Wikileaks Endangers Lives

11:25 am EST August 30th, 2011 | News | 8 Comments

The good guys, my ass.

In a shift of tactics that has alarmed American officials, the antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks has published on the Web nearly 134,000 leaked diplomatic cables in recent days, more than six times the total disclosed publicly since the posting of the leaked State Department documents began last November.

A sampling of the documents showed that the newly published cables included the names of some people who had spoken confidentially to American diplomats and whose identities were marked in the cables with the warning “strictly protect.”

State Department officials and human rights activists have been concerned that such diplomatic sources, including activists, journalists and academics in authoritarian countries, could face reprisals, including dismissal from their jobs, prosecution or violence.

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Dick Cheney Lies In New Book

11:14 am EST August 30th, 2011 | Conservative, Republicans | 35 Comments

The whole point of a Dick Cheney book is to lie about what happened so that the future misremembers its history and looks on the worst vice president in US history in a kinder light.

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Yet Another Study: No Link Between Vaccines & Autism

5:48 pm EST August 25th, 2011 | Science | 49 Comments

The anti-vaccination know-nothings lose another round:

The M.M.R. vaccine doesn’t cause autism, and the evidence is overwhelming that it doesn’t,” Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, the chairwoman of the panel, assembled by the Institute of Medicine, said in an interview, referring to a combination vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella that has long been a focus of concern from some parents’ groups.

The panel did conclude, however, that there are risks to getting the chickenpox vaccine that can arise years after vaccination. People who have had the vaccine can develop pneumonia, meningitis or hepatitis years later if the virus used in the vaccine reawakens because an unrelated health problem, like cancer, has compromised their immune systems.

These same problems are far more likely in patients who are infected naturally at some point in their lives with chickenpox, since varicella zoster, the virus that causes chickenpox, can live dormant in nerve cells for decades. Shingles, a painful eruption of skin blisters that usually affects the aged, is generally caused by this Lazarus-like ability of varicella zoster.

Again, if you oppose vaccination, you are killing children.

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Not Anti-War, But Anti-Stupid War

9:18 am EST August 25th, 2011 | Foreign Policy | 67 Comments

The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf takes Howard Dean to task for not opposing military action in Libya.

Dean lost in the primaries, so we never got to see whether he’d really embrace the rule of law, truth-telling, and transparency about facts as president. But he is still speaking out about foreign wars. On Wednesday morning, for example, he went on MSNBC, where he praised President Obama for the war in Libya. “It’s very smart. You don’t put boots on the ground. You don’t commit trillions of dollars to a war in Iraq,” he said. “You do it with the other tools that we have that frankly work much better over the long term because you don’t get a lot of public resistance — drones, special operations forces, use of intelligence agencies. That’s exactly what he did.”

Isn’t that something?

He’s praising drone strikes and special ops because they’re less likely to attract the scrutiny and criticism from American citizens. It’s a position one doesn’t expect a prominent Iraq War dissenter to take — you’d think he of all people would understand that it’s vital for the American public to scrutinize the foreign policy decisions of its leaders regardless of the political party in power.

Friedersdorf goes on to attack the anti-war movement as just so much partisan hackery. Except, he’s wrong. The bulk of opposition to the Iraq War wasn’t opposition to the concept of war. For most of us who opposed the Iraq War, it was neither out of dovishness or kneejerk opposition to Bush. It was opposition to a war that was unnecessary and distracting from the already ongoing war against Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

The only military action of the last 20 years I have seriously opposed was the invasion and occupation of Iraq, because it never made any sense. There were no WMDs and thousands of Americans died due to poor leadership from Bush and his crew.

When Obama ran for president, he did not run as an anti-war candidate, something even some of his supporters seem to have ignored. Obama said he opposed the Iraq War, but even on the campaign trail he made clear that he thought the conflict in Afghanistan was needed.

I don’t get this sort of strawman type argument that because someone – rightly – opposed the Iraq War, they should oppose all other wars and if they don’t they’re a hypocrite.

 

Living Up To Parody, Conservatives Begin Earthquake Blame Game With Obama

4:33 pm EST August 23rd, 2011 | Conservative | 65 Comments

Like clockwork.

Following the 5.8 magnitude earthquake that shook the D.C. region this afternoon, conservative media figures have responded the only way they know how: by twisting it into an attack on Obama’s vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.

 

Earthquake!

3:18 pm EST August 23rd, 2011 | News | 4 Comments

Our office shook for a little bit, then it was over. Somewhat exciting though, I must say.

