The Real Terrorists in This Country

This report and video will scare the shit out of you. The Guardian (uk) continues its excellent series of reports on the ugly racism in our country. The skinheads, the neo-nazis, The Order, Aryan Nation, the KKK, these are the people Sarah Palin is inciting when she accuses Barack Obama of palling around with terrorists. These whackjobs are the real terrorists. And they make no bones about it. Watch the video.

Guardian (uk):
Fourteen Words that spell racism
The prospect of an African-American president is bringing white supremacist subculture in the US out of the shadows

Guardian (uk): Video: 'You hear them say Obama will be assassinated'

McCain-Palin Rallies: Document the Atrocities

Pottsville, Pennsylvania yesterday:



Video by Keystone Progress.

(POTTSVILLE, PA)—In what has become a regular occurrence, dozens of supporters of Senator John McCain shouted racist and hate-filled speech at about 100 demonstrators yesterday in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

One of the McCain supporters was caught on video shouting "Bomb Obama!" repeatedly. When asked what he meant, he said "Get rid of him. I've had a number of people in the... when he gets in the White House..."

He then formed a gun with his hand and made a shooting sound.

The incident was reported immediately to Pottsville Police Captain Richard Wojciechowsky, who said it did not sound serious.

The video later was shown to the Secret Service.

Yesterday’s video, and similar videos from McCain and Palin rallies around Pennsylvania, were shot and produced by Keystone Progress. Keystone Progress is a multi-issue progressive advocacy organization that combines cutting edge online organizing and communications with rapid and hard-hitting earned media strategies.

John McCain: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Meeting without preconditions, palling around with terrorists, for John McCain, that's all Been there, Done that, Got the Armani t-shirt.


HuffPo: McCain's Private Visit With Chilean Dictator Pinochet Revealed For First Time

John McCain, who has harshly criticized the idea of sitting down with dictators without pre-conditions, appears to have done just that. In 1985, McCain traveled to Chile for a friendly meeting with Chile's military ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, one of the world's most notorious violators of human rights credited with killing more than 3,000 civilians and jailing tens of thousands of others.

McCain Hearing Things?

Or just lying? He claims people at Obama rallies have yelled "kill him" and "terrorist" towards McCain. There's no evidence to support this, of course, as the worst Obama rally goers shout towards McCain is "BOOOOOOO". Jed Lewison posted this video of McCain's claim, calling it "Another bizarre lie."

The McCain Campaign of Hate

Politico: An AFP shot from this morning in Virginia Beach.

The state chairman of the Virginia Republican Party, Jeff Frederick, told a group of Virginia volunteers that Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden "both have friends who bombed the Pentagon, that is scary."

That is, of course, a bald-faced lie, and a transparent attempt to once again call Obama a terrorist.

From the Washington Post:

Yesterday, Frederick said he stood by the comparison, even though bin Laden planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon that killed 184 people and Obama was a child and hadn't met Ayers when the Weather Underground planted a bomb at the Pentagon in 1972. No one was hurt in that blast, in which a bomb exploded in a restroom and caused flooding and damage to computer tapes containing classified information.

Ayers did not participate at the Pentagon in the bombing but admitted to involvement in other blasts.

And what of John McCain? How did he respond to this baseless smear, Mr. I'm-Going-To-Run-A-Respectful-Campaign John McCain?

He refused to condemn the remarks.

The video of McCain once again taking the low, hateful road:



John McCain looks smaller and smaller as his campaign sputters to its end. He has no economic plan, so this is all he has left.

Obama Knew It Was Coming All Along

Watch Barack Obama -- in July -- predict to a T how the Republicans will campaign against him:

Who is Barack Obama?

Jon Stewart asks Sarah Palin: Who are you?

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy: October 7, 2008

McCain doubletakes -- then smiles -- as supporter calls Obama a terrorist.

Angry/Hater '08 are whipping their crowds and their supporters into a hate-filled, racist frenzy. John McCain asked the crowd in Albuquerque, New Mexico yesterday "Who is the real Barack Obama?" and a man shouted "terrorist". Watch the video above; McCain clearly heard the man yell terrorist, his facial expression changes to one of "whoops", but he does not denounce the statement. Just like when a supporter asked him "How do we beat the bitch" about Hillary Clinton in the primaries, and he didn't denounce that, either. He laughed it off, just like he did yesterday.

