The 912 Project

Didja watch the crazy march on Washington today? Whackadoodles with signs calling Obama a Communist and for the return of Joe McCarthy? Rachel Maddow deconstructs the teabaggers latest. The stoopid, it burns.

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Never Forget

I'll never forget 9/11 or the lessons of 9/11.

The primary lesson, of course, is that who the President is matters. Whether or not the President was a good student or a C student matters. The person I vote for for President needs to be smart. The President needs to read his memos. If the CIA flies all the way to the President's vacation home to deliver an urgent memo, the President needs to take that seriously.

President Obama is annoying me mightily these days by acting as though he skipped negotiations in law school. His "fight" for healthcare seems a lot more like McClellan and a lot less like Grant. (C students, feel free to look up those Civil War generals.) But I know he's smart. And if the CIA goes to him with an urgent matter -- as they may have already -- he's not going to tell the briefer "You've covered your ass now." He won't go fishing afterwards. Obama will go to work on the problem.

So we as a nation have finally learned the lesson of 9/11. But we must never forget that having a stupid person as President can be deadly.

Colbert on Glenn Beck

Don't drink while you're watching this one.

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Sarah Palin: "Cocky Whacko"

Dependable Renegade

That's what former Republican Senator from Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee called Sarah Palin yesterday. He also called her dangerous. He's right on both counts.

She holds whacky and dangerous views. In saying goodbye to her son who was deploying to Iraq, she said Iraq had caused 9/11 -- a view so extreme that even George W. Clusterfuck doesn't say that any more.

In her series of interviews with Charlie Gibson, she said that if Russia invaded Georgia, we would go to war (bottom of page, continues on to page 3). And starting World War III didn't phase her one bit. She delivered her answers in her bizarrely chirpy cheerleader voice as though it were perfectly normal to contemplate World War III. She'd be a war president.

Sarah Palin isn't lipstick on a pig. She's George W. Bush in lipstick, ready to be a war president but having no idea or concern about what that would mean for the country and for the world. A dangerous cocky whacko.

Republicans Obscenely Show 9/11 Victims Dying as Their Convention Backdrop

Monsters.

The Republican Party has reached its basest nadir. The party of George W. Bush, the man who ignored the CIA's warning "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US", the party that let 3,000 people die on 9/11/01 and then used 9/11 to destroy the constitution, that party has reached a yet another low.

That party has now shown footage of the 9/11 attacks including graphic footage of the Twin Towers burning and collapsing.

During the family hour here on the east coast, 8:40 EST.

They are nothing but a bunch of sickos.

Boston Globe:

[A]t approximately 7:40 CST, when a video aired before delegates at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center, the towers' subsequent collapse, and smoke emerging from the Pentagon.

Here's Keith Olbermann's commentary:


If you have the stomach for it, here's the obscene video the Republicans blew up on the big screen for everyone to see. How must the 9/11 families be reacting to this obscenity?


The Republican Party is a national disgrace. First they kill us; then they put us up on the big screen for entertainment.

President Celebrates 7th Anniversary

commondreams: AUGUST 2001: OFF FOR A MONTH OF JOGGING, FISHING & CUTTING BRUSH
President Bush, right, talks with staff at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in this Aug. 6, 2001 file photo. That day Bush jogged, fished, and received a memo from the CIA with the title 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US'.
(Photo/The White House, Eric Draper/ File)

ThinkProgress: Flashback: Seven years ago today, Bush received ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.’ memo.»

President Stupid told the CIA briefer who had flown to Crawford to deliver this warning: "All right, you've covered your ass now."

And then he went fishing.

On 9/11, "[e]xcluding the 19 hijackers, 2,974 people died in the attacks. Another 24 were missing and presumed dead."

Unbelievably, those were not even the worst days of Bush's presidency, as on March 20, 2003 he launched the war of lies on Iraq that has resulted in the deaths of millions of innocents.

Murderer.

Corporate Media Misleading

Third World Traveler

I've briefly summarized these posts about the horrible media coverage of politics we get here in the old U S of A. Click on the links and read the entire articles because I'm just giving you a flavor of these pieces.

Here's something you'd only read from the international press: Obama impresses a reporter for the Jerusalem Post; while McCain & Bush are surrounded by aides when interviewed, Obama goes solo and understands the nuances of Middle East issues.

