From Talking Points Memo, another gem from the esteemed senator from the Gem State.
Drill it, mine it, log it, dam it. How this clown continues to wield any clout is a tribute to the state of the U.S. Congress.
Posted under Environment, Politics, Republican Party
This post was written by Jim Stanford on July 18, 2008
The bald eagle has landed.
Devious Dick is back in Jackson Hole for Fourth of July weekend, according to well-placed sources. He did not attend the parade this morning (where he might have faced a mob), but perhaps he’ll be ferried by chopper to the Music in the Hole concert, of which he and his wife are fans.
Since we’re such patriotic, freedom-loving Americans, we thought we’d celebrate this Independence Day with some ol’-fashioned Communist bashing.
Oops. Turns out the military trainers the U.S. government sent to Guantánamo Bay in 2002, under the direction of the Creep Veep, gave our soldiers a lesson in torture tactics pioneered by … the Communist Chinese during the Korean War.
The Chinese used these tactics — sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, standing for long periods of time — to “obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners,” the New York Times reports.
The trainers based their lesson on a chart the U.S. Air Force developed during the 1950s as it sought to train our soldiers to resist the very same techniques.
“The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: ‘Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance,’” the Times reports. Nice work, keystone commies.
[In case anyone is wondering whether waterboarding, another of the tactics implemented by the Bush administration, is, in fact, torture, a journalist we admire greatly, Christopher Hitchens, says there's no doubt. Hitchens, bless him, subjected himself to waterboarding and wrote a piece about it for Vanity Fair.]
Happy July Fourth, Chairman Cheney!
Posted under Politics, Republican Party
This post was written by Jim Stanford on July 4, 2008
When the filing period for the 2008 election closed last month, I was surprised to find no one challenging Mayor Mark Barron.
Fawning profiles in the local media nonwithstanding, there has been a lot of grumbling about Barron on barstools and coffee counters, owing mostly to the new parking garage and the rapidly changing face of downtown.
Another lawmaker ripe for a challenge is state Rep. Keith Gingery, a Republican who owes his election in 2004 to GOP gerrymandering. Gingery has rankled his constituency in Jackson by sponsoring abortion bills and his flip-flop on a secrecy bill that made correspondence between lawmakers and lobbyists off-limits to the public.
I wasn’t surprised to find him running unopposed because the Wyoming Legislature is an unpaid job that requires a lot of travel around the state and spending several weeks in Cheyenne each winter.
Should either of these pols be coasting to another term?
We who feel the issues merit more rigorous debate than a fill-in-the-blanks questionnaire from the local papers have another option: a write-in campaign.
Posted under Democratic Party, Politics, Republican Party, Town Government, Wyoming Legislature
This post was written by Jim Stanford on June 30, 2008
McLame.
By now you may have heard about the home page of John McBush McCain, where alongside his campaign strategy and Iraq policy is an equally weighted section devoted to “Golf Gear.” An indication of the demographics of his supporters, and his savvy grasp of the Internets.
The site has brought him blogospheric ridicule, but less funny is McCain’s latest assertion that it’s “not too important” when U.S. troops come home from Iraq. In this clip (after jump) he stresses that reducing casualties is what’s essential, oblivious to the fact that every day our soldiers are mired in a hostile land, away from their families, at a cost of $343 million per day, is a casualty for American taxpayers.
Posted under Politics, Republican Party
This post was written by Jim Stanford on June 13, 2008
Just when I think it’s OK to move beyond the outrage over the Bush-Cheney administration, along comes a story like this one from yesterday’s New York Times:
“The Message Machine.”
Sure to win a Pulitzer, the story is a superbly written, thoroughly documented exposé of the propaganda campaign the Pentagon has been waging, quite successfully, through the U.S. media.
Turns out those retired generals and military officers you see on TV, ostensibly as “independent” analysts, have been carefully groomed by the Department of Defense to manipulate public opinion and promote the war. In return, these analysts — many of them lobbyists for the defense industry — receive access to the highest-ranking officials awarding contracts for Iraq.
In essence, you keep our war going, and we’ll make sure you get rich off it.
One of the retired officers who participated in the campaign called it “MindWar.” Another, Gen. James T. Conway, then of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said as Iraq began to disintegrate into civil war, “The strategic target remains our population.”
George Orwell couldn’t have envisioned it any better.
How Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al are not in prison is absolutely bewildering. These men are traitors, they are terrorists, and they belong in the gulag they created at Guantánamo.
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Also, from the op-ed page, don’t miss Alexandra Fuller’s essay on the gluttony of the energy industry in Wyoming.
Posted under Politics, Republican Party
This post was written by Jim Stanford on April 21, 2008
Reactions to Barack Obama’s bright, pitch-perfect speech on Tuesday showed how his candidacy has divided America. It ain’t pretty, but Obama has indeed threshed the noble from the nasty.
Conversationalists vs. Screamers. Obama’s speech was inarguably heartfelt and profound. It opened a door for anyone wishing to explore the many histories of American grievances, if only to see how they overlap. He noted how things have gotten better and that we can make things better still.
On cue, the screamers yelled that it “wasn’t enough” and “it’s too late” and besides, Obama wasn’t serious if didn’t haul out Rev. Wright for a lynching. (Politicized Christians practice forgiveness on a case-by-case basis. Rev. Wright does not qualify; he’s not a white married Southern Republican family values senator caught in diapers with a hooker.)
Rational vs. Emotional. For those of us patiently awaiting a 21st century we can relate to, Obama underscored a crucial point: Old racial wounds are a legitimate source of anger in older people. Knee-jerk racism is expected, and can be forgiven, in older people. Young people aren’t hauling that baggage; now is the time to resume improving who we are as a nation.
Posted under Democratic Party, Politics, Republican Party
This post was written by Favio Snimp on March 21, 2008
