As you have no doubt noticed by now, many people and blogs are accusing the Bush regime of being similar to, if not outright, fascists. This caused Donald Rumsfeld to lash out by accusing his critics (most of the world) and the Iraq war critics (most of the world) as being like Nazis. What a grown-up!
Today, Iran defied the Bush regime and decided to go ahead with their nuclear plans, whatever they are. I wish we as citizens had such in-your-face power to wield. Meanwhile, Bush continues to use language against U.S. citizens as a subversive weapon. By constantly repeating the phrase, “I don’t consider anyone who disagrees with the war as unpatriotic” he is in fact telling everyone that that is exactly what he thinks. We’re on to you George! Today Bush is again on the offensive in defending the mess that is his war and again . . . he gave a speech today and promised there will be more to come. Bush is, after all, little more than a PR and propaganda figurehead. (Please let that be true.) He remarked:

“In the coming days, I’ll deliver a series of speeches describing the nature of our enemy in the war on terror, the insights we’ve gained about their aims and ambitions, the successes and setbacks we’ve experienced, and our strategy to prevail in this long war,” Mr. Bush said.”

Great - then we’ll all know what’s going on. Not! Who does this creature think he’s fooling? Then he said, “Doubtless familiar with polls showing increasing numbers of Americans drawing a distinction between the Iraq war and a larger battle against terrorism, Mr. Bush invoked the approaching anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to rebut that view.” What an idiot if he thinks we’re going to buy what he’s selling. Because Americans are nothing if not policy geniuses. What I hate is the fact that Karl Rove knows Americans are too busy working three jobs because of the great economy to pay attention to the facts in the news as opposed to Bush’s blatant propaganda.

Here’s my real question: How far will Bush go in defense of his Grand Plan or scheme, or whatever it is? Yesterday, (thanks to the Twilight and Thebes podcast) I learned that the Bush team just submitted a new plan to keep people - whoever he feels like - incarcerated forever with a certain enemy combatant designation until the conflict is over or the world ends, whichever comes first. They are trying to overturn the Supreme Court Hamden decision. Here is a great discussion of this despicable plan, “We’re All Enemy Combatants Now“. He is attempting to set up martial law and a Police State forever, folks. The article states: “According to the draft, the military would be allowed to detain all “enemy combatants” until hostilities cease. The bill defines enemy combatants as anyone “engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute.” Let me go on record as finding this . . . . alarming. How many of our rights to they want do get rid of? Oh yeah, all of them.

We have to hope like hell this doesn’t become law because if it does, Net Neutrality sure won’t matter. All the detractors, dissenters, or Bush ‘opponents’ and us anti-war people will be in jail, sans computers, indefinitely. We can’t let the fascists win this because if they do, our country is history.

This extremely long entry was submitted by Shelly of Citizen Against Lies

Via The Washington Post:
On YouTube, Charges of Security Flaws

“Michael De Kort was frustrated.

The 41-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer had complained to his bosses. He had told his story to government investigators. He had called congressmen.

But when no one seemed to be stepping up to correct what he saw as critical security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats, De Kort did just about the only thing left he could think of to get action: He made a video and posted it on YouTube.com.”

-I wonder if this will start a trend. This could be a good way to turn You Tube into a serious political soapbox.

It’s another episode of the Twilight and Thebes Show

The Pranker and Sleeping Roommate
Bush submits new terror detainee bill
Jenna Jameson First Adult Film Star Immortalized at Madame Tussauds
FBI Visits Diabolic to Check 2257 Records; FSC Offers Statement to Inspectors
Song Neighbor by The Lascivious Biddies
My Mr. Rogers crush
Hired By SF to Delete Craigslist Postings
Us Time:
Twilight gets published in $pread Magazine
Frogs in the desert
Heatwave? What heatwave?
Jeff promo for GOP Exposed

Listen to it Now! The Twilight and Thebes Show 025

An Evening In The Life of Ann Coulter
by Bill

The door opens into the penthouse Manhattan apartment of
conservative hack Ann Coulter. She shambles into the dark,
empty apartment, worn out after another nerve-wracking round
of appearances on several cable news shows. She seems so
confident on TV, but in reality the anxiety of her empty, wasted
life eats away at her, even as she spouts her glib, hateful
ideas in front of accomodating talk show hosts.

