OurFuture: "Anything Goes" capitalism destroys companies and workers' lives

Capital Eye: Aides, lobbyists and contributors among those left in the wake of John Ensign's ethics scandal

Lean Left: Don't know much about history, biology, science books, the French I took...or art. But I do know that I'm a right wing moron.

Where’s the Outrage?: Dr. Errington Thompson says..."Keith, thanks for letting America see the world I work in every day."

TAPPED: Congress' torture coverup

Welcome Back to Pottersville: Assclowns of the Week: Nattering nabobs of negativism edition

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1748)

PLAYS: (14278)

From Saturday Night Live Oct. 3, 2009.

Jon Stewart takes the GOP hypocrites to task for wanting ACORN investigated while defending the likes of Karl Rove and refusing to investigate torture, and for freaking out over a video of school children praising President Obama.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1064)

PLAYS: (1737)

An investigation into abuse of terrorism detainees won't be halted following a letter sent to President Barack Obama by seven former CIA directors. "I don't want to start getting into the business of squelching, you know, investigations that are being conducted," Obama told CNN's John King Sunday.

"I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look after an institution that they helped to build," Obama told CBS' Bob Schieffer in a separate interview.

Politico:

The White House’s comments on the sensitive issue have been closely watched by supporters and opponents of further investigation into interrogations some have described as torture.

In August,
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y) urged Obama and his aides not to send signals about what Holder should do in terms of investigating the interrogations.

“I have nothing to say to the president on this, except let Mr. Holder alone. As far as I know, they are," Nadler said at a convention of liberal bloggers and activists. “It would be….improper for the president to decide that there ought to be or ought not to be a special counsel, prosecutions or whatever.”

It is remarkable that there's nary a mention of George Bush, the chosen one and savior of our country by the conservative movement.

Given how things were from 2001 until the presidential campaign heated up, it's really quite stunning how George W. Bush is utterly missing from our discourse. The conservative movement was for that period all about elevating Dear Leader, and now he's just gone.

Some of it is because Dick Cheney has been so outspoken about his love of torture, but it's also the fact that Cheney had almost as much power as Bush himself. That was, until things started blowing up in GW's face.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1371)

PLAYS: (5484)

Howard Kurtz is still playing water carrier for the Bush administration and their WMD lies used to justify invading Iraq and when called out for it by Daniel Ellsberg who says he'll name names as to who in the Bush administration knew better what does he do? Why try to change the subject of course!

Ellsberg is the subject of a new documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers which debuts this week in New York, Los Angeles and at the Toronto Film Festival.

KURTZ: Do you think that the Obama administration is getting as much pressure from the press as it should, particularly compared to previous administrations, say the Bush administration?

ELLSBERG: None. No administration has gotten the pressure that it should from the press on this point. We got into Iraq with as much deceptions as occurred in Vietnam, a generation earlier. A performance by the press no better than we saw of pressing behind the lies of the administration than we got during the Johnson administration when I was in; nor did we get a single person within the administration, the Bush administration now, who saw that the adventure into Iraq was going to hurt our counter-terrorism efforts, hurt our security, and was violating the Constitution in terms of treaties. Another example would be treaties on torture and our domestic laws on torture. People who saw that clearly, not one of them leaked to Congress, or to the press.

(CROSS TALK)

KURTZ: Obviously, there were conflicting opinions and conflicting evidence, for example on WMDs. But let me come back to this.

ELLSBERG: No, pardon me.

KURTZ: Go ahead.

ELLSBERG: When it came to lying -- when it came to lying about the nature of the evidence that the evidence was unequivocal, that was as much of a lie as saying that evidence of the attack on August 4th, on our destroyers, was unequivocal. Yes, there was --

KURTZ: You're comparing the Bush's building of the case to go to war in Iraq, with Lyndon Johnson's Tonkin Gulf war incident, just to be clear.

ELLSBERG: I am, indeed. It's exactly the same in the performance not only by the president, but by all of the people who knew that it was a disaster. And I could name names there, if you want.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (65)

PLAYS: (265)

Apparently Chris Matthews thinks this is funny.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (94)

PLAYS: (157)

September 02, 2009 MSNBC Keith Olbermann

OLBERMANN: In the 48 hours since Dick Cheney called investigating torture an outrageous political act to former prosecutors, one from each party say they disagree.

In our fourth story on the COUNTDOWN: The torture probe is now getting support not only from former prosecutor Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic U.S. senator who joins us in a moment, but also from the nation‘s former top prosecutor, Republican Alberto Gonzales.

First, the senator, the former U.S. attorney in the “National Law Journal,” laying out the legal foundations that justify that require investigation. First, the corpus delicti, the body of evidence establishing the possible existence of a crime. In this case, the Bush administration‘s admission of waterboarding, an act defined as criminal by international treaty and by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the fifth circuit in 1984.

Mr. Whitehouse writing, quote, “For there to be investigation now is unexceptional. The only exceptional is the parties involved: the former vice president of the United States, his counsel, David Addington, Office of Legal Counsel lawyer John Yoo.”