At Sarah Palin's rally in Florida, she claimed that Obama "palled around" with terrorists, and said nothing as one of her supporters yelled "Kill him!". At the same rally, Palin complained about the mainstream media at a campaign event, and her supporters:

...hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

The head of the Pennsylvania Republican Party called Barack Obama "a terrorist's best friend".

Associations, associations, does the McCain camp really want to play that game? Palin held a fundraiser yesterday at the home of a corrupt Wall Street investment company exec, whose company paid a $72 million dollar fine in 2005. She and her husband belonged to a secessionist political party. She was blessed in church by a witch-fighting pastor who prayed to protect her from the "spirit of witchcraft" in 2005 (not 1605). She sat and listened in church while the founder of Jews for Jesus lambasted "Israelites".

McCain has his own set of unsavory affiliations. For one, G. Gordon Liddy, the convicted Watergate burglar, is an old friend of McCain's, and McCain appeared on his radio show in November of 2007. Liddy is a convicted felon who spent 4 1/2 years in jail for Watergate, and who has admitted plotting to kill, firebomb, and kidnap American citizens who disagreed with his radical conservative views. In addition, during the 1980s, McCain "served on the board of a far-right conservative organization that had supplied arms and funds to paramilitary organizations in Latin America", the U.S. Council for World Freedom, an organization with ties to Nazi sympathizers.

The debate tonight will be interesting to say the least. If I were Obama, I would be tempted to put McCain on the spot and ask him, "Do you think I am a terrorist?" Because McCain is a coward. He says these things behind Obama's back, but never has said them to his face. Even if he says yes, McCain won't dare look at Obama, and we will see who the real Alpha Dog in the race is. The fear of looking his opponent in the face betrays McCain's weakness.

Will McCain continue his angry rants in front of a group of undecided voters? I doubt it, but my record as a prognosticator isn't very good. We'll see tonight.

Sleeping With The Enemy

Sarah Palin accuses Obama of "palling around" with terrorists, but her husband was a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party for a decade; she's their candidate; and she addressed their convention just last year. Watch the video for a short but hardhitting expose of AIP.

As Jed asks, if Sarah Palin wasn't a secessionist, why was she palling around with them? (And I ask, sleeping with them?)

So here's the question: when will Sarah Palin ever explain what she was doing palling around with the Alaskan Independence Party secessionists? When will she explain why Todd Palin -- who plays a huge role in her administration -- was a member of the party for so long?

Does she oppose secession now, if so, when did she change her mind?

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.

"Justice" Department Torture Memo Released

WaPo: Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators
Justice Dept. Official in 2003 Said President's Wartime Authority Trumped Many Statutes

The Justice Department's horrifying torture memo, stripped to its bare essentials, argues that the ends justify the means. If the Bush administration is fighting terrorists (so much scarier than Nazis, so to hell with those pantywaist Geneva Conventions) it has the right to do so by all means necessary, laws and treaties be damned. Torture is justified as "self-defense":

Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a "national and international version of the right to self-defense," Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations -- that it must "shock the conscience" -- that the Bush administration advocated for years.

"Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification," Yoo wrote, explaining, for example, that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted.

The former Army judge advocate general says the Justice Department was claiming it was above the law:

Thomas J. Romig, who was then the Army's judge advocate general, said yesterday after reading the memo that it appears to argue there are no rules in a time of war, a concept Romig found "downright offensive."

The authors of this memo have written themselves a one-way ticket to hell. Incredibly, John Yoo, the primary author, is employed by the state of California as a professor of law at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkley. He's teaching two constitutional law courses this spring. What is he teaching these students? That the constitution is akin to a roll of toilet paper, which can be flushed down the toilet whenever it's expedient?

Hey, I can do a service to his students. I'll outline the course so they don't have to:

Laws, schmaws.

Write that, and you pass.

