Yes, but 911

Read Osama bin Laden’s last statement before the Bamster’s Immaculation. He’s still threatening us more than ever.

And just what does Rudy have to offer but fear itself?

So perhaps the question, Dame Rudy, should be, why did the Bush administration release the “worst of the worst” without any trials so that they could go and return to terrorism and kill again?

-G

And yest Rudy, it is “very strange” that this news breaks on the same day that President Obama made his announcement. It is very strange indeed.

-G

Oh… I have not missed seeing that ugly mug. Is it just coincidence that HE reappears as the gang up in Albany looks like the Keystone Kops?

And the NYT’s piece by Worth appears to be based on an internet statement by a group claiming he’s a leader and “confirmation” by an anonymous US official. How convenient, the day after Obama signs a few pieces of paper changing things, we get this. It’s going to take a long, long time to houseclean the intelligence agencies.

I wonder how long the NYT was holding this story for publication at just the right time.

I hear out West, the aspens should be turning.

Duh, I thought the great protector kept us safe. Bombings of embassies? I thought that only happened when Clinton was pres. /s

I just wrote Robert Frost the reporter of the NY Times prior to reading this:

“To: Robert Worth
From the Pentagon: You have done your job well grasshopper.

Was the evidence against him faulty like so many others?
Did the accusations of his involvement prior to being captured survive scrutiny? Why was he captured — did someone being tortured by the US name him? Was he named by another competeing tribe in the region to get award money we were offering at the time? Did the torture at Guantanamo, that is now acknowledged by government officials, lead him into terrorism? What happens in the Saudi rehabilitation program — more torture? How many other released prisoners have found their way to Al Qaeda? How many have not? How many contribute their allegiance to Al Qaeda because of the treatment they received while being in custody of the US?

This article cares nothing of these answers but only to stoke the issue that these people should be held indefinitely with no trial. This is a propaganda piece pure and simple.

For the record, after hearing what we did to these prisoners, no matter what happens to them, they will be an enemy of the US no matter what their feelings toward the US were prior to being captured and tortured. That has been the argument against torture from the very beginning but government syncophants in the media killed this argument and contributed such thoughts to the scary liberal left. You reap what you sow Mr. Worth.”

We’re trying to remember who did the deconstruct over the “61″ Gitmo fighters the wingers are saying returned to battle.

Think it was either Olbermann or Maddow who went through the list and found it included journalists making a documentary, double counting, at least one person who had never been at Gitmo, and the poor Uighars.

Anybody?

Very good question!

Scarface is going to work against us every step of the way. Fortunately not many people watch him.

Rudy knows what he’s talking about when it comes to very, very strange.

After all, he oversaw putting the NYC Emergency Command Center in the World Trade Center — and Rudy did so over the objections of the NYPD.

Very, very strange indeed. That’s Rudy for you.

Not to mention our lovely GOP/Media Complex that aids and abets these clowns.

The wingnuts are running around screaming that the terrorist will be wandering the streets of Cleavland or Tampa killing Americans if we move gitmo detainees to US soil.

Who said that if and when they release them they would be released to the general population here?

First, why anyone takes Rudy “let’s put city emergency headquarters next to the number one terrorist target” Guiliani seriously on this stuff is beyond me.

Second, I am somewhat amused that people are worried about terrorists entering US prisons. Is there some epidemic of maximum security prison escapes of which I am not aware?

But the kicker for me is that this extra-legal system Bush set up with virtually no thought at all has led to precisely these issues, and yet it is President Obama who has made us less safe.

Bleah.

Since when did reality need to be a part wingnut speak?

Righto. What Guiliani doesn’t know about protecting against terrorism would fill volumes.

i call him KILLER JOE

The company wingnut was saying that in the lunch room the other day. I just told him “they’re going to move ‘em in next door to you.” I think the most effective way to argue with wingnuts is to just laugh at them.

Thanks Jane.

digg is open.

My first guess upon seeing this story was that al Qaida made it up. If people believe the story, there will be pressure to keep Gitmo open. It’s a supremely effective recruiting tool, and they don’t want to lose the propaganda advantage.

