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Just enjoy the trip down memory lane. My favorite bit from tonight’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Favorite fun fact? There’s no proof that carbon dioxide is dangerous because it occurs in nature. Yup. She said that.
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Who are these angry white Republicans who are disrupting Democratic congressmen and women at their town hall meetings?
Turns out they’ve been sent to these meetings by D.C. lobbying groups with ties to the health insurance industry. Shouting out spoon-fed talking points from the insurance industry, they’re defending the millions of dollars these for-profit companies take in over our dead bodies.
Olbermann unmasked the Dems and GOP members of congress on the take from the health insurance industry. Now Rachel Maddow exposes the lying liars recently heard screaming for the corporations at these town hall meetings.
Watch this video closely. The insurance industry is actually claiming the proposed health care plans before congress with mandate sex change operations.
Don’t believe me? Let’s go to Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. Here’s their list of congressional town hall meetings. Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is a Washington D.C. -based lobbying organization that’s run by Richard Scott, a former hospital executive. According to Rachel Maddow, Scott was forced out of that company in the midst of a fraud investigation that resulted in the company paying a $1.7 billion fine.
That’s who these angry white Republicans are taking tap dancing lessons from. As Maddow reports, “This is a health care industry-linked lobbying group organizing uprisings at town hall events.”
Let’s look at Freedom Works, which gives instructions on how to scream and shout at town hall meetings for that perfect YouTube sound bite, ensuring there will be no discussion, no civil discourse, at these events.
Republican strategists are claiming these shouting matches are simply Democracy in action. What they are in fact is the absence of Democracy, wild attempts to stop dialogue, to make sure no intelligent discussion takes place. They scream and shout when anyone with a view different from their own begins to speak. They are the voice of the health insurance industry clamping down on Democracy and each and every one of us, the American people, doing everything possible to shove us down and shut us up, so the industry can pick our pockets at will.
We see them for who they are.
So we call out these GOP insurance-industry-worshipping know-nothings, and applaud the Democrats and Republicans in congress who are seeking true healthcare reform.
This just in from the WTAE Pittsburgh:
North Korea said Tuesday that two detained American journalists have been pardoned. The announcement came after news reports that former President Bill Clinton met Tuesday with the two journalists. ABC News reported that a government source with knowledge of the mission said Clinton’s meeting with journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee was very emotional.
The source was hopeful that Ling and Lee would leave North Korea on Tuesday night for the United States, ABC reported.
Earlier, Clinton met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il during his surprise mission to Pyongyang to negotiate the release of the two reporters, holding “exhaustive” talks on a wide range of topics, state-run media said.
Clinton “courteously” conveyed a verbal message from President Barack Obama, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a report from Pyongyang. Kim expressed his thanks, and engaged Clinton in a “wide-ranging exchange of views on matters of common concern,” the report said.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, however, denied Clinton went with a message from Obama. “That’s not true,” he told reporters.
I don’t know what was said behind closed doors, but this was incredibly fast. The fact that Clinton is not a member of the Obama Administration no doubt gave him greater flexibility in dealing with Kim Jong Il.
I look forward to hearing former President Clinton speak about this trip when he returns to the United States.
I especially look forward to hearing from Laura Ling and Euna Lee.
And I am incredibly impressed.
I found it amusing that representatives of the Kenyan government are completely baffled by claims from the ‘birthers’ that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
From the Washington Independent:
Jon Chessoni, a first secretary at the Kenyan Embassy in Washington, can’t understand why his office gets so many baseless questions about whether Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
“It’s madness,” said Chessoni on Monday. “His father, in 1961, would not even have been in Kenya. When this matter first came up, the Kenyan government did its research and confirmed that these are all baseless claims.”
Nonetheless, Chessoni spent part of his day fielding inquiries about an image posted at the fringe conservative web site WorldNetDaily–a purported “certified copy of registration of birth” belonging to “Barack Hussein Obama II,” submitted by attorney Orly Taitz in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, part of her undying quest to get a judge to listen to the conspiracy theories about the 44th president of the United States. “I’m forcing the issue, where Obama will have to respond,” Taitz told the Website. “I am asking the judge to give me the power to subpoena the documents from the Kenyan embassy.”
Chessoni didn’t understand what Taitz was talking about or what her discovery (the gift of an “anonymous source” who’s “afraid for his life”) was supposed to prove. He showed the image to other embassy employees, who rolled their eyes at what was, for some, only the latest forgery being passed off as an official document from Kenya. “It’s a red herring,” said Chessoni. “Maybe there are not enough facts out there.”
The “birth certificate” is bogus. We did our own debunking here on Turning Left, including the delicious revelation — which I haven’t seen reported elsewhere, by the way — that Orly Taitz misspelled her own name when she cited her Web site on the document she claims is Obama’s birth certificate.
Through all this malarkey, I can’t help but think through to that day in Matteson, IL, a few years ago, when I saw then State Senator Barack Obama sitting in his car, waiting patiently for a “Green Rally” to begin. This event was about money for the south suburbs of Chicago, not about the environment at all. There sat State Senator Obama, and no one noticed, except Mayor John Ostenburg of Park Forest, IL. John stopped to chat with the man running for the U.S. Senate.
And no one else hardly noticed Obama was there.
How times have changed.
Get over it, Birthers. Barack Obama is an American citizen, and these ridiculous attempts to prove otherwise are, well, just damn silly anymore.
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Keith Olbermann at his best. Disgusting how these pols take millions, and pretend we won’t notice when dance for their biggest donors.
