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Osama bin Laden Politics Rick Santorum Waterboarding

Rick Santorum Questions John McCain’s Torture Claims

Republican Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has one for John McCain, telling a radio show host on Tuesday that Mr. McCain, a man who was a documented, tortured, prisoner of war for 5 years, “doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works.”

Mr. Santorum was referring to an op-ed written by John McCain, in which Mr. McCain stated that the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden had nothing to do with enhanced interrogation or water-boarding. In the op-ed, Senator McCain states that after talking to CIA Director Leon Pinetta, he was under the impression that “none of the three detainees who were water­boarded pro­vided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his where­abouts or an accu­rate descrip­tion of his role in al-Qaeda.”

Santorum said on the show;

“Everything I’ve read shows that we would not have gotten this information as to who this man was if it had not been for information from people who were subject to enhanced interrogation, and so this idea that we didn’t ask that question while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being water-boarded, he doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative.”

Personally, I think it’s a rather strange coincidence that Santorum used the word “broken” in describing the point where enhance interrogation or torture begins producing information. And even stranger is the fact that he used the word in trying to dispute Senator McCain’s op-ed.

It is common knowledge that John McCain suffered many broken bones in his arms and legs from the events in 1968 that lead to his capture as a prisoner of war and his bout with torture.  And even today, the effects of those events can still be seen in the limited movements of Mr. McCain.

If Santorum is correct with his “broken” claim, then we must wonder exactly what information did John McCain give while he was being broken. Maybe Mr. Santorum knows something we don’t.

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Elections Mike Huckabee Politics Republican United States

Did You Hear? – Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump Dropped Out

Over the last few days, we’ve been on a mini vacation here at EzKool, and it just so happened that everything came apart while we were away. So in an effort to keep you guys up on what’s been happening, (lol, is there really anyone out there who doesn’t know what happened over the last few days?) it’s quite simple – Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump dropped out of the race. LOL.

This Colbert video should cover it.

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Collective bargaining Republican Party (United States) Wisconsin Wisconsin Union Bashing

Wisconsin Republicans Now Going After Police And Firefighter Unions

And so, the inevitable happened. Scott Walker and his Republican goons in Wisconsin have now turned their union busting efforts against Wisconsin’s police and firefighters.

Local firefighters and police officers are vowing to fight legislation proposed last week that would limit their ability to collectively bargain and negotiate contracts.

Rep. Bob Ziegelbauer, I-Manitowoc, introduced the bill that would eliminate collective bargaining for public safety employees on health care and pension contributions. Ziegelbauer’s bill does not require an employee to contribute to health care and pension funds, but would allow municipalities to mandate contributions.

Walker’s bill curtails collective bargaining for most public employees, including municipal workers and teachers, but exempts police and firefighters. A Dane County judge has blocked the law from taking effect after opponents allege that a meeting where the bill was approved violated the state’s open meetings law.

Jeremy Kopp, a Wausau firefighter and the department’s union president, said he will urge firefighters to email and call legislators to express their opposition to Ziegelbauer’s bill

In his original union busting bill, Scott Walker stated that there were no reasons to include the police and firefighter unions. The politics of this decision was obvious. These unions supported the governor in his run for office.

But that was then and this is now.

The Republican governor watched, as the very same union members he excluded from his bill, turned against him and joined the hundreds of thousands of other union members who were under attack. Consider this new bill as his chance to get even.

Anyone who didn’t see this coming needs glasses.

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Abortions Barack Obama Healthcare Mike Huckabee Mitt Romney Republican United States

RomneyCare Provides Funds For Abortions. ObamaCare Does Not

ThinkProgress came up with this little nugget. The graph below shows one difference between the Health Care plan set forth by Mitt Romney, the man who could be the eventual Republican nominee for the presidency in 2012, and the Affordable Health Care Act signed into law by President Obama. The difference? Romney’s plan provides funds for abortion services and President Obama’s does not.

The little secret Republicans don’t want you to know about.

Compliments of ThinkProgress via The Daily Kos

difference RomneyCare Provides Funds For Abortions. ObamaCare Does Not

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Chris Matthews Politics United States

Ron Paul – I Would Have Voted Against The Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Republican candidate for President, Ron Paul, just confirmed what we already knew – that he is against the 1964 Civil Rights law that outlawed different forms of discrimination against blacks and women.

The Republican/Libertarian appeared on the show Hardball with Chris Mathews and made his feelings against The Act known. His son Rand Paul, stated the same sentiments against the Civil Rights Act when he successfully ran for Senate in 2010.

