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Civility … Nuance. Just much too much in one short sound bite. NBC’s David Gregory wonders if protesters are budding Tim McVays … Obama calls for civil discourse (I’m sorry?) and then says protesters just want TV time ( I know, I know) …But we start with … “We have examples of anti government violence in the mid 90’s .. do you worry about that?”. Yup … those grandmas and grandpas and housewives I saw … no question … I can see the link between them and Tim McVay. Scary.

Forget Bipartisanship, Comity or Civility - Schieffer Says Mindless Meanness Has Invaded the Public Commons (CBS) That was not a State of the Union speech we heard the other night, but it had all the trappings - and when that Congressman hollered "You lie!" at the President, we did get a snapshot of the nation's state. It was not a pretty picture. The country is in an angry mood - people are frustrated, tempers are short, congressmen are being shouted down at town hall meetings (where constituents sometimes show up with guns), and at rallies like the one yesterday in...

by Amber Watson-Tardiff Friday September 11, 2009, 3:58 PM Just a week ago, Republicans all over the country were outraged that President Barack Obama would dare to indoctrinate their children by asking them to "work hard" and "stay in school" via national telecast. But the behavior of Joe Wilson (R- SC) during the President's health care speech on Wednesday night was far more detrimental to middle school and high school kids. It set an example of disrespect and selfishness to those who look up to Wilson as a role model and leader in this country. If you missed the outburst,...

The American conservative movement has devolved into an all fear movement, hopping from one hot-button "fear this" specter to another with a propaganda machine that would make many a fear-monger of the past blush. Fear "death panels." Fear the Marxist in the closet. Fear "government." Fear the imagined civilian "security force" being built. Fear ACORN and SEIU, Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders. He sees ACORNs everywhere, and imagines Marxists in every closet. His favorite term for government advisers and department heads is "CZAR." and it's not an accident. He uses it to further fears that somehow, once again, the Commies...

“IT is time to water the tree of liberty” said the sign carried by a gun-toting protester milling outside President Obama’s town-hall meeting in New Hampshire two weeks ago. The Thomas Jefferson quote that inspired this message, of course, said nothing about water: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” That’s the beauty of a gun — you don’t have to spell out the “blood.” The protester was a nut. America has never had a shortage of them. But what’s Tom Coburn’s excuse? Coburn is a Republican senator from...

Protesters and citizens asking angry questions have flooded the "town halls" where congressional representatives have tried to sell President Obama's health care reform agenda to the American people. The protesters have stolen the show, with 69 percent of Americans telling pollsters they are following the story closely. Town-hall-goers -- some raucous -- are probing costs, are raising questions about government encroachment on private life, and are deploring the fact that few legislators seem to have read the 1,000-page health care reform bill. Democrats have often had trouble answering credibly. The protesters are having an impact. Last week, the administration appeared...

It is hard to know what is more shocking: the sight of a dozen Americans showing up to flaunt guns outside the venue for President Obama’s speech in Phoenix on Monday, or the fact that the swaggering display was completely legal. We are all familiar with the right to bear arms and the noisome extremes indulged by its zealots. But is there no sense of simple respect due the nation’s elected leader when he ventures forth among the citizenry? One man strutted through the crowd with an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle slung over his shoulder. (That weapon was banned in...

Justice Dept. Looking Into Whether Attorneys Broke Law at Guantanamo - The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation... The photos were taken by researchers hired by the John Adams Project, a joint effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, to support military counsel at Guantanamo Bay, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of...

Rachel's Take I was a little concerned tonight about the Popeye’s story. Not because I don’t think it was a legitimate story. Customers called our newsroom wanting us to do the story about the chain running out of chicken after promoting a big special. They said the Lake Ave. location had long lines of cars. When we went to the Lake Ave. Popeye’s, there were indeed long lines of cars. Some people took it in stride. Other people were downright angry. A few people made jokes. The idea of people up in arms over chicken was pretty funny. I think...

