Senator Jon Kyl Jokes About Obama Drowning

By GottaLaff

Some things just aren't funny, Jon Kyl:

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) "got a big laugh on Saturday at a National Republican Senatorial Committee retreat, but his joke definitely wouldn't be funny to some people," The Hill reports.

His joke: "So Obama, Pelosi and Reid are in a row boat, and it springs a leak and starts to sink. Who gets saved?" Answer: "The American people."

I can just picture the chortling and rib jabbing now. I wonder if they'd be chortling and rib jabbing if they had the good sense to realize how they might be influencing the more violent among us.

Of course, had a Democrat made the same tasteless joke about a Republican leadership, all hell would have broken loose, there would have been demands for hearings, 24/7 media coverage, condemnation in loud, indignant voices, and calls for impeachment/resignation/prison time/firing squads.

That Family Values party has some sense of humor... and don't get me started on their outstanding judgment.

Massey Denies It Prevented Miners From Attending Funerals

By GottaLaff

Earlier, I posted about Massey Energy refusing to allow time off for miners who wanted to attend their loved ones’ funerals.

They're denying it.

Massey spokesman Troy Andes:

“We know of no instances when miners were denied a request to attend a funeral.”

They know of no instances. Maybe someone simply forgot to tell them. Or they did this:

The Washington Independent also reminds us that even if this wasn't a Massey policy, it might have been enforced by subsidiaries who actually run the mines and have their own rules.

Massey Coal: No Time off for Miners to Attend Friends’ Funerals

By GottaLaff

A sign outside a West Virginia vigil for coal miners who lost their lives in the Upper Big Branch explosion on April 5 (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

If Massey's CEO, Don Blankenship, had been confronted by strong unions, things might have been different. Lives might have been saved, and this despicable turn of events might have been avoided.

Via the Washington Independent:

Massey Energy, the Virginia-based coal giant that runs the Upper Big Branch Mine, has denied time off for miners to attend their friends’ funerals; has rejected makeshift memorials outside the mine site; and, in at least one case, required a worker to go on shift even though the fate of a relative — one of the victims of the April 5 disaster — remained unknown at the time, according to some family members and other sources familiar with those episodes. In short, the company might be taking heat for putting profits and efficiency above its workers, but it doesn’t appear to have changed its tune in the wake of the worst mining tragedy in 40 years.

Remember the scene in Miracle on 34th Street, when Kris Kringle is talking to Alfred, the Macy janitor and Alfred laments...



That's all that matters to Massey: profit. Profit over lives. The very people who make him money are expendable. But dollars aren't.

“They told my husband, ‘You’ve got a job to do and you’re gonna do it,’” said the wife of one Massey miner, referring to the funerals he’s missed this month for friends who died in the blast. “What else are we gonna do?”

What else, indeed.

The culture of fear is everywhere. It's in politics, it's at gun rallies, at Tea Bagger protests, white supremacist gatherings, and now it's directed at those who lost loved ones:

“I guarantee it: Massey’s already told these guys, ‘Hey, don’t say nothin’. You’re not talking to no reporters. You’re not saying nothin’ about our safety record — or you won’t have a job,’” said Chuck Nelson, a former Massey miner who’s since become an environmental activist with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “That’s the way they operate.”

That's the way they operate. There isn't a heart anywhere in Blankenship's body. He and Cheney should start a club.

Massey wouldn't even let a mourner hang a wreath at the entrance to the mine. Nice people skills, Don. Bully much?

“When we were all union, if there was something that came up, it wasn’t no problem at all to shut that mine down until everything was fixed.” said Nelson, who worked for nearly 20 years in union mines before Massey took over. “Non-union [workers], they ain’t got that right.”

Massey ain't got nothin' right.

H/t: hapkidogal

VIDEO: President Obama Orders Review of Mine Safety

By GottaLaff

While I work on an exclusive story, this should tide you over:

The President reports that in the wake of the West Virginia mining tragedy, he has ordered an investigation into the incident as well as a comprehensive review of mine safety regulations and inspections.