Devastating critique of the media by Digby; these two passages are my favorite:

After watching them have a mass four year orgasm over George W. Bush standing on a pile of rubble with a bullhorn saying "Ah hear you. And the people who did this are gonna hear from us real soon! yuk, yuk" like he was reciting Shakespeare's Henry V St Crispin's day speech, it's a little bit hard for me to take seriously the idea that they have anything but a bias toward cheap, shallow ignorance (which naturally favors movement conservatism.)

The problem with our media isn't that they like or dislike a politician that we also like or don't like. It's that they treat politics like a celebrity game show and it makes it very difficult for the people to even know what their interests are, much less who best represents them.

In a ridiculous article spammed out to all the media outlets who use AP, two "journalists" declared that the U.S. is winning the war in Iraq. JurassicPork at Brilliant at Breakfast let's 'em have it:

I read the news today, oh boy. The Yankee army has just won the war.

Imagine my surprise when I clicked on this article entitled “Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost” that began with this breathtakingly ballsy sentence: “The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.” Well, gee, there are very few people who would like to believe that more than yours truly. Still, I wanted to see who’d drawn up this analysis but after several paragraphs it was obvious that this “analysis” was cooked up by the same two guys who wrote this article, Robert Reid and Robert Burns.

Indeed, the breezily optimistic opening line was immediately deflated with the next sentence: “Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years.” Considering that our involvement in World War II lasted just over four years against two awesome war machines across two continents, it would seem to me that this 5½ year-old war isn’t close to being over if we have several more years of terrorist and insurgent activity to look forward to.

Yet, to Burns and Reid, the insurgency is (let’s all say it together, people, with feeling and harmony) in its last throes. So how have we beaten or won over the insurgency that we’d created by disbanding the Iraqi Army?

They launched the insurgency five years ago. They now are either sidelined or have switched sides to cooperate with the Americans in return for money and political support.

So we’re buying their loyalty with cold hard American taxpayer dollars and political favoritism. Yeah, that’s certainly a firm foundation for a lasting, peaceful alliance.

Apocalypse Bush

12% of the soldiers who have died in Afghanistan died in the past six weeks. In the past six weeks, 64 American soldiers have died in the war George W. Bush has starved for five years to fight his war of lies in Iraq. Why doesn't the New Yorker magazine have a cartoon on the cover showing George W. Bush in burning hell, spending eternity looking under his desk for the weapons of mass destruction? Now that would be funny.

The press corpse continues to stink up the Presidential race. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has dug up one of the bodies. Ron Fournier (we wrote about him here when he wrote a terribly slanted article calling Obama "arrogant") has been appointed head of AP's Washington Bureau. Apparently he's encouraging more opinion and fewer facts. Great. And since you can judge a man by the company he keeps, guess who Ron Fournier was emailing the day Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan and the Bushies were frantically covering up his tragic death? Ron Fournier, "journalist", was emailing with the Prince of Darkness Karl Rove. Here's their exchange, as summarized in a House Oversight Committee report:

Karl Rove exchanged e-mails about Pat Tillman with Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, under the subject line "H-E-R-O." In response to Mr. Fournier's e-mail, Mr. Rove asked, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this," to which Mr. Fournier replied, "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."

And after those pious niceties and expressions of patriotic solidarity, they lied to the Tillmans about how their son was killed. Reprehensible.

Edited to add: Here's a PDF of the House Oversight Committee report; the Karl Rove-Ron Fournier emails are described on page 23.

A little history is in order. Who was the biggest supporter of the Taliban in Afghanistan before 9/11/01? Why, it was George W. Clusterfuck, of course. This post at dailykos details the Bush Administration's decision to send a $43 million dollar gift to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan in May of 2001.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't think the U.S. government was in on the 9/11 attacks. But George Bush, a stupid, arrogant fool, did everything wrong in his first pathetic 9 months in office. He gave the Taliban millions of dollars. He ignored the Clinton administration holdovers like Richard Clarke who were running around the White House with their hair on fire over Osama bin Laden and the threat of terrorism. He spent the entire month of August 2001 on vacation, and when the CIA briefer flew to Crawford to read him the Presidential Daily Brief on August 6, 2001, with the ominous headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US", he told that CIA briefer "All right, you've covered your ass now". All President DumbFuckinFratBoy could think to say when the CIA dared to intrude on his brush-cutting vacation was a dumb joke. He didn't hear the urgency. He spent the month playing Solomon and splitting the baby, deciding that the country would allow stem cell research on very few cell lines, most of which are contaminated with mouse DNA. He fiddled while Osama plotted.

