President makes surprise stop in Afghanistan - Spokesman.com - March 28, 2010:
"President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Sunday for a firsthand look at the 8-year-old war he inherited and dramatically escalated.

After an overnight flight from Washington, the president landed in Afghanistan for a stay of just a few hours, all in darkness. He flew by helicopter from Bagram Air Field to the capital, where he was greeted at the presidential palace by Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, given just an hour’s notice of Obama arrival. A military honor guard stood at attention as Obama walked across red carpets.

It was Obama’s second stop in a war zone as commander in chief, coming about a year after a similarly secretive trip to Iraq."

Like Bush before him, Obama is a coward. The troops he sends to die don't have the option of staying just a few hours, all in darkness. It made me sick whenever anyone in the Bush administration made these "surprise" visits and it still does with Obama. Disgusting.

Matt Taibbi - True/Slant: The Catholic Church is a Criminal Enterprise:
"But these guys not only don’t kill themselves, they go out in public ranting about how wronged they are and how they’ve been fucked over by the evil New York Times for airing out their dirty laundry. Again, I admire the balls, but seriously, they must know the game is almost up. Sooner or later people are going to catch on, the state is going to make a move, and there’s going to be a hell of a lot of church property going up for auction along with the seized Escalades of DEA-busted drug dealers. Or maybe not in this lifetime — but one can only hope."

A bit over the top, but just a bit. Stuck in the middle of hard-right Catholicism though, it's apparent they have circled the wagons and girded their loins and battened down the hatches. The God of Love is nowhere to be found any more. It's Us against Them and Them is pure evil everywhere you look. Oh and Them is everyone else regardless.

So keep it up Matt et al. Constant pressure over and over may yet do some damage.

Dennis Kucinich Flips On Health Care Reform: Will Support The Bill:
"Kucinich explained his decision in the following terms: He fought to make the bill better as long as he could. The bill is now written and the decision is not whether it's the bill he'd want but whether it is better to support it as it is or oppose it. If this health care reform effort failed, just as Clinton's effort failed a decade and a half ago, it would make future attempts at reforming the system that much more difficult. 'This is a defining moment for whether or not we'll have any opportunity to move off square one on the issue of health care. And so even though I don't like the bill, I've made a decision to support it in the hopes that we can move towards a more comprehensive approach once this legislation is done', he said. 'A health care failure could destroy any transformative potential left in Obama's administration', he worried."

I don't understand the rationale that if THIS bill fails, all future bills will fail also. That's not even logically sound. And as far as this administration having any "transformative potential", they destroyed that as soon as they took office and picked Clinton's money men and decided to continue the Bush policies.

I don't understand, with a majority in both houses of Congress and control of the executive branch, how this party cannot create any constitutional law it wants. The Republicans were able to do just that for 8 years. It's just another example of the mind boggling ineptitude of Democrats.

The Reason So Many People Are Unemployed (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought):
"Now some people will claim that the Federal Reserve has done all it can to create more jobs but the recession is so deep this time that there’s nothing else it can do. But that’s just not true — even the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, says it’s not true. He was asked about this in a Senate hearing. As the Economist summarized his response: “Mr Bernanke does not want to risk a de-anchoring of inflation expectations. He is willing to accept 10% or greater unemployment and the resulting economic and political fall-out in order to avoid that risk.”"

What courage! Willing to accept political fall-out, willing to let millions lose their jobs all to prevent the "de-anchoring of inflation expectations".

But what do you do when your outrage meter is already at 10? There is no 11, just 10.

Official dogma: Iraq War a success - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com: "It was only a matter of time before American elites abandoned their faux regret over Iraq. For tribalists and nationalists, America can err in its execution but never in its motives."

It's like 200+ years of history never happened for these people.