Jus Cogens!

Thanks Jo.

“You know, we’re there at their invitation; they’re a sovereign nation.”

That sounds like something Hitler said.

digg

Welcome to the frontpage, JoFish.

Hard to believe the ‘Merkin people would fall for this again. I hate reruns. Hate the original, too.

Those phrases, Bush said, according to the paper,” indicated to people that I was, you know not a man of peace.”

Hey! Welcome JoFish,
will be looking forward to your Sunday posts.

Can’t wait until our national nightmare is over, next January. Sure hope we can keep our missiles clean until then.

That is truly a profound portrait of our Dear Leader.
of course there is this one, too — NSFW, may be offensive, and not for children.

Hey Boo don’t you mean this link??

From your link…

“I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.”

It’s all about the marketing.

Man of peace my ass.

Great post JoFish!

And bush is lobbying Gordon Brown:

U.S. President George W. Bush urged British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Sunday not to set a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

He said in an interview with Britain’s Observer newspaper that the United States and Britain, Washington’s main ally on Iraq, both obviously wanted to bring their troops home but this could only be “based upon success”.

“Our answer is: there should be no definitive timetable,” said Bush, adding he was “appreciative” that Brown was in frequent touch about “what he and his military are thinking”.

If British troops are pulled The Coalition of the Willing is over.
There are 8 of 27 European Union Member States in The Coalition of the Willing and 7 members states have already departed the coalition. Participation in The Coalition of the Willing of European Union Member States have dropped to 29% from a high of 55% reducing the Multi-National Force-Iraq by 53% .

Current EU Members MNFI
United Kingdom 4000
Poland 900
Romania 608
Bulgaria 155
Czech Republic 99
Denmark 50
Estonia 38
Latvia 3
Total 5853

Withdrawn EU Members MNFI
Italy 3200
Netherlands 1345
Spain 1300
Hungary 300
Portugal 128
Lithuania 120
Slovakia 110
Total 6503

http://www.coalitionnumbers.com/

BZ, JoFish!

If you pay attention to their rhetoric, marketing is about all the Rs ever have. They can’t be truthful about their real goals or they wouldn’t even get elected dog catcher anywhere.

So they continually attempt to come up with new ways to package the sh*t.

But it’s still a pile of sh*t when all is said and done.

Here is what the man of peace has wrought:

“Between the white phosphorus and depleted uranium (as reported back in early 2006, as many as 50% of Iraqi cancer patients were under the age of 5 years old. This number from 2006 is up from around 13% just over a decade years earlier.

Brain damage, cleft palate, deformities, cancer, early death, Down’s Syndrome, stillborn babies, miscarriages, heart defects and missing limbs are just some of the “abnormalities” that are being seen at an alarming rate over the past few years, not to mention bodies where the skin basically melted off after exposure to these dangerous and immoral chemical weapons use.”

“”There’s so much pollution from so many sources, your body can’t fight what’s coming at it,” Valentin said. “And you don’t eat well or sleep well, ever. That weakens you, too. There’s no chance to gather your strength. These are kids 19, 20 and 21 getting all kinds of cancers. The Walter Reed cancer ward is packed full with them.”

The prime suspect in all this, in the minds of many victims — and some scientists — is what’s known as depleted uranium — the radioactive chemical prized by the military for its ability to penetrate armored vehicles. When munitions explode, the substance hits the air as fine dust, easily inhaled. “

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…..728/536258

lol, goatse’s law goes to elliott

Yay Jo Fish!!!!

all true, but the “man on the couch”, the “sheeple” just don’t give a rip do they? It takes something like gas going up over $4 or $5 a gal to get a tiny bit of their attention-remember short attention span theater? and to keep their attention thru Nov will require a whole lot more. The sheeple will get used to high gas prices, and will once more turn their attention to what really matters, the NFL, American Gladiator, american idol, ESPN, the World Series, in fact, as long as the sheeple have their cud-beer and pretzels or chips-to chew, and their TV to watch, and their SUV/pickups to drive, then the great american unwashed could care less what the corporate MSM says, they don’t give a rip if the govt becomes a theocratic fascist entity. As long as manditory church service ends before kickoff, they.just.don’t care. 1984 missed it by a few decades, but it is coming soon to a country near you. All hail the new fascist govt. People in wingnuttia land are screaming about the latest SCOTUS decision, they totally believe in authoritarian govt. They are AF’s(authoritarian followers) conditioned over the last 7 years to believe anything that their AL(authoritarian leaders) tell them. Today black is white, tomorrow, white is black. They can believe 6 impossible things before breakfast, as long as it comes from their chosen AL’s.

