screwed up the country is. Nobody gets more assistance from government programs than those who receive Social Security and Medicare benefits, and nobody races faster to the front of the barricades to rant about the evils of socialism. Nobody receives more in transfers of wealth than deeply red states like Alaska and those of the Bible Belt, and nobody complains more about having government on their backs. Enough, already!

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Absurdity -- homophobes in America are alive and well, unfortunately!

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42672313/ns/today-relationships/

In America, the rules are very rigid for one man showing affection to another.  Makes you wonder...who in heck makes these rules, anyway?  No wonder men are so hard for women to understand--most of them keep too tight a hold on their hearts.  And they are ruled by fear -- "O God, what will the other guys think of me?"  Reminds me of what a little kindergarten girl in my grandson's class once said to her teacher:  "I'm going to build a Love-a-nator."  The teacher asked her, with a smile, "What will your Love-a-nator do?"  The little girl replied, "It will melt men's frozen hearts."

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The raving fanatical right wingers will never agree with this...

The Tea Party types are over the top in their hatred and ignorance/stupidity.  They should be ignored, but they are courted by the media and the corporate lobbyists who see they are nuts, but use them to their own advantage.  See the Reader's Comment at the end of the article, which tells the real truth of the matter:

Obama Is American as Apple Pie
By Brent Budowsky

Karl Rove is right. The fanaticism of the birther faction of the Republican Party is a curse that could sink the GOP. When polls show that barely 30 percent of all Republicans are convinced that President Obama is a natural born American, this is a level of sickness and weirdness in a major political party that could bring them electoral disaster.

I have not been shy about occasionally criticizing President Obama when I believe it is called for, but:

President Obama is as American as apple pie. He is as American as the nearest red, white and blue flag. He is as Christian as the nearest Protestant church.

Obama succeeded the American way. He studied hard and excelled at school. He rose by winning the respect of his peers. He succeeded the way Americans are supposed to succeed and achieved what he has through intelligence, diligence, ambition and hard work, which is the American way. He is devoted to a loving wife with whom he is raising a loving family.

There is something very wrong and in my view very sick when a large element of a major political party cannot accept the obvious Americanism of an American president, and when certain partisans in that party view nuts like the birthers as a constituency worth courting.

Criticize his policies for sure. But Barack Obama is as American as apple pie, and those who do not accept this are far outside the mainstream of our nation and our tradition as Americans. It is the birthers who need to learn the lesson about what it means to be an American.

Reader's Comment

He's Black - Haven't You Noticed?
Haven't u noticed he's an AFRICAN, Brent? All my GOP pals have and they don't f...ing like it! They want a WHITE guy like GW BU$H back in the WHITE HOUSE. It's called that, they tell me, because it was built to house OLD WHITE guys--not young NEGROES from Kenya or some other non-American place. Plus, haven't u read the Constitution yet--he's only 2/3rds of a person anyway.  Ignore the amendments, they were all written later on when lib'ruls like Abe Lincoln got in power.

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Nothing better than a baby's laughter!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/20/baby-laughs-dog-bubbles_n_851528.html

Baby laughs hysterically at dog eating bubbles...(~.~)

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Just what the Tea Party needs -- another "birther" GOP candidate for President

The perfect candidates for the Republicans: Donald Trump and Charlie Sheen.  Of that choice, which would you prefer? Or maybe together they could be the full ticket, with those two gigantic egos fighting for top place.  What a world! Our forefathers are spinning in their graves.

Daily Kos:

Just moments after not being able to win back custody of his kids from a wife in rehab, Charlie Sheen shocked the world by coyly mentioning he may consider a run at the White House.  “I know I promised this wouldn’t be political, but look where we f—  are, man!” said Sheen. “For one thing, I was born here!”

Sheen – who said he’d pick Nicolas Cage as his running mate, making  it the first-ever ticket based around abusing women – also announced the  fiscal policies he’d support when he became President.

“I would disband the Fed, like, now. … And send the I.R.S. to prison,” said Sheen.

