U.S. soldier 'waterboarded his own daughter, 4, because she couldn't recite alphabet'

By GottaLaff

Now where would anyone get an idea like this? Think... think... Waterboarding. It's something I'd never heard of until... until... ahhh yes.

Money see, monkey do. And the chimp in chief made it a household word. Some role model, eh Sarah Palin?

A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet.

Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.

As his daughter 'squirmed' to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

This is the example the United States set under BushCo. Be proud, Cheney supporters. Give yourselves a high five, Yoo, Bybee, et al.

[His girlfriend] told [the police] about the alleged torture and the terrified girl was found hiding in a closet, with bruising on her back and scratch marks on her neck and throat.

Asked how she got the bruises, the girl is said to have replied: 'Daddy did it.' [...]

Police have not revealed Tabor's military service, but his base is home to units that have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Daddy did it."

Why, one could imagine that quote coming from Jenna or Not Jenna, because their daddy did it, too... hundreds and hundreds of times.

H/t: TexBetsy

Obama administration will not sign land mine ban

By GottaLaff

A BushCo policy lives on:

The Obama administration has decided not to sign an international convention banning land mines.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Tuesday that the administration recently completed a review and decided not to change the Bush-era policy.

Patrick Leahy was not happy, nor were human rights groups, and I can't blame them:

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., criticized the State Department's review of the land mine policy as "cursory and halfhearted."

The senator described the decision to stand fast on the current policy as "a lost opportunity [...] We should be leading this effort, not sitting on the sidelines."

Go here for more.

VIDEO: America attacked as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney dithered

By GottaLaff

My pal Greg Skilling wrote up a piece at The Examiner on this and passed it along to me. Wow. I'd missed 60 Minutes last night so I didn't see this. Double wow:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Unnerving much?

While the administration of former President George W. Bush and his erstwhile partner former Vice-President Dick Cheney dithered about with two foreign wars, America was under attack. Sunday, on CBS' 60 Minutes, reporter Steve Kroft interviewed Project Director for the Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency, Jim Lewis regarding the attacks.

"In 2007 we probably had our electronic Pearl Harbor. It was an espionage Pearl Harbor," Lewis said. "Some unknown foreign power, and honestly, we don't know who it is, broke into the Department of Defense, to the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, probably the Department of Energy, probably NASA. They broke into all of the high tech agencies, all of the military agencies, and downloaded terabytes of information."

Much more here.

The next time a Rushpublic uses that tired, meaningless old talking point about how BushCo kept us safe, refer them back to this. Then remind them that 9/11 happened on their watch.

Mission accomplished.

VIDEO- Will on Iraq: "A bit of dithering might have been in order "; Podesta: BushCo only spent 1 hour on Afghanistan report

By GottaLaff



Via Think Progress, Who neglected what again?

Recently, Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-DE) — a former top aide to Biden and co-chair of the Vice President’s transition team — said that the Bush administration basically just “threw” the report “to the transition team as they were going out the door”:

KAUFMAN: So for him [Cheney] to come in at the end and say, “Well, we did it wrong for eight years. But then, in the end, we gave them a plan which really is what they should have used.” Let me tell you something: This administration came in. Rahm Emanuel was there. I was on the transition team on this. They started from scratch on Afghanistan. They took a blank piece of paper out and said, “What are we going to do to get this thing done?” … It was absolutely the perfect time to take a hard look at what we’re doing.

US 'hampered' probe into airline bomb plot: report

By GottaLaff

AFP/Metropolitan Police/File – Undated photos of Abdulla Ahmed Ali, (L) Assad Sarwar (C) and Tanvir Hussain (R).

You know, for a bunch of swaggery cowboys and thugs, BushCo sure behaved like a big bucket-o'-wusses.

Every time we turn around, whether it's this story, or Jane Mayer's The Dark Side, we discover that Boy Georgie and Dickless McHeartStent were so scared of the next attack that it drove them into a frenzied fearball of reckless:

Jittery US authorities unintentionally hampered an investigation into a plot to blow up at least seven transatlantic airliners, a former British police commissioner said Tuesday.

Andy Hayman, who worked on the case, said he suspects that the US authorities, fearful of US deaths if the plot was carried out, pressured Pakistan to arrest the suspected mastermind of the plot prematurely.

Hayman, former assistant commissioner of specialist operations in the Metropolitan Police in 2006, said that arrest "hampered our evidence-gathering and placed us in Britain under intolerable pressure."

A British court on Monday found three men guilty of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners using liquid explosives, in what would have been a "terrorist event of global proportions."

Yep, BushCo ruined everything. This from the "Smoke 'Em Out" crowd. How ironic.

