Might’ve been better all round if this Monica had stuck to blowjobs.
Corruption
Mormon Sins, Feels ‘Bad’.
Does the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints condone torture and murder by government?
This is Deputy White House Counsel Timothy Flanagan. Remember those porcine, well-fed, well-groomed features. We’ll be seeing them again at The Hague if there is any justice in the world.
This devout Mormon helped write the memo that allowed US troops to torture civilians at Abu Ghraib and secret US prisons elsewhere. This is one of the men who declared habeas corpus dead, said the Geneva Conventions were quaint and outdated and who declared that there were no human rights any longer. and that anywhere in the world, whoever or wherever you are, the US can kidnap, jail and torture you on a whim.
This is what that ‘devout’ ratfuck bastard enabled. (Warning, graphic violence)
Now he says he feels bad about it. Aww, bloody diddums. From Harpers:
I had a heartfelt conversation with Flanagan and told him what I had heard from Iraqis: that these techniques had been used on men, women and children in Iraq. He feels bad about it; I know he does. But the fact is that he and Yoo and some of these other people from the best law schools and universities in this country were the ones who came up with the legal definitions that allowed for the abuse to happen.
Quite. I urge you to read the whole article – it lays bare the horrendous torture that’s been happening and exactly who is to blame, including Flanagan. This is a man who should spend eternity with his eyes taped open watching endless looped movies of his own wife and children being raped and tortured. With a soundtrack on headphones.
What, you think that’s harsh? Why? It’s just what he made it legal for his underlings to do to others’ families, including children and babies. Flanagan is a monster, like his other ‘devout’colleagues-in-law John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez; none of them got actual blood on their hands but they enabled a tide of blood, cruelty and filth in the hidden prisons of the US military and intelligence that will iflood the world with even more violence for decades to come.
So he says he feels bad now. What the hell does that mean? He has a vague sense of diquiet? Sincere repentance? Dismay at being caught? WTF? Saying he ‘feels bad’ is totally self-serving and meaningless. Are we supposed to show forgiveness and understanding to this psychopath now? Fuck that. He is a criminal against humanity.
What I really want to know now is whether the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, AKA The Mormons, will denounce him. Flanagan was the Mormon Church’s blue-eyed boy in the White House; here he is speaking to a conference of LDS layers on religion and integrity in politics – from Meridian Magazine, ‘The Place Where Latter Day Saints Gather’ :
[..]
Timothy E. Flanagan
Timothy Flanagan has firsthand experience in Washington political circles, having worked as counsel in the Bush White House. He said,
“If you lined up people who have political influence against the wall, you would have a great many wonderful Jewish people. Do you know how many Latter-day Saints there would be? Only a few. There are roughly the same number of Jews in the U.S. as Latter-day Saints, but do we have the same political impact? I don’t think so.
[…]
I’m willing to admit that our system is far from perfect and we have a great many problems as money touches politics. It is an observed fact that many Latter-day Saints view giving to candidates as something they just don’t want to do. But we can build on a cornerstone of integrity. You bring to this process your principles and the world is hungry for those principles.”
Brother Flanagan emphasized that the mark of any political work should be quality.
“Too much of the effort that people put into political work is just shoddy. It is substandard. You will stand out if you put true quality into what you do.”
When they supported Brother Timothy Flanagan in pushing their agenda in in the GOP and the White House, was torture part of that quality, principled, Mormon agenda? If not, did the LDS know Flanagan was pro-torture? They certainly knew it when he published his memo.
But I don’t see any condemnation from his church then or now. In the same article one of the other elders Boyd Black, says:
“The Church attempts very hard to keep politically neutral. Silence by the Church should never be considered as endorsement.”
Well it damned well looks like endorsement to me. Sorry, but from what I can see, I’d say the LDS hierarchy, in sheltering and approving this monster of a hypocrite, is objectively pro-torture and murder.
The Big Swingin’ Dick’s Been Busy Swingin’
dept. of dubious rumors
Oh Hey, Cheney’s Maybe On the DC Madam’s ListThanks to the 700 people who sent in the latest “anything’s possible” rumor from angry local blogger Wayne Madsen. Here’s the new Contract With America: We will post it, and you will quit e-mailing it to us. Okay? Okay.