WASHINGTON -- It's no longer possible to mince words, or pretend we didn't know. The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's so-called "enhanced" interrogation methods, used on "high-value" terrorism suspects, plainly constituted torture. The time for euphemisms is over and the time for accountability has arrived. The Red Cross report -- published this week in its entirety for the first time by The New York Review of Books -- is a stunning account of how the Bush administration spat on our laws, traditions and ideals. I realize that many Americans, given...

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, today argues that the use of the "war on terror" as a western rallying cry since the September 11 attacks has been a mistake that may have caused "more harm than good". In an article in today's Guardian, five days before the Bush administration leaves the White House, Miliband delivers a comprehensive critique of its defining mission, saying the war on terror was misconceived and that the west cannot "kill its way" out of the threats it faces. British officials quietly stopped using the phrase "war on terror" in 2006, but this is the first...

Global warming is the cause of a number of damaging effects to the earth and its inhabitants, such as climate change, glacier retreat, rising sea levels, and now we may have a new threat on the horizon... world war! According to the 2007 CNA Corporation report, there is clear indication that as the tensions of global warming continue to heat up, so may the possibilities of war. There are two obvious factors which will be the cause of the increasing threat of war: 1.Crowding and Territorial Tensions- The number one cause of such tensions will be the migration of different...

<p>SCIENTISTS have warned that Christmas lights are bad for the planet due to huge electricity waste and urged people to get energy efficient festive bulbs. CSIRO researchers said householders should know that each bulb turned on in the name of Christmas will increase emissions of greenhouse gases.</p>

In today's column, the New York Times' Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, examines the paper's use (or non-use) of the words "terrorist" and "terrorism." It's a revealing exercise: "WHEN 10 young men in an inflatable lifeboat came ashore in Mumbai last month and went on a rampage with machine guns and grenades, taking hostages, setting fires and murdering men, women and children, they were initially described in The Times by many labels." "They were "militants," "gunmen," "attackers" and "assailants." Their actions, which left bodies strewn in the city's largest train station, five-star hotels, a Jewish center, a cafe and a hospital...

A Senate committee report makes clear that top officials were responsible for abuse and torture A naked Iraqi detainee is attacked by dogs held by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib. It wasn't just a few bad apples. It never was. Of course, the Pentagon and the Justice Department wanted us to believe that the abuses that Americans carried out at Abu Ghraib were strictly the excesses of a small group of poorly trained and inadequately supervised reservists. But consider cases such as that of Imad Khudair, swept up in a raid and held for nine months in 2003, before being...

Primary care specialist Dr Homer Drae Venters says the popular drama series should tone down the violence because viewers have "become accustomed to the idea of torture". Suffocating, electrocuting or drugging a suspect are all in a day's work for Bauer, played by Emmy Award winning actor Kiefer Sutherland. But in an article for medical Journal The Lancet, Dr Venters claims the show's hero Jack Bauer "makes torture popular" and warns that people are increasingly viewing such methods of interrogation as "acceptable". Dr Venters, of New York City University, said: "Jack Bauer makes torture popular. "We are tempted by the...

Black Dog Republicans by Jed Babbin 10/23/2008 Print This We’ve always had Yellow Dog Democrats from the South and some of Pelosi's puppies say they're Blue Dog Democrats. But now we have Black Dog Republicans. Their constant companions are depression and melancholy, the moods that often descended on Winston Churchill. He labeled them his “black dog.” There are two reasons the Black Dog Republicans fell prey to a depression equal to Churchill's. First is the constant chatter of the media, the Republican elite, and the Cassandra Republicans who are just as sure that John McCain will lose the election as...

A former head of MI5 today describes the response to the September 11 2001 attacks on the US as a "huge overreaction" and says the invasion of Iraq influenced young men in Britain who turned to terrorism. In an interview with the Guardian, Stella Rimington calls al-Qaida's attack on the US "another terrorist incident" but not qualitatively different from any others. "That's not how it struck me. I suppose I'd lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life and this was as far as I was concerned another one," she says. In common with Dame Eliza...

But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for? For seven weeks I've listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or Reaganite—a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign...