Gosh, I had no idea that released Guantánamo detainees accounted for such a huge proportion of troop deaths and acts of world terrorism.
Good thing no one else is being recruited by Al-Quaeda.

Well done, thank you.

Found the Rachel Maddow – Mark Denbeaux, Seton Hall Law – “Return to Battle”

Youtube

here is KILLER JOEs theme song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty_9HVeFJ9M

rip Laurie

rudy’s claim argues against quantanimo in the first place, facilities like this promote terrorism not impede the tactic

911ulianni.
a little man in search of a balcony.

I have to laugh at them…… since Obama took our Governor Arizona has become a cesspool of wingnuts without our fail safe to protest us from their radical ideas….

why wasn’t this brought during the time it occurred?? like uh i dont know……. during bushco regime!!!! i mean WTF!!!! ohh i get it now – dem in office MSM balls out of hock……………

Made the Rachel 61 video into a diary. Let us count the ways.

Really? Did 61 Gitmo Prisoners “Return to Battle”?

Rudy, it was George W. Bush who released these people. Not President Obama.

Why aren’t you pissed at Bush sowing letting killers free?

Fucking loser.

-G

Exactly. Why didn’t they try him in a regular court instead of torturing him in Guantanamo and strengthening his resolve before releasing him? Or even, why didn’t they just kill him? Surely they could have done that secretly without anyone knowing and would have been easier than defending all their actions and getting into this mess in the first place. I mean, I’m not condoning it, but I’m sure the Giuliani’s and Cheney’s of the world would have no problem killing him if they had no problem torturing him. So why didn’t they do it? They bungled it from the start.

The NYTimes is still publishing? What a shame.

And the fact remains that Michael Fortier and Terry Nichols, terrorists who attacked and killed Americans on American soil, are in federal prisons and no one is saying that it isn’t safe to keep them there.

Someone set us up the Rudy!

To be fair, the article was more about why it’s not easy to close Gitmo, rather than making Obama look weak. It was still a dumb article. I could have mentioned why he released, or that Bush released him, or, as others have said, it could have substantiated the thesis of the article with some evidence.

It’s important to remember that 9/11 Rudy still owns a chunk of Giuliani Partners a security consulting firm and he is probably just drumming up business.

I looked up the company in wiki and this caught my eye:

In July 2008, Giuliani Partners announced it was diversifying via the creation of a real estate investment fund, would target foreign investors who wanted to capitalize on the weak dollar to invest in New York and Washington real estate

Apparently the idea was to make a killing on cheap post-bubble properties but this was put together just a month or month and a half before Lehman went splat on September 15, 2008 kicking off the financial meltdown and the freezing of credit on which this scheme so obviously depended. Bad luck there, Rudy. Of course, being on top of all these developments, you no doubt saw it coming. Bwaahaaa!

OT: Forbes has published its list of the top 25 most influential liberals — list below. Here is Glenzilla’s comment:

On an unrelated note: Forbes has a list of what it calls “The 25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media,” and it illustrates quite well why I find these labels far more obfuscating than anything else. Any political term that supposedly encompasses Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman, Bill Moyers and me (#18) — along with the likes of Maureen Dowd, Christopher Hitchens, Chris Matthews, Tom Friedman and Fred Hiatt — is not a term that has any meaning. In fact, if I had to create my own list of the 25 Most Noxious Media Figures in the U.S., it would include several of the people on that list, including most if not all of the names in between those hyphens above (classifying everyone as a “liberal” who isn’t Rush Limbaugh is one of the critical tools for maintaining the myth of the Liberal Media). Notably, the Forbes list — compiled by “canvassing the views of more than 100 academics, politicians and journalists” — contains numerous individuals primarily known as “bloggers” (in fact, almost 1/3 of the list: 8 of the 25).

