At least two of four US Marines shown in a video appearing to urinate on Taliban corpses have been identified, a Marine Corps official has told the BBC.
The video, which was posted online, purports to show four US Marines standing over the bodies of several Taliban fighters, at least one of whom is covered in blood.
These soldiers did nothing to honor the traditions of the United States Marine Corps.
They did not act as the honorable warriors who serve this country so well.
Yes, thank all that is good and white, Mitt Romney won New Hampshire.
A week after winning the Iowa caucuses by just eight votes, Mr. Romney claimed a broader margin of victory here with a coalition of independent, moderate and conservative voters, but he benefited handsomely from a fractured Republican field. He delivered a pointed message to his Republican challengers, urging them not to play into President Obama’s hands by trying to destroy his candidacy as the race moves onto the more challenging terrain of South Carolina.
Onward and, well, white-ward?
For those who watched the GOP circular firing squad Saturday night, you may recall Mitt Romney referring to a question about states banning birth control “silly.”
The only thing “silly” was his dodge, as he tried to deny his own state the right to offer birth control in 2005.
Mitt Romney artfully dodged a question about whether states have the right to ban birth control during Saturday’s Republican presidential debate, calling the question “silly” and saying that states wouldn’t want to do that anyway. But as governor of Massachusetts in 2005, Romney took a harder line on contraception, vetoing a widely supported bill that would make the morning-after pill available over the counter in that state and require hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims.
His surprising veto did not stand. The Massachusetts state Senate voted unanimously to overrule it, and the state House voted 139-16 to do the same.
Imagine that.
If he does get the GOP nomination, this multi-millionaire’s record will speak for itself, even as he tries to blow smoke over it.
I actually watched tonight’s GOP presidential debate. Saw no one that appeared very presidential. Much, much pandering to the far, far right.
Every time Rick Santorum spoke he looked like a nervous schoolboy who had to pee. No kidding.
Not my observation, but the observation of someone with whom I was watching.
Still, Santorum managed to defend the massive amounts of money he made from lobbying since he lost his U.S. Senate seat.
During Saturday’s GOP Primary debate, Rep. Ron Paul accused Rick Santorum of being a “big government person” who exploited his beltway connections with lobbyists to get wealthy after losing his Senate seat in 2006. Santorum insisted that he only took a series of high paying “consulting” jobs because he believed in the causes.
“I’m known in this race and I was known in Washington, DC, as a cause guy. I am a cause guy. I care deeply about this country and about the causes that make me —that I think are at the core of this country,” Santorum said. “And when I left the United States Senate, I got involved in causes that I believe in.”
Santorum was one of the less wealthy members of the Senate during his tenure, though as the main gatekeeper for the “K-Street Project,” the attempt to place Republicans in influential positions in DC lobbying firms, Santorum developed plenty of key connections with lobbying firms and trade associations. After leaving Congress those connections proved financially beneficial. Financial disclosure forms filed last year indicate that Santorum went from making around $200,000 a year to more than a million dollars in 2010.
Washington, as it stands now, is an incredible cash cow for these GOP candidates. Do you really think any of them will change that in the least if they win the presidency?
Suppose, for example, that your chain of office-supply stores gains market share at the expense of rivals. You employ more people; your rivals employ fewer. What’s the overall effect on U.S. employment? One thing’s for sure: it’s a lot less than the number of workers your company added.
Better yet, suppose that you expand in part not by beating your competitors, but by buying them. Now their employees are your employees. Have you created jobs?
The point is that Mr. Romney’s claims about being a job creator would be nonsense even if he were being honest about the numbers, which he isn’t.
At this point, some readers may ask whether it isn’t equally wrong to say that Mr. Romney destroyed jobs. Yes, it is. The real complaint about Mr. Romney and his colleagues isn’t that they destroyed jobs, but that they destroyed good jobs.
