kpete
kpete's JournalPerot Foundation donates $1 million to Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas
Yesterday, the Perot Foundation of Dallas Texas announced it would donate one million dollars to Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas. The gift was specified as undesignated, meaning that the funds can be applied however Planned Parenthood sees fit. The Perot Foundation has long been a supporter of women’s health issues in Texas, having donated to Planned Parenthood for more than twenty years and established the Margot Perot Center for Women and Infants. The Perot Foundation was founded by Texan businessman and former Presidential candidate Ross Perot.
In a statement issued through Planned Parenthood, Margot Perot said “For nearly 100 years Planned Parenthood has helped to educate men and women regarding family planning and general family health. Our family has supported this nonprofit for many years because we are impressed with the work they do—providing birth control, scientifically-based education, breast health exams, and basic life-saving healthcare for women who cannot afford services otherwise.”
The CEO of Planned Parenthood of North Texas thanked the Foundation, saying in a statement “We are thrilled that this generous gift will enable us to continue providing basic, preventive health care. Thanks to the generosity of The Perot Foundation and other community members, Planned Parenthood is proud to be here for the Texans who count on us, no matter what.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/30/perot-foundation-donates-1-million-to-planned-parenthood-of-greater-texas/
Bang. On. OBAMA PROMISES SYRIA STRIKE WILL HAVE NO OBJECTIVE
OBAMA PROMISES SYRIA STRIKE WILL HAVE NO OBJECTIVE
POSTED BY ANDY BOROWITZ
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Attempting to quell criticism of his proposal for a limited military mission in Syria, President Obama floated a more modest strategy today, saying that any U.S. action in Syria would have “no objective whatsoever.”
“Let me be clear,” he said in an interview on CNN. “Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave.”
“It may take twenty-four hours, but it could also take twelve,” Mr. Carney said.
“Maybe we get in there, take a look around, and get out right away. But however long it takes, one thing will not change: this mission will have no point. The President is resolute about that.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/08/obama-promises-syria-strike-will-have-no-objective.html?currentPage=all
via:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/30/1235004/-Andy-Borowitz-Nails-Syria-Even-Better
'Calvin & Hobbes' Creator Has A Message You Need To See
Bill Watterson's Uplifting Advice To College Grads, Illustrated In 'Calvin & Hobbes' Style
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/29/bill-watterson-advice-to-college-grads-illustrated-like-calvin-and-hobbes_n_3837271.html
So let’s not continue that pattern. Let’s “do something” different. Let’s “do something” else.
Something terrible happens somewhere — and what is happening in Syria is not just terrible but atrocious in the literal meaning of that term.
Americans naturally feel we must “do something.”
The easiest something to do involves bombers, drones, and cruise missiles, all of which are promised to be precise and to keep our forces and people at a safe remove from the battle zone.
In the absence of a draft, with no threat that taxes will go up to cover war costs, and with the reality that modern presidents are hamstrung in domestic policy but have enormous latitude in national security, the normal democratic checks on waging war don’t work.
We “do something,” with bombs and drones, and then deal with blowback and consequences “no one could have foreseen.”
So let’s not continue that pattern. Let’s “do something” different. Let’s “do something” else.
more PEACE:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/08/28/it-is-happening-again/
Obama Plans Executive Action To Close Gun Sale Loophole
Source: Talking Points Memo
WASHINGTON (AP) — Striving to take action where Congress would not, the Obama administration announced new steps Thursday on gun control, curbing the import of military surplus weapons and proposing to close a little-known loophole that lets felons and others circumvent background checks by registering guns to corporations.
Four months after a gun control drive collapsed spectacularly in the Senate, President Barack Obama added two more executive actions to a list of 23 steps the White House determined Obama could take on his own to reduce gun violence. With the political world focused on Mideast tensions and looming fiscal battles, the move signaled Obama’s intent to show he hasn’t lost sight of a cause he took up after 20 first graders and six adults were gunned down last year in an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
One new policy will end a government practice that lets military weapons, sold or donated by the U.S. to allies, be reimported into the U.S. by private entities, where some may end up on the streets. The White House said the U.S. has approved 250,000 of those guns to be reimported since 2005; under the new policy, only museums and a few other entities like the government will be eligible to reimport military-grade firearms.
