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Top Ten Clint Eastwood Empty-Chair Falsehoods

Posted on 09/01/2012 by Juan

You can’t see me, but I’m talking to Clint Eastwood sitting spectrally in an empty chair, and I am replying to his confused rant.

1. Mr. Eastwood, you called the failure to close the Guantanamo Bay penitentiary a broken promise. President Obama was prevented from closing Guantanamo by the Republican Congress, which refused to allocate the funds necessary to end it. Do you remember this this Washington Post headline, “House acts to block closing of Guantanamo”?

2. Mr. Eastwood you called “stupid” the idea of trying terrorists who attacked New York in a civilian courtroom in New York. But what would have better vindicated the strengths of America’s rule of law, the thing about the US most admired abroad? Mr. Eastwood, perhaps you spent so many years playing vigilantes who just blew people away (people who in the real world we would have needed to try to establish their guilt or innocence) that you want to run our judicial system as a kangaroo court.

3. You complained that there are 23 million unemployed Americans. Actually there are 12.8 million unemployed Americans. But there are no measures by which W. created more jobs per month on average during his presidency than has Obama, and there is good reason to blame current massive unemployment on Bush’s policies of deregulating banks and other financial institutions, which caused the crash of 2008.

4. You criticized President Obama for giving a target date for withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan of 2014, and alleged that Romney said, “Why don’t you just bring them home tomorrow morning?” But George W. Bush set a target date of 31 December, 2011, for withdrawal from Iraq, and did so in negotiation with the Iraqi parliament. Was that also a bad idea? Have you considered that NATO allies and the government of President Hamid Karzai may have demanded an announced withdrawal date as a prerequisite of continued cooperation with the US there? And, just for your information, Gov. Romney hasn’t called for US troops to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately.

5. Mr. Eastwood, you made fun of Joe Biden as the ‘intellect of the Democratic Party.’ Vice President Biden was chair or ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for decades, helped to save the Bosnian Muslims from genocide, and passed the Violence against Women Act. I haven’t always agreed with him myself, but he has been among our more thoughtful contributors to American foreign policy. You, on the other hand, like to pretend to shoot down large numbers of people over the course of a violent two-hour fantasy.

6. You criticized President Obama for ‘talking about student loans.’ The Republican Party, especially Paul Ryan, wants to take away the government-backed loans on which millions of students depend, at a time when student indebtedness is at an all-time high. Just because some people are way overpaid for play-acting doesn’t mean that ordinary people don’t need student loans to get the credentials that allow them to make a better life for themselves.

7. Mr. Eastwood, you criticized President Obama for saying he is an ‘ecological man’ but flying in Air Force One. Under President Obama, non-hydro forms of green energy in the United States have doubled from 3 percent of electricity production to 6 percent. Obama’s tax credits have been a big reason why. In contrast, Mr. Romney wants to get rid of credits for wind energy, which will hurt the Iowa economy, e.g., and is in the back pocket of Big Oil, so that he will stand in the way of green energy. I think doubling renewables rather offsets an occasional jet ride. And, it is Obama’s policies that will get us to the solar-driven airplane, not Romney’s.

8. You made fun of Obama because he has a law degree from Harvard. I just want you to sit in your empty chair for a while, and think about that.

9. You called Mr. Romney a ‘stellar businessman,’ but his business appears to have been to send American jobs to China.

10. I don’t know who suggested to you that you address us at the end and say, “Make my day,” with the implication that we should vote Romney-Ryan. But what I remember is, that phrase is a threat you are going to do bad things to us.

source

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Michael Moore on Clint Eastwood’s Delusional Speech at the Republican National Convention

by Aug 31, 2012 6:34 AM EDT

The Hollywood legend growling at an empty chair will live on in infamy as the moment when a crazy old man hijacked a national party’s most important gathering to tell off the president.

Speaking to Invisible Obama last night, in a performance that seemed to have been written by Timothy Leary and performed by Cheech & Chong, Clint Eastwood  was able to drive home to tens of millions of viewers the central message of this year’s Republican National Convention: We Are Delusional and Detached from Reality. Vote for Us!

The footage of Eastwood rambling and mumbling to his “Harvey”—President Obama—will be played to audiences a hundred years from now as the Most Bizarre Convention Moment Ever. The people of the future will know nothing about Dirty Harry or Josey Wales or Million Dollar Baby. They will know about the night a crazy old man hijacked a national party’s most important gathering so he could literally tell the president to go do something to himself (i.e. fuck  himself). In those few moments (and these days, it only takes a few moments—see Anthony Weiner), he completely upended and redefined how he’ll be remembered by younger and future generations.

