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April 09th, 2010 | Author:

from Democracy Now, a reporter who filmed at the scene the next day:

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April 07th, 2010 | Author:

If your car displays a “Support Our Troops” decal, you need to watch this video.

If your church displays an American flag, you need to watch this video.

If you call yourself a human being, you need to watch this video.

It’s graphic.  It’s appalling.  And it’s been approved by the US military.  From the special Wikileaks website:

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.

After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own “Rules of Engagement”.

[Note: The video is best viewed full screen, and be sure your audio is turned on. The conversation of "our troops" is quite enlightening.]

Behold, the LORD’S hand is not so short That it cannot save;
Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear.
But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God,
And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.
For your hands are defiled with blood And your fingers with iniquity;
Your lips have spoken falsehood, Your tongue mutters wickedness.
No one sues righteously and no one pleads honestly.
They trust in confusion and speak lies;
They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web;
He who eats of their eggs dies, And from that which is crushed a snake breaks forth.
Their webs will not become clothing, Nor will they cover themselves with their works;
Their works are works of iniquity, And an act of violence is in their hands.
Their feet run to evil, And they hasten to shed innocent blood;
Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity,
Devastation and destruction are in their highways.
They do not know the way of peace, And there is no justice in their tracks;
They have made their paths crooked, Whoever treads on them does not know peace.
Therefore justice is far from us, And righteousness does not overtake us;
We hope for light, but behold, darkness, For brightness, but we walk in gloom.

(Isaiah 59:1-9)

Update: Huffington Post has more details on this story.  NY Times has information on another cover-up in Afghanistan, “including a new report that Special Operations forces dug bullets out of the bodies of the women to hide the true nature of their deaths.”

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April 05th, 2010 | Author:

Student who was arrested for doodling on school desk sues city for excessive force

Alexa was perp-walked out of the school in front of her classmates with her hands locked in metal handcuffs behind her back.

Alexa’s mother pleaded with the officers to accompany her daughter to the police precinct, but Camacho was told to go home and wait for a call.

Officers placed Alexa in “an enclosed room” at the precinct and handcuffed her to a pole for more than two hours, the papers note.

Another good reason to homeschool.

Constitution protects all speech, not just nice speech

Veterans groups and others on the political right are outraged at an appellate court decision that ordered the father of a dead Marine to pay the court costs for a group of wackos who protested at the Marine’s funeral.

Get over it. It is the father who dishonored the memory of his dead son by trying to suppress the free speech of others.

It’s a bit like teaching your kids not to hit by beating the crap out of them.

Are They Trying to Scare Us?

Meanwhile, back in the heartland, Dear Leader’s federal swat teams made a three-state sweep of supposed “Christian militia,” complete with helicopters and scary stories about these “Christians” plotting to kill police officers. This from a president who hangs out with Bill Ayers, who really did try to blow up the Pentagon! In the end, they arrested half a dozen of these alleged plotters.

Is this supposed to make us feel afraid? Ooh, look, that’s the kind of people who oppose Dear Leader’s health-care plan—gun-toting homophobic Christian Nazis, racists who don’t believe in evolution, blah-blah-blah. But even scarier is the message that you’d better watch what you say, or those same federal helicopters will be coming after you.

More Chicago-style conditioning of the unwashed public.

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April 01st, 2010 | Author:

March 30, 2010, Albany, NY — PC Public Affairs announced today that Al Roney will be joining their public relations and crisis management team.  Al Roney is the former radio talk show host for 810 WGY in Albany, NY and one of New York’s leading voices in state politics.

More to follow…

According to their temporary website, PC Public Affairs is a new public affairs firm being formed by Frederico Polsinelli and Andre Claridge, with offices in Albany, New York City, and Washington, D.C.

So it appears that we won’t get to hear Al on the radio, but perhaps he’ll share more details about his new position when he MC’s this year’s  Tea Party on Saturday, April 17th, from noon to 2 pm, at the Corning Preserve in Albany.

We wish you well, Al, and will continue to miss you.

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March 24th, 2010 | Author:

Here are a couple snippets from an excellent article by Thomas L. Knapp:

A woman comes upon a snake in some kind of trouble (frozen, injured or being attacked). She rescues the snake, takes it home, and nurses it back to health. It becomes a trusted friend and pet. Then one day, she decides to go to town and picks up the snake to take it with her … and it bites her. As she dies, she asks the snake why. “Lady,” the snake says, “you knew I was a snake when you picked me up.”

Every new government outrage against all that is right and good elicits reactions of astonishment and outrage — and every time I hear those reactions, I think of The Fable of the Snake.

Folks, the guys I’m quoting here are the naive, feel-good, utopian, hippy dippy doo optimists of political history. If you want to a more level-headed, accurate assessment of the ends to which government means inevitably lead, read any well-written history of the Third Reich’s Holocaust, Pol Pot’s Killing Fields or Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

It’s time to stop kidding yourself.

It’s time to stop buying the “this time, it will be different — really!” line.

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