Clemency for terrorists but not our soldiers?
by Diana West

During the Thanksgiving season especially, Americans should give thanks to our brave men in uniform, and women, too, fighting in hostile lands under atrocious conditions.

But there’s another duty upon us as Americans with a debt of gratitude to our armed forces.

We must recognize and protest the travesties of military justice that have tried, convicted, jailed and denied clemency to all too many brave Americans, the same brave Americans who have fought our wars only to be unfairly charged with “murder” in the war zone.

Readers of this column will recall the crushing conviction of Sgt. Evan Vela, a young Ranger-trained sniper and father of two from Idaho, for executing his superior’s 2006 order to kill an Iraqi man who at the time has been compromising his squad’s hiding place in the pre-”surge” Sunni triangle…

Evan Vela now has all too many brothers-in-arms at Fort Leavenworth prison where they form what is increasingly known as The Leavenworth Ten: Vela (10 years), Corey Claggett (18 years), William Hunsaker (18 years), Raymond Girouard (10 years), Michael Williams (25 years), Larry Hutchins (11 years), Michael Behenna (20 years), John Hatley (40 years), Joseph Mayo (20 years), Michael Leahy (20 years). Google their names, read their cases…

You got it. John Hatley…*google*…

US Army sergeant convicted of murdering four Iraqi detainees

…Prosecutors told a court martial in Germany on Wednesday that Master Sgt John Hatley acted as “judge, jury and executioner” of the four men, captured in the Baghdad area in the spring of 2007.

After Hatley’s unit was engaged in an exchange of fire, the men were seen fleeing a building which was found to contain assault rifles, grenades and sniper rifles.

The court martial heard that the four were not going to be prosecuted due to lack of evidence and would normally have been set free.

Two other soldiers, who have already been found guilty of the killings, testified that the prisoners were instead taken to a deserted site near a canal in Baghdad’s West Rasheed neighbourhood.

There, they were shot point-blank in the back of the head with automatic pistols.

Captain Derrick Grace, prosecuting, said that evidence had pointed to “a complete breakdown of discipline and crimes that are among the worst of a soldier”…

Don’t know, Diana, how Hatley was “unfairly charged with ‘murder’ in the war zone.” Putting handguns to the heads of “prisoners [who] were ‘zip-tied, blindfolded and stationary’” and blowing their brains out doesn’t qualify? Then I suppose nothing does.

I’m frankly sick of the ‘patriots’ like you who throw tantrums over requiring our military people to know and obey the laws they’ve been ordered to know and obey. As far as I can recall, it’s never been legal or particularly American to execute unarmed prisoners. And I don’t understand how dictating to the military which of their own laws to mind constitutes ‘support’ when they themselves know the laws and regulations exist to strengthen their institutions.

Your being disappointed with the application of a ‘no prisoner execution’ law points out a traditional difference between us and you, the Conservatives: we believe the law should be vigorously applied to the most powerful people in society. Our laws should closely govern the powerful because of their potential to do harm. The President, giant corporations, and billionaires need restraints because they can do the most to trash or disturb a perfectly good society (witness the recession).

You guys, however, think that the powerless need far-reaching laws to govern them. The pot smoker sitting at home, the homeless guy pissing in the alley–these people need to be made to obey. You’ve got it dangerously backwards because, frankly, you’d prefer to ass-kiss the types of people you want to become. The result of your societal spinelessness is that the powerful literally get away with murder. Even though President Bush started a war in Iraq that slaughtered thousands of innocent women and children, I’m sure it was perfectly fine with you. I bet he meant well, heck, he was only doing the best he could.

So it goes with respect to soldiers. We arm them and train them to kill, and they become some of the most powerful people on the planet. Thus, in the article, as far as I can tell, you think there are no laws that should apply to them. Even though no one disputes that Sergeant Hatley ordered his men to execute these prisoners–he personally shot two of them–convicting him of the murders is ‘unfair’? Because, what, you feel the Iraqis maybe were bad guys? And in the off chance they weren’t…well, why should you care? If Americans are snuffing out innocent lives in foreign lands, I’m sure they were only doing the best they could.