Below is the video, compliments of TPM

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Arizona Georgia Illegal immigration Immigration Immigration Reform Politics United States

Arizona Immigration-Type Bill Signed Into Law In Georgia

By the Associated Press

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has signed a bill that cracks down on illegal immigration by increasing some enforcement powers and requiring many employers to check the immigration status of new hires.

Deal on Friday signed the bill that has some similarities to a controversial bill enacted last year in Arizona.

Most parts of the Georgia law are set to enter into effect July 1. But opponents have said they plan to file lawsuits seeking to block it.

A requirement for private employers to use a federal database to check the immigration status of new hires is set to be phased in.

The new law also authorizes law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of certain suspects and to detain those who are in the country illegally.

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Barack Obama Osama bin Laden Politics

Seals Helmet Cameras Show How Osama Bin Laden Died – Video

Little cameras on the helmets of Seal members captured every moment of the operation to catch Osama Bin Laden. And based on this information, CBS has created this video, to give a more accurate idea on what happened the night the most wanted man in the world was killed.

Below is the video.

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Osama bin Laden Politics United States Waterboarding

John McCain – Torture Did Not Lead To Osama Bin Laden’s Capture

John McCain is often called many things for many reasons (we will not get into them now). But one thing you must respect Mr. McCain for is the many years he spent in captivity while flying bombing missions in the Vietnam war. John McCain was a prisoner of war and faced bouts of torture from his captors.

So when McCain talks about torture, it would be a wise idea to listen to someone with first hand knowledge. In a Washington Post op-ed written on Thursday, McCain responded to the claims of many in his own Republican party that intelligence gathered under torture led to Osama Bin Laden’s capture. Mr. McCain spoke about some of the acts employed by United States personnel, namely water-boarding;

Much of this debate is a definitional one: whether any or all of these methods constitute torture. I believe some of them do, especially waterboarding, which is a mock execution and thus an exquisite form of torture. As such, they are prohibited by American laws and values, and I oppose them.

After stating his personal feelings on water-boarding, Mr. McCain – the Republican 2008 Presidential nominee and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee – dove into the debate head-on, saying that any claims by former Bush officials that torture led to Bin Laden’s capture were “false.”

But this must be an informed debate. Former attorney general Michael Mukaseyrecently claimed that “the intelligence that led to bin Laden . . . began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information — including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.” That is false.

I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.

This must be shocking news for those on Fox News and most of the Republican leaders, who, on the Sunday talk shows had a field day promoting the lie that torturing Khalid Sheik Mohammed revealed the name of the courier to Osama Bin Laden. Instead of accepting the fact that Bin Laden was captured on President’s Obama’s watch, these partisan Republican leaders got their talking points from Fox News, and ran with it.

Mr. McCain continued;

In fact, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced false and misleading information. He specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an al-Qaeda facilitator — none of which was true. According to the staff of the Senate intelligence committee, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee — information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in al-Qaeda and his true relationship to bin Laden — was obtained through standard, noncoercive means.

One of the claims John McCain made in the 2008 presidential election was that he was still a maverick. Well you can’t get more mavericky than this.

At a time when Republicans are looking for any kind of victory, even trying to take one away from a Democratic President, one Republican is standing up and speaking the truth – a rare act. And for that, John McCain has regained his maverick status.

Hopefully, it’ll stick around for a while.

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Barack Obama Newt Gingrich Politics Republican Sonia Sotomayor Soviet Union United States

Newt “Fraud And Trickery” Gingrich For President

So Newt decided to throw his hat in the ring. Mr. Gingrich has decided that what America needs now is a Republican President who’s on the ball. One who is able to see through the fraud and trickery of the Democrats. The only problem is, fraud and trickery is Newt’s middle name. Try as you may, you won’t find a politician more trickier than Newt Gingrich.

Mother Jones has a piece out that goes through some of the more inflammatory remarks and doings of Newt, since he first joined congress in 1978, spanning some of his most infamous remarks to date. These include, but not limited to;

  • His 1978 address to Congressional Republicans urging them to be more nasty
  • Another speech in 1984, where he charges Democrats of “appeasement and distributing ‘communist propaganda,'”
  • And yet another speech in 1984, where he quotes a conservative study and argues that it was time to stop using the label “patriots” when talking about Democrats. According to Newt, “enough historical evidence exists,” to prove that Democrats cannot be patriots.
  • And in 1985, when he talked about Democrats foreign policy, Newt said, “Adolph Hitler must somewhere be burning in hell, wishing he had lived two generations later, so he could manipulate Americans instead of Englishmen.”

