What's so funny Mr. President?
Michael Collins
The president and the mainstream media, along with the capital in-crowd, celebrate their wonderfulness each year at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. The format consists of an invited comedian who pokes fun at the president and press with some shtick from the current leader of the free world. The event is by invitation only, no common folk allowed.
After watching the dinner on C-Span, I have just one question. What's so funny Mr. President?
The president will never be asked that question. But if just one of those White House correspondents hosting the event had the courage, the answer would be in two parts.
How can the president and the press get together and yuck it up when we're in such a dreadful state of affairs. The nation is in an economic dead calm. Millions of jobs left the country in the past decade, probably for good. Many more jobs were lost due to the ongoing recession. Not many were created to take their place, unless we count minimum wage jobs at Walmart (with benefits from Medicaid).
PermalinkSyrian rebels threaten Christian towns
Rebels have threatened to storm two predominantly Christian towns in central Syria, saying regime forces are using them to attack nearby areas, an activist group said Saturday. It says such an attack could force thousands of Christians from their homes. (Image: White House Web Page, headlines added)
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that one rebel group has issued an ultimatum to the towns of Mahrada and Sqailbiyeh in the province of Hama.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said some Christians and Alawis have also left Hama province in the past several days to escape violence. He said some of them found shelter in the coastal city of Tartus.
Can you dig it?
Michael Collins
Now what could this mean? TV crew stopped from taking samples from polluted Florida beach. Pat Gonzales, US Fish and Wildlife (to WEAR ABC 3 reporter taking a sample from polluted beach): "You can not come out here and do your own investigation if you're looking for oil product." WEAR ABC 3
Is the government protecting the sovereign state of BP? Is a pattern emerging?
It seems so. In addition to chasing off WEAR-ABC off the beach, federal officials discouraged scientists from taking samples in the Gulf, other federal officials confiscated samples gathered by scientists at LSU, and state officials refused to test fish for pollution claiming they'd seen no oil in the area in question. Who benefits?
Things the President Left Out of His Big Speech
Michael Collins
I just read the presidents big speech tonight and it struck me. There were some key lines left out of the speech. You may have had the same response. For the sake of clarity and fairness, I've tried to reconstruct the missing lines. I'm sure that the omissions were just an accident. Or maybe that Robert Gibbs may be up to his old tricks again. My insertions are in italics, following the president's words from the official White House transcript. White House, August 31, 2010 Here goes.
THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Tonight, I’d like to talk to you about the end of our combat mission in Iraq, the ongoing security challenges we face, and the need to rebuild our nation here at home. But before I do that, we need a moment of truth. The Iraq war was based on a deliberate lie involving the White House distorting the National intelligence estimate on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The report got it wrong on WMD. There were none. But it concluded that the only way the nonexistent WMD would be used against the United States was in retaliation for a US attack on Iraq that threatened Saddam Hussein. By deleting this information, the Bush-Cheney White House justified a preemptive invasion without any basis, a crime under international law that our nation helped establish after World War II.
Gibbs Outed as Republican Mole
Michael Collins
(Satire)
White House Press Secretary, Robert "the mole" Gibbs, was outed last night for his lead role in throwing the 2010 congressional election to the Republican Party. The White House refused to return calls to comment on the charge or verify the outline of the carefully orchestrated plot. But a variety of off the record sources spoke as one - the plot is real and has been going on long before the 2008 general election. The scope of the plot goes well beyond the upcoming congressional contests.
In a recent interview for The Hill newspaper, Gibbs used an entirely new technique in election tactics - offend and humiliate a key element of your voting block right before a critical election. Gibbs ridiculed progressives as part of the "Professional Left" and said, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian health care and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.” Research indicates that this approach has never been used within 90 days of a general election.
But the story goes much deeper than simple electoral politics. The planned outburst has a short term benefit for Republicans but, as we will see, Gibbs is reporting to a higher authority.
Hitting bottom at the top - White House forgets to lead on Haiti
Michael Collins
People are dying in Haiti because they can’t get out, Dr. Green said. Shala Dewan, New York Times, January 29
Many of us wanted to think that the dreadful behavior during the Bush administration was some sort of aberration. We had a relatively clean election and ended up with a more intelligent and compassionate president who would reflect our views. There would be no more foreign invasions (wrong); we'd take care of the people before the Wall Street failures (wrong); and there would be no more Katrinas, without any doubt!
MIAMI — The United States has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who will pay for their care is settled, military officials said Friday. NYT
Why are "military officials" saying anything in a situation where the lives of people are involved and the reputation of the United States is on the line. Where's the White House?
"Conspiracy or cock up?" White House reaction to ersatz bomber
The underpants bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is a curious terrorist. He became disillusioned with his privileged life as the son of a bank chairman and member of the Nigerian elite, it would seem. Rather than pursuing his studies in London, he retreated to Yemen to learn the ways of al Qaeda inspired terrorism.
Farouk was so indiscreet that his father reported him to the U.S. Embassy as a potential terrorist in November. A month later, he managed to get on a jumbo jet headed for Detroit to complete a terror mission. Despite his training in engineering at the prestigious London School of Economics, Farouk failed in his mission. He couldn't mix his explosives to achieve the desired effect. He apparently forgot to detonate the explosive device in mid flight, waiting until just before landing in Detroit to start his task. He retrieved and set off the chemicals to create the explosion in full view of passengers.
What kind of terrorist is this? He doesn't know when, how or where to conduct his criminal enterprise.
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