The sad thing, in this case, is that it could be true. Exhausted and maybe PTSD’d, Hatley probably shouldn’t have been in combat. But what did you expect would occur when you put all these soldiers in the impossible position you did? Fighting an immoral war against people who wouldn’t be interested or capable of harming Americans if we hadn’t invaded their homeland? Did you think our soldiers would be able to sleep at night just because they’re soldiers? Believe me, these guys know right from wrong, and fighting a war that’s wrong becomes a war against themselves. You Conservatives refused to learn the lesson of Vietnam, and now, with the brains of prisoners all over the place, you want to change the rules to make it okay.

Well, you don’t get to. The military is not a plaything for you, their laws included. Did you even consider why they bother with rules and regulations, Diana? Why they teach any of that crap to their people? Why they have investigators and lawyers and the Uniform Code of Military Justice? To annoy right-wingers like you? It’s to get people to do their jobs correctly, professionally.

The military aren’t about to stop demanding that now, even though you can’t stand to see it. They define what a soldier’s job is and isn’t and promote, laud and defend their personnel when those standards are met. And those laws and legal institutions, and the relationship between soldiers and the law, have been tested and refined over two centuries. A military without mechanisms to define what a good soldier is, without strict rules and regulations and a willingness to apply them, isn’t a military at all.

But what you’d prefer, some institution that would sanction the execution of unarmed prisoners, Diana, is something wholly different. Diana West’s ‘military’ is a Death Squad, and they are much beloved by local Conservatives all over the world.

I’ve been asking myself the nearly unaskable: if Sarah Palin became President, as she clearly wants to be, what will America then become? What will it look like?

I found a year-old article in Salon that addresses the question. It details the tribulations of a Baptist minister, Howard Bess, in a town near to Palin’s Wasilla who had a number of run-ins with the aggressive Mayor and her evangelist cohort. She is a religious extremist, rigid and intolerant, and she does not keep her beliefs to herself. Ever.

If you like the local crank who seeks to ban gay-tolerant books from the library, take over the local hospital board and ban abortions, and take over the local school board and install the ‘teaching’ of Creationism, you’ll just love her as President of the United States. Otherwise, her heaven makes for your hell.

The pastor who clashed with Palin
Baptist minister Howard Bess, who wrote a book Palin wanted banned and who fought her on abortion and gay rights, says the country should fear her election.
Monday, Sep 15, 2008

WASILLA, Alaska — The Wasilla Assembly of God, the evangelical church where Sarah Palin came of age, was still charged with excitement on Sunday over Palin’s sudden ascendance…

It confirmed, they said, that God was making use of Wasilla. “She will take our message to the world!” rejoiced an Assembly of God youth ministry leader, as the church band rocked the high-vaulted wooden building with its electric gospel.

That is what scares the Rev. Howard Bess. A retired American Baptist minister who pastors a small congregation in nearby Palmer, Wasilla’s twin town in Alaska’s Matanuska Valley, Bess has been tangling with Palin and her fellow evangelical activists ever since she was a Wasilla City Council member in the 1990s…

“She scares me,” said Bess. “She’s Jerry Falwell with a pretty face.

“At this point, people in this country don’t grasp what this person is all about. The key to understanding Sarah Palin is understanding her radical theology.”…

The retired minister moved to the Mat-Su Valley with his wife, Darlene, in 1987, after his outspoken defense of gay rights at Baptist churches in the Santa Barbara, Calif., area and Anchorage landed him in trouble with church officials. In the Mat-Su Valley, Bess plunged into community activism, helping launch an assortment of projects, from an arts council to a shelter for the mentally disabled.

Inevitably, his work brought him into conflict with Palin and other highly politicized Christian fundamentalists in the valley. “Things got very intense around here in the ’90s — the culture war was very hot here,” Bess said. “The evangelicals were trying to take over the valley. They took over the school board, the community hospital board, even the local electric utility. And Sarah Palin was in the direct center of all these culture battles, along with the churches she belonged to.”