Despite her image as a “blond bombshell” she well knows
her days as any kind of a sex symbol are long over. As
she saunters into the bathroom to remove the 3-inch
thick layer of makeup that cakes her corpse-like face,
she sees staring back at her in the mirror a bitter, angry
old hag with a protruding Adam’s Apple and lines around
her mouth from her constant sneering.

Ann walks into the kitchen to get the only thing that
can dull the pain of her phony, useless life: liquor.
As she pours herself a glass of whiskey (no mixer or
even any ice) she wonders, for the one millionth time:
Why am I so lonely? Why doesn’t anyone like me?
So much money and fame, and yet so alone. She starts
sobbing, as she often does at this point of the
evening. It seems to have become a nightly ritual.

She decides to cheer herself up by trying to think of
new callous, half-baked things to write in her increasingly
unpopular syndicated column. “How about…”, she
muses excitedly, “…wouldn’t it be funny if someone
gunned down Hillary? Haw, haw, haw!!” or…
she strains to form a thought…”I know!”, she
exclaims. “Muslims are flithy animals, we need to
put them in the zoo! Haw, haw haw!!!”.

But her good mood dissipates once again, as she
is haunted by the frequent thought of how she
will never find a man who doesn’t dump her
after two dates, how she’ll never have children
or any real friends. She finally breaks down crying
again when she is hit with the thought–the same
one with which she ends so many evenings–
of how she’ll die alone, a bitter old hag no one
ever loved.

She stumbles in a drunken stupor to her empty
king size bed, where she passes out, a half-full
glass of Jack Daniels falling out of her hand onto
the floor next to the bed…the rank brown liquid
seeping into the bedroom carpet, turning into a
stain as dark as her soul.

Shock and Awe doesn’t work. From the very moment that the first bomb falls, killing the first person, the war of the agressive,”superior” military force is doomed to failure. With each succeding bomb, the destruction of their country and the mounting death toll solidifies an opposition that will never forgive and never stop resisting.
It’s still difficult to think back on the shameful days of Shock and Awe and the way it was glorified in the media and celebrated as a great victory by a majority of people in this country still reeling from the aftermath of 911 and vulnerable to the lies coming from the White House. After three years of resistance to the American occupation of Iraq, can anyone deny the failure of such a strategy of Shock and Awe?
And now we have the latest incarnation of this proven failed strategy in Lebanon.
With over 1,000 civilian deaths and monumental destruction of infrastructure is there anyone surprised that the Lebanese people supported Hezbollah? And in the aftermath of that destruction was anyone surprised that Israeli occupiers could not control the ground they took because they were surrounded by an entire population opposed to their presence?
This lesson is an old one, but for us Vietnam should be still close enough in our memory to have reminded us that military might alone can never win a war. This is the lesson that our people must learn because to the forces that control our government, war is their livelihood. They make money every time a bomb explodes and they don’t give a shit about any lessons. It’s up to all of us to change this with leadership from the grassroots.
Brian

Wake Up AM Podcast

I like the DNC’s brand new plan for changing around the caucus schedule for the 2008 presidential election cycle. But unfortunately, as usual the D.C. Democrats are focusing on strategy again — as though that will matter, instead of the big problem. I suppose it might make some difference: the idea is that by adding Nevada and South Carolina to the early mix of caucuses they will add racial and geographical diversity. The two additional caucuses would occur before New Hampshire’s primary. I agree with that strategy because of Iowa’s democraphics. Think about it: a 98% white state of middle class Protestants who drink coffee so weak it puts you to sleep get to choose the Democratic presidential candidate. No offense to Iowans, but I’ve been to your fine state and it’s not exactly a melting pot, (and I will never forgive you for your awful pick in 2004.)

So even though the strategy is sound, it won’t solve any problems as long as Republicans continue to steal elections. When your vote doesn’t count or is literally thrown out in key states, what’s the point of choosing a great candidate? All the Russ Feingolds in the world won’t do any good when the GOP hacks your voting machine and changes your vote. I’d like to see the Democrats loudly and doggedly challenge the use of hackable Diebold voting machines with no auditable paper trail instead of all these cheerful plans, as though they are playing a game on a fair playing field. They’re not. Diebold machines can be easily hacked with a screwdriver by anyone who has rudimentary computer skills. See this article: “Diebold voting machines can be beaten with a switch-flip . . . . If you want to steal an election, use a Diebold machine.”