Worst. President. Ever.

We can't elect another stupid, out of touch, arrogant fool again. (cough, cough, John McCain)
.

Dumb Americans

I want to read this book:

The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby

Her story of what prompted her to write the book is priceless:

NYTimes: Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

Ms. Jacoby, [] the author of seven other books, [] was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”

Bye Bye Rudy

Rudy Giuliani (noun) is dropping out (verb) despite the broad appeal of his heroic mayoring on 9/11. Now the Republican field is down to the Mittwit, St. John McCain (the "less jobs, more wars" candidate), and Huckleberry Huckabee. Choices, choices.

AP: Giuliani to Exit Presidential Race Today

NYTimes: For Giuliani, a Dizzying Free-Fall

The more that Republican voters saw of him, the less they wanted to vote for him.

Republicans Play Limbo

If the question is: How low can you go? Rudy Giuliani wins every time.

He's using actual video footage of 9/11 in a Florida campaign ad. You can watch his sick campaign video at the link, at Talking Points Memo Election Central. I won't link it here. I gasped when I watched it.

Truly despicable.

Time to repeat this sick Rudy Giuliani joke:

Q: What's the difference between a cow and 9/11?

A: Rudy Giuliani doesn't know how to milk a cow.

Stop Crazier-Than-Cheney Rudy Giuliani: An Ongoing Series

Rudy Giuliani is batshit crazy, and he's leading the Republican field to be their 2008 candidate. This scares the shit out of me, because George W. Bush was dumb as a stump and he lead the Republican field in 2000 -- and look where that got us. So we'll be collecting the stories about the nutjob in the race, so our readers can get the word out: Rudy is crazy, and he must be stopped.

Glenn Greenwald, salon.com: Rudy Giuliani's messianic paranoia

[F]ar more significant [is] Giuliani's expressed view of what he thinks his mission will be as President. After proclaiming that "America has a special, even a divinely inspired role in the world," Giuliani vowed:

It was this nation that saved the world from the two great tyrannies of the 20th century, Nazism and Communism. It's this country that's going to save civilization from Islamic terrorism.

So Islamic Terrorism is no longer merely "a threat to our freedoms." It isn't even just an existential threat to our country any more. It's been upgraded rather severely in Giuliani's mind: it's now a threat to civilization itself. And Rudy Giuliani is running for President because he is "going to save civilization" -- his words -- from the Terrorists.

In one sense, this isn't surprising. After all, Giuliani -- with barely any attention from the press -- has assembled a foreign policy team led by someone who just wrote a book declaring "World War IV" and whose "prayers" consist of the deranged plea that bombs be dropped now on Iran.

Boston Herald: Jakes to rip Rudy over 9/11 legacy
Converge on Granite State

A group of New York City firefighters who lost brother jakes in the 9/11 attacks is taking its anti-Rudy Giuliani message to New Hampshire this weekend, blasting the Big Apple’s ex-mayor for “exploiting” the catastrophe for political gain.

The New York City Firefighters & Families will be spreading its “Rudy’s No Hero” campaign at firehouses and diners in the Granite State tomorrow and will host a town hall forum at Dartmouth College on Monday.

“We want them to know about him. He’s saying he’s the big 9/11 hero. It’s a big fabrication,” said New York Fire Deputy Lt. Jim Riches, whose firefighter son Jimmy died at Ground Zero. “He failed to prepare us for 9/11.”

[]

“America’s mayor” has been dogged by New York firefighters who claim he misrepresented his leadership before and after the attacks. Chief among the group’s complaints are that the New York Fire Department had the same malfunctioning radios on Sept. 11, 2001, that failed during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

“Why did they give radios to my son that didn’t work?” Riches asked. “I want him to answer all the questions and admit the mistakes that were made.”

The group also says Giuliani cut the recovery effort short, allowed human remains to be shipped to a Staten Island dump, falsely declared the Ground Zero air safe and didn’t provide rescue workers adequate respirators.

Here's a link to the video about how Giuliani's failure to get the FDNY new radios after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing contributed to 343 firemen dying on 9/11.

