No, No, No. Hell NO!

I watched this last night and couldn't agree more. Please share this everywhere.
Rachel Maddow rocks.

I realize this is not the most important thing in the world that guys like Paul Wolfowitz still writes articles about U.S. wars, but please, Jesus, can there be some accountability in American politics? Can there be a penalty for being wrong about the biggest things in the world to be wrong about? If you were an architect of the Iraq war, you don't ever get an opportunity to talk about what is a good idea when it comes to war ever again. Deal? Deal.
Dick Cheney, I don't want to hear from your anymore about wars. George W. Bush -- no. Donald Rumsfeld, not interested.
Condoleezza Rice, I'm sorry. I'm sure your new book is awesome. I would still like to interview you about it. But when it comes to being part of our collective conversation about war in this country, you had your chance -- blew it. No. Wrong. You are not going to be consulted on the next big idea since you got the last one so wrong.
Take up another hobby. Try to convince us to listen to your big ideas on some other subject. Take up macrame. Confess before the cleric of your choosing. Buy stock in little black combs and lick them and make a fortune.
But war advice, no. Seriously, "Foreign Policy" magazine, you went looking for a plan for Afghanistan and for that plan, you went looking to Paul Wolfowitz?
The answer is no, no, no. Ten years of hell, no. Not again.

Watch it here.

...the world is spinning round and round, out of control.....again.....

One day us humans may figure out how to live with each other, but until then.....more war! not that I don't think Libya needed to be dealt with long before now, I do think it is the Arab League's business. They should be taking the lead, with the US only in a support role.

And since we now have a President who is not a 'cowboy' (god help us, we barely survived), I don't expect anyone in the Obama administration to do this. But just in case, since it seemed to be so well liked by the public the last time. Here is a BBC article telling us who the major players are in Libya. So, before you see the playing cards, you already know who they are....just consider this a little useful knowledge.

and the beat goes on....

I should have The Plum Line  on the side.....

Gitmo isn't open because the administration doesn't want to close it, although its efforts in this area are ripe for criticism. It's still open because Republicans in Congress successfully frightened Democrats in Congress out of giving the administration the necessary funds to close it when they had control of Congress. In the process, they've managed to obscure the original reason detainees were brought to Gitmo -- to keep them away from the scrutiny of the federal courts. Once the Supreme Court held that federal courts had jurisdiction and even habeas rights, the facility was useless for that purpose. Republicans are determined to keep it open not because we can't safely imprison terrorists in the U.S., but because they feel its ongoing presence vindicates Bush in the eyes of history.

must read....

via Balloon Juice

I have never wavered from my view, expressed among other places in Blindside in 1995, that thanks to the almost incredible, if unnoticed, speed with which Japan has been building its lead in advanced manufacturing, the United States has been losing economic position faster than any Big Power since the implosion of the Ottoman empire a century ago. Nothing indeed has shaken my conviction that already by 2000, the United States had become an economic Potemkin village — a largely hollowed-out hulk whose eroding competitiveness was overlooked at the time merely because so many commentators, not least the ten highly influential observers on this invitation list, were busy proclaiming the myth of Japan’s economic oblivion.

...useful knowledge.....

Just in case you missed this.....I don't normally read The Huffington Post, however, a few of my favorite bloggers post there regularly and I do read them. If you haven't read Chez Pazienza, you really should. He's one of the reasons I waited so long to write up a blog.....comparatively, I suck. So please read this piece regarding Wikileaks and the 'Professional Left'. Here's a taste......

I'll try to say this as respectfully as I can, but it's getting to the point where whatever Glenn Greenwald says, I feel an instinctive need to stand against it, simply on principle. It's not that he doesn't occasionally make some excellent and even necessary arguments from the left; it's that he's become the personification of a movement that's so self-righteous in its outrage, so petulant in its demands, and so destructive to its overall cause by refusing to give even an inch in its quixotic quest to see the Progressive Utopian States of America come to fruition in our lifetime that it's tough to consistently take his side. All that aloof disapproval just becomes exhausting after awhile. Throw Sirota and Hamsher into the mix and you've got the intractable left's own version of the Supremes -- only more diva-ish.

remember, it's important to know what's going on around you....politics and the business of politics are intertwined in our daily lives and we must be as informed as we can be......