Sheen’s announcement couldn’t come at a better time for the nation’s  media, as now every single network – including obscure cable outlets and  public-access shows – have now interviewed Donald Trump, and written  stories about how amazing it’s been that he has climbed in the polls.   Sheen  has that one special factor that only people like Trump have – he’ll  talk to anyone.

It is time to get Charlie Sheen on all political shows. That way,  next week, the media can be puzzled about why he’s climbing the polls in  the 2012 race for the U.S. Presidency, while others can ponder why political discourse in the U.S. has gone to hell.

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Zahi Hawass: Fake Chamber Scandal

I have never liked this man -- he is so obviously an arrogant authoritarian controller, enjoying his perch at the top of Egypt's antiquities pyramid (pun intended) -- but he is toppling fast.  Look at what he pulled on the public via national TV:
http://newsflavor.com/world/middle-east/dr-zahi-hawass-fake-chamber-scandal/

Read the latest on Hawass's arrest and sentencing to prison for one year at: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread690495/pg1

Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs Zahi Hawass has been sentenced to one year in jail on Sunday for refusing to fulfill a court ruling over a land dispute.

The article goes on to note the court has ordered Hawass be stripped of the ministerial portfolio for antiquities and fined. Will he actually serve any time or will the Egyptian military junta simply overturn the court sentence? My bet is on the latter. If not, what does this mean for Egyptology?

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Statue of Liberty stamp is actually picture of Las Vegas copy

Our country today;  using clip art to make a stamp and getting it wrong:   http://boingboing.net/2011/04/15/usps-accidentally-is.html

Read all about it at: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/ted-rall/35664/stamped-out-the-statue-of-liberty-stamp-error-and-the-end-of-america

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A Bad Year, A Good Year -- all depends, doesn't it?

Two different stories -- light years apart.  This is America today.

LAID-OFF AMERICANS TAKING PAY CUTS, KISSING THEIR OLD LIVES GOODBYE:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/19/trading-down-long-term-unemployed_n_850220.html

On the other hand, IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR for: EXECUTIVE PAY SKYROCKETS 23 PERCENT--TOP 299 CEOS GET 3.4 BILLION   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/19/executive-pay-2010-ceo_n_850975.html

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'Close Encounters: Proof of Alien Contact' - Documentary

This is a very impressive 50-minute video.  If you can find the time to watch it, I think you will find it fascinating.  It is full of documented evidence and credible, informed witnesses/reporters, including astronauts, pilots, a surgeon who has found absolute proof of extra-terrestrial technology embedded in the bodies of some patients, and an engineer who actually worked on the craft.  Much video evidence that really can't be refuted.

http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/page/1292.html    

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Tell-all book about Sarah Palin is on the way

Unfortunately, Blind Allegiance to Palin and Michele Bachmann and all other conservative "leaders" will continue, no matter what negative facts are brought out about them. The people who follow these idiots are the same ones who listen to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh for their marching directions. They don't want truth, they want rants that agree with their already prejudiced views.  No use wasting energy talking to them or trying to inform them of facts.  Still, this book should provide some interesting truths.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — When a book is called "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin," you can guess it's not a happy story.

An imprint of Simon & Schuster announced Monday that it had signed up "Blind Allegiance," a long-rumored tell-all by former Palin aide Frank Bailey.

The imprint, Howard Books, will release Bailey's book May 24. Excerpts from an early draft were leaked to reporters earlier this year.

Bailey worked with Palin while she was governor of Alaska and when she was John McCain's running mate on the Republican presidential ticket in 2008.

Howard Books is calling "Blind Allegiance" a "chilling expose." Author Ken Morris and Alaska political blogger Jeanne Devon helped write the book.

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Wisdom of the Native Americans -- sadly, it didn't "trickle down" to the white man and we are paying the price

The True Peace

The first peace, which is the most important,
is that which comes within the souls of people
when they realize their relationship,
their oneness, with the universe and all its powers,
and when they realize that at the center
of the universe dwells the Great Spirit,
and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.
This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this.
The second peace is that which is made between two individuals,
and the third is that which is made between two nations.
But above all you should understand that there can never
be peace between nations until there is known that true peace,
which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.