Preznit CammoDiapers

Best. Bush. Nick. Evah.

Welcome to the front page, Jo Fish!

That made me think of Eliza’s take on him. She is no fan of Mr. Bush.

well… we’ve talked here about his perfidy on foreign policy. I think its useful this weekend to consider the impact of his domestic policies as well. After 8 yrs of doing nothing about global warming, disaster preparedness and infrastructure, he’s just lost another American city. Cedar Rapids is pretty much destroyed. The city’s levees were 12 feet high. The waters crested on Friday at 32′. If you set shrub, cheney, inhofe, and the chairman of ExxonMobil end-on-end head-to-toe on TOP of the levees, the chairman still wouldn’t have managed to get his head above water. 83 of 99 IA counties are now disaster areas. In times of a global food crisis (itself at least partially blameable on shrubbish inaction), 1.3 million acres of corn and 2 million acres of soy bean have been destroyed. This is a whole new ballgame.

“and that we’ve got to work to stop them from learning how to enrich,”….see that is how he’s gonna frame this thing….attack “before” they “learn”….might as blow up the whole world…

Bwahahaha…Gawd, my glasses aren’t quite strong enough because that looks like….why yes, I do believe those are…OMG…707

Blub, you are so right… the neglect of America (the one we all live in) via the infrastructure-killing “tax cuts”, the weather-related destruction of an American City and failure to rebuild it with more than rhetoric surely shows that the failures of this gang of criminals is not just legion, but maybe that’s the leaders name too…

and no, I am not so religious :-) but I did live in Iowa once.

one wonders where he plans to after January, where he can take the time to contemplate his awesome, triple failure as President, as a person, and as a member of the human race.

Congratulations, Jo Fish, on your first front page post at FDL! Great post!

How many Americans have died by the hand of Bushco? I am not talking about the armed forces? Katrina, health care, stress of economy, pollution, or anything else a person can come up with.

He honestly believes that history will exonerate him. You must also remember that all the casualties are nothing more than a bunch of commas. I think he is such an oligarch that he really doesn’t see anything wrong with what is happening to all those who are not of the privileged class.

Thanks for all your kind words!

he has a beautiful mind like his mommie.

sick stuff here

Kristol: McCain And Graham Plan To Introduce Legislation Undermining Supreme Court Decision On Guantanamo
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts. Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wasted no time in publicly blasting the decision, saying they were “disappointed” in “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

This ruling will inevitably lead to a “flood of new litigation” challenging the Bush administration’s right to hold these detainees, only one of whom has received a verdict. Detainees will then finally get a decision as to their status.

Today on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol revealed that “very soon” — likely as early as next week — McCain and Graham will be introducing legislation to undermine the Supreme Court decision by setting up a “national security court”:

the democrats really need to be prepared;

“you are saying, if an person using the cover of office wants to put me out of business, all they have to do is claim I am a terrorist and I am put in jail with no chance of proving you were lying to get my business?”

“you are saying, if my son is raped by one of your depraved officials, all he has to do to avoid prosecution is make believe my son is some kind of terrorist and you don’t want him to be allowed to prove you are making that crap up?”

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE IDIOTS?”

Congratulations, Jo!

Mary, I’ve been reading about the rise in infant mortality here.
‘In 2001 infant mortality was 6.8 deaths per thousand. A year later (2002) it rose to 7 per thousand.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were surprised at the results. They last time infant mortality in the USA went up was in 1958.’
That might be due to older women having multiple births.
But then we see this:
‘In South Carolina, 10.2% of newborns are underweight. That is an increase of .06% in just four years. Infant mortality has increased as well. Per 1,000 births, 9.4% of babies do not live, according to the report.’

Thank you very much.

Hey mods, any chance you could delete my digg link in number two, which unfortunately doesn’t lead to digg.

Where is our MEDIA? Then, of course, if Dana Perino were asked about this abomination, she might say it’s a “good thing.” After all, getting rid of 1200 tons of DU in Iraq means we don’t have to find a storage facility for it here.