The Obama administration is also proposing a federal rule to stop those who would be ineligible to pass a background check from skirting the law by registering a gun to a corporation or trust. The new rule would require people associated with those entities, like beneficiaries and trustees, to undergo the same type of fingerprint-based background checks as individuals if they want to register guns.
Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/obama-close-background-check-loophole.php
Anderson Cooper Takes Apart Pat Robertson - The video from CNN is a thing to behold.
Anderson Cooper Takes Apart Pat Robertson
The video from CNN is a thing to behold.
Here's the video:
(commercial (this is America) first):
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/08/29/anderson_cooper_takes_apart_pat_robertson.html
THE BABY AND THE BAATH WATER
THE BABY AND THE BAATH WATER
Thursday 16 June 2011, 19:00
Adam Curtis
................................
And Za'im promised the Americans he would throw all the corrupt politicians in jail, reform the country, recognise the new state of Israel, and then bring in proper democracy. All the Americans were convinced that it was a brilliant plan - except for one man, a young political officer called Deane Hinton. Copeland describes a moment when they were out in Damascus planning the coup when Hinton turned to the rest of the group and said:
"I want to go on record as saying that this is the stupidest, most irresponsible action a diplomatic mission like ours could get itself involved in, and that we've started a series of these things that will never end."
Deane was promptly kicked out of the group and ostracised. The coup happened in March 1949. It was the first post-war military coup in the Middle East. It was a great success and the American celebrated "opening the door to Peace and Progress"
But then Za'im immediately went back on all his promises and turned into a violent tyrant. He got so bad that five months later a group of his subordinates surrounded his house and shot him to bits. And then they mounted another violent coup, this time with no promises. As Copeland noted - Hinton had been right. The Americans had started something - they had "opened the door to the Dark Ages" in Syria.
Here is Copeland interviewed in 1969. He is reflecting ruefully on the disaster they had created in Syria. His is the voice of a generation of Americans who had tried to intervene to bring democracy to the Middle East - not just in Syria but later in Iran and in Nasser's Egypt. The "Game" he refers to is a management game-playing exercise the CIA did in the 1950s when planning the interventions. It's aim was to predict how all the "players" in the country would behave.
VIDEO:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/the_baby_and_the_baath_water
IF USA Cares About Int'l War Crimes Law-We Would Do Better By Delivering Cheney To The Hague-Instead
Either it's worth taking a side in the Syrian civil war, or it isn't. Either it's worth the blood and treasure to end the conflict and hold the war criminals to account, or it isn't. Bombing a country to prove a point about observing internationally sanctioned methods of killing seems unjustifiable. If the United States is less intent on saving lives in Syria than on proving to the United Nations how much we care about observing international war crimes law, we would do better to begin by delivering Dick Cheney to the Hague, instead.
the rest:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/punishing-few-based-on-unknown-to.html
"Nobody could have known!" (Millions of us knew) "Nobody told us!"
Obama: U.S. Has 'Concluded' Syrian Government Behind Attacks... Presents No Direct Evidence... State Dept. Admits It Doesn't Know Who Ordered Attack...http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/28/us-syria-conflict_n_3827964.html
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And when all the lies came to light post-war, the great wailing and gnashing of teeth went up. "Nobody could have known!" (Millions of us knew) "Nobody told us!" (No official sources, but in theory you're grownups and should know better than to trust "official sources".)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/29/1234688/-Syria-Kurdish-leader-says-Assad-NOT-to-blame-for-gas
NOT A SLAM DUNK BY ANY MEANS:
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would not be "so stupid" as to use chemical weapons close to Damascus, the leader of the country's largest Kurdish group said.
Saleh Muslim, head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said he doubted the Syrian president would resort to using such weapons when he felt he had the upper hand in the country's civil war.
He suggested last Wednesday's attack, which the opposition says was carried out by government forces and killed hundreds of people, was aimed at framing Assad and provoking an international reaction.
...........
Read it all. At least you won't be taken by surprise in the postwar world
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/27/us-syria-crisis-kurds-idUSBRE97Q0LP20130827
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The intelligence linking Syrian President Bashar Assad or his inner circle to an alleged chemical weapons attack that killed at least 100 people is no “slam dunk,” with questions remaining about who actually controls some of Syria’s chemical weapons stores and doubts about whether Assad himself ordered the strike, US intelligence officials say.
...
However, multiple US officials used the phrase “not a slam dunk” to describe the intelligence picture — a reference to then-CIA Director George Tenet’s insistence in 2002 that US intelligence showing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was a “slam dunk” — intelligence that turned out to be wrong.