And here is the actual list:
1. Paul Krugman
2. Arriana Huffington
3. Fred Hiatt
4. Thomas Friedman
5. Jon Stewart
6. Oprah Winfrey
7. Rachael Maddow
8. Joshua Micah Marshall
9. David Shipley
10. Markos mouloitsas Zuniga
11. Fareed Zakaria
12. Chris Matthews
13. Bill Moyers
14. Christopher Hitchens
15. Maureen Dowd
16. Matthew Yglesias
17. Hendrick Hertzberg
18. Glenn Greenwald
19. Andrew Sullivan
20. Gerald Seib
21. James Fallows
22. Ezra Klein
23. Kevin Drum
24. Kurt Andersen
25. Michael Polan

Why is it that after a news story about some EO that Obama signed the next thing they do is interview some Republican on the subject? Why aren’t they interviewing a Democrat to get their views?

Guiliani’s timing seems to be impeccable. A perfect reverse indicator.

On another subject, do you remember those posts a couple of weeks ago that had the horizontal bar charts show something like the multipliers of various types of fiscal stimulus? I went looking for them last night but couldn’t find any. I think there were 2 or 3 that used the same chart, and one of which would work for my current purpose.

I’d like to see Zbigniew Brzezinski become a regular on the program.

I think Conyers and a few others on the Hill might put Christy Hardin Smith and Jane Hamsher on that list somewhere, after the power they have to get the phones ringing in Congressional offices.

NPR reporting that Patrson will name Gillibrand in a news conference at noon ET.

Type Giuliani in your google box now. You don’t have to leave this page. Just type in Giuliani and see what scrolls down. Giuliani is a joke.

WRT one facet of Rudy’s bullshit diamond:

As Bob Cesca has pointed out, nobody is pushing to immediately release all of Guantanamo’s inmates; instead, they will be transferred to other prison facilities while they receive the due process that was denied them for so many years.  Furthermore, as studies by Seton Hall and Amnesty International have shown, the vast majority of the detainees are almost certainly innocent.  Why should Rudy and the other torturemongers fear due process that would prove this?

here we go again a noun a verb and 9/11

Was one of them Willy Horton?

Why should Rudy and the other torturemongers fear due process that would prove this?

The RWNFs need their “bogeyman” to excite their meager numbers of supporters and to avoid having to come up with actual ideas on/with which to run.

We know that all the wingnuts have to offer is: be afraid, be very afraid. We also know that the Ds have been too dumb to stand up to that kind of fearmongering. Obama has made some effort to do so in his inaugural speech. Let’s see if he continues to slap down the fear meme.

Digby wrote this. It’s from a Talkleft archive:

Giuliani came into office in 1994, shortly after the first WTC attack. He gave Motorola a sweetheart, no-bid contract for radios. When the NYFD got them, they didn’t work and they had to be reissued the same radios that had proved inadequate in 1993.

On September 11th, the firefighters didn’t hear the warnings to get out of the buildings. The cops heard them. They mostly got out. Their radios could get the right frequency. The firefighters’ old radios couldn’t.

Why was nothing done to improve FDNY radio performance for seven years after a clear need was demonstrated in the 1993 World Trade Center attack?

When new radios were finally ordered, why did the city block other companies besides Motorola from bidding on the contract?

Once Motorola was given the contract, why did its cost jump from $1.4 million to $14 million?

Why were these new radios never tested?

Eric Goia is the New York City councilman with authority to call for the investigation.

There’s more background on Rudy’s five 9/11 lies here. And it’s not just the radios.

thomas friedman is a libbrullll?

A little googling,

http://firedoglake.com/2009/01…..rinciples/

The chart is half way down the page.

It’s clear that Forbes doesn’t understand the notion of “liberal” in the sense that people on the left do. Similarly, they don’t undestand the notion of “influence” from that group.

The nutters and their enablers are throwing everything against the wall as fast as they can in hopes that something will stick. They cannot allow Obama to get two weeks momentum into his Presidency. They need to put him on the defensive ASAP. That is what this is all about, and for several reasons. Wingnuttia obviously. But the press have a stake in it, too. If they can’t get his administration on the ropes, and soon, they lose what power they had as gatekeepers. The elite want to break his momentum, too. That’s what these stories are all aiming for.

Of course, Obama gamed this move out months if not years ago. You’d have to be an idiot not to see it coming.

i’m more afraid of rudy and cheney than of “foreign” terrorists.

And Christopher Hitchens is best described as “a recovering Trotskyite.”