Yeah, hmmm let’s see, the NIE said that the Irani’s are not working towards Nukes, but the 1600 Crew was so successful in getting blantant untruths to be believed previously (psssst… Al-Qaeda launched their strike from Iraq, didja hear?) that this has to be child’s play by comparison. And as we all know, we’ve seen this teevee show before. I guess since it’s summer, it’s rerun season

team b youtube

cheney has done this before, he did it in Iraq and he’s doing it in Iran

he forms a “team b” when the professionals in the cia refuse to lie for him he manufactures bullcrap and then makes believe it’s actual data

he did it to nixon to undermine detante;

Last week, Rumsfeld told the press we should be preparing for “the Long War,” saying of the war this administration has stirred up with its attack on Iraq that, “Just as the Cold War lasted a long time, this war is something that is not going to go away.”

The last time Rumsfeld talked like this was in the 1970s, in response to the danger of peace presented by Richard Nixon.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon returned from the Soviet Union with a treaty worked out by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the beginning of a process Kissinger called “détente.” On June 1, 1972, Nixon gave a speech in which he said:

“Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear—for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world.”
But Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford’s Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated? And how could billions of dollars taken as taxes from average working people be transferred to the companies that Rumsfeld and Cheney – and their cronies – would soon work for and/or run?

Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort – first secretly and then openly – to undermine Nixon’s treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear.

They did it by claiming that the Soviets had a new secret weapon of mass destruction that the president didn’t know about, that the CIA didn’t know about, that nobody knew about but them. It was a nuclear submarine technology that was undetectable by current American technology. And, they said, because of this and related-undetectable-technology weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work or have businesses relationships with.

The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld’s position a “complete fiction” and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone.

…

But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good.

Wolfowitz’s group, known as “Team B,” came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn’t depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable with our current technology. It could – within a matter of months – be off the coast of New York City with a nuclear warhead.

And they succeeded in recreating an atmosphere of fear in the United States, and making themselves and their defense contractor friends richer than most of the kingdoms of the world.

this is the most depraved story I have ever read, not only the fact that cheney and rumsfeld got away with it but more so the fact we allowed them to do it to us again

this article was written BEFORE we attacked Iraq with made up crap from cheney, rumsfeld, wolfowitz and company

I think I read a little blurb somewhere on here last week that we essentially have no food reserves left. Bushco has been depleting them and we basically had only 1.3 million bushels of wheat left after sending the rest (about 30 million bushels) somewhere to feed people – oh yeah – that would be Iraq – where we have ‘helped’ the Iraqis so much they are now on food rationing.

With this flood – maybe we can join those lucky Iraqis in the food ration coupon lines.

are they amoral or immoral? does the distinction make any difference?

they have to be stopped.

Thanks for the information.

Peeps – we’ve all got to remember that this crap that Bushco has foisted off on us is not just HIM – but the whole neocon cabal – including all the signatories at the founding of PNAC.

Getting rid of Bush/Cheney will NOT get rid of the problem. We need to identify ALL of them and root them out and stomp out their programs and their ideology by exposing it to the sunlight and repeating over and over – this is not America. This is not America. This is not America.

they are socioplaths, they are both

Amoral means they have no morals.
Immoral means they have some but are working against them – deliberately.

I really don’t know which is worse.

Do you think the media would pay attention if the dead, maimed, tortured, sick, starving people that Bushco is responsible for, were DOGS, they would report it???? You bet they would.

Only if they live here. If they live anywhere else, not so much.

I’d say! To me, the distinction is immaterial. The destruction and danger are real.

Maybe the neocons are holding McCain and Graham’s BFF relationship over their heads…jump…and they say “how high”…or else..

John McCain is one of them. He doesn’t like anyone to notice – but he is. Somehow, he became one of them after the 2000 election.

Wonder what the neocons are holding over his head?????

Yeah, they wouldn’t feel sorry for islamobamofascist dogs.

That’s not it – I think there is evidence that McCain was not ‘tortured’ the way he likes to paint it – his North Vietnamese nickname is “songbird”.

The Forrestal incident has all kinds of questions around it as well. He was the only ‘wounded’ person transferred off the Forrestal after the fire – the rest were taken care of in the ship’s hospital. Hmm.

