Author: Ezra Grant

I'm just tired of the lies and nonsense coming from the GOP, so this is my little contribution to combat the nonsense!

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Dick Cheney George Bush Politics

Dick Cheney – George Bush “was an integral part of the [torture] program”

Yes, Cheney threw George Bush under the bus with his recent revelation in a Fox interview, when he said that the former president knew all the gory details of their torture program.

Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked the former vice president whether the agency deliberately kept Bush in the dark about its so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.

“Not true. Didn’t happen,” Cheney responded. “Read his book, he talks about it extensively in his memoirs. He was in fact an integral part of the program, he had to approve it before we went forward with it.”

Asked if there was ever a point where he knew more about the CIA’s activity than the President, Cheney said “I think he knew everything he needed to know and wanted to know about the program.”

Baier then asked if the former President knew about the “details” of the program. The report — which Cheney called “full of crap” — described brutal interrogation methods including waterboarding, extensive sleep deprivation, threats to harm detainees’ families and “rectal feeding.”

“I think he knew certainly the techniques, we did discuss the techniques,” Cheney said. “There was no effort on our part to keep him from that.”

“The notion that the committee’s trying to peddle, that somehow the agency was operating on a rogue basis, and we weren’t being told or the President wasn’t being told, is just a flat out lie,” he later added.

Categories
basketball Sports

Watch The Ugliest Air Ball Ever – Video

An air ball so ugly,  it made the one of the announcers ask, “did the goal move?” The same announcer then begged the baker to “put that roll back in the oven!” It clearly wasn’t ready.

The baker in this case was none other than Brooklyn Nets’ Cory Jefferson, as he lobbed a three pointer from well within shooting range. Something happened along the way and the ball fell way short.

Video.

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Politics

While You Debated The Torture Report, Congress Snuck This Past You

Torture is a serious crime and the interest in the newly released torture report is necessary and warranted. And it is a perfect diversion for a congress determined to fatten their own pocket.

Two measures were snuck into the must-pass spending bill this week — all without formal debate.

The first was a rider that essentially overturns the District of Columbia’s ballot initiative legalizing marijuana, which passed by a more than 2-to-1 margin last month. (Remember, D.C. doesn’t even have elected House or Senate members.)

The second measure Congress snuck into the spending the bill will be more galling to some, because it amounts to a pay raise for the two unpopular political parties: It raises the $32,400 maximum that donors could give the Democratic National Committee or Republican National Committee to a whopping $324,000 per year, gutting what’s left of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. The Washington Post says this was inserted on page 1,599 of a 1,603-page bill (!!!). These two measures — and probably more like them — will become law because they were jammed into a must-pass spending bill to keep the government open.

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Celebrities

Whoopi Golberg – “I Don’t Know How I Feel” About Torture – Video

While I agree with Mrs. Whoopi on many issues, this one in particular is a no-brainer. I know how I feel about torture and the so-called, “enhanced interrogation” methods the CIA used to “get information” from suspected terrorists. I am totally against it! We are supposed to be better than that. ‘American Exceptionalism,’ remember?

On Wednesday’s episode of The View however, Goldberg tried to explain her confusion.

“I don’t know how I feel about it,” she said one day after Senate Democrats released a report detailing extensive abuses, “Because on one hand, I do know there are other countries that have done it, and it’s reaped quite good benefits for them. I don’t know if that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. But I’m not surprised that other countries that we’ve gone over to and pointed the finger at, are now pointing the finger at us.”

Rosie O’Donnell responded that President Ronald Reagan took part in “banning” torture, via the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. “So this is not a partisan issue,” she said. “This is an issue of national security and identity.”

Video

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Carmelo Anthony new york knicks Sports

Source – Carmelo Anthony Threatened to “Beat Up” Tim Hardaway Jr.

I remember the days when other teams were afraid to come to the Garden to play against the New York Knicks. Those days of Anthony Mason and Charles Oakley’s choking defence are all gone. Now, the failing team is fighting itself as it embarks on a journey that might end up being the worse season in Knicks history.

The New York Knicks were en route to their fifth straight loss last week against Brooklyn when a frustrated Tim Hardaway Jr. screamed angrily, “Get the rebound!”

Certain his second-year teammate was speaking to him, Carmelo Anthony approached Hardaway on the way down the court and used an expletive to ask Hardaway who in the world he thought he was talking to.

Anthony, according to sources, used another expletive in telling Hardaway he was going to beat him up when they got into the locker room after the game.

While the two players never wound up fighting, the episode was emblematic of the volatile state of the Knicks. Off to their worst start in franchise history at 4-19, the Knicks are a team full of discord, defiance and doubt, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

“Nobody’s taken a swing at anybody, but there’s a lot of arguing and cursing each other out after games,” one source said.

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Dick Cheney George Bush Politics

Jon Stewart was Almost Speechless About Bush’s Torture Report – Video

It’s a rare occurrence when that Jon Stewart can’t find the words, but Tuesday was almost one of those times.