Clint’s Crazy Speech

A few years ago, at the annual National Board of Review film awards held at Tavern on the Green in New York, I was there to hand out one of the honors. When it came time for Eastwood to accept his, he went up to the microphone and growled to me in front of the audience, “If you ever show up at my house with that camera, I’ll shoot you on sight.” The audience laughed, I laughed, but the person who issued the threat wasn’t laughing. That creeped me out a bit. I made sure never to go stand on Clint Eastwood’s lawn.

But as I said, the best outcome from the incident last night was that it showed just how out of touch Republicans are these days. It’s as if they want a divorce from us, the American mainstream, so they can go live in the land of legitimate rapes and ice caps that don’t melt. Most Americans don’t live there on Planet Koo-Koo, and I don’t suspect many will be visiting there any time soon.

Thanks, Clint, you made our day!

source

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Michael Moore is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker and author. He directed and produced Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Sicko. He has also written seven books, most recently, Mike’s Election Guide 2008.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.

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Obama Admin. Blatantly Lied About SEAL Team Killing Bin Laden in Self-Defense

 

John Glaser, August 29, 2012

From the Washington Post, news that the Obama administration completely lied about the killing of bin Laden being in self-defense:

Bin Laden apparently was shot in the head when he looked out of his bedroom door into the top-floor hallway of his compound as SEALs rushed up a narrow stairwell in his direction, according to former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette, writing under the pseudonym Mark Owen in “No Easy Day.”

…The author writes that the man ducked back into his bedroom and the SEALs followed, only to find the man crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood with a hole visible on the right side of his head and two women wailing over his body.

Bissonnette says the point man pulled the two women out of the way and shoved them into a corner. He and the other SEALs trained their guns’ laser sights on bin Laden’s still-twitching body, shooting him several times until he lay motionless. Only when they wiped the blood off his face, were they certain it was bin Laden.

These revelations illustrate two important points from the bin Laden raid. First, the Obama administration pathologically lies about the nature of their secret operations in order to make targeted killings seem like self-defense when they are not and thus to immunize the operatives and the administration. This should be a lesson coloring our perceptions of everything from drone strikes to other elite commando raids, most of which we know comparatively little next to the Abbottabad operation.

The other point falls somewhere along the lines of what Noam Chomsky wrote immediately following the assassination operation on bin Laden. “It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law,” he wrote. “There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition…In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial.” But if President Obama suspects you’ve done wrong, no court or trial or judge are needed; he’ll just kill you by royal decree.

source

see also Pentagon may take legal action against author

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Obama on Syria : chemical weapons are a red line

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“An Extreme Choice”: Touting Ayn Rand, GOP Pick Paul Ryan Backs Dismantling New Deal.

Democracy Now

[youtube http://youtu.be/uinYyuSNQJE?]

Part 2

[youtube http://youtu.be/9pw1VkL6OJY?]

The Paul Ryan Vision: Ban Abortion, Defund Contraception, Outlaw In Vitro Fertilization

[youtube http://youtu.be/d7u4m62_K3s?]
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Foreign Cash Disqualifies Romney from Presidential Bid

Romney’s Faces Prosecution for Campaign Finance Violations

…by  Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

No other American presidential candidate has ever left the US to garner campaign contributions from foreign citizens. 

There is a reason for this, one Romney and his staff seem oblivious to and the mainstream media has ignored. 

Using foreign contributions in any American election is a felony. 

If you go outside the US, if you stay inside the US, if your contributor is living in the US but not a citizen, any money you get can mean years in jail.

For Romney, he went the whole way, outside the US, foreign citizens, and while traveling humiliated himself and his country with his ignorance and his attempts to trade illegal cash for promises of illegal war.  One could hardly break more laws if one wanted.

Romney raised millions in foreign cash at fundraisers across Israel.  One table alone gave him a million in cash.  None was from American citizens.  Fewer than 10% of Romney’s contributors in Israel are estimated to be “dual citizens.”

A real question many might ask, why would a presidential candidate travel outside the US to seek campaign money at all?  As the Supreme Court points out, in the decision Bluman, et al., v. Federal Elections Commission, no foreign cash, especially collected overseas, can ever be used in an American campaign.

