March 20, 2013

I am not broken. I am not confused. I do not need to be fixed.

TUE MAR 19, 2013 AT 04:29 PM PDT
Gay Teen to NJ Senate Committee: "I am not broken. I am not confused. I don't need to be fixed."

...on Monday, Jacob took a trip to Trenton with Garden State Equality to testify before the New Jersey Senate Health, Human Services, and Senior Citizens Committee in support of S2278, which would do just what Jacob calls for in his petition. The full video is below, but perhaps this sums it all up:

What disturbs me the most is that our government would allow orientation-conversion organizations to subject children to such so-called therapy. It is hard enough for LGBT teens to accept that their sexual orientation differentiates them from their classmates. Consequentially, I cannot fathom how emotionally scarring it must be for these kids to be told they are somehow broken and are then manipulated to reject their innate sexual preference and ‘become’ heterosexual again. What strikes me as the most cruel facet of this practice is that these young people cannot defend themselves from being subjected to this harmful practice.

VIDEO & MORE:
http://www.towleroad.com/2013/03/rudolphexgay.html

March 19, 2013

10 years later: "SO"

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/03/19/20558/cheney-poll-iraq/


TEN YEARS LATER:

CHENEY: “I did what I did. It’s all on the public record, and I feel very good about it. If I had to do it over again, I’d do it in a minute.” —

Cheney in a new documentary which aired last Friday.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/15/politics/cheney-documentary/





MORE:
http://underthemountainbunker.com/2013/03/19/10-years-later-documenting-the-true-history-of-the-bush-administration/

March 19, 2013

Amanpour on Iraq: Where were the journalists?

On Monday, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked how so many journalists could have been misled in the run-up to the Iraq War. She interviewed two reporters for Knight-Ridder newspapers, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, both of whom have been vindicated as being consistently right on Iraq.

Amanpour began by recapping some of the George W. Bush administration’s hallmark assertions regarding Saddam Hussein’s purported programs to make nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and highlighting the debunked claims that Iraq was importing aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for enriching uranium.

................

“It was very lonely,” he said. “One of the ironies is that every time we would write something, the White House would say nothing, because we realized after a while that that would have been the best advertisement for our stories that we could possibly ask for.”

“There’s a problem with journalism in Washington,” said Strobel, “and that’s access. The New York Times and others had access to top officials who were spinning this line. We talked to those people as well, but most of our reporting was done with intelligence — military and diplomatic — mid-level and lower-level, the types that journalists don’t normally talk to or go after.”

....video & more:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/19/amanpour-on-iraq-where-were-the-journalists/

March 19, 2013

Woodward seen at WH

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/bob-woodward-seen-entering-white-house-photo?ref=fpblg

March 19, 2013

Avenging Uterus in Steubenville

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/19/1195078/-Avenging-Uterus-in-Steubenville

March 19, 2013

A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran

A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.
I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.





Dig last updated on Mar. 18, 2013

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/the_last_letter_20130318/

March 19, 2013

Bill O’Reilly’s Divorce Is So Ugly, God Got Involved

Bill O’Reilly’s Divorce Is So Ugly, God Got Involved
John Cook

Bill O'Reilly wants his ex-wife to go to Hell. Literally. As we previously reported, the Fox News falafelist became separated from his former wife Maureen McPhilmy at some point in 2011, and later went on an apparently corrupt crusade to destroy the career of the Nassau County Police detective she was dating. We have now confirmed that O'Reilly and McPhilmy have been formally divorced, that she has since married the detective, and that O'Reilly is in the midst of a scorched-earth custody battle—dubbed, appropriately enough, Anonymous v. Anonymous—over the ex-couple's two children. It involves a surreptitious attempt by O'Reilly to undermine his custody arrangement by hiring, as a member of his household staff, the woman he and his ex had agreed on as a neutral arbiter of their disputes. It also involves O'Reilly's attempts to annul his marriage and have McPhilmy potentially booted from the Catholic Church.

To catch you up:
MORE:
http://gawker.com/5990571/bill-oreillys-divorce-is-so-ugly-god-got-involved

March 19, 2013

Boehner/Ryan: There's No Debt Crisis, We Just Want to Screw the Poor

Republicans: There's No Debt Crisis, We Just Want to Screw the Poor

March 18, 2013 |
Appearing on Sunday morning talk shows this weekend, both Republican House majority leader John Boehner and Republican Congressman Paul Ryan admitted that there is no imminent debt crisis.

On ABC’s “This Week,” Boehner said he agrees with President Obama that there is no immediate crisis concerning the country’s debt.



Boehner told ABC’s Martha Raddatz:



more:
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/republicans-theres-no-debt-crisis-we-just-want-screw-poor?akid=10199.1084699.8-R6xz&rd=1&src=newsletter811103&t=3

March 19, 2013

Daniel's letter to Justice Roberts re: gay marriage: "I was told that I was considered 'unadoptable'

12 y.o. Daniel writes a letter to Justice Roberts about gay marriage


Daniel and his dad, Bryan. Judging by Bryan’s shirt, it’s an interesting question as to just whose hundreds of Star Wars toys those are in the background.

.........

“We were adopted when I was five, and my sister was about 12 months old. When I was in foster care, I was told that I was considered ‘unadoptable’ because of my Goldenhar Syndrome. That is a genetic disorder that affects the whole left side of my body. I lost my little brother Emilio because some people wanted to adopt him but they weren’t willing to adopt me because of my medical conditions. Lucky for me, that’s when my two dads came along.”

MORE plus video:
http://americablog.com/2013/03/daniel-writes-letter-justice-roberts-gay-marriage.html

March 18, 2013

Behold, the scene at Donald Trump’s CPAC speech this morning in the main ballroom.

Donald Trump: “Behold, the scene at Donald Trump’s CPAC speech this morning in the main ballroom. Empty seats were everywhere, although it’s not entirely Trump’s fault. He was given an 8:45 a.m. speaking slot, the very first of the day. Many CPAC attendees aren’t even out of bed yet. Still, Trump was invited not because of his conservative bona fides (he’s donated more money over the years to Democrats than to Republicans), but because he’s supposedly a crowd-pleasing draw.”



more, plus great Palin pics:
http://underthemountainbunker.com/2013/03/17/cpac2013-keep-fcking-that-chicken/