Like this:

1.  Oklahoma City:

“A retired military explosives expert says the government’s “fertilizer truck bomb” story is hogwash.

Ben Partin, a retired brigadier general in the United States Air Force, has provided every member of Congress a detailed, comprehensive report of his analysis of the April 19, bombing.

The general contends the explosion was caused in part by demolition charges placed at critical structural points inside the building.

The official story by the Clinton administration’s FBI, accepted virtuallly without question by the Establishment media, is that the bombing was caused solely by a single truck bomb consisting of 4,800 pounds of ammonium nitrate transported to the location in a Ryder truck which was parked outside the building.

Partin said the destruction to the building could not have possibly resulted from such a bomb alone.

To verify his analytical conclusions, Partin visited Oklahoma City during the last week of June 1995, where he had the opportunity to review hundreds of photographs taken throughout the cleanup operation.

The photos, taken before the debris was hauled off and buried at another site, provide, in Partin’s view, “irrefutable evidence that at least four demolition charges were set off at four critical columns of the reinforced concrete structure at the floor level of the third floor.”

Says Partin: “Based on my experience in weapons development and bomb damage analysis, and on my review of all evidence available, I can say, with a high level of confidence, that the damage pattern on the reinforced concrete superstructure could not possibly have been attained from a single truck bomb without supplementing demolition charge.

“The total incompatibility of this pattern of destruction with a single truck bomb lies in the simple, incontrovertible fact that some of the columns collapsed that should not have collapsed if the damage was caused solely by a truck bomb, and some of the columns were left standing that should have collapsed if the damage had been caused by the truck bomb.”

The architect of the Alfred P. Murrah Building, Partin said, agrees with the retired general’s assessment. “In my discussions with the building architect,” said Partin, “he told me that the residual building was structurally sound and that the Murrah building could have been rebuilt. This is totally consistent with the collapse of columns with demolition charges because the inflicted structural damage is localized.”

http://www.orwelltoday.com/okpartin.shtml

2.  “The Conspiracy Theorist Label

The conspiracy theorist label is the cleverest tool the conspirators have come up with to deter the people from investigating and questioning their (the people’s) own government.

The truth is, the greatest threat to our national security is not an external foe, but the secrecy of our own government. Secrecy mis-justified by the claim that it is in the interest of national security. How convenient for the profiteers of the national security state.“

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/16/732284/-The-Conspiracy-Theorist-Label

3.  How sad, since the Democrats ran on an anti-war, close Guantanamo platform last Fall:

“Senate Dems to Block Funding for Gitmo Closure“

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/05/19/senate-dems-to-block-funding-for-gitmo-closure/

4.  “The Disease of Permanent War

The embrace by any society of permanent war is a parasite that devours the heart and soul of a nation. Permanent war extinguishes liberal, democratic movements. It turns culture into nationalist cant. It degrades and corrupts education and the media, and wrecks the economy. The liberal, democratic forces, tasked with maintaining an open society, become impotent. The collapse of liberalism, whether in imperial Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire or Weimar Germany, ushers in an age of moral nihilism. This moral nihilism comes is many colors and hues. It rants and thunders in a variety of slogans, languages and ideologies. It can manifest itself in fascist salutes, communist show trials or Christian crusades. It is, at its core, all the same. It is the crude, terrifying tirade of mediocrities who find their identities and power in the perpetuation of permanent war. 

It was a decline into permanent war, not Islam, which killed the liberal, democratic movements in the Arab world, ones that held great promise in the early part of the 20th century in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. It is a state of permanent war that is finishing off the liberal traditions in Israel and the United States. The moral and intellectual trolls—the Dick Cheneys, the Avigdor Liebermans, the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads—personify the moral nihilism of perpetual war. They manipulate fear and paranoia. They abolish civil liberties in the name of national security. They crush legitimate dissent. They bilk state treasuries. They stoke racism.

“War,” Randolph Bourne commented acidly, “is the health of the state.” 