Congressman Jerry Nadler making the same case on FOX News where, of course, the emcee was contractually obligated to interrupt as soon as Nadler mentioned Cheney.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NADLER: The law says very clearly that it is the obligation of the attorney general to investigate, to see whether crimes were committed any time there was torture under American jurisdiction. He must do that, if he didn‘t do that, he‘d be breaking the law. My criticism of the attorney general is that he should not limit the investigation to people in the field who may have committed the torture, to people who may have ordered, such as the vice president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: But it was Fredo, poor Fredo who grabbed the headlines by going against the family. He broke their hearts.

Quote, “Let me just say that I have a great deal of respect for General Holder. I think that the attorney general would have made this on his own and I think as the chief prosecutor of the United States, he should make the decision on his own. Eric Holder is looking at conduct that goes beyond the instructions given by the Department of Justice. And if people go beyond that, I think it is legitimate to question, to examine that conduct to ensure that people are held accountable for the actions they take even if it‘s the actions in prosecuting the war on terror.”

With us now, as promised, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Great thanks for your time tonight, Senator.

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D), RHODE ISLAND: Good to be with you.

OLBERMANN: First, your thoughts on Mr. Gonzales endorsing this investigation. Do you think his approval is sincere here? Or is it a function of relief that the aim is no higher than the operatives at the interrogative level?

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1130)

PLAYS: (2475)

September 01, 2009 News Corp

HANNITY: Now former vice president, Dick Cheney, has made no secret of his disappointment with the current administration. He aired his frustrations with President Obama in perhaps the most explicit terms yet on FOX News this past Sunday. Asked his opinion of the president, he said the following.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I wasn't a fan of his when he got elected, and my views haven't changed any. I have serious doubts about his policies, serious doubts especially about the extent to which he understands and is prepared to do what needs to be done to defend the nation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: All right, the White House is not taking that sitting down. National security advisor, Jim Jones, hit back yesterday, telling ABC News that the country is actually safer under President Obama than it was under President Bush. OK. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. JAMES JONES (RET.), NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: We're seeing results that indicate more captures, more deaths of radical leaders, and a kind of a global coming together of the fact that this is -- this is a threat to not only the United States, but to the world at large.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: And joining me now to discuss all of this is former deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, somebody who knows the former vice president very well. Liz Cheney is back to us.

Liz, thanks for being here.

LIZ CHENEY, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, NEAR EASTERN AFFAIRS: Thank you for having me, Sean. Great to be with you.

HANNITY: You know, I find it interesting, because we can't even say it's a war on terror. I mean, Robert Gibbs slipped up the other day. Wasn't -- isn't it supposed to be now an overseas contingency operation? It's no longer a war on terror?

L. CHENEY: Yes, I mean, it is really a very concerning state of affairs, because you have a situation where, through a whole series of policies, you know, bringing terrorists from Guantanamo on to U.S. soil, threatening to prosecute the individual at the CIA who kept us safe since 9/11, not understanding exactly where the responsibility for future interrogations will lie, a whole set of circumstances which have us now moving back to pre-9/11 kinds of policies, dealing with terrorism as a law enforcement matter.

But it's worse than that, because we now know what happened when we dealt with terrorism that way. We've now been through 9/11. We've seen the attacks. So for the administration and President Obama, the attorney general, to now be returning to those days with the knowledge that we have of the consequences is really inexcusable.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (89)

PLAYS: (278)

September 01, 2009 MSNBC HARDBALL

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1270)

PLAYS: (4986)

Jeremy Scahill weighs in on Dick Cheney's softball interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and why there needs to be prosecutions of everyone from top to bottom. And that means anyone who broke the law and ordered the torture of prisoners, from the top Bush administration officials to those that carried it out. Scahill also takes the media to task for their coverage of this issue and not making sure Americans are actually aware of what's been done in their name.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1176)

PLAYS: (4695)

On Sunday's ABC Roundtable, Liz Cheney and Sam Donaldson got into it on the torture investigations.

The only reason she's on is to defend her father once again. This is old and tired. Why does Dick only appear on FOX News to defend his position? We know the answer to that one. Chris Wallace makes with the Love Boat eyes and crawls on his tummy to try and get Dick all excited. They are like two cats in heat. Sam Donaldson wouldn't take Liz's ridiculous arguments. I mean, she actually says that there already were investigations...cough...cough...by the Bush administration and they passed with flying colors. She then continues to lie about the 2004 report and says that nobody was raped...Sure, Liz...

Liz: You do, you say it has already been looked at..

Sam: By who?

Liz: By career prosecutors...

Sam: In the Bush administration justice department.

But Sam, they were less political than Eric Holder, who is a political appointee...

When Sam brought up drilling people in the head and rape, Liz Cheney was outraged. Not at the act, but at the accusation...

Liz: That is totally, that is inexcusable..

Sam: It's in the report...

Liz: Nobody raped anybody...