Yes. Six years after the debacle of 2000 and two possible stolen elections since then and we still don’t have unhackable, safe and accurate voting machines, or a system in place for how to deal with vote stealing and other dirty tricks and crimes that Republicans commit to steal elections. There is ample evidence that they have committed voter fraud and other crimes in the last three elections. How long do we put up with that while we cheer on strategies like mixing up the caucus schedules? Too little, too late!

Get a clue, D.C. Dems, and do something that will actually prevent yet another presidential election from being rigged. Get rid of those dictator-loving touch-screen Diebold machines or at least demand they are unhackable and insist on paper trails for ALL machines. Do that, and someone besides Repubicans might win presidential elections again.

Submitted by Shelly of Citizen Against Lies

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of United States District Court in Detroit stands up to Alberto Gonzales, the point man for the White House’s assault on our Constitution. Maybe this will empower more judges to stand up to these fascists. And hopefully it will remind Congress that they swore an oath to defend the Constitution against ALL enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC.
Finally someone says no to these guys. It’s not like it’s any great revelation that NSA spying was ILLEGAL. But finally someone has done something about it. The courts are apparently our last hope. Of course they will counter with attempting to reword the law as an end run around this decision, but that new law will still be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court is one judge away from a majority for the criminals who occupy the White House. Now is the time to flood our courts with cases that preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. And let everyone go on record as to where they stand. We know where Judge Taylor stands.

Brian

Wake Up AM Podcast

After listening to Seymour Hersh the other night on Democracy Now, he made me realize something that should have been so obvious that I’m feeling pretty stupid at the moment. The Israeli / Lebanon “war” was an attempt to lay the ground work for the coming plan to take on Iran. I knew that part but failed to understand the direct strategic necessity as a prelude to war with Iran. I say attempt because the objective of taking out Hezbollah not only failed but actually strengthened them. Why was this first step so important to the US and especially Israel? Because when and if we take on Iran, Hezbollah will go ballistic (literally) and Israel will have it’s hands full with a threat right on it’s border. Israel would have liked to take care of this problem now instead of fighting a multi front war.

Now, because Hezbollah’s resistance proved once again that “shock and awe” from the skies is simply good for one thing, killing innocent civilians, the US and Israel must take the slower route to their objective, bring in “peacekeeping” troops and slowly disarm Hezbollah. But they will never disarm. So this means that if the US and Israel really want war with Iran then it will be even tougher now. And war with Iran could very well mean war in the entire region and World War 3 may not be too far behind that.

Of course, some unforseen “event” may be coming sooner than later to justify taking more military action. As the neocon plans fail they may become more desperate. And desperate men do desperate things.

Brian

Wake Up AM Podcast

Recently it has been once again ground forcibly in my face that the vast majority of Americans are spineless cowards. My countrymen, heirs to a proud tradition of resistance to abusive power, have shown themselves all too willing to surrender what little remaining dignity they still possess for the comfort of false security. Willingly giving up their self-respect and licking the boot that kicks them, they seek to be protected from a negligible threat that has been overblown by the wearer of that very boot.� They seek to be protected by the people who� sold them this� danger. To paraphrase Dan Barker, you are “buying a band-aid from a man who cut you in order to sell it to you.”

How sickening to see Americans this terrified of something that kills less people than medical malpractice or even drowning. In fact, even in 2001 more Americans died by drowning than by terrorist acts. It’s the Red Scare all over again, folks. Here’s some homework for ya, kids. Find some old McCarthy, Nixon or Reagan anti-commie speeches and replace the terms relating to Communism with terms relating to terrorism. See how little has changed? Fear still controls.

Now, here’s a long-term project for you. Watch how many more alerts we have this year. Watch the color code change as quickly and erratically as the light-show at a rave. And then watch it all come to a screeching halt after the first week of November. Just like 2004. The goose-steppers have only one thing to sell, and that is fear. They know that frightened people will vote for tough-talkers, regardless of whether the tough-talkers have ever done anything remotely like what they promise.

�

As an administrative note for my several fans, I am forced to extend my hiatus to an unforseeable point in time due to duty requirements and making ready to finally re-deploy home. Rest assured I will resume my show as soon as possible, but that may not be until I have returned to the US. Thank you for your patience.

I’m totally disillusioned with the MSM, or mainstream media, these days. Are they worthless or did they cover the protests and I missed it? Look at this crowd! I now in fact call the media the COM, or the corporate-owned media. I don’t mean online media, which is often pretty good.