The “former CEO” supposedly on the DC Madam’s phone list is “former” Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney. He paid money to some poor girl and stuck his thing in her deal. ABC News all but dropped the story when Cheney threatened to jam that prop phone up three feet up the ass of Brian Ross. That’s why the formerly explosive scandal story instead got seven minutes at the end of whatever ABC News show Friday night.
There, are you people happy now? Didn’t think so. Do you know why we’re underwhelmed by this rumor? Because even if it’s a fact, which it probably is, there’s no way it would have any impact on Cheney’s “career.” This is a draft-dodging half-human war criminal with a pregnant lesbian daughter who tells senators to fuck themselves and shoots his own friends in the face. Ordering an outcall hooker is positively innocent compared to the well-known things Cheney does every day.
Cheney Rumor You Have To Scroll Down For Because Wayne Madsen Still Doesn’t Know What a Permalink Is
Given that the escort agency’s speciality was ‘fantasy sex play’ I bet a shooting in the face was involved there somewhere. Or maybe a game of of ‘you be the insurgent, I’ll be the marine captain’ or maybe he just wanted to be told a bedtime story about Jimmyjeff, the commander in chief and the tin of bald-head polish.
I could go on with this for hours…
Church News: Black Teenager Hanged At White Ohio Evangelical Youth Retreat. Suicide or Lynching?
Murder or suicide: Black youth’s death newly probed
Racially motivated foul play alleged in mother’s suit
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Julie Carr Smyth
Associated PressBellefontaine, Ohio — Investigators explored whether a black teenager found hanging at a church youth retreat might have been murdered rather than have committed suicide, according to investigative reports from the days following James McCoy III’s death.
Yet the boy’s mother, who has filed a lawsuit alleging racially motivated foul play, said Friday she still does not believe authorities did enough to determine what happened the day McCoy died.
“I don’t feel that if this was a reverse situation, if a Caucasian boy had died at an all-black church event, that it would have been handled in the same way,” Tonya Amoako-Okyere said.
McCoy was found hanging from a tree on April 22, 2006, his 18th birthday, in a remote area of Camp Cotubic, a Christian camp east of Bellefontaine, about 60 miles northwest of Columbus.Amoako-Okyere filed a wrongful death suit against Church of the Messiah in Westerville near Columbus, which sponsored the camp; four unnamed youths who attended the event; and four unnamed Logan County authorities. The suit was moved last week to U.S. District Court.
Bishop Bruce Ough, who leads the Methodist region to which McCoy’s church belongs, issued a statement saying his administration “is supportive of the staff and leadership of Messiah as they seek truth and justice in this matter.” His office said he was traveling Friday and unable to discuss specifics of the suit.
McCoy’s mother said in a telephone interview that she had heard friends chastising her son for having a white girlfriend. He told his mother just before the retreat that he planned to buy her an engagement ring, she said.
Yet Amoako-Okyere said she was barely questioned by authorities about what she knew, which included the fact that some of her son’s friends had previously experimented with a “choking game” and that her son rarely wore belts like the one wrapped around his neck when he died. She said she was never asked to identify the belt.
Still, Logan County sheriff’s records reveal that deputies did not ignore race as an issue in the incident. At least one key witness was asked whether she thought McCoy’s death might have been intentional and race-related. Another was asked whether anyone wanted to hurt McCoy for any reason. The answer to both questions was no.
Deputies also accumulated a number of documents, including statements McCoy made in a prayer journal from the camp and on a personal Web page on Xanga.com, a social networking site similar to MySpace.
“I am in a world of trouble . . .,” he wrote on the site. “No matter what I do, something will happen . . . it is times like these that i wish i wasnt alive . . .”
McCoy’s prayer journal read: “I’m going to hell. I [expletive] hate myself. But I don’t care. I will keep doing it until I get the nerve to end it.”
Amoako-Okyere said the journal writings didn’t appear to her to be in her son’s handwriting, use his vocabulary, or reflect his thoughts.
I don’t know what’s going on here, but it looks like an awful lot more than meets the eye. The Columbus Dispatch has more detail:
The U.S. Department of Justice investigated the family’s complaint that this was a hate crime and closed the case.
