Inspire Political Discourse

BLACKWATER aka XE Contracted With Foreign Operatives to Staff Secret CIA Program

Blackwater, who recently changed it's name to XE. the world's most powerful private army, owned by Erik Prince, a right-wing Christian, hired foreign operatives to implement a secret CIA operation. The question here is WHY would the CIA hire Blackwater for an operation well within it's own bailiwick.

WASHINGTON — When the CIA revived a plan to kill or capture terrorists in 2004, the agency turned to the well-connected security company then known as Blackwater USA.

With Blackwater's lucrative government security work and contacts arrayed in hot spots around the world, company officials offered the services of foreigners supposedly skilled at tracking terrorists in lawless regions and countries where the CIA had no working relationships with the government.

Blackwater told the CIA that it "could put people on the ground to provide the surveillance and support – all of the things you need to conduct an operation," a former senior CIA official .....

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VIDEO: President Obama Eulogizes Ted Kennedy

Click here to read the transcript of President Obama's eulogy to Ted Kennedy..

 

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2008 Democratic Convention Tribute to Senator Ted Kennedy

Video and Text of Ted Kennedy's Speech at the 2008 Democratic Convention

TRANSCRIPT of Kennedy speech at the 2008 National Democratic Convention in Denver, Colorado.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy:

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Caroline.

My fellow Democrats, my fellow Americans, it is so wonderful to be here.

And nothing - nothing is going to keep me away from this special gathering tonight.
I have come here tonight to stand with you to change America, to restore its future, to rise to our best ideals, and to elect Barack Obama president of the United States.

As I look ahead, I am strengthened by family and friendship. So many of you have been with me in the happiest days and the hardest days. Together we have known success and seen setbacks, victory and defeat.

But we have never lost our belief that we are all called to a better country and a newer world. And I pledge to you - I pledge to you that I will be there next January on the floor of the United States Senate when we begin the great test.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

For me this is a season of hope - new hope for a justice and fair prosperity for the many, and not just for the few - new hope.

And this is the cause of my life - new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American - north, south, east, west, young, old - will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.

We can meet these challenges with Barack Obama. Yes, we can, and finally, yes, we will.
Barack Obama will close the book on the old politics of race and gender and group against group and straight against gay.
And Barack Obama will be a commander in chief who understands that young Americans in uniform must never be committed to a mistake, but always for a mission worthy of their bravery.

We are told that Barack Obama believes too much in an America of high principle and bold endeavor, but when John Kennedy called of going to the moon, he didn’t say it’s too far to get there. We shouldn’t even try.

Our people answered his call and rose to the challenge, and today an American flag still marks the surface of the moon.

Yes, we are all Americans. This is what we do. We reach the moon. We scale the heights. I know it. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. And we can do it again.

There is a new wave of change all around us, and if we set our compass true, we will reach our destination — not merely victory for our party, but renewal for our nation.

And this November the torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans, so with Barack Obama and for you and for me, our country will be committed to his cause. The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on.

Oh Pleaseeee.........

Newt Gingrich, advising Sarah Palin on the rehabilitation of her political career. Gag.

FYI, Mr. Gingrich, Palin is just soooo much less than you give her credit for. She is a typical redneck Republican woman with a poor education, and a penchant for talking too much and reading too little. She is not worthy of your time or anyone elses' time either. Not that I like you either, Mr. Gingrich; however, I do certainly understand that the chasm between your intellect and Palin's intellect, is oh so wide and deep.

Paul Begala, a Democratic political consultant and former Clinton Administration consultant, had this to say about Gingrich and Palin, during an interview aired on CNN:

He is trying to treat her like a serious person. She is not. OK? She is about half a whack job. She does not have the intellectual heft of Newt Gingrich or almost anyone else in the Republican Party, and I think she has proved that

Erik Prince, Founder of Blackwater, Implicated in Murder

The scourge of the earth, the man who views himself as a Christian crusader, Erik Prince, founder and former CEO of Xe (formerly known as Blackwater, the world's largest for hire/mercenary army), has been implicated in murder according to an article in The Nation.

“A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.

These allegations, and a series of other charges, are contained in sworn affidavits, given under penalty of perjury, filed late at night on August 3 in the Eastern District of Virginia as part of a seventy-page motion.....”

Possibly irrelevant, but Prince was responsible, as one of the largest contributors to the cause (donations in his mother's name), for Proposition 8.

Krugman on Wingnut Paranoia

Paul Krugman on the wingnuts:

“The truth is that the factors that made politics so ugly in the Clinton years — the paranoia of a significant minority of Americans and the cynical willingness of leading Republicans to cater to that paranoia — are as strong as ever. In fact, the situation may be even worse than it was in the 1990s because the collapse of the Bush administration has left the G.O.P. with no real leaders other than Rush Limbaugh.»

Boycott Fox News Sponsors

The political news headlines these days are completely repulsive. And, for the most part, they lead back to one particular "news" organization; Fox News or as some like to call it, "Faux News". Ahem....."faux" is certainly a fitting term.

Please join us, along with many organizations, in boycotting the sponsors of Fox News. Call them, write them, using the reference links in this post.

And consider this.

Can we really continue to allow former Australian, racist bigot, Rupert Murdoch to sow the seeds for the destruction of our democracy? Speak out now by contacting the advertisers Fox News relies upon. This. is. important.

To gather contact info for Fox News sponsors, as well as info on which sponsors have agreed to stop sponsoring Fox News, and which sponsors need to be further pressured, visit the following links:

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Keith Olbermann to Sarah Palin on Her Imaginary "Death Panels"

I just listened to this episode of Countdown, with Keith Olbermann. Two of the people Olbermann focuses on here are Sarah Palin and her inspired claims of "death panels", and Glenn Beck. Both are, in my view, among the most disgusting human beings I can imagine, and Olbermann speaks out for those of us who are bloody damn TIRED of the right wing's racist, fear mongering, violent, ignorant and un-American rhetoric.

 

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Sarah Palin: the Utterly Predictable LIAR

The woman never ceases to amaze. Her complete audacity, her attempts to manipulate the public with outright lies, is enough to make one want to gag. Or better still, send her to a gulag (only partly joking).

Horrid, unintelligent woman that she is, she is inciting public fear yet again, via her publication of the following statement on her Facebook account:

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

A complete fabrication by Palin, it is a quite horrific lie, it's intention being to fear monger in the short term, and defeat Obama in the long term, which to Palin, is 2012.

Rated "Pants on Fire" by Politifact.com, they had this to say:

“We agree with Palin that such a system would be evil. But it's definitely not what President Barack Obama or any other Democrat has proposed.

We have read all 1,000-plus pages of the Democratic bill and examined versions in various committees. There is no panel in any version of the health care bills in Congress that judges a person's "level of productivity in society" to determine whether they are "worthy" of health care.

Palin's claim sounds a little like another statement making the rounds, which says that health care reform would mandate counseling for seniors on how to end their lives sooner. We rated this claim Pants on Fire! The truth is that the health bill allows Medicare, for the first time, to pay for doctors' appointments for patients to discuss living wills and other end-of-life issues with their physicians. These types of appointments are completely optional, and AARP supports the measure.”

Sarah Palin is a fear-mongering, self-centered politician, and we really would benefit immensely if we could ban her lying derriere from the national political debate. For the truth about the healthcare related distortions currently making the rounds, check out Politifact's Guide.