Bess’ first run-in with Palin’s religious forces came when he decided to write his book, “Pastor, I Am Gay.” The book was the result of a theological journey that began in the 1970s when Bess was asked for guidance by a closeted homosexual in his Santa Barbara congregation…

In his book, Bess suggests that gays have a divine mission. “Look back at the life of our Lord Jesus. He was misunderstood, deserted, unjustly accused, and cruelly killed. Yet we all confess that it was the will of God, for by his wounds we are healed … Could it be that the homosexual, obedient to the will of God, might be the church’s modern day healer-messiah?”

When it was published in 1995, Bess’ book caused an immediate storm in the Mat-Su Valley, an evangelical stronghold dotted with storefront churches. Conservative ministers targeted the book, and the only bookstore in the valley that dared to stock it — Shalom Christian Books and Gifts – soon dropped it after the owner was barraged with angry phone calls. The Frontiersman, the local newspaper that ran a column by Bess for seven years, fired him and ran a vicious cartoon that suggested even drooling child molesters would be welcomed by Bess’ church.

And after she became mayor of Wasilla, according to Bess, Sarah Palin tried to get rid of his book from the local library. Palin now denies that she wanted to censor library books, but Bess insists that his book was on a “hit list” targeted by Palin. “I’m as certain of that as I am that I’m sitting here. This is a small town, we all know each other. People in city government have confirmed to me what Sarah was trying to do.”

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George Will, what an old bag. I oughta hire a gang of giddy children to slap Grandma senseless.

Scroogenomics
by George Will

WASHINGTON — Another huge value-destroying hurricane is about to slam America, destroying billions of dollars of value. Another Katrina? No, another Christmas.

Take cover, everybody, a ‘value’ tragedy, a bruising of ‘value’, is about to blah-blah. And all the smart people in the world have already clicked something else.

But, no, not me. Why? Insomnia.

This voluntary December calamity is explained in a darkly amusing little book that is about the size of an iPhone. “Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays” comes from a distinguished publisher, Princeton University Press, and an eminent author, Joel Waldfogel of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school.

This is going to be depressing, one way or another, because the title isn’t bad at all. When George Will likes it, especially if it’s ‘darkly amusing’, it’s guaranteed to be complete dog poo.

He says that the crux of Yuletide economics, which common sense suggests and research confirms, is:

Gifts that people buy for other people are usually poorly matched to the recipients’ preferences. What the recipients would willingly pay for gifts is usually less than what the givers paid. The measure of the inefficiency of allocating value by gift-giving is the difference between the yield of satisfaction per dollar spent on gifts and the yield per dollar spent on recipients’ own purchases.

AHH, HEADACHE. Why does George Will even exist, other than to pain good people? Good lord, it’s Christmas, you douchebarrel.

By calculating the difference between the consumption of holiday goods (e.g., jewelry, but not gasoline) in December as opposed to November and January, you get a rough estimate of Christmas spending. Waldfogel’s conservative estimate is that in 2007, Americans spent $66 billion on gifts and produced $12 billion less satisfaction than would have been produced if the recipients had spent the $66 billion on themselves.

OOWWW. Yes, douchevat, gift-giving is bad science, it’s easy to ‘miss’. How it stinks of high spirits that besot accuracy. Lemme guess–this sort of behavior has societal consequences, you naked teens.

At least the Christmas stimulus strengthens the economy, right? Wrong, says Waldfogel. If all spending justified itself, we would pay people to dig holes and then refill them — or build bridges to unpopulated Alaskan islands. Spending is good if the purchaser, or the recipient of a gift, values the commodity more than he does the money it costs. Otherwise, there is a subtraction from society’s store of value.

…jeez, how pathetic is George? At this time of the year, perhaps we all should keep “society’s store of value” in mind. Hell, wouldn’t want to put a leak in that. No, not gonna give you anything you won’t ‘value’ as much as I paid for it. If only I knew exactly what you thought of all the stuff in the stores near me.

Douchetank offered a stupid example, incidentally. The ditch digger isn’t doing anything of value in the universe, digging and then filling in holes. But while some gifts may be unwanted, they still hold value elsewhere. That whole thing, goods moving about into higher ‘valuation’ sectors, is called…AN ECONOMY. The secondary value extracted is…MONEY. Wharton owes me some sort of award.

