Mirrors

The war on Christmas rages on at home.

The cartoon war rages on abroad.

2265 Dead American Soldiers

Remind me again how many people died on 9/11 and what demolishing a country that had nothing to do with it is supposed to make us safer or cozy with 2265 unnecessary deaths.

Five of those recently dead were only twenty-one years old, two of them were twenty-seven and the granddaddy of the bunch was a ripe old twenty-nine.

Cancelling Elections

What to do when the DOD is not satisfied to run it's own spying operation on Americans or using propaganda on Americans and others or paying secret armies to do secret stuff in secret places. Oh, what to do..

Um, well, try to get authority to postpone or cancel elections in New Mexico.

h/t The Sideshow

A Jim Crow Poll Tax In One Hand

A chance to make yourself look good in the other.

What's a racist President not to love?

OOps! Nobody said there would be honesty.

update:
Four more states are rushing to halt the black or poor vote.

It's The Media

The paid propogandists are thick with greed and there is so much to it that I suggest you check out mediacitizen because Chris Matthews, like Judith Miller is highly unlikely to ever stop lying.

Why would they when it works so well for them? Sure they are killing America but they don't give a damn because they have theirs.

Shared Faith

It's David and Goliath all over again, but we're loading our slingshot

Christian Alliance For Progress

National Council of Churches USA

Go check out our ammo.

PURGE!

Robert Grenier, the head of CIA counter-terrorism (via Avedon)

State Department (via bumpkis)

surprise surprise.

Women And Children First

What kind of man spends all his money at the fights and takes it away from the children? Bush wants to cut Social Security Survivor benefits as soon as he's done hacking away at Women Infants and Children (WIC), food stamps, heating assistance, daycare assistance, child support assistance, Medicare and Medicaid, vocational training and who knows what else so that the top income levels Haliburton, Exxon can keep more of their ill gotten goods.

Haliburton News

Government audits have repeatedly criticized KBR's pricing and accounting methods but, in 2005, the Pentagon paid the company $1.4 billion in Iraq costs disputed by its own auditors. Last May, the military even paid $72 million in bonus payments to "reward" KBR's work in Iraq.

The Bush administration initially concealed critical conclusions in the Task Order 5 audit, including KBR's $208 million fuel overcharge and another $62 million in "unreasonable" fuel transport costs.

This man is also a jet setting gad-a-bout who travels the world sparing no expense to make himself look good while his family must beg the neighbors to assist them with the necessities if life.*

What kind of man spends his families money that way?

* via Alternate Brain

Center for Research on Solutions for Society

Cross Left is looking for progressive Christian policy wonks!

Volunteers are being sought to do Christian scholastic research and writing. The work will consist primarily of researching a pressing social/political issue from the Christian perspective and then writing a persuasive essay. Critical analysis of the issue as it is currently perceived and addressed by the Church and public policy is desired. The paper will deal specifically with one issue and can include a prescriptive change proposal on that subject. The best papers on each issue will be published on this site with the goal of ultimately publishing the best of the collection in book form. These documents will also be utilized as resources for designing future public policy proposals.

For more information, please visit CROSS at www.crossleft.org/thinktank

Sounds promising

All Christians Are Not Treated As Equals

I found this at Sacraments Wholesale

Seven Christians protesting the denial of rights to prisoners at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have been served papers by the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and face jail terms of up to 10 years.

This is despite the fact that their trip was a response to a challenge by the US president that those concerned with the conditions there should go down and 'take a look'.

The group of twenty-four U.S. Christians, part of the group Witness Against Torture, marched over 60 miles to the Naval Base in an attempt to practice the Christian act of prisoner visitation.

The group camped and fasted for four days at the gate of the militarised zone while awaiting access to the base.

Five hundred prisoners are currently detained by the U.S. government in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Human rights organizations and released detainees have documented torture and extreme prisoner abuse at the base, but the Bush administration asserts that Guantánamo is beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. and international courts of law.

In a response sent through the Center for Constitutional Rights, Witness Against Torture refused to answer OFAC's questions, maintaining that the true crime is the torture and abuse of civilian prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Guantánamo, not the violation of the travel ban on Cuba.

As the U.S. prohibits travel to Cuba, Witness Against Torture members risk a maximum of 10 years in prison or a 0,00 fine for their actions to bring attention to U.S. practices in Guantánamo.

However, their actions were a response to a statement by George W Bush that those concerned with the conditions there should go down and 'take a look'.

Other "Christians" get their own legislation.

Tony Perkins Wants Your Help Keeping Those Homos Single

Senate To Vote On Homosexual Marriage Ban In Early March

Troop Support Bush Style

The last time 1st Lt. William “Eddie” Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood.

A field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook’s right arm to stanch the bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Soldiers yanked off his blood-soaked body armor. He never saw it again.

But last week, Rebrook was forced to pay $700 for that body armor, blown up by a roadside bomb more than a year ago.

You guessed it, this happened because Bush and Rumsfeld "fixed" the rules again

Rebrook’s mother, Beckie Drumheler, said she was saddened — and angry — when she learned that the Army discharged her son with a $700 bill. Soldiers who serve their country, those who put their lives on the line, deserve better, she said.

“It’s outrageous, ridiculous and unconscionable,” Drumheler said. “I wanted to stand on a street corner and yell through a megaphone about this.”

Rebrook was standing in the turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle when the roadside bomb exploded Jan. 11, 2005. The explosion fractured his arm and severed an artery. A Black Hawk helicopter airlifted him to a combat support hospital in Baghdad.

He was later flown to a hospital in Germany for surgery, then on to Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital in Washington, D.C., for more surgeries. Doctors operated on his arm seven times in all.

But Rebrook’s right arm never recovered completely. He still has range of motion problems. He still has pain when he turns over to sleep at night.

Even with the injury, Rebrook said he didn’t want to leave the Army. He said the “medical separation” discharge was the Army’s decision, not his.

So after eight months at Fort Hood, he gathered up his gear and started the “long process” to leave the Army for good.

Things went smoothly until officers asked him for his “OTV,” his “outer tactical vest,” or body armor, which was missing. A battalion supply officer had failed to document the loss of the vest in Iraq.

“They said that I owed them $700,” Rebrook said. “It was like ‘thank you for your service, now here’s the bill for $700.’ I had to pay for it if I wanted to get on with my life.”

In the past, the Army allowed to soldiers to write memos, explaining the loss and destruction of gear, Rebrook said.

But a new policy required a “report of survey” from the field that documented the loss.

Rebrook said he knows other soldiers who also have been forced to pay for equipment destroyed in battle.

“It’s a combat loss,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a cost passed on to the soldier. If a soldier’s stuff is hit by enemy fire, he shouldn’t have to pay for it.”

Rebrook said he tried to get a battalion commander to sign a waiver on the battle armor, but the officer declined. Rebrook was told he’d have to supply statements from witnesses to verify the body armor was taken from him and burned.

“There’s a complete lack of empathy from senior officers who don’t know what it’s like to be a combat soldier on the ground,” Rebrook said. “There’s a whole lot of people who don’t want to help you. They’re more concerned with process than product.”

Exxon/Haliburton get another tax cut so somebody has to pay for it.

h/t to watertiger again

Mrs Bitterness

This woman cannot fathom anyone having a husband who was loved and respected for what he was not for what an army of public relations experts pretend he is.


Image swiped from Dependable Renegade who gives REUTERS/Jason Reed proper credit

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Abu Gonzales Invokes The Fifth

How many times did he couldn't tell, wouldn't tell? Well we need to know!

My suggestion to Congress is to subject him to the same slight "discomforts" that he insists are "not torture" until he gives in.