Click through for the video if you’re viewing this via RSS.
You go, Keith.
Former President Bill Clinton went to North Korea on Monday to negotiate the release of two American television journalists who were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korean territory, a person who was briefed on the mission said.
Mr. Clinton landed in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, early Tuesday morning local time, Central TV, a North Korean station, reported. The White House declined to comment.
The journalists, Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, were detained by soldiers on March 17 near the North Korean border with China. In June, they were sentenced to 12 years in a North Korean prison camp for “committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry.”
Go for it, Bill. Godspeed.
Chris Lake is a photographer from Park Forest, IL. We had the chance to chat briefly recently and exchanged emails. He invited me to stop by his Web site and take a look at his work.
Very stirring.
What caught my eye most is the fact that hope for change is fading on the south side of Chicago.
I was recently commissioned to shoot a story about gun violence on the south side of Chicago. Working with a reporter from UK’s The Guardian, I heard many tragic stories about how gun violence has been destroying lives in that part of the city in epidemic proportions. These people are understandably upset and angry and it shows in their eyes. The problem is getting worse and worse and no one seems able to figure out what to do about it. Hopes that President Obama, himself a southsider, would do something once he took office have faded and residents feel increasingly abandoned and desperate.
I’m looking forward to reading this story in the The Guardian.
Chris says he is looking to collaborate with designers to use some of the photography from the gun violence. Contact him on is blog if you are interested.
Stop by and take a look at his blog. The photographs, well, speak volumes.
The birthers need a lesson in history, says Melinda Warner at Media Matters for America:
The birther movement, led by attorney/dentist/real estate agent/second degree black belt Orly Taitz, has taken an interesting turn.
Desperate for any “proof” that President Obama is not a native-born United States citizen, Taitz has seized upon a “birth certificate” for Barack Obama, dated April 4, 1961, from the Republic of Kenya.
Here’s the kicker: Kenya did not become a Republic until 1964. Three years after President Obama was born. Now, it appears as though the certificate was stamped and signed in February of 1964 – but the Republic was not officially formed until December 12, 1964.
You’d think that whoever constructed this forgery would at least have had the sense to at least take a peek at Wikipedia to see when Kenya became a Republic.
There you have it, a birth certificate for Barack Obama for a country that would not exist until three years after his birth. What more evidence do we need?
We’re further left to wonder about if Dr. Orly Taitz’s abilities since she misspelled her name in the Web address that appears on this “birth certificate!” The Web site of this attorney/dentist/real estate agent/second degree black belt is www.OrlyTAITZ.com. On the forged document above, you will note the site is spelled: www.OrlyTATZ.com.
She misspelled her own name!
So Dr. Orly Taitz, if that is her real name, and if she is a real physician — could her diploma be forged? — offers us a birth certificate from a country that did not exist at the time of the president’s birth, with a Web site written on it that does not exist today.
Look again:
Now that’s proof!
Nod to Brad Friedman for this.
From Reuters, via the NYTimes:
Israel’s gay community was rocked on Sunday by the killing of two people in a homosexual and lesbian youth center and the possibility they fell victim to a hate crime in the Jewish state’s most freewheeling city.
“The biggest shock is to think that it happened in Tel Aviv, which is the most tolerant city in the country,” said Avi Sofer, a gay rights activist.
Witnesses said a masked gunman clad in black opened fire on Saturday night in a basement club belonging to the Tel Aviv Gay and Lesbian Association, which was hosting a weekly event for teenage gays.
The attacker killed a 26-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl and wounded 13 people before fleeing, hospital officials said.
“He simply fired all over the place,” Or Gil, 16, told the YNet news website. “At first I thought it was prank, or a toy gun. After the killings, it was quiet, completely silent and then people came to help the wounded.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu condemned the attack, telling his cabinet: “We are a tolerant, democratic country governed by the rule of law and we must respect each and every person.”
I found this quite interesting:
Despite anti-gay sentiments among some religious Jews in Israel, gays serve openly in the military. Israel accords same-sex couples a measure of legal recognition and cohabitation rights, though Orthodox religious authorities control formal nuptials in the country.
The whole episode is quite sad.
What a bombshell.
During my recent interview with FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds on the Mike Malloy Show, a caller had asked her opinion on whether she believed 9/11 to have been “an inside job.”
Edmonds replied by first specifying “As I have done for the past 7 or 8 years, I have basically stuck with what I know, first-hand, directly, my own knowledge, based on my own experience, based on what I obtained, which is not a lot, but it is extremely important.”
After explaining the difference between what she does and doesn’t know first hand, she went on to explain: “I have information about things that our government has lied to us about. I know. For example, to say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban – those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.” …
Her complete response, pulled from the lengthy interview (full, commercial-free audio here) has been transcribed by Luke Ryland, perhaps the world’s foremost expert in all things Sibel Edmonds related.
From Luke Ryland on the Daily Kos:
Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).
In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, “all the way until that day of September 11.”
These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These ‘operations’ involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.
Luke’s summary:
The bombshell here is obviously that certain people in the US were using Bin Laden up to September 11, 2001.
It is important to understand why: the US outsourced terror operations to al Qaeda and the Taliban for many years, promoting the Islamization of Central Asia in an attempt to personally profit off military sales as well as oil and gas concessions.
The silence by the US government on these matters is deafening. So, too, is the blowback.
Puts an entirely different spin on Bush ignoring that PDB.
What did George W. Bush know, and when did he know it?