Hayman said throughout the investigation, then British prime minister Tony Blair and US president George W. Bush were being briefed.

"Fearful for the safety of American lives, the US authorities had been getting edgy, seeking reassurance that this was not going to slip through our hands," Hayman said, writing in the Times.

"We thought we had managed to persuade them to hold back so we could develop new opportunities and get more evidence to present to the courts. [...]

"In the end, I strongly suspect that they lost their nerve and had a hand in triggering the arrest in Pakistan."

"The arrest hampered our evidence-gathering and placed us in Britain under intolerable pressure." [...]

"We believed the Americans had demanded the arrest (of Rauf) and we were angry we had not been informed," he said.

"We were being forced to take action, to arrest a number of suspects, which normally would have required days of planning and briefing."

See how they made America safer? Next to them, Obama's such an amateur.

Tom Ridge: BushCo pushed to raise security alert for political reasons prior to re-election

By GottaLaff

BushCo politicized the Justice Department, BushCo politicized... well, everything. The latest revelation (as if we didn't know this already, right?) from former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is that they politicized the security of our nation:

[I]n the book, Ridge reveals that he considered resigning because he was urged to issue a politically-motivated security alert on the eve of Bush’s re-election.

He considered resigning, but he didn't resign. Way to put America first, Tom.

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

Playing politics with terror was a relatively frequent occurrence in the Bush administration.

See how safe BushCo kept us? If you read Jane Mayer's book, The Dark Side, you can see how they made a habit of blindsiding, shunning, withholding information, and politicizing. But remember... whatever we do, we shouldn't look back, just keep looking forward.

Revealed: the secret evidence of global warming Bush tried to hide

By GottaLaff

UPDATE: Check this out.

The Ugly Bush Stain may be indelible this time.

My jaw just hit the floor... and then I staggered to a chair and collapsed. Just... read:

Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.

The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.

The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic. More than a million square kilometres of sea ice - a record loss - were missing in the summer of 2007 compared with the previous year.

Nor has this loss shown any sign of recovery. [...]

The phenomenon threatens to set off runaway heating of the planet, say climatologists.The latest revelations have triggered warnings from scientists that they no longer have the funds to keep a comprehensive track of climate change. [...]

The Obama administration has already taken steps to tackle America's flagging scientific lead. The president's economic recovery plan allotted $170m (£100m) to help close the gaps in climate modelling. The NOAA is seeking an additional $390m in its 2010 budget to upgrade environmental satellites, and help make data more available to researchers and government officials.

See for yourself:

(click on image to enlarge)

I get frustrated with the ObamAdministration at times, but this is one area (among many others) where I support him 1000%. He gets it.

And BushCo, once again, has put all of our lives in danger.

Former MI6 chief says Britain was 'dragged' into Iraq war

By GottaLaff

But... But... but BushCo and the Rushpublics say that the intel from al-l-l-l those other countries was the same as ours, and they all pointed to bad, bad things like imminent threats and WMD. Now Nigel had to go and open his big mouth and ruin everything:

Britain was "dragged into a war in Iraq which was always against out better judgment" the former deputy head of MI6 has claimed, in a remark that will reignite the debate over political interference in the war.

The comments, made by Nigel Inkster, who was deputy director of MI6 at the time, make clear there were reservations over the war at a very senior level within the Secret Intelligence Service.

MI6 was blamed for the failure of intelligence that took Britain to war after helping produce a dossier in which Tony Blair claimed that Iraq was ready to use weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.

The dossier, said to have been "sexed up" by Downing Street, also mentioned controversial intelligence that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Niger.

In a speech at the Institute for Public Policy Research, Mr Inkster blamed weakness at the Foreign Office for allowing Britain to get dragged into a war over which officials had serious doubts. [...]

His views on Iraq, expressed for the first time in public, may also explain why he was passed over as the head of MI6 in favour of Sir John Scarlett, who took responsibility for the dossier during the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly. [...]

The Butler Report into the intelligence that took Britain to war, concluded that "more weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear", and that judgements had stretched available intelligence "to the outer limits".

So many investigations, so little time.

Another BushCo cover-up: High lead levels in D.C.