Wonder what the neocons are holding over his head?????

they are seducing him with power, and eternal wealth for his family

the real question is what are they holding over nancy’s head and they must be holding something powerful

it might not even be personal, it might be blackmail in the form of a threat;

“pick a city for our “terrorist attack” if you set that table”

and yes, they are sociopaths, I do not put that past them

Wonder what the neocons are holding over his head?????

mr. mccain, what did you tell them when they tortured you, would you say that torture was effective and you revealed information that you should not have?

John McCain is one of them… he became one of them after the 2000 election.
Wonder what the neocons are holding over his head?????

He went willingly, and he went earlier than the 2000 election…

http://www.truthdig.com/report…..r_america/

John McCain’s connection to PNAC can be traced back to before its formation in 1997.  In fact, he was president of the New Citizenship Project, founded by Kristol in 1994. This organization was parent to PNAC, and served as its chief fundraising organ.

Although it sounds like a good way to hack at McCain, the reality is that any attacks on his service record will backfire. Badly.

There are many many many reasons in his years in congress, his flip flops, and his general voting record that are more than enough to take him down.

Attacks on his service record, no matter how seemingly justified to some, become a version of “swift boating” and will seem to most of the voting, low-info folks as a pay back against Kerry, lies included. The attacks will not be believed and will make McCain seem far more sympathetic than he deserves to be held.

So…McCain’s position is that if you are detained and confined for five plus years..and you are a “foreigner”….it is his opinion that you should have no right to be presented with the reasons and evidence to validate that detention. That to give that person the human dignity of the right to challenge the “jailer” is the “worst decision” ever made.

Ummmm….McConfused….that would be YOU….you were the foreigner detained by a government for five years with no recourse.

McConfused is a bumbling idiot.

Although it sounds like a good way to hack at McCain, the reality is that any attacks on his service record will backfire. Badly.

there is no reason to attack his record but we absolutely must attack his position condoning torture

And that is fine. But attacking him for what he may or may not have done while a POW or while on the Forestal is attacking his service record.

Hey Jo Fish! Congratulations and welcome!

So…McCain’s position…it is his opinion that you should have no right to be presented with the reasons and evidence to validate that detention.

but that’s not the best way to frame the discussion;

“it is his opinion that if a depraved official wants to steal a mans business or wife, all they have to do is make believe the man is a terrorist and that person would have no right to prove they are being framed by depraved criminals”

that puts a real face on what is being discussed

Whu’d dubya say, “This is hard work.” {?}

Wellll, YEAH BUDubya! Heap a thanks to that gang ya got there.

I bet the emperator can’t even remember, nor does he care, why he ran for office in the 1st place.

And, agreed, the enablers at every level are every bit as deserving of blame and … Oh HEQQ, if there ARE any books left, throw ALL of em at the whole bunch of scum.

Some of these idiots run around deciding in public who among the populace are true “believers” and who are not.

HOW can they POSSIBLY have a CLUE what that means?!

I am a secular humanist believer, pretty much. Which makes for a pretty danged compassionate heathen, when ya think about it.

junior & wrong-way-shooter & that whole gang of thieves? their combined sense of morality wouldn’t even fill up the eye of my sewing needle.

Those in government who truly have any moral compass remaining in their brains and hearts OWE it to this country and the rest of the world to work WITH people like us to turn these idiots around in their tracks before they trash the whole world.

magna c Biologist. Advanced degree. Published. NO SNARK!

Hellloooooo Reid and Pelosi and all who came in with ye!

We’re HERE. We’re READY. We’ll HELP. PLEASE HELP US HELP!

We have ONE planet. ONE. It’s interconnected, oddly enough.

ONE. SMALL. FRAGILE. PLANET.

The Forrestal incident had nothing to do with McCain directly. He happened to be sitting in an A-4 waiting to launch, when the conflagration started. The incident that started it changed the way that ordnance was handled on carrier flight decks to this day, and was the subject of extensive review and investigation.

McCain’s POW tenure was a man doing his duty as an American Naval Officer, no more no less. Casting aspersions on his service while there is not worthwhile, and I am certainly no McCain supporter not now, not tomorrow, not ever. There are plenty of other things to target; his public record is full of stuff from Keating Five to Cindy Lou’s drug-diversion cover-up and more that are all “fair-game” in this race.