A report by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence outlining that evidence against Syria is thick with caveats. It builds a case that Assad’s forces are most likely responsible while outlining gaps in the US intelligence picture. Relevant congressional committees were to be briefed on that evidence by teleconference call on Thursday, US officials and congressional aides said.
The complicated intelligence picture raises questions about the White House’s full-steam-ahead approach to the August 21 attack on a rebel-held Damascus suburb, with worries that the attack could be tied to al-Qaida-backed rebels later. Administration officials said Wednesday that neither the UN Security Council, which is deciding whether to weigh in, or allies’ concerns would affect their plans.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-intel-community-says-case-against-assad-no-slam-dunk/
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we have lost our moral authority to be drawing 'red lines' anywhere regarding sarin usage.
April 1988: Sarin was used four times against Iranian soldiers in April 1988 at the end of the Iran–Iraq War, helping Iraqi forces to retake control of the al-Faw Peninsula during the Second Battle of al-Faw.
Using satellite imagery, the United States assisted Iraqi forces in
locating the position of the Iranian troops during those attacks.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/25/secret_cia_files_prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran?page=0,2
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Before The Bombs Drop
I don't claim to always know how to save the world, I just know we're willing to spend orders of magnitude more money to blow people up in order to save them than we are willing to spend on any other kind of "humanitarian" aid. When that changes, I'll be a bit more open to the bombs dropping.
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2013/08/before-bombs-drop.html
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They know of no solutions to the paradoxes of the Middle East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines. Being baffled, and also being very tired of being baffled, they have come to believe that there is no way out -- except war -- which would remove all the bewildering paradoxes of their tedious and now misguided attempts to construct peace. In place of these paradoxes they prefer the bright, clear problems of war...
http://www.iwise.com/Gv68U
More here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/28/1234649/--Crackpot-Realism-and-Military-Intervention-in-Syria
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Posted on 08/29/2013 by Juan Cole
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President Obama has probably boxed himself into rather uselessly tossing a couple of cruise missiles onto Damascus next week. For a thoughtful man he often seems to lock himself into undesirable courses of action by ill-considered and hasty public remarks. But whatever he does, it seems clear that it won’t have the kind of multilateral framework he prefers, and he’ll have to cowboy it.
Wasn’t that where he came in?
http://www.juancole.com/2013/08/western-strike-stall.html
THE ONION Posts A Message From Assad: I’d use chemical weapons again in a heartbeat. You Know That.
So, What’s It Going To Be?
COMMENTARY • Opinion • ISSUE 49•35 • Aug 28, 2013
By Bashar Al-Assad
.........................
So, it’s your move, America. What’s it going to be?
I’ve looked at your options, and I’m going to be honest here, I feel for you. Not exactly an embarrassment of riches you’ve got to choose from, strategy-wise. I mean, my God, there are just so many variables to consider, so many possible paths to choose, each fraught with incredible peril, and each leading back to the very real, very likely possibility that no matter what you do it’s going to backfire in a big, big way. It’s a good old-fashioned mess, is what this is! And now, you have to make some sort of decision that you can live with.
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Okay, what else? Well, you could play small-ball and hope that limited airstrikes to a few of my key military installations will send me the message to refrain from using chemical weapons again, but, c’mon, check me out: I’m ruthless, I’m desperate, and I’m going to do everything I can to stay in power. I’d use chemical weapons again in a heartbeat. You know that. And I know you know that. Hell, I want to help you guys out here, but you gotta be realistic. Trust me, I am incapable of being taught a lesson at this point. Got it? I am too far gone. Way too far gone.
.......................
I’ll leave you with this: I am insane. Not insane enough to generate worldwide unanimity that I cannot remain in charge of my own country. That would make this a lot easier. No, unfortunately, I’m just sane and stable enough to remain in power and devise cunning military and political strategies while at the same time adhering to a standard of morality that only the most perverse and sociopathic among us would be capable of adopting. But nevertheless, I am insane, so do with that information what you will.
Long story short, I’m going to keep doing my best to hold on to my country no matter what the cost. If that means bombing entire towns, murdering small children, or shooting at UN weapons inspectors, so be it. I’m in this for the long haul. And you will do...whatever it is you’re going to do, which is totally up to you. Your call.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/so-whats-it-going-to-be,33662/?ref=auto
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