The Village Voice: Runnin' Scared
Crisis-Mode Rudy
Just wait till the rest of the country sees Giuliani unhinged


But what about Rudy's maxims? After all, a president has to have some moral touchstones for political action. Here's one of Rudy's: "Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it."

Joke of the Day

Q: What's the difference between a cow and 9/11?

A: Rudy Giuliani doesn't know how to milk a cow.

The Decider on 9/11/01

I'm too enraged about politics, Bush's War Without End, Amen and the dithering Democrats to write much these days. So here's my 9/11 post.

From Buzzflash:

A 9/11 Reminder from a 2004 BuzzFlash Editorial: "Minutes of Silence That Should Live in Infamy: As Americans Leapt to Their Deaths from the Twin Towers, George W. Bush Sat Cluelessly in a Florida Classroom, Endangering the Lives of the Children Around Him, Until His Handlers Could Figure Out What to Do With Him."

I wish I had written this, but I'm just too pissed off:

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Anniversary

Let's Sell Arms to the Saudis

Then when we those weapons show up in Iraq, we can look really surprised. How did that happen? Our good friends the Saudis. Terror financers. 15 of 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. Let's give them smart bombs.

Heckuva job, Bushie.

McClatchy: U.S. to sell advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia and others

NYTimes: U.S. Set to Offer Huge Arms Deal to Saudi Arabia

Giuliani Called Off 9/11 Recovery Efforts After $230 Million in Gold Bullion Recovered

Here's the video the New York City Firefighters put out to debunk the urban legend of Rudy Giuliani, hero of 9/11. I knew he didn't get the firefighters working radios in the 9 years after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and that's why so many -- 343 -- firefighters died, and I knew he put the emergency command center on the 23rd floor of the World Trade Center Bilding 7

But I didn't know that his controversial decision to end the recovery efforts for the bodies of the thousands killed there was made after the Bank of Nova Scotia's $230 in gold bullion was recovered. Then he started sending trucks of debris containing body parts to the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island. No wonder the firefighters hate him. Rudy is no hero.

Giuliani Bungled Preparation in Years After 1993 Attack on Trade Center.

Critical failures by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani before, during and after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, raise serious questions about his ability to be commander-in-chief.

In this thirteen minute documentary, fire fighters, fire officers and family members give dramatic testimony about Giuliani's leadership failures. Their dramatic stories tell how Giuliani failed to provide the FDNY with radios that worked, which led to the deaths of 121 fire fighters inside the World Trade Center's North Tower because they were unable to hear orders to evacuate.

Fire fighters also point to Giuliani's poor judgment in placing his emergency command center at 7 World Trade Center, a known terrorist target after the 1993 bombing.

This video documents the mayor's lack of respect for the fallen when he called off the recovery effort at Ground Zero on Nov. 1, 2001, after $200 million in gold bullion was recovered.

"We produced this documentary because we need to make sure our members know Giuliani's real record," said IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger.

"The UFA participated in this video to correct the myth that Rudy Giuliani has perpetrated on the American public," said Steve Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York, IAFF Local 94.

The Giuliani campaign defended the former mayor's record by issuing a release that lists items he purchased for FDNY.

"But the campaign, with its response, has neglected to address the charges of failed leadership outlined in our documentary," President Schaitberger said.

"Purchasing equipment for a fire department doesn't qualify any mayor to be president," said Jack McDonnell, president of New York City Local 854, the Uniformed Fire Officers Association.

"If that's the litmus test for president of the United States, then most mayors in this country qualify for the job. Giuliani is running on his 9/11 record, and his 9/11 record is laced with failures in preparedness and response," McDonnell said.

The IAFF has not made an endorsement in the 2008 presidential election. Local 94 supported President George W. Bush in the 2004 election, while the IAFF
and Local 854 endorsed Sen. John Kerry.

The International Association of Fire Fighters, headquartered in Washington, DC, represents more than 280,000 full-time professional fire fighters and paramedics in every state in the United States and in Canada. More information is available at www.iaff.org and at www.rudy-urbanlegend.com.

Rudy's a Dick Cheney Warrior: He Had Other Priorities

Rudy Giuliani, who is running for president on his national security credentials (which are nil) was on the Iraq Study Group, which produced the Baker-Hamilton report (which Bush ignored, but that's another story.) Rudy never showed up for one meeting, and when James Baker called him on it, it quit. What was he doing with his time? Raking in millions, you read that right, millions, as in $11.4 million in four months on the speaker circuit.