 

Republicans Now Support Middle Class Tax Increase, Clearly Screwing With Us Now

11:48 pm EST August 22nd, 2011 | Republicans | 13 Comments

During the time in which George W Bush was waging a poorly planned war for no reason while also presiding over the near-collapse of the global economy, we on the left were told time and time again that to get back in the good graces of the American people we had to be “serious.” But either in power, out of it, or half way there, the American right — as usual — is subject to a different, more lenient set of rules from the media and the establishment. How else to explain that the party’s flip flop in favor of increased taxes for the middle class isn’t gaining more attention?

Many of the same Republicans who fought hammer-and-tong to keep the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts from expiring on schedule are now saying a different “temporary” tax cut should end as planned. By their own definition, that amounts to a tax increase.

The tax break extension they oppose is sought by President Barack Obama. Unlike proposed changes in the income tax, this policy helps the 46 percent of all Americans who owe no federal income taxes but who pay a “payroll tax” on practically every dime they earn.

Remember, these are the “serious” people. Those of us who think the rich ought to pay a fair share — that they can afford, we’re “crazy” ones.

 

Stanley Kurtz Has A Fail: Rick Perry Edition

1:52 pm EST August 22nd, 2011 | Conservative | 4 Comments

National Review writer Stanley Kurtz is a promoter of fake stories about President Obama. Today he provides us with some humor, writing:

I’ve been reading Rick Perry’s book, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington. You should read it too. A thoughtful argument for reviving federalism and taming our out-of-control welfare state, Fed Up! also helps makes sense of Perry the man and the phenomenon. The book provides enough context to defuse what are sure to be a long line of bogus attacks on Perry, while also setting up a legitimate argument about the size and purpose of government. Fed Up! is going to help build Perry a mass following. It’s certain to ignite a series of bitter anti-Perry attacks as well. More than your typical campaign book, Fed Up! is going to play a role in the 2012 presidential election.

Unfortunately for Kurtz, Rick Perry seems to have a different POV about Rick Perry’s book. From a couple days ago:

But since jumping into the 2012 GOP nomination race on Saturday, Mr. Perry has tempered his Social Security views. His communications director, Ray Sullivan, said Thursday that he had “never heard” the governor suggest the program was unconstitutional. Not only that, Mr. Sullivan said, but “Fed Up!” is not meant to reflect the governor’s current views on how to fix the program.

The issue bubbled up Thursday, when a gaggle of protestors confronted Mr. Perry outside a café in Portsmouth, N.H., accusing him of trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare. Mr. Perry didn’t respond when one of the protesters inside the café accused him of believing the Social Security system was unconstitutional.

In an interview, Mr. Sullivan acknowledged that many passages in Mr. Perry’s “Fed Up!” could dog his presidential campaign. The book, Mr. Sullivan said, “is a look back, not a path forward.” It was written “as a review and critique of 50 years of federal excesses, not in any way as a 2012 campaign blueprint or manifesto,” Mr. Sullivan said.

 

Spider-Man Writer Michael Bendis On Pissing Off Glenn Beck

12:18 pm EST August 22nd, 2011 | Comic Books, Conservative | 6 Comments

Michael Bendis is the writer behind Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man, and he enjoyed Glenn Beck’s freakout over the new multiracial Spidey.

The announcement that Miles would be the star of Bendis and Pichelli’s new Spider-Man series received a lot of media attention, far more than Bendis had foreseen. “The media stuff has been crazy surreal. Like I said, Joe [Quesada] saw it coming a year ago, but I don’t see how we control any of that stuff. We hit a slow news day twice with the death of Spider-Man. It was really cool and I’m very grateful, but this one was surreal,” Bendis said. “We pissed off Glenn Beck, and that was amazing. I don’t think Glenn Beck is an idiot because he’s a conservative. I literally think he’s just an idiot. Regardless of his belief system, he’s just a lunatic. So that was hilarious. Not that I’m going out of my way to find ways to piss people like that off, but boy is it so nice when you do it by accident. I told my wife that she doesn’t have to get me anything for my birthday because nothing will make me happier than this made me. I was happy all day.”

(via)

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VIDEO: Jon Stewart Destroys The GOP’s Class Warfare

10:58 am EST August 22nd, 2011 | Conservative, Economy, Republicans | 5 Comments

I wish we had Dem politicians and liberal pundits with 1/3 the mojo of the Daily Show. In this clip Stewart, with precision, rips apart just how full of excrement the GOP’s bellyaching on class warfare is. Bonus points for pointing out the Heritage Foundation’s vile attempt to claim rich people have it good.

 

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