~Black Elk, Oglala Sioux & Spiritual Leader (1863 - 1950)


Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.

~Chief Seattle, 1854


Treat all men alike. Give them all the
same law. Give them all an even chance
to live and grow. All men were made by
the same Great Spirit Chief.
They are all brothers. The Earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it....

~Chief Joseph, Nez Perce Leader


Treat the earth well.
It was not given to you by your parents,
it was loaned to you by your children.
We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,
we borrow it from our Children.

~Ancient Indian Proverb


Friend do it this way - that is,
whatever you do in life,
do the very best you can
with both your heart and mind.

And if you do it that way,
the Power Of The Universe
will come to your assistance,
if your heart and mind are in Unity.

When one sits in the Hoop Of The People,
one must be responsible because
All of Creation is related.
And the hurt of one is the hurt of all.
And the honor of one is the honor of all.
And whatever we do effects everything in the universe.

If you do it that way - that is,
if you truly join your heart and mind
as One - whatever you ask for,
that's the Way It's Going To Be.

~passed down from White Buffalo Calf Woman


Cherokee Prayer Blessing

May the Warm Winds of Heaven
Blow softly upon your house.
May the Great Spirit
Bless all who enter there.
May your Moccasins
Make happy tracks
in many snows,
and may the Rainbow
Always touch your shoulder.

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Jon Kyl (GOP Senator): a typical example of Republican flip-flop doublespeak out-and-out LIES

And then, after making blatantly false statements to the world (and, rightly, being publicly ridiculed for it), does a Republican take responsibility and apologize for it?  Of course not!  The Republican way is to always...always...ALWAYS...blame someone else!  They complain about the crushing national debt and lay it all at Obama's feet, conveniently "forgetting" the role played by Cheney/Bush in starting the Iraq war on lies and all their other insane expenses that took a budget surplus (handed to them by the Democrat President Clinton)  and turned it into a horrendous, gigantic deficit. Will they admit that it was their own party leaders who created the deficit in the first place? NEVER! In their blind-eyed vision, it is all someone else's fault.  Jon Kyl, true to the "'don't-blame-me" GOP guidelines set down for all Republicans, follows their "rules" to perfection.  No matter that his false statement on the floor of the Senate was meant to destroy an excellent health-care-giving organization. No matter that its destruction would leave millions of women without any kind of health care. No matter that there are many people in our country ignorant and stupid enough to believe his outrageous lie.  He will not apologize -- and makes a meager attempt to "clarify."

By Jason Linkins

Last week, Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) received a fusillade of criticism when he took to the Senate floor to declare that abortion was "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does." That criticism soon turned to ridicule after his office responded by releasing a statement that said that "his remark was not intended to be a factual statement." Everyone has been making fun of him on Twitter and on late night comedy shows, and it really hurt his feelings. So now, Kyl is "clarifying" himself once again.

Asked if he regretted the flap, Kyl said Thursday: "I misspoke when I said what I said on the floor - and I said so."

But what about the claim that it was "not intended to be a factual statement" when Kyl said 90 percent of Planned Parenthood's services were abortion related?

"That was not me - that was my press person," he said.

Got it. See, when Jon Kyl said a bunch of things that were not true, he obviously had some sort of malfunction in the speech center of his brain. Clearly, what he meant to say was "Three percent of Planned Parenthood's activities are related to abortion, and now that I'm saying this out loud, I forget why I was making such a big deal about it in the first place, so I yield the floor." But an episode of some kind of dysphasia caused him to form entirely different syllables, so while it looked to the world like he was absolutely speaking with perfect clarity of voice and thought, it was all really just a mangled mistake. That observers couldn't see that he was misspeaking is just a terrible coincidence.

Oh, and then some idiot -- "my press person" -- said some even dumber things to CNN, but why was anyone in the news taking the things Jon Kyl's "press person" says seriously, as if his "press person" was somehow authorized to speak to the press, on Jon Kyl's behalf?

So, really, this was everyone else's fault.