On CNN last evening both David Gergen and Ed Rollins echoed the current mantra that the "old" noble McCain is gone-and a "new" nastier one has emerged, largely because of his attacks on Ayers, perhaps his planned future ads on Wright, and a few unhinged people shouting at his campaign stops. Recently Christopher Buckley endorsed Obama, likewise lamenting the loss of the old noble McCain. New York Times columnist David Brooks dubbed Palin a "cancer," and he suggested that Obama's instant recall of Niehbuhr sent a tingle up his leg as Obama once did to Chris Matthews as well. A...

After a turbulent week that included new disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin and signs that Senator John McCain was struggling to strike the right tone for his campaign, Republican leaders said Saturday they were worried that Mr. McCain was heading for defeat unless he brought stability to his presidential candidacy and settled on a clear message to counter Senator Barack Obama. Again and again, party leaders said in interviews that while they still believed that Mr. McCain could win over voters in the next 30 days, they were concerned that he and his advisers seemed to be adrift in dealing...

They just said it is a foregone conclusion that Obama's win ( my paraphrase). Good lord. Thanks guys. They say it would take a 3000 point rise in the stock market to save McCain now. The dems special interest agenda caused this debacle and the GOP takes the fall. Is there no justice? But WHY never any mention of the stinkin' muck and company Obama keeps?

McCain just killed all the momentum and enthusiasm of the last week with this simple sentence in response to an angry attendee at a rally tonight: “I have to tell you, he is a decent person, a person that you do not have to be scared [of] as president of the United States." “No, ma’am. He is a decent family man, citizen"

As noted below, the story of the moment is not just the unhinged quality we're seeing from more and more McCainiacs at McCain-Palin rallies, but also the leading role McCain and Palin have played in whipping up all the anger. Here is establishmentarian David Gergen making the key point ( nice catch by HuffPo)... "There is a free-floating sort of whipping-around anger that could really lead to some violence," Gergen says. "And I think we're not far from that." More from Gergen: "I think it's really imperative the candidates try to calm people down." That's the story here: That not...

To All You Republicans Who Are Wringing Your Hands. You Listen Up, And Listen Good.... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John McCain may not be conservative enough for you. He certainly isn't liberal enough for many of us dems and ex-dems. BUT BY GOD HE'S AMERICAN ENOUGH AND THAT HAD BETTER BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR ALL OF US! Because if it isn't, we will lose our country to a communist/socialist agenda and we ain't NEVER gonna to recover. GOT IT? So light a fire under your collective butts and get moving! NOW! ____________________________________________ No, no, no....Not God Bless the DNC. God Damn the DNC....

Enjoy it here

WASHINGTON (AP) — Has Sarah Palin become a liability for John McCain? Since joining his ticket, the overnight political celebrity has seen the shine come off her poll standings and doubts surface among some conservatives once excited about her candidacy. The Alaska governor still draws huge crowds and energizes McCain's drive for the White House. Yet a whirlwind month after he made her his running mate, Palin is starting to seem very, very vulnerable. A stumbling interview with CBS's Katie Couric last week in which Palin equated her state's proximity to Russia with foreign policy experience may have been her...

Members of the American Psychological Association have voted to prohibit consultation in the interrogations of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or so-called black sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency overseas, the association said on Wednesday. The vote, 8,792 to 6,157 in a mail-in balloting concluded Monday, may help to settle a long debate within the profession over the ethics of such work. Psychologists have helped military and C.I.A. interrogators evaluate detainees, plan questioning strategy and judge its psychological costs. The association’s ethics code, while condemning a list of coercive techniques adopted in the Bush administration’s antiterrorism campaign, has...

Is it over for McCain? The Republicans can pretend that the media has turned against them. They can pretend that they used the hurricane as an excuse to avoid coverage of the convention. They can pretend that only evil, sexist, misogynists are against Sarah Palin. But the truth is that McCain’s cronies have made a fatal choice. They ran this gal up the flagpole and the pole broke from shock. McCain did not want Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential pick. He wanted Joe Lieberman. And as insane as it sounds, even Joe Lieberman would have been a better choice than...

This is the week that the Democratic party ran up the white flag when it comes to the surge in Iraq. Leading the surrender was none other than Barack Obama, the Democratic party's presumptive nominee for president and among the most vocal critics of the counterinsurgency plan that has transformed the Iraq war from a potentially catastrophic loss to what may turn out to be a historically significant victory. On Monday, Obama wrote a New York Times op-ed in which he acknowledged the success of the surge. "In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge," Obama wrote, "our...