VIDEO: Rep. Grayson breaks down in tears over letters about uninsured dead

By GottaLaff



Rep. Grayson may say things he shouldn't sometimes, but I adore the guy. He is reading stories from the site http://www.NamesOfTheDead.com.

Defense Department Conceals Data on Detainee Deaths

By GottaLaff

One might expect this from BushCo... but not-- well, read all the way to the end:

Last year, as Dr. Steven Miles, professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School and faculty member of its Center for Bioethics, was researching the deaths of detainees in U.S. custody, he noticed something strange. Although the Department of Defense had in the past issued press releases when detainees died at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, at some point in 2006, he says, the “entire prisoner death reporting system was turned off in Afghanistan.” Although at that time deaths in Iraq were still being reported, he says, that system was “turned off” at the beginning of 2008.

Miles, a member of the board of the Center for Victims of Torture and author of “Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and America’s War on Terror,” published in 2006 by Random House, was working on an updated edition of the book, which documents how physicians and psychologists working for the U.S. military violated the Hippocratic oath and American Medical Association rules by helping the government design and monitor abusive interrogations. [...]

Instead, Miles documented, first in the British medical journal the Lancet and then more expansively in his book, physicians actually helped facilitate torture. [...]

Death certificates were falsified and military health officers were either reporting instances of torture late, or not reporting them at all, he found. And, he observes in the Appendix to the book’s second edition, titled Oath Betrayed: America’s Torture Doctors, published by University of California Press this year, the military appeared to be using physicians and psychologists to test the reactions of detainees to particular interrogation techniques, which may well violate ethical bans on experimentation on human subjects. Physicians for Human Rights recently released a report documenting similar concerns.

As Miles was working on his book, he realized there were huge gaps in the military’s reporting about the torture, injury and death of detainees in its custody. [...]

[O]ne day, the press releases stopped. “They just stopped reporting it,” said Miles last week. It couldn’t be that no one died, he said, because “you have a certain expected death rate based on the size of the population. I’ve been able to trace all public death reports and can show when they turned them off.”

Last week,TWI first reported that the Department of Defense appears to have stopped releasing information about the deaths of detainees in its custody in Afghanistan and Iraq. (It has continued to release them concerning detainees at Guantanamo, most of whom are represented by lawyers.) [...]

In his paper, Miles writes:

In May 2004, shortly after media published photographs of lethal abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, DoD disclosed 22 prisoner deaths; of which 12 (54%) were attributed to natural causes. DOD did not disclose another 67 deaths that occurred during that same period. Only 13 (15%) of the total 89 deaths were due to natural causes. By the end of 2008, 93 of 165 known decedents (56%) are unnamed. Death certificates are available for 37 (22%). Homicides and shelling of prisons are the leading causes of death. DoD has completely suppressed prisoner death reports from Afghanistan since 2004 and adopted a similar policy for Iraq in 2008.

And now, even more bad news, news that I hate posting:

The Obama administration does not appear to have changed the reporting policy, although at least some officials in the administration have declared the “war on terror” over. Still, the Pentagon under President Obama has not resumed regular reporting on the deaths of prisoners in custody, says Miles. The system is “still shut down,” he said. “Obama hasn’t opened it up. It’s just mysterious to me.” [...]

Late yesterday, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed that the DoD issues press releases when detainees die at Guantanamo Bay; TWI still has not received an answer with regard to the deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

****************

All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari's story here. Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.

Revealed: 90 immigrants have died in US custody in last 5 1/2 years

By GottaLaff

I'm running out of room for all my outrage and horror:

At least 90 immigrants have died while in US custody since October 2003, a document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed Friday. At least 32 deaths occurred at facilities run by private contractors.

The document -- which has received little to no attention -- also displays an apparent carelessness on the part of prison officials, whose records of the deaths change and omit inmate deaths over time.

Moreover, it shows that prison officials are now recording even fewer details about immigrants' deaths, possibly in response to periodic scrutiny of the list. [...]