Here is what the New York Times reports on recent court decisions that disqualify Romney as a candidate:

January 9, 2012, 3:34 pm

Supreme Court Retains Ban on Foreign Campaign Donations

By JOHN H. CUSHMAN JR.

In a terse four words, the Supreme Court on Monday issued an order upholding prohibitions against foreigners making contributions to influence American elections.

The decision clamped shut an opening that some thought the court had created two years ago in its Citizens United decision, when it relaxed campaign-finance limits on corporations and labor unions. On Monday the Supreme Court, upholding a lower court’s decision in Bluman, et al., v. Federal Election Commission, refused to extend its reasoning in Citizens United to cover foreigners living temporarily here.

Foreign nationals, other than lawful permanent residents, are completely banned from donating to candidates or parties, or making independent expenditures in federal, state or local elections.

The Supreme Court’s order did not discuss the merits or suggest that there was any dissent among the justices.

The iconic photo below, from the Washington Post, hands Romney out to dry:

A man with some real problems to wail about;  “Please g-d, don’t let them catch me…”

Here is what the Washington Post reported on Romney’s illegal fundraising efforts inside Israel:

JERUSALEM — Mitt Romney held an intimate breakfast fundraiser here Monday with some of his campaign’s biggest benefactors, telling them about the spiritual impact his trip to Israel had had on him.

Seated around a U-shaped conference table with roughly 40 donors, with Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson immediately to his left, Romney said he was “overwhelmingly impressed with the hand of providence.”

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was expected to raise more than $1 million from the donors, who each were required to raise or donate $25,000 to $50,000 to attend the event. All of the donors are U.S. citizens, and many of them flew here from the United States to be with Romney during his 36-hour visit to Jerusalem.

Many of those in attendance at the posh King David Hotel are major bundlers for Romney’s campaign, raising tens of thousands of dollars from their business associates and friends. Adelson, for instance, has personally committed to giving tens of millions of dollars to a pro-Romney super PAC.

He sure has a big smile on his face

The problem stems with bad legal advice Romney received from his campaign finance staff.  The Romney campaign had been laundering money through corporations, money moved into the US under the “Citizen’s United” decision of the US Supreme Court.

Romney figured he could then go anywhere in the world, peddle foreign policy, promise war, play president and collect cash from foreigners though this is specifically prohibited by US law.

In doing so, he is no longer qualified for office and, if challenged by Ron Paul, has no standing at the Republican Convention. With such a clear violation of law, not just blatant but massive, Romney could face years in prison.

The Romney/Bain legal team was not available for comment.

It is now for Romney to prove that not one cent of contributions collected from thousands in Israel was actually collected from Israel.  We wish him good luck with that.

source

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An Unusually Candid Interview With Mitt Romney

Posted by
romney-victory.jpg

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) – Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney dropped by The Borowitz Report today and gave what some are calling his most candid interview ever:

Q: What do you see as the biggest challenge of your campaign going forward?

A: Well, I suppose the biggest challenge would be the same one I’ve faced all my life: that no one likes me. But as I’ve found in the past, money usually takes care of that.

Q: What do you need to do to persuade the right wing of your party that you’re one of them?

A: Well, first and foremost, I have to do a better job of convincing them that I believe in the crazy things they do. The problem is, the media keeps emphasizing aspects of my resume that make me sound sane, like when I gave people in Massachusetts healthcare. Talk about something I’d like to have a Mulligan on! Now, there’s stuff in my biography that would help me with the Republican base—like the time in prep school when I pinned that gay boy to the ground and cut his hair off—but that gets little if any coverage. This is a clear case of media bias, and I wish it would stop.

Q: How are you working to change the perception that you’re sane?

A: Well, obviously, by saying stuff that makes me sound like I’m off my rocker. Sheldon Adelson has been super helpful with this. If I could just channel that guy, I’d be ready for the booby hatch! I mean, you want to talk about a few bricks shy of a load. [Makes circular motion by the side of his head.] Anyway, he’s given me some of my best lines for my stump speech. Like the one about how on Day One I’m going to move Obamacare and Planned Parenthood to Iran and then bomb the hell out of all three. That’s pure Sheldon.

Q: Speaking of your stump speech, recently you’ve been talking about how President Obama has fostered a “culture of dependency.” What’s the impetus behind that?