Additionally his love of ultra-authoritarianism is slowly starting to wake up even the most comatose moderates who do vote… his upcoming stand on the recent Supreme Court decision with his BFF Huckleberry Graham is likely to raise more than eyebrows… it’s likely to be a source of funding for Dems this year…

he needs to be asked without attacking then, “while you were tortured, were those torturing you able to gather useful information”

that is a question he cannot answer and continue to support torutre

JoFish
Nice to see you on the front page. And a great post. Thanks

It’s still a line of questioning and attack that would rebound against the questioner. No matter how much it would highlight the discrepancy in his positions, it would be perceived as attacking his patriotism.

Imagining what a memoir by president Eddie Haskell (or rather Karen Hughes or someone similar) would read like is causing a simultaneous urge to run for the antacids, laugh in hysteria or pound my head on the floor.

I guess my point is that he’s been a victim of the very thing he’s condoning.

I did not say that I wanted to attack his service record. I’m just trying to figure out why he went from being a “true maverick” to this Bush clone. Most people think it happened sometime after the 2000 election, but I see that information is not correct (h/t njr83).

As far as the torture stuff – attacking his POSITION on torture now is NOT an attack on his service record. As someone who ostensibly HAS been tortured – he should be violently opposed – and in the past he was. He has now flip-flopped on that issue – and it DESERVES to be attacked.

I’m not totally convinced McSame even remembers what he’s said from one day to the next. That is NOT a reason to elect someone to high office. imho

That’s already happened.

Look how that worked out.

Some republicans still with a few operant brain cells had better wake up and realize what’s happening while we still have a chance to pull this planet outta the dumpster it’s headed toward.

I think voters are beginning to get the idea.

Why are politicians and MSM so slow to understand?

All the closeted information, cushy job possibilities, cool deal off-shore tax-free havens. NONE of this will make the slightest difference if they play this wrong.

Even the children’s children are getting angry.

Someone needs to tell the formerly ruling class to turn up their hearing aids and look out the window.

Dave Neiwert upstairs with some good attacks on McCain and his two (or more) faces.

hey, Jo.

Hey, Julia

Bush ran for office to transfer as much wealth to the ultra-rich as possible in eight years. The military complex is raking in big buck; the private military corporations write their own contracts; CEOs of big corporations have almost quit paying taxes; the oil companies are awash in profits; the drug companies have never been richer; and, the top 1% own most of the country. If Bush had his way, he would eliminate the inheritance tax so that the rich could keep their wealth forever.

Meanwhile, the rest of us share a national debt that will limit the progressive agenda of President Obama. Bombing Iran will add to the debt and make the military corporations richer still.

Only the idiots will vote Republican again, but, if the Cheney-voting-machines tally the vote, we will have four more years or McBush.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, McClatchey is doing a 5 day series called Guantanamo Beyond the Law. It will end on Thursday. Here are the topics and a link.

ABOUT THIS SERIES
An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.
Today: We got the wrong guys
Coming Monday: ‘I guess you can call it torture’
Tuesday: A school for Jihad
Wednesday: ‘Due process is legal mumbo-jumbo’
Thursday: ‘You are the king of this prison’
READ THE EVIDENCE
Browse an archive of documents obtained by McClatchy in the course of this investigation.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/

jofish!!! woohoo.. late to the party but still celebrating

I’ve seen statements recently from the Iraqi rump government maintaining the pretense that U.S. forces are there by invitation, indicating that they’d overstayed their welcome. Granted the government is not legitimate and depends on the U.S. forces to stay in power. It’s a double-bind.

What do Our Beloved and Glorious Leader and Hillary Clinton have in common??

—They both share one key block of voters – voters who ALWAYS vote. Year after freakin year- they’re there.

—-These voters are VALUES VOTERS – they value beer and french fries and little neato colored things off the Big Gulp counters to glue on your car or stick in yer hat or on yer clothing and who think the guy with a book in his hand is more evil than the guy with the chainsaw because the guy with the chainsaw looks more like them.

And when the guy with the chainsaw is done with them all, and their lives lay in ruins, do ya think they might look back and reflect on maybe they shoulda picked the guy with the book in his hand instead??

NO. They won’t. At least not in any great numbers. But just enough will. This time a few of them will allow the new guy in. And if it works, if the new guy is honest and genuine, next time the numbers could be downright amazing.