OT

more re Gillibrand.
interesting.

wigwam @ 41, THANK YOU!

This isn’t a graph but has similar info:

http://firedoglake.com/2009/01…..o-the-job/

Thanks. Do you know I even scanned that post, but gave up before I got to the part I was looking for!

thomas friedman is a libbrullll?

Oh, yeah. And at 4′10″ and 111 lbs., I’m Ghengis Khan! That’s about the right comparison!

Thanks again.

I went to the NY Assn of Economists “forecasting” lunch yesterday, and the material presented was dreck. Just wanted to make the point that the blogs are better at this sort of thing than what Wall St. economists have to offer these days. Your links have been emailed to the person who set up the meeting.

All the Liberals I know are big proponents of Freidman’s Flat Earth with it’s oursourced jobs and Tom’s big ol’ can o’ Whip Ass on the Global Poor. /s

What the MSM does not get is how Obama keeps making end runs by going directly to the people by network time, emails and the social networking. I have a feeling that Obama will not allow the gatekeepers….

Seriously there are quite a few of the names on that list I don’t recognize. How influential can someone be if I, and I’m betting a lot here, don’t even know the name? And Forbes is making this list? How idiotic is that? It’s about as objective as asking William Kristol or David Brooks to come up with the authoritative list of liberals. It is just silly.

I’m trying to wean the prez of SUNY-New Paltz off of Friedman, by sending him links to Taibbi’s reviews of Friedman. I’m making some headway, but it’s tough. And the man in question is an economist, Princeton-Harvard. No accounting for it. He is otherwise a great guy.

Liberals also love those great 1970’s walrus mustachios. Pretty soon they’ll be called retro and cool, if Freidman and Bolton wait long enough.

Matt Taibi is also not a big fan of Friedman: http://www.nypress.com/article…..-that.html

I still haven’t figured this out. Are we supposed to keep the people in Gitmo until they die? Even if they are innocent?

Liberal’s favorite Friedman quote (referring to Iraq) is of course, “Suck On This!” *

*actual Influential Liberal Tom Friedman quote.

An excellent project.

I’d like to put together a list of articles that debunk Friedman, including especially all of Glenn Greenwald’s, Taibbi’s, and many others I’ve read.

For some reason, Friedman is able to project a gravitas and an unctious sincerity, especially when he’s talking to Charlie Rose, that is very seductive for well-read and well-meaning who lack the interest to connect the dots, i.e., to notice that Friedman is full of shit.

Taibi hits Friedman starting with his writing skills/syntax and just hits every point pretty much calling him idiot over and over again. It was pretty funny reading it and how he ripped Friedman and his writing……

After all what connection to the real world does Friedman have when he lives in a 114,000 sqft mansion and married to another money bags wife…..

fantastic title, Jane.

I can haz propaganda? sur.

Rudy figures that if Obama drops the ball on terrorism and suffers some embarassment- Rudy will be there to catch the presidency.

Re the Forbes list here via some quick googling is a little bio info on the more obscure names. I think this has to be a put on. I wonder what Jane’s reaction would be to Fred Hiatt of WaPo infamy being in the number 3 slot.

1. Paul Krugman
2. Arriana Huffington
3. Fred Hiatt editorial page editor of The Washington Post
4. Thomas Friedman
5. Jon Stewart
6. Oprah Winfrey
7. Rachael Maddow
8. Joshua Micah Marshall
9. David Shipley deputy editor for Op-Ed at the NYT
10. Markos Mouloitsas Zuniga
11. Fareed Zakaria
12. Chris Matthews
13. Bill Moyers
14. Christopher Hitchens
15. Maureen Dowd
16. Matthew Yglesias
17. Hendrick Hertzberg senior editor and staff writer at The New Yorker, where he frequently writes the opening Comment in The Talk of the Town
18. Glenn Greenwald
19. Andrew Sullivan for TIME magazine, a columnist for the Sunday Times of London and senior editor at The New Republic
20. Gerald F. Seib is assistant managing editor and executive Washington editor of The Wall Street Journal, and a regular commentator on Washington news for Fox
21. James Fallows National Correspondent for The Atlantic
22. Ezra Klein staff writer at The American Prospect
23. Kevin Drum blogger at Mother Jones
24. Kurt Andersen novelist Heyday and Turn of the Century
25. Michael Polan, not sure about this last one. Michael Pollan is a professor of journalism at Berkeley who writes on food mostly The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Let’s not sully the name of Trotsky by comparing that asshat Hitchens to him, please.