But, you say, what about sentimental value? Don’t you value the thoughtfulness of dotty Uncle Ralph who gave you the sweater? Actually, Ralph’s sentiment in selecting it was like your sentiment when you selected for him the candle shaped like Gandhi — desperate bewilderment about what he might like.

Were it not for sentimentality about sentiments, which are highly overrated, we would behave rationally, giving cash, thereby avoiding value subtraction. We almost do that with wedding registries.

Well, cold rationality is a drunken joy. And fulfilling a couple’s wedding demands for flatware is almost as fun. Get the idea that self-centered George has given a few stone gifts in his holiday history? It wasn’t his fault–he’s too smart to make mistakes. It’s stupid Christmas‘ fault, stupid day. And you’re stupid too. Don’t you know anything about the economy?

“There are worlds of money wasted, at this time of year, in getting things that nobody wants, and nobody cares for after they are got.” So said Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1850… Data from 1919 concerning the retail giants of the day — mail-order companies (e.g., Sears and Montgomery Ward) and “dime stores” (e.g., Woolworth) — actually show that Christmas sales as a share of the economy is about half as large as it once was. This means proportionally less value subtraction. Hallelujah.

Cue George, on his phone:

“Hello, is this Harriet? Harriet, this is George Will. Yes, good afternoon. The holidays are upon us again, Harriet, so I thought I’d call you while I was making out here, before me, my schedule. Tell me, Harriet–in dollar terms, what sort of value would you put on a toaster?”

[Pause]

“A toaster, like perhaps a chrome one, say a Hamilton Beach. What would you hazard is its worth?”

[Pause]

“Yes, roughly, I understand. Of course, very good. Harriet, if I find one at that price, I shall gift wrap it and send it to you.”

*click*

The Horoskis ran into trouble and illness and struggled to pay the loan. The bank absolutely refused to renogotiate anything and continued to tack on penalties and interest. The outstanding $291,000 became over $525,000.

The couple took them to court, and the judge was outraged by the lender. The verdict: he zeroed the loan…

…Spinner excoriated OneWest for repeatedly refusing to work out a deal, for misleading him about the dollar amounts at stake in the case, and for its treatment of the couple over months of hearings.

OneWest’s conduct was “inequitable, unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious,” Spinner wrote.

He canceled the debt because the bank “must be appropriately sanctioned so as to deter it from imposing further mortifying abuse against [the couple].”

Happy Thanksgiving.

At a time when Americans self-identify as ‘Republicans’ less than at any time in the last 8 years, they want to squeeze candidates through ‘purity’ bottlenecks? This is a good idea? Will this help attract new, and especially rare non-white, folks to their ‘pure’ Republican candidates? Doesn’t sound like it.

G.O.P. Considers ‘Purity’ Resolution for Candidates
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

The battle among Republicans over what the party should stand for — and how much it should accommodate dissenting views on important issues — is probably going to move from the states to the Republican National Committee when it holds its winter meeting this January in Honolulu.

Republican leaders are circulating a resolution listing 10 positions Republican candidates should support to demonstrate that they “espouse conservative principles and public policies” that are in opposition to “Obama’s socialist agenda.” According to the resolution, any Republican candidate who broke with the party on three or more of these issues– in votes cast, public statements made or answering a questionnaire – would be penalized by being denied party funds or the party endorsement.

What do the proposed ‘purity’ vows look like? Here:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

Not only is this a bad idea for a party that’s in danger of becoming marginalized, the list itself is a complete joke, the sort of thing that insiders write for insiders to read and then cheer about. Poorly written, poorly thought out and full of flimsy talking points, it’s easily made fun of…

1.) You’d oppose Obama’s well-known stimulus bill tax cuts? 237 fricking billion dollars? Are you guys lying, or just stupid?

9.) Most ridiculous of all–do you know how many Americans die because they have no access to healthcare? It’s far past rationing, it’s full-blown denial, followed by death.

If I can trump this pathetic thing in a matter of a couple minutes, I doubt that it’ll score with centrists and outsiders who are notoriously slow to buy political pablum. And that’s whom the Republicans desperately need.