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If You Want to Know the Sad but True Facts about the Department of Defense

Read this article (it's enough to make you cry at how corrupt things have become in our government):

I don't believe that the US can make real changes to DoD procurement until we change the financial incentives of the individuals who work in this corrupt system. All other reforms can be deformed, and anyone who does not go along with this system, i.e. the Boy Scout types, are pushed out and most often have their careers destroyed if they don't go along with it. In this column, I will define the problem with the incentives for the people who work in this DoD/contractor system, and in next week's column, I will suggest tough solutions to change the very base of incentives for DoD personnel and the defense contractors.

For those who are interested in digging deeper on how this system got its start since World War II, I would suggest reading journalist Andrew Cockburn's excellent essay in the "Pentagon Labyrinth" called "Follow the Money."

Since I started working on reforming the Pentagon in 1979, I have found one of the most corrupting problems has been the revolving door, the insidious practice where DoD and Congressional personnel go to work for defense contractors or start work at defense contractors and move in and out of the government positions using their influence and inside knowledge to maximize the profits of the defense industry.

I don't believe that the US can make real changes to DoD procurement until we change the financial incentives of the individuals who work in this corrupt system. All other reforms can be deformed, and anyone who does not go along with this system, i.e. the Boy Scout types, are pushed out and most often have their careers destroyed if they don't go along with it. In this column, I will define the problem with the incentives for the people who work in this DoD/contractor system, and in next week's column, I will suggest tough solutions to change the very base of incentives for DoD personnel and the defense contractors.

For those who are interested in digging deeper on how this system got its start since World War II, I would suggest reading journalist Andrew Cockburn's excellent essay in the "Pentagon Labyrinth" called "Follow the Money."

Since I started working on reforming the Pentagon in 1979, I have found one of the most corrupting problems has been the revolving door, the insidious practice where DoD and Congressional personnel go to work for defense contractors or start work at defense contractors and move in and out of the government positions using their influence and inside knowledge to maximize the profits of the defense industry.

The Buying and Selling of the Pentagon
By Dina Rasor

http://www.truthout.org/the-buying-and-selling-pentagon-part-i68883    Part One

http://www.truthout.org/buying-and-selling-pentagon-part-ii                     Part Two

I don't believe that the US can make real changes to DoD procurement until we change the financial incentives of the individuals who work in this corrupt system. All other reforms can be deformed, and anyone who does not go along with this system, i.e. the Boy Scout types, are pushed out and most often have their careers destroyed if they don't go along with it. In this column, I will define the problem with the incentives for the people who work in this DoD/contractor system, and in next week's column, I will suggest tough solutions to change the very base of incentives for DoD personnel and the defense contractors.

For those who are interested in digging deeper on how this system got its start since World War II, I would suggest reading journalist Andrew Cockburn's excellent essay in the "Pentagon Labyrinth" called "Follow the Money."

Since I started working on reforming the Pentagon in 1979, I have found one of the most corrupting problems has been the revolving door, the insidious practice where DoD and Congressional personnel go to work for defense contractors or start work at defense contractors and move in and out of the government positions using their influence and inside knowledge to maximize the profits of the defense industry.

I don't believe that the US can make real changes to DoD procurement until we change the financial incentives of the individuals who work in this corrupt system. All other reforms can be deformed, and anyone who does not go along with this system, i.e. the Boy Scout types, are pushed out and most often have their careers destroyed if they don't go along with it. In this column, I will define the problem with the incentives for the people who work in this DoD/contractor system, and in next week's column, I will suggest tough solutions to change the very base of incentives for DoD personnel and the defense contractors.

For those who are interested in digging deeper on how this system got its start since World War II, I would suggest reading journalist Andrew Cockburn's excellent essay in the "Pentagon Labyrinth" called "Follow the Money."

Since I started working on reforming the Pentagon in 1979, I have found one of the most corrupting problems has been the revolving door, the insidious practice where DoD and Congressional personnel go to work for defense contractors or start work at defense contractors and move in and out of the government positions using their influence and inside knowledge to maximize the profits of the defense industry.

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