Did you catch Glenn Greenwald’s reaction– see #41.

LOL!

sorry, but librulls aren’t actually THAT WRONG almost ALL OF THE TIME!!!

And MODO???? Really?????

Eliminating the dreck from the list:

1. Paul Krugman
2. Arriana Huffington
5. Jon Stewart
6. Oprah Winfrey
7. Rachael Maddow
8. Joshua Micah Marshall
10. Markos Mouloitsas Zuniga
13. Bill Moyers
16. Matthew Yglesias
18. Glenn Greenwald
22. Ezra Klein staff writer at The American Prospect
23. Kevin Drum blogger at Mother Jones

If you take out the more media personalities, you end up with

1. Paul Krugman
2. Arriana Huffington
7. Rachael Maddow
8. Joshua Micah Marshall
10. Markos Mouloitsas Zuniga
13. Bill Moyers
16. Matthew Yglesias
18. Glenn Greenwald
22. Ezra Klein staff writer at The American Prospect
23. Kevin Drum blogger at Mother Jones

And why would Maddow a relatively new figure make the list and Olbermann not? Why would Yglesias make the list and Atrios not? The word lame comes to mind.

Saw the comment. Will go to the post, thanks.

Has the dog previously acted in a way that should have put the owner on notice of the dog’s inclination to bite? If this level of knowledge cannot be established, the owner may still be liable if the owner was violating a law intended to protect the public, like a leash law, at the time the injuries were sustained. Such a violation is considered “negligence per se.” Where negligence per se cannot be established, the issue becomes whether the injuries came as a result of the owner’s negligence. For example, an abused dog is more likely to bite a person, even if the dog has never done so before. The negligent act of abusing the dog can give rise to the owner’s liability.

One last comment on this stupid list. Do you notice that not a single politician is on it? The funniest omission in this regard is the non-appearance of one Barack Obama. Is this atacit admission by Forbes that they realize that he isn’t liberal?

On an unrelated note: Forbes has a list of what it calls “The 25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media,” and it illustrates quite well why I find these labels far more obfuscating than anything else. Any political term that supposedly encompasses Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman, Bill Moyers and me (#18) — along with the likes of Maureen Dowd, Christopher Hitchens, Chris Matthews, Tom Friedman and Fred Hiatt — is not a term that has any meaning. In fact, if I had to create my own list of the 25 Most Noxious Media Figures in the U.S., it would include several of the people on that list, including most if not all of the names in between those hyphens above

Not to mention that to be a Liberal, one must first be okay with being defined as one.

Probably half the people on that list would challenge you to a fist fight if you called them “Liberal” to their face.

I hope we find so much push back to these folks who are willing to undermine Obama/progress at every step. Slime Laura can only spit the Obama name out of her mouth, and Rush is of course “shameless”. I do not want to reach their level in the crapissimo dept, but I do want facts and ongoing demonstration of what a disaster their Child King et al. have given us.

Haven’t seen you in awhile. Glad you’re back. :)

And why would Maddow a relatively new figure make the list and Olbermann not?

Wow, I didn’t catch that glaring omission!

Love him or hate him, but he’s top 5 easy.

Thanks! It’s good to be missed.

Count me “in” as an Underminer of the Bamster Omissaiyuh…the man who never ran anything is in the process of dissembling what little effectiveness we have.

“Saudi rehabilitation program”

Doesn’t this have ‘The Onion’ written all over it?

I think it’s like slamming Barbra Streisand at the Oscars. Or something. They left KO off just to get his goat.

BTW I was treated to a commercial on our local Air America station for Rudy 911’s motivational speaking event with Zig Ziglar. gak! It was too funny.

Rudy who?

Good luck in your undermining efforts (not). It takes much more energy and talent to build up and create than to stand on the side and complain or tear down. Enjoy your drool.