Now if only his balls would drop:

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has issued a strong warning to the Defense Department over plans to award $1 billion in new contracts to the firm formerly known as Blackwater, accusing managers of the private security company of lying to win lucrative jobs in Afghanistan.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) also cited a history of allegedly abusive behavior by Blackwater employees, including misappropriation of government weapons and hiring of workers with criminal records that included assault and drug offenses.

Levin did not directly say that the Pentagon should cancel its plans for the contracts but urged officials to “consider the deficiencies” in Blackwater’s performance before making a final decision.

The firm’s inadequacies “appear to have . . . undermined our mission in Afghanistan,” the senator said in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Levin released the letter Thursday after an investigation by his committee raised questions about efforts by Xe Services, as Blackwater is now known, to seek defense contracts to train Afghan National Army troops.

The company bid for the job through a subsidiary known as Paravant.

In applying for the contracts, Paravant submitted statements saying it had years of experience and a strong cadre of trained, thoroughly screened instructors. In reality, Paravant was a shell company created solely to conceal Xe’s involvement and to avoid what one executive with the firm “called the ‘baggage’ associated with the Blackwater name,” according to a statement issued by Levin’s office.

Come on Carl, what’s so difficult with saying: “Blackwater/Xe/Paravant/whatever the hell their name is today shouldn’t get another fucking cent of taxpayers’ money because they’ve engaged in child prostitution, gun smuggling, murder, fraud, graymailing, and torture”?

Carl is just throwing his supporters a bone. Because if he really wanted to stop Blackwater from receiving taxpayers’ money he would use his power as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services instead of writing a goddamn pussified letter to the Pentagon.

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Tags: Blackwater, Carl Levin, Xe
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I mean, someone should be rotting in jail for this:

Self-proclaimed waterboarding fan Dick Cheney called it a no-brainer in a 2006 radio interview: Terror suspects should get a “a dunk in the water.” But recently released internal documents reveal the controversial “enhanced interrogation” practice was far more brutal on detainees than Cheney’s description sounds, and was administered with meticulous cruelty.

Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.

The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding “session.” Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.

[...]

The doctors were also present to monitor the detainee “to ensure that he does not develop respiratory distress.” A leaked 2007 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross says that meant the detainee’s finger was fixed with a pulse oxymeter, a device that measures the oxygen saturation level in the blood during the procedure. Doctors like Allen say this would allow interrogators to push a detainee close to death – but help them from crossing the line. “It is measuring in real time the oxygen content in the blood second by second,” Allen explained about the pulse oxymeter. “It basically allows them to push these prisoners more to the edge. With that, you can keep going. This is calibration of harm by health professionals.”

[...]

The memo also contains a last, little-noticed paragraph that may be the most disturbing of all. It seems to say that the detainees subjected to waterboarding were also guinea pigs. The language is eerily reminiscent of the very reasons the Nuremberg Code was written in the first place. That paragraph reads as follows:

“NOTE: In order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented: how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process (realizing that much splashes off), how exactly the water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment.”

Only in America will you find a man sentenced to 35 years in jail for smoking pot, a man’s life sentence upheld by the Supreme Court because he didn’t pay a 120 dollar bill, and a man getting a lifetime job because he wrote memos approving torture.

But lets not kid ourselves. The reason why the torture debate is focused on waterboarding is because people don’t want to talk about genital mutilation, raping of children, raping of assholes with broken bottles, forced masturbation, threatening to kill children in front of their parents, and a whole bunch of other shit that would make Eli Roth cum in his silk boxers.

Waterboarding is just the tip of the iceberg. And it’s the only thing our government is willing to fess up too.

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Tags: Dick Cheney, If we were doing this to white people the media would be going ape shit, Torture, Waterboarding
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Who’s with me?