By GottaLaff

BushCo does it again. Concerns about putting people's lives and health at risk? Meh. To BushCo, it was simply one more opportunity to play Chicken with the justice system, regulatory measures, and America's well-being:

An investigation by Rebecca Renner of Salon has revealed that the Center for Disease Control(CDC) had withheld evidence of dangerously high levels [of lead]. An influential CDC report released in 2004 (and since cited by officials in Seattle to calm nervous parents) downplayed the role that chloramination played in the D.C. lead crisis, saying that it "might have contributed a small increase in blood lead levels." However, according to Renner, "the results of thousands of blood tests that measured lead contamination in children were missing from the report, potentially skewing the findings and undermining public health. Further, the CDC discovered in 2007 that many young children living in D.C. homes with lead pipes were poisoned by drinking water and suffered ill effects. Parents wondered whether the water could have caused speech and balance problems, difficulty with learning, and hyperactivity. Yet the health agency did not publicize the new findings or alert public health authorities in D.C. or other federal agencies that regulate lead, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or Housing and Urban Development." [...]

The parents of young twins, who believe lead exposure caused developmental problems with their children, filed a $200m lawsuit in February.

Let's say it one more time, in unison: Oversight.

Seems like old times, though, doesn't it? M-m-m, nothing like reminiscing to make you really.... sick.

The full Salon article can be found here.

The ugly Bush stain: Gray wolves edition

By GottaLaff

One more time, BushCo sets out to be killers of both the environment and animal life (not to mention human life). Here they go again, squeezing in more destruction before they leave office (in five, count 'em, five days):

Bush administration officials said Wednesday that they would remove gray wolves in the Midwest and the northern Rocky Mountains from the endangered species list -- the latest, but probably not last, chapter in the wolf's on-again, off-again federal protection.

The Interior Department decision would apply to wolves in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Idaho and Montana. It would maintain protections for wolves in Wyoming, where the department says state officials haven't done enough to ensure the wolves' continued recovery.

An Interior Department official told reporters that the decision represented a victory for conservation efforts.

But the move, less than a week before President Bush leaves office, could be short-lived. Environmental groups hope President-elect Barack Obama will quickly reverse it after his inauguration. If he doesn't, the groups, which have blocked previous efforts to delist the wolf in court, say they'll sue again.

In this case, sue-age is a good thing.

A particularly ugly Bush stain: BushCo to bar autoworkers from striking against GM

By GottaLaff

When Thom Hartmann rants, I listen. Right now, he's ranting... loudly. He's quoting from this Raw Story piece, and when you're done reading, feel free to rant with Thom and me in Comments. The gist: GM says give us the loan money, but make it illegal to strike. A strike would give the government permission to rescind their loan and allow GM to declare bankruptcy:

A little-noticed provision buried in the Bush Administration's $13.4 billion loan package to General Motors will prohibit the United Auto Workers from launching a strike as long as the company receives funds from the federal government.

Not only that, but a strike would give the federal government the power to call in their loan -- putting the loan in default and forcing GM into bankruptcy. The government now has the power to force a bankruptcy if “any labor union or collective bargaining unit shall engage in a strike or other work stoppage.”

Why would he do this? Here's one reason: Break the unions, break the Democratic party.

The terms of GM's loan package were reported last night in the Detroit Free Press. They did not become public until GM filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

So the big fat corporate rich guys get their bonuses, but the workers get... screwed.
The US auto workers union is also saddled by another requirement of the loan: the UAW must now accept a plan to lower wages and benefits for GM to match those of other foreign-owned US automakers' plants.

Feel that rant coming on yet?

FDA "fundamentally broken"; scientists ask Obama for help

By GottaLaff

I'm not a big fan of defective medical devices, are you? I mean, not counting any that the Nation of Dick might sport:

A group of scientists at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday sent a letter to President-elect Barack Obama's transition team pleading with him to restructure the agency, saying managers have ordered, intimidated and coerced scientists to manipulate data in violation of the law.

The nine scientists, whose names have been provided to the transition team and to some members of Congress, say the FDA is a "fundamentally broken" agency and describe it as a place where honest employees committed to integrity can't act without fear of reprisal.

"There is an atmosphere at FDA in which the honest employee fears the dishonest employee," according to the letter, addressed to John Podesta, head of Mr. Obama's transition team.

The letter will likely increase pressure on Tom Daschle, Mr. Obama's choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, to make sweeping changes at the agency.

What?! BushCo politicizing? Again? Pfft. That's so Alberto Gonzales ago.

The scientists' main concerns are with the agency's scientific review process for medical devices, which they characterize as having been "corrupted and distorted by current FDA managers, thereby placing the American people at risk."[...]

The group says they have taken their concerns to the head of the FDA, Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach, and his assistant commissioner for accountability and integrity, attorney Bill McConagha. The scientists say no one has been held accountable, and say some of the problematic managers have been promoted and rewarded.

I'm feeling a few more Medals of Freedom coming on.

The agency has been under fire from both parties in both Houses of Congress as being too close to industry. Several leading politicians, including Sen. Chuck Grassley have complained that FDA leaders often ignore or suppress their own scientists' opinions on safety issues involving drugs and devices. [...]