The list also reveals that one private company, the Corrections Corporation of America, had at least 18 deaths under its watch, and that 32 of the 90 deaths occurred while immigrants were held in private prisons. 37 of the deaths occurred at regional facilities and 20 at federal centers. [...]

In addition, information about some deaths has been obscured.

"Some information has been changed without explanation," the Times added. "For example, the cause of death for Boubacar Bah, 52, who was held at the Corrections Corporation of America detention center in Elizabeth, N.J., previously was listed as 'brain hemorrhage, fractured skull' and now reads 'undetermined.'"

The full list is available here.

Cheney, on catching Bin Laden: "We've got a few days left yet"

By GottaLaff

Please note that the Nation of Dick says he is unaware of any impending strike on Bin Laden. He must just have some kind of "gut feeling" about the imminence of a victory over a 6'4" guy with a health problem who's managed to elude him for years.

And perhaps "feeling" is too emotional a reference when it comes to the Nation of Dick:

Outgoing US Vice President Dick Cheney Friday did not give up hope of capturing or killing Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, with only 11 days left before Barack Obama moves into the White House.

"We've got a few days left yet," Cheney told CNN when asked why bin Laden or Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri continue to elude US capture.

I wonder, did Big Dick take a gander at this here chart?

Or this one?

The government’s own figures, put out by the National Counterterrorism Center but going back only to 2004, show an increase in 2007:

The urgency of rounding up Osama bin Smoke 'im Out apparently diminished relative to the increase in the number of deaths since his September 11, 2001 attacks.

But hey, there are still 11 days to go. Patience. It simply took BushCo 7 years to get it up, so to speak.

The ugly Bush stain: OSHA's "dismal inaction" edition

By GottaLaff

Once again, Bush leaves behind a malodorous, toxic stainy mess that has resulted in even more lost lives and further erosion of formerly high standards:

Current and former career officials at OSHA say that such sagas were a recurrent feature during the Bush administration, as political appointees ordered the withdrawal of dozens of workplace health regulations, slow-rolled others, and altered the reach of its warnings and rules in response to industry pressure.

The result is a legacy of unregulation common to several health-protection agencies under Bush: From 2001 to the end of 2007, OSHA officials issued 86 percent fewer rules or regulations termed economically significant by the Office of Management and Budget than their counterparts did during a similar period in President Bill Clinton's tenure, according to White House lists.

White House officials have dismissed such tallies, emphasizing in recent regulatory overviews that their "objective is quality, not quantity," and that heavy restrictions on corporations harm economic performance. [...]

"The legacy of the Bush administration has been one of dismal inaction," said Robert Harrison, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco and chairman of the occupational health section of the American Public Health Association. It has been "like turning a ketchup bottle upside down, banging the bottom of the container, and nothing comes out. You shake and shake and nothing comes out," Harrison said.

More than two dozen current and former senior career officials further said in interviews that the agency's strategic choices were frequently made without input from its experienced hands. Political appointees "shut us out," a longtime senior career official said.

Among the regulations proposed by OSHA's staff but scuttled by political appointees was one meant to protect health workers from tuberculosis. Although OSHA concluded in 1997 that the regulation could avert as many as 32,700 infections and 190 deaths annually and save $115 million, it was blocked by opposition from large hospitals.

In the summer, the agency decided against moving further toward the regulation of crystalline silica, the tiny fibrous material in cement and stone dust that causes lung disease or cancer. OSHA promised a scientific peer review of the health risks by early 2005 and then by early 2007, but it never acted. Regulating silica exposures would have prevented an estimated 41 silicosis deaths and 20 to 40 lung cancers annually, according to OSHA.

In the spring, political appointees quietly scrapped work on another long-pending regulation of hazardous exposure to ionizing radiation in mailrooms, food warehouses, and hospitals and airports. It cited "resource constraints and other priorities" -- the same reason officials gave for withdrawing more than a dozen regulatory proposals in 2001.