So I knew there would be protests on August 12th in Washington, but I assumed, due to lack of hearing about it later, that the protesting was a disastrous failure. Nothing of the kind! In fact, according to certain websites which actually pay attention to this type of thing, the protests were large and enthusiastic. You can read about them here at one of my favorite protest websites.

My latest podcast ends with an interview with Ahmad S., an Afghan journalism student in Pakistan who talks about our foreign policy and his ideas on what we can do about it. You’ll be impressed with his insightful thoughts on it. He produces and writes his own blog called MyScribbles, here. During the interview he expresses his desire for Americans to rise up and protest and demand that our government change our policies. It sounded so easy when he described what we should do! Part of the problem is that when people do protest, the media doesn’t even cover it. If it’s completely ignored, there is no reason to protest. They know this, and that’s why they control so much of the media. Look up who owns American media, and it all starts to make sense. Whoever controls the flow of information to the people, controls the people.

Submitted by Shelly of Citizen Against Lies.

We have a brand new Progressive Podcast network podcast, which we’re pretty excited about. (Thanks to AJ from the BaldguyShow for his hard work on it.)

In this, The first show of the PPN, we have segments from the following podcasts:

• No Respect
• Best Of The Left
• Citizen Against Lies
• Florida SoapBox
• Sooner Thought
• BaldGuyShow (AKA Political Tuesday or Last of the Superheros)
• Wake Up AM

Music by:

• 2012 - Dream of Freedom
• The Freedom People - Stop The War
• New Song - Joe Whyte

Thanks for Listening! From All of us at the Progressive PodCast Network
Direct download the original podcast here!

What is this all about?!?

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=684

Looking at that poll taken recently it says to me that while the U.S. and other countries have not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, amazingly more U.S. adults (50%) think that Iraq had such weapons when the U.S. invaded Iraq.

Obviously the months of misinformation leading up to the invasion take even longer to be dispelled from the minds of the masses.

This to me seems a huge increase from the 36 percent in February 2005. Does everyone only watch Fox news?!? Who is feeding the population this crap?

Even Bush has been forced to admit his administration’s number one justification for attacking Iraq was wrong.

There were no weapons of mass destruction.

The News is there for one reason alone… To give us facts.

If this is really the opinion of 50% we need to worry about the possibility this is going to seep into the history books.

I don’t know what to believe.. Yet.

When I heard about the recent terror threats thwarted by the British government it was on the car radio as I got back from a few days away in the sticks. The circus was in full swing with the tabloid news bigging things up almost to the level of an American TV news station. Comparisons with nine eleven were batted about as easy as delivering a weather report and still nothing was really known.

I thought I would reserve judgement for a few days and see what surfaced. Instead of watching the endless news reports say the same nothings, I looked around at how the British public were reacting.

Down my local shop people weren’t talking about it any more than the weather. The most concerned person I came into contact with was a member of the family that was due to fly to Spain and wanted the airports to get back to normal as they had been desperately looking forward to this break abroad.

Have we really gotten so use to all of this? Perhaps it only affects our subconscious now? The fear.. The feeling of a threat always lurking in the shadows..

I am hoping it’s that we just have retained a little perspective. There is some serious suffering going on in the middle east at the moment and maybe even the British public can see through the frantically scrawled sensationalism fed to us by our gutter press.

Yesterday I found myself momentarily thanking the powers that be for reading every electronic information transmission in the ‘civilised’ world. Thanking them for intercepting this threat and therefore keeping us safe.

But only for a moment.

Then I realised how convenient this all is. That we are to be reminded of another victory for the powers-that-be over the evil that lurks in our everyday lives. Just when our ‘war on terror’ was flagging and the common man joined together in condemnation of the atrocities occurring in the middle east.

A few small crumb like facts are slowly coming to light and things are once again beginning to look a little sinister.

Could this plot descovery be another well timed public release..?

Take a proper-gander at the news and decide for yourselves.

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/august2006/130806liquidbomb.htm

Playing Catch Up on “The War on Terror”

The new York Times had an article today with the headline:

FOCUSED ON 911, U.S. IS SEEN TO LAG ON NEW THREATS

The gist of the article is that because they were focused on the “lessons” of 911 (the truth is, we’ve barely even scratched the surface on the 911 lessons), The Dept. of Homeland Security (that continues to have a Nazi/Fatherland ring to it, doesn’t it?) has once again found itself chasing those imaginitavie “terrorists”, this time in the form of liquid explosives. And of course the solution is to ban all liquids.