George: The law said the threats were illegal, It's against the law.

Liz: Wait a second, that's not clear.

{}

Sam: Everyone except one person that I know has commented ....says torture is waterboarding is wrong.

Liz: Waterboarding isn't torture. We can go that path...the lack of seriousness here is important...

When a conservative is losing an argument, one of their weapons is to say that you're not serious. It's a one stop shop argument fixer. Kristol uses the word "serious" a lot to make himself sound intelligent, but nobody buys it except FOX.

Oh and Liz is still trying to sell her best product of all: Waterboarding isn't torture. How many times has she denied it already?

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (81)

PLAYS: (198)

Looks like Mr. Glazed-Chicken Duncan Hunter is at it again with defending our torture of prisoners. I don't know what else Chris Matthews thought he was going to get from the likes of Hunter given his past appearance on his show where he called detainee abuse "left wing rubbish". Now he's claiming that waterboarding isn't torture, and it makes our Marines tough! I think Jesse Ventura would disagree with him.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz did a pretty good job later in the segment when she was allowed to get a word in edge-wise and took Hunter to task for his claim that the government got any information from KSM after he was waterboarded.

Media Matters has a good run down of where that latest talking point came from and debunks it here-- Following Wash. Post article, conservative media advance falsehood that CIA documents prove interrogation techniques worked. Unfortunately since so much of the segment turned into a pissing contest between Hunter and Matthews over whether waterboarding is torture or not, those points were barely discussed.

Of course the fact that they have to make things up to justify the use of torture is no surprise since it doesn't work. It's meant to extract confessions and to get the prisoner to tell the torturer what they want to hear, not to get at the truth. But that's not going to stop the likes of Dick Cheney and Duncan Hunter from lying about it or the media from giving them a format to do it.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (68)

PLAYS: (110)

From Fox's Wall Street Journal Editorial Report, the panel recites the latest GOP talking point that any abuse of prisoners has already been investigated. Scott Horton does a nice job of debunking this in his article at Harpers Magazine, Seven Points on the CIA Report:

The “prior investigation” canard. It looks like the favorite talking point emerging for torture apologists (like David Ignatius) is that the CIA cases were already examined by career prosecutors who decided not to take any action. But this claim is false. Although these cases were enshrouded in extraordinary secrecy from the outset, I closely studied their management and conducted a number of interviews with Justice personnel who were involved; I also worked with the House Judiciary Committee in its review of the matter. The cases were referred by Helgerson to the Justice Department, which in turn passed them to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Paul J. McNulty. (This U.S. attorney’s office was the most highly politicized in the entire U.S. attorneys system, and McNulty was ultimately promoted to the office of deputy attorney general and then resigned amidst accusations of misconduct involving the politicization of the Justice Department.)

McNulty’s office acted as a sort of “dead letter office” for troublesome torture allegations. The suggestion that there was an active investigation is laughable. No grand jury was impaneled or testimony taken, and contrary to Ignatius’s claims no decision was taken not to prosecute. What happened instead was inaction. Why? If the cases had been pressed, the CIA personnel involved would have immediately implicated high-level Bush Administration officials. The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility has examined the handling of these cases and has confirmed that no serious investigation ever occurred. So the suggestion that Holder is now somehow undermining or second-guessing the decision of career prosecutors is preposterous.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (817)

PLAYS: (1372)

Juan Williams while making some very good arguments about why we should not be torturing anyone gets punked by Chris Wallace at the commercial break and plays the "we haven't been attacked since 9-11" card. I guess those anthrax attacks don't count, huh Chris?

Williams: But let me just if I could say quickly, two quick things. One is, in a democracy you don't torture people. It's against the law. We're having this discussion here like oh well, you know if it works, it's okay. No. It's not okay. You don't torture people.

And the second thing is, did it make America safer? No, in fact it led to our reputation in the world being diminished, and people not sending forces to fight with us in Iraq and else where. That doesn't help America.

Wallace: Alright. We have to take a break here, but I just want to point out to the audience that it is purely coincidental that this country has not been attacked again since 9-11.

h/t Think Progress

John Amato:
Here we go. Cheney's new BFF, Chris Wallace does what a good doggie always does for his master. I wrote this yesterday to Cheney, but it applies to the Village apologists as well.

You see, 9/11 doesn't count. Cheney and his ilk make it sound as if America was being attacked every week after 9/11 and once he started torturing they all magically stopped. Why was the US safe from 1993-2001, without using torture or the Patriot act? And the Trade Center bombers were all caught and brought to justice, but using Cheney's method Bin Laden is still free.

Mohammed told America that any plot after 9/11 would be virtually impossible anyway without the medieval methods Cheney adapted.:

Mohammed told interrogators that after the Sept. 11 attacks, his "overriding priority" was to strike the United States, but that he "realized that a follow-on attack would be difficult because of security measures." Most of the plots, as a result, were "opportunistic and limited," according to the summary.

Dick Cheney should never be believed, ever. That's why he goes on FOX every chance he gets.