With BushCo, economic considerations (their own and their cronies') always trump the physical well-being of the U.S. population (actually, that of the entire planet), the health of the U.S. economy, morale, and/or the environment.

What's so disturbing is that their filthy, self-serving, homicidal policies will have exponential repercussions, but of course, none of those will be legal ones. Those responsible will skate.

Many more details can be found here, if you can stomach them.

Army Alters Photographs, Issues Them To AP

By GottaLaff

clipped from www.cjr.org

The Associated Press retracted two government-issued photographs last night after a photographer in Texas alerted the agency that the photos in question appeared to be doctored.

Bob Owen, chief photographer of the San Antonio Express-News, notified the AP that the photos of two deceased soldiers, who died in Iraq on Sept. 14, were nearly identical. Upon examining the photos, Owens noticed that everything except for the soldier’s face, name, and rank was the same. The most glaring similarity, Owen told CJR, was that the camouflage patterns of the two uniforms were “perfectly identical.”

After inspecting the photographs, the AP confirmed that the images were, indeed, Photoshopped, and issued eliminations on the two photos.

The elimination reads:

The content of this image has been digitally altered and does not accurately reflect the scene. No other version of the photo is available.

The photos were released by the U.S. Army at Fort Stewart in Georgia. Officials at the base could not be reached for comment.

“I’d like to think that the media holds itself pretty accountable and we try really hard to keep high standards,” Owen said. “Obviously the army, and the government, doesn’t see anything wrong with that [photo altering] at all.”

And a few comments from the same site:

• With it now clear to virtually everyone that the U.S. government is entirely owned and operated by compulsive liars, I'm not clear why any self-respecting news organization would ever again accept press releases, comments, recordings, videos, or photos from anyone on the federal payroll.

• i heard one of these young gentlemens mother on the talk radio show today and it was truly sad. she said this was her sons 3rd tour of duty. she said she found out about his death from the news media and the government isn't giving her any answers on what really happened to her son. this is our government at its' worst and this is a dam shame how they are treating this young mans family.

• There is no aspect of government or public service that has not been tainted by the Bush administration's need to keep people in the dark about what it does.

• I saw that same picture yesterday on YahooNews, but it was associated with a different story. I checked and it has been replaced with a picture that is hardly relevant to the story.
  http://news.yahoo.com/story/ap/20080918/ap_on_re_mi_ea/eu_iraq_soldiers_charged;_ylt=Asexnl2hxLg.ZoKjOMDcAxDMWM0F

• Somebody better tell Charles Johnson and Michelle Malkin. They are always blaming the AP. Now look who needs the blame.

No further comment necessary.

Sequel: Hurricane Ike news blackout; hundreds of bodies found in Galveston area

By GottaLaff

I posted about the Hurricane Ike news blackout here, which included an e-mail from someone who claimed there were 1500 unreported bodies in the Galveston area.

Now one of our commenters tells us of another e-mail that seems to corroborate the earlier one:

I just got from a friend in Houston that corroborates other reports of unreported deaths in the aftermath of Ike.

No major damage on my end either. We had some trees down but that's about it. Others in the greater Houston area haven't fared so well. We have a friend who is a police officer for League City (an area of town much closer to Galveston- which seems to have taken most of the damage) and he says that even though they are only publicizing about 20 or so deaths, that there are several HUNDRED unidentified bodies on Galveston Island on the Bolivar Peninsula. (which is now technically an island as the two major ways of getting to Bolivar are now under water).

Sad to say, but I trust the word of e-mailers over that of our corporate media.

H/t: Kerry

Hurricane Ike news blackout; 1500 bodies found in Galveston?

By GottaLaff

One of our many astute Anonymi pointed me to this one:

The following is from an email sent to me by a good friend in Nacogdoches whose buddy has been over Galveston - names have been edited out to protect the folks those who relayed the report. Also relayed from this guy and others: persons going into the restricted area are apparently being patted down and cameras are being confiscated, by Army and Coast Guard personnel.

