Hot Potato Mash

Timeline: John McCain Does NOT Support The Troops

DEMOCRATS COLLUDING WITH BUSH TO GUT 4th AMENDMENT TO COVER THEIR OWN CULPABILITY

That's right folks. Democrats will pass a Bill in the House tomorrow that will eviscerate the 4th Amendment and grant after the fact immunity to lawbreaking corporations in an effort to cover their own asses. Is it possible to get any more craven?

To put this law in context, even the Republican controlled Congress couldn't get this legislation passed. But now that the Dem leadership has been exposed to have had knowledge about the Bush administration's illegal spying on Americans (and did nothing), Dems are jumping at the bit to coverup their actions.

And just where o where is Barack Obama? As the Democratic Party leader all he need do is make a simple phone call telling Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to shelve the destruction of the 4th Amendment until after the election. Yet, despite his repeated claims to be adamantly opposed to this legislation and for the rule of law, he remains dead silent. Nice leadership.

Face it people, unless Barack Obama changes course by tomorrow he will prove himself to just another politician. And the right wing noise machine will be able to rightfully claim that Obama is all rhetoric and no substance.

PLEASE CALL THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN AND TELL THEM TO KILL THIS BILL BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE: (866) 675-2008 [Dial 6, then 0, on the menu]

Keith Olbermann

KEITH OLBERMANN INTERVIEWS SCOTT MCCLELLAN

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

SIEGELMAN-GATE

Today's Keith Olbermann segment of BUSHED! - The 50 running scandals of the Bush administration - included... 

3. Siegelman-Gate
2. Blackwater-Gate
1. You do realize they are making this up about Iran-Gate

Technorati Tags: Blackwater, bush, countdown, Don Siegelman, iran, Keith Olbermann, Bushed!

THE BADA BING CLUB - ABSOLUTE MUST WATCH - SERIOUSLY

The first video is the ABC News investigative report, “The Principals”, which tells the story of how the highest ranking Bush admin officials - Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Powell (not such a good guy after all), Rice and Cheney - had meetings in the White House where they literally choreographed how prisoners would be tortured.

The second video is Countdown's Keith Olbermann interviewing constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley who was fairly clear about what all of this means:

“Well this is one meeting of principal, they are not talking about the Ali kind. And what you have is a bunch of people talking about something that is a crime for those of us that look at the criminal code and see torture for what it is. This is like meeting at The Bada Bing Club. These people are sitting around, regularly talking about something defined as a crime. And you even have John Ashcroft standing up and saying, ”Maybe we shouldn't be talking about this at the White House“. Obviously that is quite disturbing. It shows that this was a program, not just some incident, not just someone going too far, it was a torture program, implemented by the United States of America and approved at the very highest level. And it goes right to the President's desk.

And it's notable that this group wanted to get lawyers to sign off on this and they found those lawyers in people like Jay Bybee and John Yoo and those people were handsomely rewarded. In Bybee's case he became a federal judge after signing off on a rather grotesque memo that said that they could do everything short of causing organ failure or death.”

All of which makes Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and Cheney - WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS!

Technorati Tags: bush, cheney, CIA, fascism, interview, national security, olbermann, rumsfeld, torture, video

'BUSH ORDERED WAR CRIMES'

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley: “It really is amazing because Congress, including the Democrats, have avoided any type of investigation into torture because they do not want to deal with the fact that the President ordered war crimes. But evidence keeps on coming out - the only thing we don’t have is a group picture with a detainee attached to electrical wires. I mean every time we see more evidence we have more and more high ranking people at the scene of this crime. And what you get from this is that this was a premeditated and carefully orchestrated torture program. Not torture, but a torture program.”

“Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law” (Marjorie Cohn)

Technorati Tags: olbermann, Jonathan Turley, torture

OBAMA MORE ELECTABLE THAN HILLARY SAYS EVERYONE

When informed by Governor Bill Richardson (D-NM) that he was endorsing Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton allegedly responded, “He cannot win, Bill. He cannot win.” Clinton chief strategist Mark Penn also said last month that Obama “can't win the general election”.

It would seem that the Clinton Camp, like the Bush administration before it, has officially left the “reality-based community”. As the video (0:45) above makes clear, just about everyone and their mothers believes that Barack Obama stands a far greater chance of beating John McCain in November than Hillary Clinton.