What will those “terrorists” think of next?

One thing this latest act of “terrorism” does have in common with 911 is the source
of Pakistani intelligence (ISI) in identifying the “terrorists”. (For simplicity sake, I’m going to drop the quotation marks around the word terror in all it’s forms. Just think of them when you see the word. I put them there to remind myself and others that The War on Terror (think quotation marks) is a complete fabrication on the part of this administration in the White House.) Anyway, the ISI has once again played a roll as they did on 9/11/01.

So, once again we have a terrorist plot that results in heightened security, reinforces the need to suspend more freedoms, and justifies the current fear-based mindset of our policy. So, in the aftermath of all of these plots, let’s ask ourselves who benefits the most? I would suggest that it is the Bush administration, the Blair government, and the entire concept of the endless War on Terror. Throw in the release of Oliver Stone’s new movie (I think Stone has had to pay his dues, after the financial disaster of his last movie, in the form of a patriotic reminder of 911, in fairness I haven’t seen the movie yet) and you have an attempt of a complete turnaround back to the days when Bush and Cheney were above criticism in the name of patriotism and TWOT. (I’m not sure that’s the best acronym for The War on Terror)

All I know is that at some point us sheep need to stop following and start stampeding. If we can stave off election fraud, we still have the ultimate Weapon of Mass Democracy. If that goes away, then it’s time to to stampede.

stam·pede� (stm-pd)
n.

1. A sudden frenzied rush of panic-stricken animals.
2. A sudden headlong rush or flight of a crowd of people.
3. A mass impulsive action: a stampede of support for the candidate.

Brian

Wake Up AM Podcast

President Bush’s approval rating has “dropped to 33, matching his low in May,” according to an AP-Ipsos poll. Most of the people who voted for Bush in 2004 (57%) disapprove of the job he is doing. Obviously, we need to all walk around with shirts that say, “Pay Attention!” What are the other 43% thinking? Bush, Cheney and Lieberman all wasted no time in blaming Democrats for terrorism and using yesterday’s foiled plot to justify all war that ever occurred anywhere. But in fact, this terror plot is clearly an offshoot of Bush’s disastrous foreign policy, according to no less than the former 9/11 commissioner Tim Roemer.

According to Think Progress, Dick Cheney has already used the terror plot for political reasons. As have Tony Snow, Bush, and even Joe Lieberman, fresh off his huge and humiliating Connecticut primary loss. Cheney said the Democrats were encouraging “the Al Qaeda types.” . . . and the vice president added, “there’s a significant body of opinion that wants to go back — I guess the way I would describe it is sort of the pre-9/11 mind-set, in terms of how we deal with the world we live in.” (Why do the media continue to quote this? He says it at least once a month. Boooooring!) From the Center for American Progress:

President Bush seized on the foiled London airline bomb plot yesterday “to hammer unnamed critics he accused of having all but forgotten the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.” [He also said, "The London conspiracy is "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation," the president said on a day trip to Wisconsin.
"It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America," he said. He's right - his administration is a HUGE threat to the United States.] His remarks came “one day after the White House orchestrated an exceptionally aggressive campaign” to tar opponents of the Iraq war as “weak on terrorism.” Publicly, Bush aides “fought the notion that they had exploited their knowledge of the coming British raid” for political advantage. Privately, they expressed a different sentiment. “Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big,” one unnamed White House official said, expressing hope that the foiled plot “would yield political gains.” Another Iraq war supporter, Sen. Joe Lieberman, said yesterday as he kicked off his “Lonely Joe” campaign, that setting a timeline for U.S. troop redeployment (backed by 57% of Americans) “will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It will strengthen them and they will strike again.” Previously, Lieberman has called using national security issues for political purposes “just unacceptable and in my opinion un-American.”

I guess that means Lieberman just called himself and most of the Bush administration un-American.

Submitted by Shelly of Citizen Against Lies

�

�

Excerpt from an interesting article from a British newspaper…�

Western values ‘are causing mental illness’
From Leo Lewis in Tokyo
The Times (UK) August 10, 2006

THE rapid spread of Western business practices
in Japan has caused widespread mental illness
and is responsible for a deepening demographic
crisis, government officials say.
Statistics indicate that 60 per cent of workers
suffer from “high anxiety” and that 65 per cent
of companies report soaring levels of mental illness.

