Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Hero or Villain?

Read more about the man who exposed the Bush Administration's illegal warrantless wiretapping program. Remind me again why Bush wasn't impeached and imprisoned for this clear violation of law and the U.S. Constitution?

Eighteen months after Thomas Tamm first disclosed what he knew, the Times reported that President George W. Bush had secretly authorized the NSA to intercept phone calls and e-mails of individuals inside the United States without judicial warrants. The drama followed a quiet, separate rebellion within the highest ranks of the Justice Department concerning the same program. (James Comey, then the deputy attorney general, together with FBI head Robert Mueller and several other senior Justice officials, threatened to resign.) President Bush condemned the leak to the Times as a "shameful act." Federal agents launched a criminal investigation to determine the identity of the culprit. LINK

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Monday, December 8, 2008

The Truth = 1, Conspiracy Theorists = 0

STUNNING NEWS: OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE APPEAL FAILS!

In what must be unbelievable news to the right-wing conspiracy theorists who have been pushing this Obama birth certificate nonsense, the Supreme Court delivers a punch to the gut by rejecting Leo Donofrio's appeal today:

"Without any comment whatsoever, the Supreme Court today declined to take up an appeal by a New Jersey man who questioned President-elect Barack Obama’s eligibility for the presidency.."

Not that this will convince any of these conspiracy nuts who need NO credible evidence to buy in to a conspiracy theory because they read it on a right-wing blog or heard it on pushed on the air by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Jerome Corsi, etc.

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Saturday, December 6, 2008

More On The "Obama Birth Certificate" Conspiracy Nuts

Some choice quotes from a story at Salon.com on these idiots who will NEVER be convinced that Barack Obama is eligible to be President of the United States no matter how much evidence is put in front of their faces (NOTE: Click on image for a full-size view of Obama's birth certificate).

1. The fact that the case has gone to conference doesn't mean anything about its merits -- the court will also be deciding whether to take up a number of other cases, and the chances that the suit will actually be heard is exceedingly small. Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, has calculated that over the past eight years the court has considered in conference 842 cases that sought a stay. Only 60 of them were actually heard.

2. Any inconvenient facts are irrelevant. People who believe in a conspiracy theory "develop a selective perception, their mind refuses to accept contrary evidence," Chip Berlet, a senior analyst with Political Research Associates who studies such theories, says. "As soon as you criticize a conspiracy theory, you become part of the conspiracy."

3. Evan Harrington, a social psychologist who is an associate professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, agrees. "One of the tendencies of the conspiracy notion, the whole appeal, is that a lot of the information the believer has is secret or special," Harrington says. "The real evidence is out there, and you can give them all this evidence, but they'll have convenient ways to discredit it."

4. Rush Limbaugh already suggested that Obama's trip to Hawaii to see his ailing grandmother, who died not long after, was somehow connected to the controversy. Others, like Michael Savage, followed Limbaugh's lead, saying Obama was going to Hawaii to alter the record.


5.
Not surprisingly, almost all of the people who've been most prominent in pushing this story have a history of conspiracist thought. There's Jerome Corsi, who's best known as the co-author of the book that launched the Swift boat vets; he's a chief proponent of the claim that the government is secretly planning to form a "North American Union" with Canada and Mexico. Philip Berg, who filed the lawsuit that had until now drawn the most public attention, is a 9/11 Truther. Andy Martin, who's credited with starting the myth that Obama is a Muslim and has been intimately involved in the birth certificate mess as well, was denied admission to the Illinois bar because of a psychiatric evaluation that showed he had "moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character." He also has a long history of anti-Semitism. Robert Schulz, who's responsible for the ads in the Chicago Tribune, is a fairly notorious tax protester.

LINK

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Obama To Appoint Chemical and Biological Weapons Czar After Bush "Punts"

"President-elect Barack Obama plans to appoint a new White House official to coordinate efforts to prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear or biological weapons, advisers say, giving the highest priority to thwarting a catastrophic attack that a bipartisan panel warns could come in the next five years."

"A law requiring the position, passed by Congress more than a year ago and signed into law by President Bush, has been ignored for more than 15 months, in part because Bush opposes giving the Senate the power to confirm the official." LINK

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Thursday, December 4, 2008

Obama Versus Bush On The Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB)

Barack Obama has been receiving the PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) 7 days a week versus 6 days a week for President Bush. I guess Bush wasn't really looking at this President thing as a full-time gig. He probably needs one day to ponder the "end times" and he figured that taking a day off might make that happen a little sooner. Can we have this inauguration now instead of waiting until January?


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