Amoako-Okyere is represented by Clifford Arnebeck Jr. and Robert Fitrakis of Columbus. Arnebeck said yesterday that McCoy died because the other teens choked or hanged him as part of a birthday prank. Then, the kids wrote papers full of despondent and suicidal thoughts, attributed the writings to McCoy and gave them to authorities, Arnebeck said.
McCoy, who had been a popular, well-liked senior at Westerville South High School, had a bull’s-eye on his back at the conservative church because he was dating a white girl, Arnebeck said.
A woman who answered the phone at the Church of the Messiah yesterday afternoon said the church had no comment.
The Logan County sheriff’s office investigated McCoy’s death, and Sheriff Michael Henry had no comment yesterday. But in the days after the incident, he said he was confident that his deputies acted appropriately and that race played no role in their conclusion that the young man had killed himself.
The sheriff’s case files include a written statement from a friend who wrote that McCoy had been having trouble at home and was upset about illnesses and a recent death in the family. The friend wrote that McCoy previously had tried to kill himself.
Also in the file are writings that the church’s assistant youth pastor said he found two days after McCoy’s death and turned over to authorities. They include a prayer journal said to be McCoy’s that says: “I hate myself. I want to do die.”
Arnebeck said the notes are not in McCoy’s handwriting and are evidence of a cover-up.
I have no idea what the truth of this tragedy is, but even a casual perusal of US history (and particularly that of Ohio) tells me that a black male teenager + white girlfriend + a fatal hanging does not generally turn out to be the result of suicide.
That the US Justice Department investigated and dismissed this case as a potential hate crime isn’t reassuring, given that Justice’s civil rights division has been deliberately subverted by the Bush administration’s installation by the back door of unqualified, pro ‘white-rights’, fundamentalist ‘lawyers’ from bible schools and fundy diploma mills into posts that are supposed to be filled by the nation’s brightest and best legal talents. The Justice department, which should oversee everyone’s civil rights, is now a tool of the GOP used to push a racist, far right agenda.
Do we really think these people could find a white evangelical church had committed a hate crime? Oh, please.
Comment of The Day
Today’s is for anyone who thinks the US population is one big amorphous monocultural blob and there are no regional animosities; it comes from TPM Muckraker’s excellent piece on corruption in the Alaska State legislature (the accused even had the brass neck to have had hats made with with ‘Corrupt Bastard’s Caucus’ on them).
The comment drips Californian contempt for Alaskan provincials:
What isn’t ugly about US Alaska, besides the scenery and people and the culture there before it became a US state? Let’s be blunt, the only reason it’s a US state is so we could plunder it for resources. The people who go there are mostly unintelligent and coarse people only made more so by the harsh environment and wild west atmosphere. There are excepts I’m sure, but I have yet to meet one.
Having never been there I can’t claim to be an expert. But if the people I’ve met are representative, it must be awful.
I’ve met several Alaskan oil workers and they were peanut brained, alcoholic, cave men. Some of the stupidest, crudest, and most brutish bipedal primates I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting.
I had the misfortune of sharing a hot-tub in Hawaii with some Alaskan vacationers once. They began by complaining their stay was going to be too short, complained about Alaska, and didn’t seem to even like each other very much, including their spouses.
They kept asking me about the weather in California, and when I told them it was nice, they really looked displeased by that fact, and complained Alaska weather was terrible. Then they looked at me like it was my fault. Amazing. What kind of moronic inferiority complex causes a person to ask questions they already know and dislike the answer to?
To top it off, both guys were big fat red necks (literally burnt red necks, wife beater tans, one rocking a mullet) and their wives were middle aged desperate housewives or something with too much makeup like blue eye shadow. The wives wanted to sit beside me in the tub and talk about arts and culture, while their husbands became increasingly hostile.
If all Alaskans are like that… no wonder the state is a giant armpit.
They sound like janners to me.
I don’t know if this is all part of some California/Alaska long-running grudge match, or whether it’s just simple snobbery, but it does seem this commenter is inferring an awful lot from a very small sample of Alaskans. I haven’t met any. Was this a typical experience?