The group said there needs to be a complete restructuring of the evaluation and approval process, and that Mr. Obama needs to sign new legislation giving protection to government employees who speak out against corruption.

IMHO, P.E. Obama already needs another vacation.

50-year-old war vet stunned by new deployment to Iraq

By GottaLaff

Think: What better place to look for potential soldiers in tip-top shape to fight a fraudulent war in Iraq... than AARP:

A veteran who has been out of the military for 15 years and recently received his AARP card was stunned when he received notice he will be deployed to Iraq.

The last time Paul Bandel, 50, saw combat was in the early 1990s during the Gulf War. [...]

In 1993, Bandel took the option of leaving the Army without retirement and never thought he would be called back to action."Here he's 50 years old, getting his AARP card, and here he's being redeployed with all these 18-year-olds," said Paul's wife, Linda Bandel.

Clint Eastwood, maybe, but Paul Bandel?

Involuntary recall allows the military, regardless of age or how long someone has been out of service, to order vets back into active duty.

Call it what it is: A draft.

"Anger's not the word. I was more concerned about the financial impact it's going to do. My pay's probably cut in half," said Paul Bandel.

There's that.

And there's also that whole "we're winning" thing that BushCo insists on bellowing whenever a camera focuses in on their pompous mugs. If we're such victors, why are they forcing 50-year-olds to fight a war we've supposedly won?

The last missile system the veteran was trained to operate is no longer used by the military.

Calls to the Army and the Pentagon about how many men and women in their 50s are being called back to duty were not returned Wednesday. Paul Bandel will be deployed overseas until 2010. His wife plans to move in with her elderly parents until his return.

The veteran is dusting off his old uniforms and torn between his duty to his country and obligations as a grandfather.

I'm sure they'll give him all the training he needs to dodge all those pesky IEDs. Think how physically fit he'll become! That should be of some comfort to his grandchildren.

Video here.

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.

The ugly Bush stain: Comprehensive list edition

By GottaLaff

I've been posting about the malodorous BushCo's intentional, last-minute ambush, using an onslaught of New Rules as their most recent, desperate weapon against their own "homeland" (let's lose that word forever, please). The residual effects will leave a stubborn stain on this country, but hopefully, not an indelible one. However, some of the stench emanating from this bunch of thugs may be harder to eradicate than we think.

Here's a partial list, via Huffington Post:

• EPA would not regulate a contaminant in drinking water (Kool-Aid from our government to us)
• Mining permits near Grand Canyon and other national parks (blasts from the past)
• Gut the Endangered Species Act (the hell with biodiversity or consideration for creation's creatures. Shoot 'em.)
• Power plants could be exempted from installing pollution controls, allowing an added 70 million tons to be released into our air (what's a little cough among friends and who needs to see anyway?)
• EPA narrows the definition of solid waste (now there is a regulation to savor)
• Less reporting on animal pollution proposed
• Rules for dumping mine debris erased
• EPA lowers air quality standards for lead
• Fisheries rule calls for less public input (the czars had a way with public input, too.)
• Loaded guns possible in National Parks( not if the Park rangers have anything to say about it)
• Public lands may be leased for the development of oil shale (public, not to be confused with proprietary)
• Interior Department rules could limit public environmental comments (so much for the First Amendment)
• EPA lets factory farms decide if they need a permit to discharge animal waste into waterways (or large concentrations of dung dumped into our rivers and streams) [...]

It is hard to imagine the state of mind in our officials that produces this kind of malice. [...]

There are remedies. One, of course, is the will of the new administration to override this treachery and destructiveness. The other is the Congressional Review Act. Items published in the Federal Register before Nov 21st take effect 60 days from that date.
House and Senate leadership has already stipulated that they will use the Review Act in a similar way that a Bush administration action used it to undo a Clinton regulation in 2001. Reversal probably cannot take place without scrupulous effort, but we should all encourage the new administration and Congress to do everything they can to defeat these ruinous regulations. [...]

To write midnight regulations that sabotage human health is to see Charles Dickens scribing away by candlelight, as one of his most rapacious and vile villains rises from the candle flame and defiles humanity and its landscape.

Sanitizing sewage of this magnitude won't be easy. Thank you, BushCo, for relieving yourselves publicly all over a country that has tried to maintain some sense of cleanliness, beauty, and pride, despite your relentless maneuvers. You've done your level best to vulgarize it.

We will now unite to collectively scrub America clean until it sparkles again.

H/t: Chris

The "Obama recession"

By GottaLaff

Remember: This is all Obama's fault.