Okay...I've got some news on this front. Take it for what it's worth, but the guy I got it from is someone I trust to raise my children... He's never once lied to me...ever. And we're close.

He's in a pretty high-up supervisory position for a refinery down on the coast.

His refinery has some equipment and lines in and around Galveston county, and before they were to bring them back on line he and his crew had to inspect the place for damage and potential hazards. So they were given permission....after a background check....to helicopter in and inspect, which meant coming in over Galveston.

I kid you not when I say that he told me they saw AT LEAST 1500 bodies in trees scattered about Galveston. They also saw a lot in various ditches and marshes, esp. on the north side of East Galv. Bay, east side of Trinity Bay, and in the marshes between I-45 and Seabrook/Clear Lake/Deer Park.

It explains why they're not letting the media anywhere close to the Island except in limited sectors nd we're not hearing anything from or about the people who survived and those who stayed behind. It's like 20,000 people never existed....where are they? Where'd they go? What are their names? Nothing....

Same thing in Orange county.

Take it for what it's worth....I believe him, though his count may be wrong given the shock of the sight. But like I said, I'd trust him to raise my kids.

I'd be more surprised if he were wrong than if he were right.

And from Rhiannon Myers of the Galveston Daily News comes this dispatch:

GALVESTON - Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas on Monday ordered all city employees not to talk to news reporters. She did not say when that order would be lifted.

Thomas and City Manager Steve LeBlanc will be the only officials allowed to talk to reporters. City spokeswoman Mary Jo Naschke vehemently denied the city was trying to clamp down on coverage.
......

Reporters would be allowed on the island only if they had proper identification, Thomas said. She didn't clarify what that meant.

Reporters were also forbidden from visiting areas on the far West End, Thomas said. She did not explain why.

How sad is it that I'm no longer surprised by this kind of disturbing news?

British government "lost track" of dead soldiers

By GottaLaff

I'm at a loss for expletives. This rivals even BushCo's insensitivity and incompetence:

Ministers were last night accused of 'incompetence and insensitivity' after it was revealed that a list of war dead compiled for MPs and Her Majesty's coroner had missed out dozens of dead British soldiers.

Professor Sheila Bird, who discovered the 'forgotten soldiers' during a detailed study of the military inquest system for the Medical Research Council, said the government appeared to have lost track of the actual date of death of the fatally injured soldiers.

Families of troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq last night reacted with outrage amid calls for an inquiry into the 'disappeared' dead soldiers.

You lose your keys. You lose your sunglasses. You even lose your mind. But you do not lose track of the deaths of soldiers who gave their lives for your country, and whose families are devastated twice over now, as a result.

Corroborative analysis by Tory MP Patrick Mercer of ministerial statements concerning the death toll suggest that as many as 33 dead British soldiers literally vanished from the list of fatalities awaiting inquests given to parliament by defence and justice ministers.

Maureen Shearer, who waited more than 550 days for an inquest verdict into her son Richard's death in Iraq from a roadside bomb:

"...It's bad enough to feel that your son died for no good reason, but to feel they were not even cared about to the extent they disappeared is dreadful. I cannot imagine how it must be for parents whose sons literally disappeared in every sense."

U.S. weapons in Iraq affecting babies

By GottaLaff

This must be going over well:

The new cases, and the number of deaths among children, have risen after "special weaponry" was used in the two massive bombing campaigns in Fallujah in 2004.

After denying it at first, the Pentagon admitted in November 2005 that white phosphorous, a restricted incendiary weapon, was used a year earlier in Fallujah.

In addition, depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were used heavily in Fallujah. The Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tonnes of DU in Iraq thus far.

Many doctors believe DU to be the cause of a severe increase in the incidence of cancer in Iraq, as well as among U.S. veterans who served in the 1991 Gulf War and through the current occupation. [...]

"The most worrying is that many of our women have suffered loss of their babies, and some had babies born with deformations."

Spreading Democracy can be unhealthy for children and other living things.