Falafel Me This

Weapons of Mass Destruction?
Wikipedia: Falafel

What percentage of American falafel eaters are terrorists? The FBI thinks it's a connection worth pursuing. In 2005 and 2006, the FBI actually looked at grocery story sales in the San Francisco area to see if they would find terrorists because they were purchasing falafel ingredients. (And what of hummus?)

The CQPolitics article about the FBI tracking grocery store sales is not from the satirical newspaper the Onion. No, it is a statement of fact. The FBI actually looked at who bought the ingredients to make falafel in order to find Iranian terrorists.

Because falafel eaters....oh, never mind, it's so mindnumbingly foolish that it seems superfluous to comment on it.

Because really, falafel ingredients? Why didn't they look at, oh, I don't know, visas, flight schools, purchases of guns, ammunition and bomb-making materials, or bank records, just to name a few.

And shouldn't they have looked carefully at Bill O'Reilly, a self-confessed lover of the falafel (last line, paragraph 78)?

CQPolitics: FBI Hoped to Follow Falafel Trail to Iranian Terrorists Here

Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn’t last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal.

Blogtopia* Roundup, Saturday, August 4, 2007

From the Mel Kelly Life List

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
The Starry Night
Senate Democrats cave to Smirky McEavesdropper, give him even more power to wiretap, and unbelievably, put Serial Liar Alberto Gonzales in charge of oversight. 16 Democratic fools voted for this: thank heavens my Senators are more sane than these:

Evan Bayh (Indiana); Tom Carper (Delaware); Bob Casey (Pennsylvania); Kent Conrad (North Dakota); Dianne Feinstein (California); Daniel Inouye (Hawai‘i); Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota); Nancy Mary Landrieu (Louisiana); Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas); Claire McCaskill (Missouri); Barbara Mikulski (Maryland); Bill Nelson (Florida); Ben Nelson (Nebraska); Mark Pryor (Arkansas); Ken Salazar (Colorado); Jim Webb (Virginia).

Were they that desperate to go on vacation?

Wish you were at YearlyKos? (I do! Maybe next year.) TPM has videos of interviews with some of the attendees.

The Jose Padilla trial plods on; the government's evidence is so very weak that Padilla's attorneys put on no case. Not surprising since Bush's DOJ has a 29% conviction rate on terrorism prosecutions, compared to 93% elsewhere; they're all smoke and mirrors. Kind of like the entire Bush Administration. As Will S. said, all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The Bush Administration killed a 4 cents a gallon gasoline tax in 2004 that would have gone to fixing the country's decaying roads and bridges. Heckuva job, George.

Speaking of Heckuva Job George, Monday is the 6th anniversary of the PDB that George ignored: "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In US". There'll be a blogswarm on the topic.

Main St. USA News, from BoingBoing: Bubblegum rocker Bobby Sherman has built a replica of Disney's Main St. USA in his backyard.

Since Congress, George W. Bush, and the Iraqi Parliament are all on vacation, I'm gong too. Posting will be rare for the next two weeks.

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

Of Course He Plead Guilty

Just read the post on Huffington Post and ask yourself, what if this were my countryman? How would I feel about the United States of America holding itself out as a moral paragon? These are the depths to which the Crawford Caligula has led this nation. He may as well have opened a brothel in the White House for the shame and revulsion he will be held by history.

Today Australian David Hicks plead guilty to breaking a law which did not exist until September of 2006; he has been in Guantanamo for five years. The original charges were all dropped. Before the hearing, two of his three lawyers were dismissed by the court; the third was threatened, and his request for additional counsel was denied. Justice, unAmerican style. Unfortunately, this happened under the American extra-legal system established at Guantanamo. It is truly shameful. Some day it will be in the history books along with the unconstitutional internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.

HuffPo: Justice Guantánamo Style

David Hicks, the Australian man that has been held in Guantánamo for five years, (the last year or so in solitary confinement) agreed to plead guilty yesterday. There are a few things you should know about his plea. First, and most importantly, Hicks is pleading guilty to a crime that did not exist on the books until September of 2006.

All of the original charges (the serious ones) were dropped against Hicks because the military had no evidence against him. Mr. Hicks was confined at Guantánamo until a new law could be passed that he could then be charged with. Never mind the fact that our constitution prohibits ex post facto (retroactive) laws, I mean that is why we are holding him at Guantánamo right?