� …

The article also mentions the fact that the influence of Western capitalism has driven the Japanese from an ethic of working together to one of competing and working against each other. Family stability has gone down the toilet and suicides are up, especially those that are work-related. The Japanese hardly had an ideal society before this happened–far from it–but it’s very striking to hear what happens to other cultures when they adopt the American ethic of me, me, me.

As I write this (10:48PM EST on Tuesday, August 8 ), 87% of the precints in Connecticut have reported, and Ned Lamont is on track to beat Sen. Joe Lieberman in the state’s Democratic primary. Lamont has 52% to Lieberman’s 48%. Most of us who have been paying attention are not surprised at Republican Joe’s defeat. Lieberman thought he could turn his back on the majority of his constituents and his party by stubbornly supporting the Iraq War. Of course, the mainstream media and some of the Democratic Party� establishment� have been implying that this has all been orchestrated by hateful extremists who want to move the Democratic Party to the far left, and want to kick Poor Ole Joe out of the Senate. It’s funny how anytime the majority of the population expresses its desires through the electoral process, the elites in our country can’t wait to start screaming about how dangerous it all is. Well, this is democracy, and this is goodbye, Joe. Good luck with your doomed-to-failure independent campaign.

And by the same token, I also have to say: So long, Cynthia McKinney. I like you, but apparently your own majority-black constituency doesn’t.

Before the war, Bush was unaware that there was a difference between Shiites and Sunnis. Now granted, I was no expert either, but I’m not the frackin’ President of the United States, either. How dumb is/was is this guy? According to Former Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, he was clueless. In his new book (The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End) Galbraith claims that the Bush regime knew very little about Iraqi, Iraq society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

“Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam–to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

This also explains why Bush can’t coherently explain what an “insurgent” is, and in fact he has called them “ordinary Iraqis”. RawStory writes that a year after the “Axis of Evil” speech, Bush met with experts who said it became very clear to them that Bush was clueless about the different religious groups within Iraq and the potential problems with attempting to force them to merge and all be like one another under Bush’s utopian veil of “democracy, freedom and liberty”. Those words to Bush seem to represent a 1950’s version of American society where everything is shiny and old-fashioned, and capitalism thrives and people spend all their time thinking about money and how to make more of it. That would have provide the U.S. with decades of controlling cheap oil. That the Bush regime is still going ahead in pursuing this utopian plan, despite all that has transpired in the last 3 years and not taking into account how much of Iraq despises us, is madness. Instead, Bush will be adding more American soldiers (aka “targets”) to the fray in hopes of calming down the super-violent Bahgdad. As Gen. John P. Abizaid testified before the Senate last week, we needed to at least control Baghdad, and we’ve lost that. As a result, Iraq is now embroiled in a horrible civil war, all because our ignorant “leader” had no concept of what he was getting into. Time Magazine says that Baghdad is already in a civil war which it calls “Life In Hell”. My question is: what is our punishment for doing this to a country? Not just one country but at least two. Look at these satellite photos of Beirut, courtesy of Juan Cole’s website.

Submitted by Shelly of Citizen Against Lies.

Via Media Matters:

O’Reilly: Rape, murder victim was “wearing a miniskirt and a halter top. … [E]very predator in the world is gonna pick that up at 2 in the morning”

While discussing the recent rape and murder of 18-year-old Jennifer Moore during the August 2 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O’Reilly appeared to suggest that the clothing she was wearing at the time helped incite her killer. O’Reilly discussed several factors that contributed to the “moronic” girl’s rape and murder, including that she was drunk and wandering the streets of New York City alone late at night. But in addition to those factors, O’Reilly added: “She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at 2 in the morning.”

-Sure I’m usually disgusted by O’Reilly but this is a particularly vile comment. What next? Is he going to imply she wanted to be raped and killed because why else would young woman dress like that?!? Blaming the victims of rape and/or murder is a horrible thing to do. The only thing this man is accomplishing is the promotion of misogynism. Since he’s not reporting “fair and balanced” news perhaps that is his real agenda.

Posted by Twilight from The Twilight and Thebes Show

Via BBC News:

French fries back on House menu

French fries are back on the menu in the US House of Representatives, three years after the name was ditched in favour of “freedom fries”.

House Republicans renamed fries and French toast in 2003 to protest at France’s opposition to the war on Iraq.

The patriotic name change hit the headlines at the time but the change back is getting much less coverage.

A House official would only say that fries are no longer being offered under the “freedom” nomenclature.

Posted by Twilight from The Twilight and Thebes Show