ADD: Keith Olbermann notes that this ‘purity test’ would have, in the past, excluded a bunch of half-asses like…Ronald Reagan:

Hanged Census Worker Staged Suicide in Apparent Insurance Scam

The part-time census worker found naked, bound and hanging from a tree had staged his suicide to make it appear like murder, authorities said today.

When the body of Bill Sparkman, 51, was found near a rural Kentucky cemetery in September, he was gagged, had duct tape over his eyes and neck, his hands and feet were bound with tape, and he had “fed” scrawled on his chest.

Authorities initially investigated whether Sparkman had been a victim of anti-government sentiment, but today they said in a statement that he died during an “intentional, self-inflicted act that was staged to appear as a homicide.”

Two life insurance plans had also been taken out by Sparkman, a single father, right before the time of his death, but payment for suicide was precluded, said police…

I got it wrong. I called it ‘murder’, though I didn’t guess that I knew by whom. I couldn’t imagine how he could have died in the manner he did, with his feet found on the ground and his hands in front of him, without a second person being there. The guy who found the body thought the same thing: “The scene left Weaver without a doubt how Sparkman died. ‘He was murdered,’ he said. ‘There’s no doubt.’”

I’ve never heard of a person managing to kill themselves in a manner like that, very strange. Almost an act of sheer will. The only thing I’ve heard that’d be remotely like it is auto-erotic asphyxiation, and, with that, the victim’s bodies and brains are pre-occupied with another goal. Hopefully I’ll do some better analysis next time, I continue to live and learn.

Sparkman was apparently a troubled man who was battling cancer, and he may have just gotten too depressed. Though I doubt he could have known just how big a story his ‘killing’ would become, it still was a lurid and shocking public suicide that intended to implicate others. As a result, quite a few people ended up looking sideways at Kentucky for a couple weeks, and that wasn’t fair. Sparkman made a huge mistake ending his life that way, accusing the people of Kentucky of murder, and now that’s what we’ll remember him for. And our obliging his scam.

Btw, I can live with my Sparkman ‘murder’ gaffe over, say, Roger Hedgecock’s, who guessed he was killed by ‘open borders‘ and Mexican druggies, or Dan Riehl’s, who guessed he was killed because he was a child molester. Knowing Dan, he’ll say that he got it right.

If I wake up early enough tomorrow, stay tuned for an eventual ‘Lou Dobbs = Sarah Palin’ post because the parallels are obvious (sure).

Such a pompous fool. The guy doesn’t have a political party, but he thinks he can be President. Because what he does have is…television.

‘Mr. Independent’ mulls White House bid

…Less than two weeks after announcing his departure from the cable network—and following a series of interviews in which Dobbs encouraged speculation about his political plans—the anchorman known to fans as “Mr. Independent” finally made his presidential ambitions explicit on former Sen. Fred Thompson’s radio show Monday.

Asked if he might make a run at the White House in 2012, Dobbs answered flatly: “Yes is the answer.”

“I’m going to be talking some more with some folks who want me to listen in the next few weeks,” Dobbs told Thompson. “Right now I’m fortunate to have a number of wonderful options.”…

Lou Dobbs spoke to Fred Thompson? Just how do cattle communicate?

Did I mention that Lou Dobbs is a miserable liar?

As usual, Obama (along with his Attorney General, Eric Holder) has failed utterly and spectacularly. How could he be so stupid?

By trying the terrorists in our civilian courts, it mocks the system. By guaranteeing that they will be convicted, legal processes have been tainted. By allowing them traditional access, they may escape with a not guilty verdict, like O.J. Simpson.

They seem to trying on every complaint on the rack in reaction to Holder’s decision. Frankly, it sounds like they just don’t know what to say: Obama can’t both be subverting the system by locking in a conviction and be letting the terrorists off the hook. It sounds like they’re just angry with the President regardless of what he does.

Of course, you’d be angry with him, too, if he’d made the right decision, justice-wise, when justice was the last thing you were interested in.

Obama in Wonderland
by Ken Blackwell

“…Queen of Hearts: Now then, are you ready for your sentence?

Alice: But there has to be a verdict first.

Queen of Hearts: Sentence first! Verdict afterwards.”

…Now, this is the model of criminal justice that the President wants to showcase for the entire world. The U.S. is going to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a federal court in Manhattan. That’s the city where nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered by the 9/11 terrorists.

…We say we are going to give a fair trial to this man. He is going to be found guilty, the President tells us. And, Mr. Obama continues, he is going to get the death penalty.

…Obama is the man who “hovers above us all like a sort of God,” said Newsweek editor Evan Thomas. When such a pronouncement of guilt and such assurance of execution comes down from such an Olympian character, how precisely, is Holder going to find an impartial jury?

New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Are New York jurors going to say they have not heard what Obama said about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Will they say their view of the “defendant” was not prejudiced by the man who has access to far more national security information than any of them do? Can any of them really say they would pay Obama’s views of this “suspect” no special attention?…

This is a travesty, this guarantee by the President. He’s corrupted our whole system, even though he obviously hasn’t. The execrable Ohio voting fraudster Ken Blackwell surely would prefer a military trial. Where all the jurors, though taking orders from this biased corrupter, the Commander in Chief, would somehow rise above the corruption. Or, at least, do better than New Yorkers. Perhaps because Ken is betting they didn’t vote for the President? Brilliant legal reasoning.

Verdict First, Trial Afterward
by Paul Greenberg

Worried about trying the ringleader of the 9/11 terrorists and four of his close associates in a civilian courtroom?

Don’t be, says our president. He knows just how the trial will turn out — Khalid Sheik Mohammed will be convicted and executed. We have his word on it.

He makes the trial sound like just a formality. And here some of us thought trials didn’t have a predetermined outcome, not in America. Naive us.

…Pick your favorite downside of this change of venue. There are lots to choose from. And others will become evident only as this show trial gets on the road. It promises to have a longer run than any Broadway hit.

…Yet the president insists on a civilian trial in order to demonstrate the fairness and superiority of civilian courts in such cases — even as he proclaims the trial’s outcome.

First it was Obamacare. Now the country is about to get Obamalaw, which promises to be a treasure trove of such ironies.

Greenberg also believes a military tribunal would have been better, but it’s not entirely clear why. Perhaps tribunals are older and better(?). He also seems to think that the President should have said “Hell, I have no idea if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s going to get convicted.” I’m sure that would have brought the Conservatives immediately to their feet, cheering like the rabid fans of blind justice they so clearly are.

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BILL O’REILLY: Let me be very bold and fresh again. Do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough, to handle the most powerful job in the world?

“I believe that I am because I have common sense, and I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many other American values, and I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the, um, the ah..kinda a spineless..a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite Ivy League education and and a fat resume that’s based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles Americans are, could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership, I’m not saying that that has to be me.”

…when somebody posts a clip that shows that damned handball over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over…well, it’s about 80 times in a row…maybe there’s some anger?

The YouTube page:

THE FRENCH HAVE LET THE NEGRO PEOPLE IMMIGRATE BECAUSE THEY ARE HOPING THAT IF THE GERMANS INVADE AGAIN THAT THEY AT LEAST WILL HAVE SOMEONE WHO WILL STAND UP AND FIGHT !!!!!!! filthy frogs

yeah, some anger there

..h/t my buddy Paul..

Lou Dobbs famously asserted that illegal immigrants were coming into the United States carrying leprosy, and that it caused a spike in domestic cases. 60 Minutes debunked it, but he defended the report anyway. Why was the leprosy story ‘correct’? Because he’s Lou Dobbs, and he reported it on his show.

Every other reporter’s facts are subject to scrutiny, but not Lou’s. Because Lou is the one person in the world who only reports the truth. And to support that lazy arrogance, he called the same ‘reporter’ back on the show to repeat the same falsehoods without doing any of the same fact-checking that 60 Minutes showed he omitted. Only this time, he and the reporter added “..we don’t make up numbers here”:

Lou felt astounded: “…it’s, uh…it’s remarkable that, uh…this, whatever, confusion or confoundment over 7,000 cases. They actually keep a registry of cases of leprosy.” That’s right, and you keep refusing to read it. Unbelievable. Lou is actually touting the same registry that proves he’s a professional liar. And then he has the gall to say he has no idea why the spike in cases, which never occurred, occurred? In other words, no one has any idea what’s causing the false rise in leprosy, but now he just happens to be in the mood to talk about illegal immigration.