Where will you be in five years? Many claim the American dream has died. Earnings have supposedly stagnated, even while corporate profits boom and health coverage disappears. Most Americans believe the economy is in a recession. Pick up any newspaper, and it seems the days when most Americans could work hard and expect to get ahead are over. But look more closely at the polls. They show most Americans think it's harder for other Americans to get ahead, but that they personally will be better off in the future. How can most Americans believe opportunities are vanishing for others but...

Why is it that with every bump in the road, some people in the Democratic Party immediately assume the “kiss my behind goodbye position” illustrated on aircraft seat cards? When they’re not depressed over the war that the USA won in Iraq, and the larger ongoing successes against terrorism, they’re bracing themselves for the party itself to implode - for the ground to break under their feet and swallow them.

The United States appears to be on a downward spiral from which there is no apparent escape. Our very way of life is being severely threatened in the interest of fairness, multiculturalism and liberalism in general. Tradition, culture and national identification mean nothing anymore because so-called progressives -- the new term for liberals -- are bent on molding this country into an unidentifiable glob of feel-good socialism. One need only look at recent events in order to verify my concern. The country is flooded with illegal aliens who have no fear of apprehension or deportation and in fact are aided...

Repeal the 2nd Amendment June 27, 2008 No, we don't suppose that's going to happen any time soon. But it should. The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is evidence that, while the founding fathers were brilliant men, they could have used an editor. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

So much for that second-half rebound. Truth be told, that was always more of a wish than a serious forecast, happy talk from the Fed and Wall Street desperate to get things back to normal. It ain't gonna happen. Not this summer. Not this fall. Not even next winter. This thing's going down, fast and hard. Corporate bankruptcies, bond defaults, bank failures, hedge fund meltdowns and 6 percent unemployment. We're caught in one of those vicious, downward spirals that, once it gets going, is very hard to pull out of. Only this will be a different kind of recession --...

Picture Generals Obama, Reid and Pelosi standing a foot deep in snow at Vally Forge: Quartermaster reports: "The soldiers are freezing, shall we search for more firewood?" The Generals: "No! Impose a tax on all the firewood suppliers!"

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams pleaded with graduates from Ohio State University in Columbus to repair America during a commencement speech Sunday. "I come here today with a request for the Class of '08: We need you to fix the country – and I'm sorry to ask this of you," Williams said, suggesting that the U.S. is broken. "And I'm deadly serious and we really do. I am 49 and on behalf of my generation, I'm so sorry …" The news anchor, who was awarded an honorary Doctor of Journalism degree from the university, said the Internet has distracted...

Party of Defeat: How Democrats and Radicals Undermined America's War on Terror Before and After 9-11 By David Horowitz and Ben Johnson FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, April 11, 2008 The following [link] is the introduction from the new book Party of Defeat by David Horowitz and Ben Johnson. The introduction lays out the book's thesis: that the opposition to the war in Iraq has crossed a troubling boundary. For the first time, a large number of national leaders have not merely opposed a war; that would be their inalienable right under the U.S. Constitution. Instead, they have actively sabotaged an ongoing...

Nearly 60 House Democrats yesterday urged the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to examine whether top Bush administration officials may have committed crimes in authorizing the use of harsh interrogation tactics against suspected terrorists. In a letter to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, the lawmakers cited what they said is "mounting evidence" that senior officials personally sanctioned the use of waterboarding and other aggressive tactics against detainees in U.S.-run prisons overseas. An independent investigation is needed to determine whether such actions violated U.S or international law, the letter stated.

Groom, many guests of one wedding will be on call for another - that of the president's daughter Saturday, May 10, 2008 WEST — Nora Bartosh has been waiting for her wedding, scheduled for today, for the past six years. Now, the 34-year-old West drugstore clerk is worried that a president's daughter could steal her groom and thus her special day. The groom, all eight groomsmen and about 150 of the guests work in McLennan County law enforcement. That leaves Bartosh hoping that everything goes smoothly in and around President Bush's Crawford-area ranch today as first daughter Jenna says her...