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Tags: Jim Gray, Marijuana, War on Drugs
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We need to shove a couple of dicks in these guys’ mouths:

During the national furor that erupted last year after American International Group paid more than $165 million in bonuses, the voices of those vilified for receiving the payments remained silent, at least in public.

But behind closed doors, employees at AIG’s Financial Products division — the very unit whose trading had hastened the insurance giant’s collapse — were defiant, saying they were merely getting what they were due, recoiling at public accusations that they were behind their capitalizing on the company’s massive taxpayer bailout.

“I will stand behind every action I have taken in this company from Day One,” one employee said, according to a newly obtained transcript of a conference call the division’s head held last March with some of his staff.

But when another employee asked whether the staff would be getting a second round of bonuses promised for March 2010, his colleagues burst into laughter, apparently considering this a preposterous notion amid the public outrage.

Yet they did see that money, at least most of it. Last month, under a deal in which employees agreed to take a cut in their upcoming retention bonuses in return for an accelerated payment, AIG paid out about $100 million to employees at the firm. AIG is scheduled to pay the last of the bonuses this month.

Even so, neither time nor money has softened the employees’ feelings of wrongful persecution and their anger over becoming the subjects of scorn and ridicule. Seldom was that sense of victimhood more clear or more visceral than in the conference call of March 23, 2009.

[...]

The employees said that the corporate leaders who had driven the firm into the ground were already gone from the company. Those who had remained behind to help clean up the mess and repay the taxpayer bailout were due their compensation, they told Pasciucco.

“You made a commitment to us, and we made a commitment to you. And for anybody to look beyond that, as the politics and the media are at the moment, is missing the point,” said an employee. “You can’t expect us to just roll over and ignore that commitment because there is a bunch of immoral bigots that intend us to do something different. It’s not going to happen.”

Another was even more irate, lashing out at the public for scapegoating AIG employees. “To be honest with you, I really hope it blows up. I think the U.S. taxpayer deserves to lose a trillion dollars over this thing for the way they have behaved.”

And then he turned on politicians who had joined the anti-AIG posse. “They only care about the next election, just like we only care about the next bonus. Well, none of them cares about the country, none of us cares about the institution,” he said, adding: “They really don’t care, and I really don’t care. And frankly, if a trillion dollars gets lost, fine.”

The AIG retention bonuses have rankled many in the public because the company has received a federal rescue package of about $180 billion in loans, stock investments and other commitments from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. Closing down AIG Financial Products’ trading portfolio has been vital to stemming further losses and repaying the public money.

Wall Street’s like that slutty, crazy chick in high school who let you in her back door, and you put up with her ungrateful attitude and lack of loyalty because of it.

But one day you wake up and realize that putting your dick in the shit hole of a crazy person isn’t that great. Plus, you find out she’s been talking to her friends about how whipped you are and how you never follow through with your threats.

So you tell the whole school during morning announcements how you fucked the slutty, crazy chick in the ass while listening to Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t StopBelievin’”, and that you’re breaking up with her because she’s an ungrateful, gold-digging cunt.

Then you hook up with that sweet next-door neighbor chick who worships the ground you walk on. (Bonus: she swallows.)

See, that’s what our government needs to do. They need to call a press conference and calmly tell Wall Street to go fuck themselves. Then they need to use the trillions of dollars they where giving Wall Street to build schools, homes, and jobs for the people.

But our government won’t do that, because they love to fuck the slutty, crazy chick in the ass. No matter how much they get shitted on.

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Tags: AIG, Bank Bailout, Bunch of old white men that need to die in a grease fire, Wall Street
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In Pakistan:

The Obama administration plans to spend nearly $50 million on Pakistani media this year to reverse anti-American sentiments and raise awareness of projects aimed at improving quality of life, confirms a Washington insider.

[...]

The US Special Representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke believes that a substantial amount of monies spent on media- especially private TV channels will reduce tension and may even bring Pakistan-US relations back on the right path.