Do we really need another Presidential candidate with other priorities?

Newsday.com: Giuliani quit Iraq panel after missed meetings - but he had time for fundraising

WASHINGTON - Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war.

He cited "previous time commitments" in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why - the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani's lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months.

Giuliani failed to show up for a pair of two-day sessions that occurred during his tenure, the sources said - and both times, they conflicted with paid public appearances shown on his recent financial disclosure. Giuliani quit the group during his busiest stretch in 2006, when he gave 20 speeches in a single month that brought in $1.7 million.

On one day the panel gathered in Washington - May 18, 2006 - Giuliani delivered a $100,000 speech on leadership at an Atlanta business awards breakfast. Later that day, he attended a $100-a-ticket Atlanta political fundraiser for conservative ally Ralph Reed, whom Giuliani hoped would provide a major boost to his presidential campaign.

The month before, Giuliani skipped the session to give the April 12 keynote speech at an economic conference in South Korea for $200,000, his financial disclosure shows.

Jerry Falwell, 1933-2007

Given that Jerry Falwell blamed me, a feminist, for 9/11, I have a hard time saying anything nice about the man. As Atrios says, let's hope he finds God more forgiving than he thought he was. (or, even better, lets hope that he finds out that God is female!)

A compilation of some of the lowlights of his public statements: The Carpetbagger Report: Jerry Falwell dies at age 73

Wikipedia: Jerry Falwell

NYTimes: Rev. Jerry Falwell Is Dead at 73

Rudy Giuliani: "Said all the right things, but did all the wrong things"

I hope the Republicans are foolish enough to run Rudy Giuliani in 2008. He's crooked and a real jerk. Here are just two articles about his perfidy.

WaPo: In Private Sector, Giuliani Parlayed Fame Into Wealth
Candidate's Firm Has Taken On Controversial Executives, Clients

On Dec. 7, 2001, nearly three months after the terrorist attack that had made him a national hero and a little over three weeks before he would leave office, New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani took the first official step toward making himself rich.

And at the same time he was busily making himself rich, he was exposing thousands of Ground Zero workers to toxic dust by failing to enforce federal requirements regarding respirator use:

NYTimes: Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani’s Legacy

Administration documents and thousands of pages of legal testimony filed in a lawsuit against New York City, along with more than two dozen interviews with people involved in the events of the last four months of Mr. Giuliani’s administration, show that while the city had a safety plan for workers, it never meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear respirators.

At the same time, the administration warned companies working on the pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed. And according to public hearing transcripts and unpublished administration records, officials also on some occasions gave flawed public representations of the nature of the health threat, even as they privately worried about exposure to lawsuits by sickened workers.

“The city ran a generally slipshod, haphazard, uncoordinated, unfocused response to environmental concerns,” said David Newman, an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a labor group.

City officials and a range of medical experts are now convinced that the dust and toxic materials in the air around the site were a menace. More than 2,000 New York City firefighters have been treated for serious respiratory problems. Seventy percent of nearly 10,000 recovery workers screened at Mount Sinai Medical Center have trouble breathing. City officials estimate that health care costs related to the air at ground zero have already run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and no one knows whether other illnesses, like cancers, will emerge.

[]

The city’s handling of safety issues has been criticized by doctors, unions and occupational safety experts. Mr. Giuliani’s oversight of the operation was condemned in a 2006 book, “Grand Illusion,” by Wayne Barrett, a longtime critic of the former mayor, and Dan Collins. Mr. Barrett said in an interview that when it came to safety, Mr. Giuliani “said all the right things, but did all the wrong things.”

And of course, by failing to do the right thing in the long term, he saved money in the short term, and used the speed of the Ground Zero cleanup to burnish his own reputation, which he then sold around the world (see WaPo article at top.) For Rudy, it's all about the Benjamins, and public health and the little people be damned.

Keith Olbermann to Rudy: You Crossed the Line

Rudy Giuliani, who located New York City's disaster response headquarters in the basement of the World Trade Center, had fire and police departments whose radios could not reach each other, and elevated his corrupt driver, Bernard Kerik, to Police Commissioner of New York, says if a Democrat is elected America will be hit again by terrorists. Shameless. Keith Olberman says it much more elegantly: