So, Conyers will hold hearings. Um, note to John Conyers:

We've heard that before. Surely you realize you are now the exemplar of impotent democrats?

It's really hard to believe Newt Gingrich has a degree in history.

So does George W. Bush. And an MBA, too.

It's really hard to believe Newt Gingrich has a degree in history.

And Dan Quayle passed a bar exam...

"Know what's tiresome? Listening to wealthy financiers complain about people not liking them."

they're right: i don't like them. but i didn't like them before all this nonsense, either.

Ahem, AmeriCorps according to Rep. Bachmann is nothing more than the euphemistic way of saying "ReEducation Camps" - so there you have it. It's just a matter of time before we become socialists! -Kevo

Also, note to Kudlow: Are you simply jealous you could never perfect such a gesture, and therefore, have absolutely no cred on the streets of America? Are you, Mr. Kudlow, so worthy of my time to waste it with your petty envy? Get a life! -Kevo

AmeriCorps = ACORN on steroids and funded with taxpayer dollars (for real). Barry Hussein Soetoro/Obama will finally get to deploy a version of his boyhood leftist goons that will spy on "right-wing" extremists" under the guise of "I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help you." (For you historically-impaired libertards, that's what the great Ronald Reagan warned us about. What short memories the MTV generation turned out to have.)

"Know what's tiresome? Listening to wealthy financiers complain about people not liking them."

TOP FIVE THINGS I HATE ABOUT WEALTHY FINANCIERS

5) Nicknamed themselves the "Masters of the Universe"
4) $50,000 Rolex watches
3) Invested with Bernie Madoff
2) They love Republicans
1) DESTROYED THE ECONOMY OF THE WORLD!

Know what else is tiresome?

Lame trolls pretending to be Al.

* Might prosecutors drop the charges against the AIPAC lobbyists?
The story implies they would due to the difficulties put in the path of such convictions, which is sad. It's time to stand up to AIPAC, and of course:
* Apparently, a criminal investigation is underway covering illegal activities associated with the financial industry bailout program.
Hoo-rah! But this shouldn't be another Abu Ghraib style slam of the little fry and let the bigwigs (and sadly, at the very top again?) get away with the equivalent of torture of our economy.

BTW I am not Neil Barofsky. Go Neil!

Shine: But our "sincere" trolls are so snooty, persistent, and aggravating (remember the fatiguing brawl in the global warming thread?) ... they are like the humorless conservative "intellectual" establishment.

Know what's tiresome? Listening to wealthy financiers complain about people not liking them.

These Wall Streeters sound an awful lot like a lady who once said, "If the poor don't have bread, then let them eat cake!"

Of course, things didn't work out so well for her.

It's just a matter of time before we become socialists! -Kevo

I'm already a "socialist". I support continuation, and even expansion, of Unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. I also support child labor laws and the 40 hour workweek.

Viva la Revolution!

* President Obama signed a new national service bill into law today, which, among other things, triples the size of AmeriCorps. -- Steve Benen

Anyone who, for even a moment, doubts Bachman's claim about the AmeriCorps being a US version of re-education camps... Anyone who, for even a split second, doubts the truth of Al's claim (@17:58) of it being ACORN on steroids... Just ask yourselves:

Which hand did he use to sign the act? Huh? Huh?

That's all you need to know about the direction in which this country is headed.

* President Obama signed a new national service bill into law today, which, among other things, triples the size of AmeriCorps.

Actually, it's a little more than tripling in size---from 75,000 to 250,000. And while we're on the subject---if anyone wants to make Michele Bachmann's head explode, just remind her that 250,000 people is the equivalent of 25 full combat divisions.

Obama "genuflected" to the Saudi King? Really?
I don't think so.

"There you go again!"

This is cute, from one of the many physics bloggers who sometimes put up clever political commentary and snark. It's about where conservatives might consider moving to, in protest of Obama's socialist/wimpy governance:

http://scienceblogs.com/pontiff/2009/04/where_to_move.php#more

Thanks, Neil (@7:28 PM). Fun list. Some of the comments are hilarious.

How can you insist that your workers need to take paycuts, then turn down cheap financing because you won't tighten your own belt?

Winkandanod: "How can you insist that your workers need to take paycuts, then turn down cheap financing because you won't tighten your own belt?'

It's appatrtently really easy, and I believe the proper term for it is "hypocrisy."

Turn Gingrich's degree over, and you will find that it is printed on half of a crackerjack label. The other half was used to print ex-Senator Phil Gram's Economics degree.

"I wonder why the right didn't throw a tantrum when George W. Bush shook hands with Uzbekistani President Islam Karimov."

Or when Dubya kissed that Saudi guy.

Oh, right, because the GOP has no principles beyond, "Anything we do is good; anything you do is bad."

"I wonder why the right didn't throw a tantrum when George W. Bush shook hands with Uzbekistani President Islam Karimov." Or when Dubya kissed that Saudi guy...
Posted by: Chris on April 21, 2009 at 9:56 PM | PERMALINK*********

Yea, and remember that 15 of the 19 '9/11' killers were Saudi! Can you imagine if a Democrat had done that? The (f)Right would be screaming 'Traitor!', 'treason!', "fascist!" til their lungs bled. But hey, no problem when it's a Repuke.

It looks like the bureaucratic infighting has begun over torture. This comes from the NYTimes this evening.

President Obama's national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.

Yesterday Cheney made the claim that torture was effective and this evening Blair's memo was leaked by someone within the intelligence community. This may have been done in coordination with the Dick. As we recall, Dick may have left behind sleepers deep within the federal bureaucracy.

Blair has clarified his memo,

"The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means," Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. "The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

How can you possibly compare Karimov with that awful Chavez? I mean, all Karimov has done is boil people to death. That demon Chavez has given oil to needy Americans! The horror!

NYTimes also has a lengthy piece tonight on how the US got into the torture business. Here's the take away.

They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. Nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading C.I.A. officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, or that the Justice Department lawyer most responsible for declaring the methods legal had idiosyncratic ideas that even the Bush Justice Department would later renounce.

The process was "a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm,"a former C.I.A. official said.

Today, asked how it happened, Bush administration officials are finger-pointing. Some blame the C.I.A., while some former agency officials blame the Justice Department or the White House.

When businesses cut wages and benefits for employees, Wall St. responds by sending the company's stock up. When industries gain concessions from unions, the Stock Market cheers. When a companies lays off workers to cut costs, the financial markets look at that as good news.

When a Wall Street firm collapses under its own poor decision-making and greed, gets bail-out by taxpayers who make a tiny fraction of the executives' salaries, has to retract bonuses skimmed-off the bailout funds that would have never been paid had the bailout not occurred, Wall Street whines like an infant who had a rattle taken away. Wall Street shouldn't get all pissy about the remaining 99% of America cheering the robber barons' inability to continue their looting. It's about time they got to feel what's it like for one group of people to publicly celebrate another's misfortune.

NYTimes also has a lengthy piece tonight on how the US got into the torture business.

Meh. McClatchy has more than the current news spin cycle:

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that intelligence agencies and interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

...

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

Dick might insist that torture works, but according to a newly release Senate report torture never gave him his Holy Grail.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that intelligence agencies and interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly � Abu Zubeida at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Mohammed 183 times in March 2003 � according to a newly released Justice Department document.

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Uzbekistani? Hmm remember that's NOT the name of the people, they are simply Uzbeks.

From above excerpts: "But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there." and "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

In other words, their primary reasons for the use of torture were exactly the same as those of most outlaw nations, irrational fears and a demand from the boss that they extract confessions no matter what.

Would someone please put Cheney behind bars forever.