A: Oh, that’s to appeal to voters who don’t like Black people. I thought that was obvious! Laughing Out Loud. Well, I’m afraid that’s all I have time for. I have to take some of the old Bain gang out for dinner and make sure we “keep our stories straight” about when I worked there.

Get the Borowitz Report delivered to your inbox for free by clicking here.

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AIPAC: The Voice of America

There can be no doubt, at least as far as Middle East Policy is concerned, that AIPAC is the Voice of America.

Although I have heard AIPAC pronounced in two distinct ways, one of which is A-PAC, I have chosen to pronounce the acronym with the same initial sound as in the word ‘aisle’. To me, this pronunciation is more appropriate, because the use of the A for America sound is subtly misleading. The organization has nothing to do with A for America, it is all about I for Israel.

In the graphic illustration near the end of this video, had the mathematical relationships been absolutely accurate, either the Orange would have filled the screen or the pea would have been invisible. The discrepancy between the power AIPAC wields, compared to the rest of the American population, is immense, and that power benefits one nation: Israel.
….

A closer look at how the members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee exercise a grotesquely disproportionate amount of power over the foreign policy of the United States.

My thanks to YouTube7hevo1d for the Dollar Drain animation — http://www.youtube.com/7hevo1d and to David Dees for his incisive graphics — http://www.dees2.com/

While I was checking the final edit of this video, the Israelis gave the world yet another stark reminder that they are not fit to control a collection of bumper cars, let alone a land they have stolen from others, much less an arsenal of over 200 nuclear weapons. Clearly, Israel does not want peace with the Palestinians or anyone else in their region, yet the membership of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, support, aid and abet these criminals in their disregard for the lives of others. They have done their best to suppress the Goldstone Report on the 2008/9 attack on Gaza, and now, no doubt, they will side with Israel in their latest atrocity. I am referring to the attack of May 31st, 2010, on the Gaza Flotilla which was attempting to bring much-needed humanitarian aid to the Palestinians in their beleaguered, fenced-off, Apartheid Prison called The Gaza Strip.

Do these Israelophants, the members of AIPAC, realise just how the rest of the world views them, Israel, and, because of the connections, the United States and its citizens? If they don’t, then I can tell them: With deep suspicion, dismay and an increasing lack of respect, because, it seems, Americans are incapable of running their own country, decently, by electing officials who don’t take bribes or other favours, but who have the interests of their own constituents in mind when they vote on how their taxes should best be spent. And no half-way decent public official would vote to invade another country, in order to steal its oil and other resources, under the pretext of protecting their own security, and Israel’s from thousands of miles away. A majority of the current membership of the United States congress are, in fact, traitors to their own nation, because they have indicated, time and time again, a desire to put the protection of the Apartheid State of Israel ahead of considerations for the safety and security of the realm to which they have been pledged their allegiance: The United States of America.

Treason from Within
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the galleys, heard in the very hall of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor — he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and wears their face and their garment, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation — he works secretly and unknown to undermine the pillars of a city — he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.”
Cicero, 42 B.C.

Because of the uncertainties and ambiguities associated with U.S. aid to Israel, arriving at a precise figure for total direct U.S. aid to Israel probably is not possible. Parts of it are buried in the budgets of other government agencies—mostly the Defense Department—or in a form not easily quantifiable—such as the early disbursement of aid, allowing Israel a direct gain and the U.S. Treasury a direct loss of interest on the unspent money. The figures quoted in the video have been taken from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2008, pages 10-11; subtitled Congress Watch.
http://wrmea.org/component/content/article/245-2008-november/3845-congress-wa…

Other references on aid to Israel:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6784 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21790.htm

Attack on the Liberty
http://www.ussliberty.org/gifs.htm
http://www.ussliberty.org/moorer2004.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6ng5bgenmw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqL9q6BnX54&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaCjkdueA5o

Five Dancing Israelis Arrested on 9/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRfhUezbKLw

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The Killing Of America (1982) Uncut

[youtube http://youtu.be/MameAk4FVo8?]

A documentary of the decline of America. It features a lot a footage (most exclusive to this film) from race riots to serial killers and much-much more. While this documentary is easily available everywhere else, it has never been released, distributed, televised nor made available for sale in the USA. This documentary argues that the turning point was when John Kennedy was assassinated in Texas 1963 combined with poverty, racism, the Vietnam war, and gun violence but unlike Michael Moores heavy handed 2002 documentary “Bowling for Columbine” (Which is often compared to this documentary) this film never becomes preachy nor does it blame guns in the same way.

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