How the hell can he get away with the blank assertion that what he does is anything but utter bullshit? Because he relies upon experts, like the poltergeist they used for the story:

Dr. Madeleine Cosman, perhaps the creepiest human being in the world. Or, at least she was, while she was still alive. Madeleine was an expert…in ancient and Renaissance stuff. She wrote Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony. She also had a Ph.D. In English. Might as well mirror an ultra-Conservative crocodile whackjob Medievalist when you want to lecture people on inter-border infectious disease trends, right?

When Amy Goodman called Dobbs out again for lying about fantasy leperous illegal immigrants, he defended himself with a new dodge, reminding us of the intellectual rifle, Dr. Cosman. She was amazing:

See a trend? No matter what the actual truth is, no matter how conclusively you prove to him that he’s wrong, the blowhard won’t give in. He’s always got a reason or an excuse because, frankly, the idea of his being the ultimate source of all things true is a lot more fun to indulge than the truth. Hey, why waste time finding out if you’re an honest man when you can just pretend to be the face of honesty itself? C’mon, Lou is on CNN, fer chrissakes. So, like a shiny brat, he’ll take responsibility for nothing that he’s done, said, or about to do because he’s just better than that.

Yesterday, in an interview with Telemundo, they understandably challenged him yet again on his lying about leprosy and illegal immigrants. This time, he finally admits the story wasn’t accurate. But, he says, all he did was say one word. And the mistake wasn’t his fault, of course, it was the reporter’s, she ‘ad-libbed’. And, besides, you jerks, it was four years ago:

MARIA CELESTE: …but even after that, that was proven wrong, what you had said, you stood behind your reporting, insisting that it was accurate. Why was that?

LOU DOBBS: No, no. Let’s be very clear: one–I did not stand behind that reporting, in fact we corrected that reporting. And secondly, in fairness to me, if you will, I never said a word about leprosy and undocumented immigrants as you put it. My correspondent on our broadcast ad-libbed it, and as you’re very familiar with the process of an edited report, and at the end of that, she referred to a source with whom she had been speaking, and she said at the end of that report, ad-libbed it, that is without script or preparation, but simply said it, that there were thousands of people on the registry for leprosy in the United States and that those had shot up dramatically over the course of three years. Obviously she was wrong. My only statement by the way in coming out of that report was one word: “incredible.” That was it…

Dobbs called the reporter back onto his show to tell the leprosy lie a second time and to personally aver “I stand 100 percent behind what you said.” But now, Dobbs remembers that it was a wispy ad-lib from a foolish reporter. Hell, all the perplexed Lou managed to mutter was…’incredible.’

Enough? It’s time to tell the truth: Lou Dobbs is just a fucking liar.

How many steps are involved in eventually casting a vote that counts in an election?

There are a few:
1. You must become eligible.
2. You must register.
3. Your eligibility has to be verified.
4. The state must put you on the voter roll.
5. You have to show up to vote.
6. Election officials have to verify your valid voter identity.
7. You have to cast a valid vote.
8. Your vote has to get counted.

Republicans’ satanic Wizards/Nazis, ACORN, are involved with step two. And now, some crazy…

Poll: Majority Of Republicans Think Obama Didn’t Actually Win 2008 Election — ACORN Stole It!

The new national poll from Public Policy Polling (D) has an astonishing number about paranoia among the GOP base: Republicans do not think President Obama actually won the 2008 election — instead, ACORN stole it.

…The poll asked this question: “Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the Presidential election last year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?” The overall top-line is legitimately won 62%, ACORN stole it 26%.

Among Republicans, however, only 27% say Obama actually won the race, with 52% — an outright majority — saying that ACORN stole it, and 21% are undecided.

Among McCain voters, the breakdown is 31%-49%-20%. By comparison, independents weigh in at 72%-18%-10%, and Democrats are 86%-9%-4%…

Call them idiots, but they’ve got a huge chunk of the electorate believing the whopping lie. This is how you inspire a nation to vote Republican in the midst of brutal, Republican-caused misery.