The article, written by David Corn and Tim Murphy, details the last 33 years of Newt Gingrich. But if you don’t have the time to read through the garbage that sums up Newt’s political and personal life, the New York Times published a piece summarizing some of the more  outrageous and divisive statements;

The Democrats who won in 2008, including President Obama, are “left-wing radicals” who lead a “secular socialist machine,” he wrote in his 2010 book, “To Save America.” He accused them of producing “the greatest political corruption ever seen in modern America.” And then the inevitable historical coup de grâce: “The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.”

The slurs don’t stop there. He compared the Muslims who wanted to open an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan to the German Reich, saying it “would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum.” He is promoting the fringe idea that “jihadis” are intent on imposing Islamic law on every American village and farm.

Last year, he called for a federal law to stop the (nonexistent) onslaught of Sharia on American jurisprudence and accused the left of refusing to acknowledge its “mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” This nuanced grasp of world affairs was reinforced when he said that Mr. Obama displayed “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.”

In his world, advocates for gay rights are imposing a “gay and secular fascism” using violence and harassment, blacks have little entrepreneurial tradition, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court is a “Latina woman racist.” (He kind of took back that last slur.)

And even Newt’s own mother unintentionally threw him under the bus back in the 1990’s, when she quoted something he said about Hillery Clinton, then first Lady of the United States.

Yes, the fraud and trickery of Newt Gingrich is abundant. Just what we need in the White House!

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It’s Official! Conservative Media Lies… A Lot!

We’re bringing you a bit of news we’ve already known for some time, but it feels good repeating it again – and again!  So just in case there’s anyone out there who doesn’t already know, this makes it official – one more time!

A new study confirms the following – that liberal reporters and pundits stick to the facts, while the conservatives’ excuse for a reporter/pundit simply make stuff up.

The most interesting conclusion of the report is the confirmation that liberals are accurate more often than conservatives. That may be the result of the inherent slant of factual information that was first identified by fake pundit Stephen Colbert who noted that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

The top performer in the study is Paul Krugman of the New York Times. The worst performer is uber-pundit George Will.

I am a little disappointed though, I thought Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would have definitely tied for last. And let’s not forget a previous study that finds Fox News just makes stuff up.

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Barack Obama Osama bin Laden Politics United States

President Obama’s Approval Rating Hits 60 Percent

According to a new poll by the Associated Press-GFK, Americans are beginning to appreciate the efforts of President Obama. The poll was taken after the President ordered the capture/killing of Osama Bin Laden, and shows his biggest rating in over 2 years.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s approval rating has hit its highest point in two years — 60 percent — and more than half of Americans now say he deserves to be re-elected, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll taken after U.S. forces killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

In worrisome signs for Republicans, the president’s standing improved not just on foreign policy but also on the economy, and independent Americans — a key voting bloc in the November 2012 presidential election — caused the overall uptick in support by sliding back to Obama after fleeing for much of the past two years.

Fox News and conservative radio have their work cut out for them over the next few months. Watch for the lies and mis-information from these media outlets to increase. Maybe somehow, they will resurrect Bin Laden before the 2012 elections!

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Barack Obama Featured Mike Huckabee Republican Satan United States

Oh My Gawd. Mike Huckabee Is Crazy!

Cliché Time…

If we are known by the company we keep, and birds of a feather flock together, then what exactly does it say about Mike Huckabee – the 2008 Republican presidential candidate and possible 2012 Republican candidate for President – when his closest advisor, Janet Porter says “President Obama is a Soviet Secret Agent?” Seriously!

Huckabee has joked that he “answers” to “two Janets.” One is his wife, Janet Huckabee. The other is Janet Porter, the onetime co-chair of Huckabee’s Faith and Values Coalition. And Porter, the former governor has said, is his “prophetic voice.” But that voice has said some weird things over the years: Porter has maintained that Obama represents an “inhumane, sick, and sinister evil,” and she has warned that Democrats want to throw Christians in jail merely for practicing their faith.

She’s attributed Haiti’s high poverty rate to the fact that the country is “dedicated to Satan,” and she suggested that gay marriage caused Noah’s Flood. And there’s this: In a 2009 column for conservative news site WorldNetDaily, Porter asserted that President Barack Obama is a Soviet secret agent, groomed since birth to destroy the United States from within.

So if Janet Porter is Mike Huckabee’s “prophetic voice,” and her opinions are clearly those of the insane, does that mean that Huckabee is therefore insane and thus, a crazy Republican is getting ready to possibly run for the job of Commander In Chief of this nation?

OMG!

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