That’s right, the Obama administration is spending taxpayers’ money on propaganda in a country we aren’t at war with. Well, the Obama administration says we aren’t at war with, but don’t tell that to the families of the three dead U.S. special forces soldiers.

But this doesn’t surprise me, because what the Obama administration is doing is taking the propaganda model the Bush administration used during the lead up to the Iraq war and using it on the Pakistanis.

What does surprise me is the 1.45 billion the Obama administration is giving the Pakistan government to help with their economic troubles:

Reuters today reported that the Obama administration has sent lawmakers a plan for funding water, energy and other projects. Report said the US intends to spend $1.45 billion of earmarked for the Kerry-Lugar bill in fiscal 2010.

[...]

The Obama administration plans to help Pakistan’s democratic government meet budget shortfalls and deliver services to a population increasingly angry about economic and security troubles. As the funding builds the capacity of the government to provide basic services, the US sponsored Pakistani media will raise awareness and a build a brand for America, our sources have confirmed.

Could someone help me understand how this president is a socialist, Marxist, commie? Because I thought Socialism, Marxism, and Communism used taxpayers’ money to create services and programs for the taxpayers; not use taxpayers’ money to create services and programs for people in foreign countries.

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Tags: I couldn't make this shit up, Obama, Pakistan, Propaganda
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Thanks for looking out for the little guy:

Mother Jones has obtained a copy of Sen. Chris Dodd’s plan to house a consumer financial protection office within the Department of the Treasury rather than creating an independent agency. Several other news sources have received copies, but none have made the leaked document publicly available. We’re posting Chris Dodd’s consumer financial protection plan here (PDF). It seems certain to disappoint experts and progressives who had called for a powerful new agency. (Andy Kroll has more on this.) This is the document’s top-line summary:

Create a [Bureau of Financial Protection] inside of Treasury with a Presidentially-appointed director; a dedicated budget (through assessments on large banks, non-banks, and with the Fed making up the shortfall); autonomous rule-writing authority with the regulations to apply across-the-board to all entities offering financial services or products; and examination and enforcement authority for large banks and mortgage companies, small banks in a back-up capacity, and other non-banks on a risk basis, as described below.

The independent agency proposal would be dropped.

Now why would Chris Dodd water down a bill he strongly supported a year ago? Easy, his corporate master, Jamie Dimon, told him too:

Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, says he believes Washington has become increasingly erratic and unfair in its treatment of the banks over the last few months, and he now has some regrets about participating in the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.

[...]

Mr. Dimon said Thursday at the Investor Day conference that he supported certain new regulations to secure the financial system, but not all of them. He said JPMorgan had always supported the creation of a systemic risk regulator, which would be controlled by the Federal Reserve, to monitor the largest and most interconnected banks in the nation.

He disagreed with one proposal to create a separate agency devoted to consumer protection, which would regulate a whole host of activities from mortgages to credit cards.

“We want better consumer protection; we just don’t want a new agency. We think it should be done by the O.C.C. and the Fed,” Mr. Dimon said, referring to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

“Yes, you can say they didn’t do a great job, but they are professional people,” he said. The elegant solution is for Congress to tell them do a better job.”

Mr. Dimon may get his wish, thanks to some persuasive lobbyists in Washington. Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said last month that he might drop demands for a new agency after pushing for its creation.

Many people believe Democrats are pussies. They’re not. They’re just corrupt and do whatever their corporate masters tell them to do.

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Tags: Fuck Chris Dodd, Fuck Democrats, Fuck I'm out of scotch, Fuck Republicans
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I don’t know if it’s this graph, or Jim Bunning blocking unemployment benefits,  or the handle of Jack Daniels I drank last night, but I find myself deeply depressed. And this video of Christopher Hitchens embarrassing a Creationist in front of a live audience made me smile. So I decided to share it with you. Why? Because I’m a nice guy, that’s why.

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Tags: Christopher Hitchens, I feel like shit, I'm depressed
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