It’s a popular upgrade for new homes, but could your granite countertop actually be a hazard to your health? The family who agreed to have their granite countertop tested for radiation wants you to know the answer to that question. They asked that their identity not be revealed, but they would like to share what was found at their home. “We’re living in a world that has radiation in it. And there’s nothing that you can do to stop it. However, that’s above background. That is an enhanced source of radiation,” said Bill Llope. Llope is a Rice University physicist....

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Kaplan, in a recent publication, the US National Defense University described the Iraq War as a "major debacle." According to the latest statistics, 500 insurgent attacks are still taking place each week. Still, you are convinced that there is a "learning curve" for the US Army in Iraq. What exactly has been learned? Kaplan: One attack is one too many. But a while ago there were 500 attacks a day. So empirically, the situation has improved -- whether measured in terms of Iraqi cilivans killed or American soldiers attacked, insurgents captured or the number of intelligence tip-offs....

...They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore. We’re borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil. Our president’s latest energy initiative was to go to Saudi Arabia...

<p>Tribal leaders in southern Iraq are starting to push back against Iranian-supported militias in Basra, cracking their hold over the economically crucial province, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker said yesterday at two separate roundtable interviews with reporters. Continues...</p>

The outcome of the Iraq war may still be in the balance but U.S. President George W. Bush has already won the war about the war in Washington. In November 2006 elections, Bush's Republican Party lost control of both houses of Congress largely due to public anger about Iraq. Democrats pledged to end the war that started in March 2003 and bring the troops home. But testimony to Congress this week by the top commander on the ground, Army Gen. David Petraeus, indicates there will be about the same high level of U.S. troops in Iraq when Americans elect Bush's...

Sen. Biden: Troop buildup is failure 16 minutes ago A leading Democrat on Saturday declared last year's troop buildup in Iraq a failure. Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the military push didn't succeed because U.S. troops remain committed there in large numbers and political reconciliation has not been achieved. "The purpose of the surge was to bring violence in Iraq down so that its leaders could come together politically," said Biden, D-Del., in this week's Democratic radio address. "Violence has come down, but the Iraqis have not come together." He later added, "There is...

Hagel: Who says we have to win Iraq? Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:19:47 Republican Senator Chuck Hagel says some of the top politicians in Washington hold regrettable views on how the Iraq war should end. In a Thursday interview with CNN, Hagel criticized Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain for framing the situation in Iraq as one that the US must 'win'. "John (McCain), the President and the others have put the Iraqi situation in the wrong context. This isn't a win or lose," said Hagel. "We shouldn't frame this up as a win-or-lose because, when we do that - and this...

5 Ex-Chief Diplomats: Close Guantanamo Mar 27 08:46 PM US/Eastern By GREG BLUESTEIN Associated Press Writer ATHENS, Ga. (AP) - Five former U.S. secretaries of state on Thursday urged the next presidential administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and open a dialogue with Iran. The former chiefs of American diplomacy, who served in Democratic and Republican administrations, reached a consensus on the two issues at a conference in Athens aimed at giving the next president some bipartisan foreign policy advice. Each of them said shuttering the prison camp in Cuba would bolster America's image abroad. "It says to...

President Bush on Thursday defended the slow pace of progress in Iraq, asserting "it is not foot-dragging" as Iraqi politicians try to reach agreement on political, security and economic goals. Bush derided calls from Congress for troop withdrawals or deadlines so that the military could focus more on the anti-terror battle elsewhere. "This argument makes no sense," he said. Bush offered his assessment of the war in a speech before a military audience of more than 1,000 people at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton. Within weeks, Bush is expected to endorse the recommendations of...

Top Democrats on Monday reacted to the 4,000th U.S. death in Iraq by calling for a change in policy.Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) called the event a “grim milestone” and advocated a new course on Iraq. “It is past time to end this war that should never have been waged by bringing our troops home, and finally pushing Iraq's leaders to take responsibility for their future,” Obama stated.His rival for the nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), said at the onset of a speech on the economy that the news of the 4,000th U.S. death in Iraq is...