…

Citizens in a state of permanent war are bombarded with the insidious militarized language of power, fear and strength that mask an increasingly brittle reality. The corporations behind the doctrine of permanent war—who have corrupted Leon Trotsky’s doctrine of permanent revolution—must keep us afraid. Fear stops us from objecting to government spending on a bloated military. Fear means we will not ask unpleasant questions of those in power. Fear means that we will be willing to give up our rights and liberties for security. Fear keeps us penned in like domesticated animals.
…

Our permanent war economy has not been challenged by Obama and the Democratic Party. They support its destructive fury because it funds them. They validate its evil assumptions because to take them on is political suicide. They repeat the narrative of fear because it keeps us dormant. They do this because they have become weaker than the corporate forces that profit from permanent war.

The hollowness of our liberal classes, such as the Democrats, empowers the moral nihilists. A state of permanent war means the inevitable death of liberalism. Dick Cheney may be palpably evil while Obama is merely weak, but to those who seek to keep us in a state of permanent war, it does not matter. They get what they want. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote “Notes From the Underground” to illustrate what happens to cultures when a liberal class, like ours, becomes sterile, defeated dreamers. The main character in “Notes From the Underground” carries the bankrupt ideas of liberalism to their logical extreme. He becomes the enlightenment ideal. He eschews passion and moral purpose. He is rational. He prizes realism over sanity, even in the face of self-destruction. These acts of accommodation doom the Underground Man, as it doomed imperial Russia and as it will doom us. “

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090518_the_disease_of_permanent_war/?ln

5.  “Ads you probably won’t see in the US

These ads were designed for the History Channel in South Africa. I don’t think Jon Stewart would care much for the first one:

“

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/05/18/ads-you-probably-wont-see-in-the-us/

6.  Good:

“The Obama-Netanyahu talks were clearly a train wreck for Israel’s far rightwing Likud Party. The talks went on nearly twice as long as scheduled, suggesting a lot of bumps in the road. The two seemed to me stiff in their body language afterward, and they clearly did not agree on virtually anything important. Both finessed the disagreement by appealing to vague generalities and invoking the long term. Obama wants to negotiate with Iran regarding its civilian nuclear enrichment research program, but stressed that his patience is not infinite. Netanyahu, of course, wants military action against Iran on a short timetable.”

http://www.juancole.com/

7.  “Government Has Pledged $12.8 Trillion on Bailouts – Every Household on the Hook for $109,887

Bloomberg has a good article comparing the amounts pledged in the bailouts with relevant figures:

The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year …

The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.

That means that every American household is on the hook for $109,887 for the bailouts.

For background, see this and this.

Note: If any of the government’s loans, commitments or investments actually get paid back or pay off, then that amount would be reduced. However, some analysts have said that the government will end up committing closer to $20 trillion, rather than $12.8 trillion.“

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/government-has-pledged-128-trillion-on.html

8.  “Obama’s embrace of Bush terrorism policies is celebrated as “Centrism”

I wonder how many people from across the political spectrum will have to point this out before Obama defenders will finally admit that it’s true.
…
Most important, Goldsmith expresses admiration for Obama’s rhetorical and symbolic changes — such as Obama’s emphasis on obtaining Congressional support for Bush’s policies while highlighting his deep concern for “civil liberties” — because Goldsmith believes that Obama’s rhetoric vests Bush’s policies with more credibility, ensures more bipartisan and Congressional support for these policies, makes them more palatable to Democrats, and thus ensures that those policies will endure in a stronger and longer-lasting form
…
What’s most striking about the denial of so many Obama supporters about all of this is that Obama officials haven’t really tried to hide it.  White House counsel Greg Craig told The New York Times‘ Charlie Savage back in February that Obama “is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency.”  It was in that same article where Savage — a favorite of Bush critics when Bush was president — warned that after the first week of Executive Orders, “the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting Al Qaeda.”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

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