When the dust settled after the companies that Bain restructured were downsized — or, as happened all too often, went bankrupt — total U.S. employment was probably about the same as it would have been in any case. But the jobs that were lost paid more and had better benefits than the jobs that replaced them. Mr. Romney and those like him didn’t destroy jobs, but they did enrich themselves while helping to destroy the American middle class.
And that reality is, of course, what all the blather and misdirection about job-creating businessmen and job-destroying Democrats is meant to obscure.
The sad news comes from the Chicago Tribune: “Rasul “Rocky” Clark, who was paralyzed while playing football for Blue Island’s Eisenhower High School in 2000 and later fought an unsuccessful battle to keep his health insurance, died Thursday after undergoing surgery at Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, a hospital spokeswoman said.”
He was a 16-year-old backup running back on Sept. 15, 2000, when Eisenhower’s starting running back separated his shoulder in a game at Oak Forest High School. Mr. Clark went into the game. Four plays later, he was tackled and suffered two broken vertebrae in his neck and a spinal injury.
Left a quadriplegic, Mr. Clark for 10 years received top-notch health care through the catastrophic medical insurance provided by Community High School District 218. That included nurses in his home around the clock, access to pain medicines and prescriptions and a storeroom of supplies.
But in August 2010, Clark was informed the $5 million health insurance had reached its maximum and would no longer cover his medical needs. Officials with Clark’s insurance agency, Health Special Risk Inc., previously declined to discuss his case or their policies on claims and lifetime maximums with the Tribune.
At the time his policy ended, Clark said he felt he was being punished for living too long. Many quadriplegics die within 10 years after their injury because of lung or kidney failure. But Clark was able to thrive, in part because of the meticulous health care he received, his physician and family members said.
Punished for living too long.
Senator John McCain expresses his "confidence that President Obama will turn this country around" while speaking for Mit Romney.
Oh, well.
We must tread lightly regarding family members of candidates. Still, when anyone takes radical positions, preaches endlessly and with great sanctimony, well, that candidate merits closer attention – especially if that candidate wants to be President of the United States.
Frankly, I am in shock as I write this.
Rick Santorum’s wife had a second-term abortion to save her life, so reports oursilverribbon.org:
Rick Santorum is one dangerously confused denialist. The former Pennsylvania Senator and presidential aspirant is best known for his inability to associate his professed compassion for life at the level of the zygote, with the physical realities of human sexuality. He has equated loving same-sex relationships to bestiality. He is opposed to abortion under any circumstance. Almost.
In October, 1996, his wife Karen had a second trimester abortion. They don’t like to describe it that way. In his 2004 interview with Terry Gross, Santorum characterizes the fetus, who must be treated as an autonomous person, as a practically a gunslinging threat, whom the mother must murder in self-defense. Karen has had to justify her decision to save her own life by explaining that if she died her other children would have lost a mother.
The compassionate side of me says this is an incredibly private family issue. However, the Santorums have already discussed this publicly.
Read for yourself and decide: http://oursilverribbon.org
Well, okay, then.
North Korea has called on the country to defend the new leader, Kim Jong-un, to the death, in a New Year message.
The army, ruling party and people should be prepared to act as “human shields” for the son and successor of Kim Jong-il, the message released by state media said.
It added that the nation must launch an “all-out drive” to achieve prosperity.
Yup.
And then this:
On Friday, he was appointed supreme commander of the country’s 1.2 million-strong armed forces, according to state media.
“Glorify this year 2012 as a year of proud victory, a year when an era of prosperity is unfolding,” the message released by the official Korean Central News Agency said.
Yup. Then there’s that.
Strange beyond strange.
A Swedish woman has discovered her wedding ring on a carrot growing in her garden, 16 years after she lost it, says a newspaper.
Lena Paahlsson had long ago lost hope of finding the ring, which she designed herself, reports Dagens Nyheter.
The white-gold band, set with seven small diamonds, went missing in her kitchen in 1995, she told the paper.
Although the ring no longer fits, she hopes to have it enlarged so she can wear it again.
From the BBC