The other thing you should know is what was clear to anyone paying attention: there was never going to be a hearing. The most recent evidence of that was when Hicks stepped into his arraignment yesterday and the first thing that happened was that two of his three attorneys were removed from representing him. Hicks' civilian attorney was removed because he refused to sign a statement agreeing to abide by military rules that had not yet been drafted and another attorney was removed because she supposedly did not have the correct credentials for the commission. That left Hicks with only one attorney, his military attorney, Dan Mori. Although Mori has been doing an exemplary job for Hicks, there was a little cloud hanging over Mori: the prosecuting attorney has suggested that Mori should be brought up on charges of misconduct for his zealous defense of Hicks. Mori was still trying to figure out how that threat by the prosecuting attorney would affect his representation of Hicks. Mori sought a short continuance to get legal counsel on this issue but that request was denied.

So yesterday, after two of his three attorneys were removed from representing him and the prosecuting attorney was attempting to intimidate the third, Hicks asked the military judge for additional counsel to help level the playing field. That request was denied... leveling the playing field is not what the military had in mind. The writing was clear on the glistening red, white and blue walls of the commission hearing room and David Hicks did the only thing that could possibly make sense in this abhorrent proceeding. He pled guilty to something that was not even against the law when he was arrested. Hicks' only hope is that he will be sent to Australia to serve his sentence and that perhaps, in time, a court in Australia will agree that pleading guilty to a crime that did not exist when he was arrested should be considered a nullity. Only problem is, Australia does not have a constitutional prohibition against ex post facto laws... I wonder if that is how the phrase "kangaroo court' first came to be?

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Is The Easter Bunny

I have this Easter Bunny scoop EXCLUSIVELY here at Main St. USA based on superduper topsecret authority. Bushco is suppressing that particular confession for obvious reasons, as it does not fit into their "get Gonzo off the front pages" plan.

Apparently, while we've been torturing Mohammed for the past five years, he's confessed to EVERYTHING they've ever asked him about. 31 terrorist acts in total. Who'd a thunk it? Torture works. We get everything we want. He has also confessed to being the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and Borat.

WaPo (front page): Alleged Architect Of 9/11 Confesses To Many Attacks

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, confessed at a Guantanamo Bay military hearing that he planned and funded that al-Qaeda operation and said he was involved in more than two dozen other terrorist acts around the world, according to documents released by the Pentagon yesterday.

In a rambling statement delivered Saturday to a closed-door military tribunal, Mohammed declared himself an enemy of the United States and claimed some responsibility for many of the major terrorist attacks on U.S. and allied targets over more than a decade. He said that he is at war with the United States and that the deaths of innocent people are an unfortunate consequence of that conflict.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z," Mohammed told a panel of military officers through a personal representative, who read off a list of 31 terrorist acts that were either carried out or planned but not executed. According to transcripts released by Defense Department officials last night, Mohammed later spoke in broken English and Arabic, saying, "For sure, I'm American enemies."

This last sentence proves that he is the real Borat.

I mean, really. The "hearing" at which Mohammed "testified" (in a language other than his own) took place on March 10th. The purpose is to determine whether he is an enemy combatant. The Washington Post has a pdf link to the entire transcript. On page 10, Mohammed asks to present witnesses. His request is denied on the grounds that his witnesses are not relevant. The 31 terrorist acts to which he confesses are presented in the form of a written list which is read into the record by his "Personal Representative" (question, was this a lawyer? Embarrassing if so.) This list was clearly written by someone other than Mohammed as his broken English is miraculously repaired. He says things like "I was the Media Operations Director", "I was the Operational Director", as though al Quada was really a modern US corporation. Jeez.

The whole thing is a kangaroo court and the corporate media is jumping up and down as though this farce had some basis for respect. It is a farce. The guy may be guilty as hell, but the US makes him look like a victim by torturing and railroading him. Couldn't we just have subjected him to the greatest legal system in the world? Just another way in which the Bush Administration has used 9/11 to attack our Constitution and degrade us in the eyes of the world. The shame.