And, as my posts below indicate, this has been the case for many moons:

• Hillary Is Literally The GOP Candidate Of Choice (For Now) (03/18/08)
• CNN, GOP, HILLARY SUPPORTERS GANGING UP ON OBAMA (03/06/08)
• VIDEO MASHUP: Why Does Bush Favor Hillary Over Obama? (02/11/08)
• ELECTABILITY IS EVERYTHING (02/03/08)
• Can Barack Obama Overcome Karl Rove, Republicans, Hillary, CNN, Wolf, ABC, George And The Mainstream Media (12/04/07)

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, McCain, olbermann

Keith Olbermann: Special Comment On Hillary's Campaign

VIDEOS: Bill O'Reilly Targets Mark Cuban In Latest Joseph McCarthy Act

Who needs Joseph McCarthy when you have Bill O'Reilly? O'Reilly's latest and greatest victim is Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban who, according to O'Reilly, should be imprisoned.

The original attack came Monday night, undoubtedly because Mark Cuban called the demagogue a “moron” in response to a Brad Friedman question at BlogWorld last week.

A mashup (5:08) of O'Reilly's attacks on Cuban on Tuesday.

Keith Olbermann puts the O'Reilly smears in context.

KO interviews conservative constitutional lawyer, Bruce Fein, about the legal b.s. being spewed by Bill-O.

UPDATE: O'REILLY ATTACKS CUBAN FOR THIRD STRAIGHT DAY

O'Reilly brings Dennis Miller into the ring to further his attacks on Mark Cuban.

MSNBC's Dan Abrams smacks O'Reilly good in just a half a minute (0:41).

UPDATE 2: KO KO's Fox 'News' and O'reilly

Brad has more.

Cheney's Chief Of Staff David Addington Is Today's Worst Person In The World

Keith Olbermann Special Comment - War Today, War Tomorrow, War Forever

So sad and so true. Olbermann catches George W. Bush in a lie that Norman Solomon warned about a month or so ago.  Mainly, lying about future drawdowns in an attempt to placate the weary masses so that they do not take to the streets and demand a change. Why go to all that trouble when even the president sees change around the corner? It's not!

If the Bush administration, the military industrial complex and the ruling elite get their way, we will have war today, war tomorrow and war forever.

And that won't change until the profit motive changes or when the people wake up and demand that the government represent them.

Why Bush Invoked Vietnam On Wednesday

The real reason for Bush's insane Vietnam remarks Wednesday was to appeal to his conservative base in the run-up to the coming “Surge” debate next month. It is common knowledge among the far right loons that still support Bush that we would have won Vietnam if it were not for the hippies and liberal politicians that forced the country to pullout too early. Seriously.

RECORD SUICIDES IN MILITARY

948 OTHER soldiers attempted suicide in 2006, the highest level in 26 years of record keeping. 88 soldiers killed themselves in 2005 and 67 soldiers committed suicide in 2004. 

Bill O'Reilly Slammed x2

Olbermann hands it to O'Reilly again.

Pentagon War Games Predictions On Iraq

Video and article are a couple of weeks old but I missed it back then and it doesn't appear to me that many in the MSM picked it up. In the video above, Keith Olbermann discusses the results of the Pentagon wargaming a withdrawal of US troops out of Iraq with Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks. Ricks article on the subject, from July 17, can be read at WaPo. 

Not surprisingly, the exercises produce a far different result than the dire predictions offered by George the Crazy and Dick the Evil, both of whom love to scare Americans with tall tales of an Iranian takeover of Iraq and Iraq becoming a breeding ground for al-Qaeda (ridiculous on its face since al-Qaeda - think 15 of 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia - and Iran are enemies). Ricks even quotes Bush as saying that al-Qaeda would “be able to recruit better and raise more money from which to launch their objectives” of attacking the US which is again laughable considering nothing is a better recruitment tool than the US occupation of a Muslim country for its oil.

So, just what did the war games find? Iraq is likely to split into three separate countries -- Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish. Iran would likely attempt to exert its influence and “become bogged down in southern Iraq. And al-Qaeda is hardly the threat Bush claims:

U.S. intelligence analysts, however, have a somewhat different view of al-Qaeda's presence in Iraq, noting that the local branch takes its inspiration but not its orders from bin Laden. Its enemies -- the overwhelming majority of whom are Iraqis -- reside in Baghdad and Shiite-majority areas of Iraq, not in Saudi Arabia or the United States. While intelligence officials have described the Sunni insurgent group calling itself al-Qaeda in Iraq as an ”accelerant“ for violence, they have cited domestic sectarian divisions as the main impediment to peace.

W., of course, will not take into account the results of the Pentagon war games because he views Iraq as a game that is to be won or lost. Bush's troubled psyche does not even allow him to  consider the facts, common sense, reason or the lives of Iraqis and US soldiers. The only thing on the line as far as he is concerned is his own disgraceful legacy. Thus, he has absolutely nothing to lose by continuing full speed ahead.

Read the Thomas Ricks article