Stewart took on the newly released torture report which detailed some of the brutal activities done to others during the Bush administration, and he compared the events in the report to a movie he did on the subject of torture and how one man overcame the inhumane treatment. And in comparing the two, Stewart concluded that his movie did not even scratch the surface of torture, when compared to the report.

“It’s funny, I just made this movie about a guy who triumphs over the inhuman conditions in his imprisonment in an authoritarian country, and I don’t think they did half that shit to him,” Stewart said.

Stewart began his piece playing a clip of George Bush saying that his government “does not torture people.” Stewart then broke to a montage of clips showing Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) detailing numerous situations in the report where people were tortured and a reporter even detailing situations where prisoners were fed through their rectum, now known as “rectal feeding.”

That revelation left Stewart speechless and the only think he could do was to ask for a clip of Mr. Creosote projectile vomiting in Monty Python’s “The Meaning Of Life.”

Video

Categories
Dick Cheney George Bush Politics

Fox’s Response to The Torture Report – “America is Awesome!” – Video

Fox News. That’s all I have to say and most of you already know that nonsense is about to follow.

When most of the country focused on the unimaginable acts done in our names by the CIA torture program during the Bush administration, Fox News was more interesting in dismissing the torture report as total foolishness because, “America is awesome!”

“The United States of America is awesome,” said Fox News’s Andrea Tantaros. As if that excuses the fact that torture really happened or because of our awesomeness anything should be expected.  “We are awesome. But we’ve had this discussion. We’ve closed the book on it. The reason they want the discussion is not to show how awesome we are. It’s to show us how we’re not awesome. They apologized for something.”

Tantaros also called out Democrats for concentrating on the torture report as a political gimmick, because, you know, “America is awesome!”

Video

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exercise Health Homeless

Meet The Homeless Bodybuilder – Video

Although he has no place to call his home, Frenchman Jacques Sayagh maintains a body many would envy. In a YouTube video uploaded last week that has already gone viral, the 50 year old Jacques explained his motivation.

“I have grandchildren,” he said. “I don’t want them to think that their grandfather is an asshole. I want them to be proud of me, that’s all I want.”

Video

Categories
Politics

Being a Cop Showed Me How Violent and Racist Police Are

As a kid, I got used to being stopped by the police. I grew up in an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis. It was the kind of place where officers routinely roughed up my friends and family for no good reason.

I hated the way cops treated me.

But I knew police weren’t all bad. One of my father’s closest friends was a cop. He became a mentor to me and encouraged me to join the force. He told me that I could use the police’s power and resources to help my community.

So in 1994, I joined the St. Louis Police Department. I quickly realized how naive I’d been. I was floored by the dysfunctional culture I encountered.

I won’t say all, but many of my peers were deeply racist.

More from The Washington Post

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Politics

Watch President Obama Take Over Stephen Colbert’s Chair – Video

The president sat in Colbert’s chair and comedy took over.

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Dick Cheney Featured George Bush Politics

In The Bush/Cheney Whitehouse, The Torture was Brutal

The brutality of the CIA’s torture program under the leadership and direction of George Bush and Dick Cheney is quite frankly, terrifying.

Interrogations that lasted for days on end. Detainees forced to stand on broken legs, or go 180 hours in a row without sleep. A prison so cold, one suspect essentially froze to death. The Senate Intelligence Committee is finally releasing its review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs. And it is brutal.

Here are some of the most gruesome moments of detainee abuse from a summary of the report, obtained by The Daily Beast:

The CIA has previously said that only three detainees were ever waterboarded: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zabaydah, and Abd Al Rahim al-Nashiri. But records uncovered by the Senate Intelligence Committee suggest there may have been more than three subjects. The Senate report describes a photograph of a “well worn” waterboard, surrounded by buckets of water, at a detention site where the CIA has claimed it never subjected a detainee to this procedure. In a meeting with the CIA in 2013, the agency was not able to explain the presence of this waterboard.

Contrary to CIA’s description to the Department of Justice, the Senate report says that the waterboarding was physically harmful, leading to convulsions and vomiting. During one session, detainee Abu Zabaydah became “completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open full mouth.” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded at least 183 times, which the Senate report describes as escalating into a “series of near drownings.”

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Healthcare Mitch McConnell ObamaCare Repeal

Mitch McConnell Promising an Obamacare Repeal Vote in The Senate

Republican Senate Majority Leader-elect, Mitch McConnell, campaigned on repealing Obamacare, promising to uproot Obamacare “root and branch” he often said, and the voters in Kentucky, who benefit most from Obamacare decided to put McConnell in charge.

So in an effort to keep his promise to take away his constituents healthcare, McConnell is already gearing up for a repeal vote in the senate.

“Number one: We certainly will have a vote on proceeding to a bill to repeal Obamacare. … It was a very large issue in the campaign,” he told Roll Call in an interview published on Monday.

Republicans will have 54 members in the new Senate to convene on January 3 – short of the 60 needed to overcome an expected Democratic filibuster on a bill that repeals Obamacare.

Though he spoke of a more cooperative and functioning Senate, McConnell insisted that Republicans “will go at that law [Obamacare] – which in my view is the single worst piece of legislation passed in the last half century – in every way that we can.”

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