Michelle Obama - Extended Interview by Soledad O'Brien

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Michelle Obama - Extended Interview by Soledad O'Brien

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Michelle speaks at length with Soledad O'Brien on topics ranging from her family to attacks on her husband as he campaigns for President. Appeared on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360.

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Barack Obama's response to Bush's final State of the Union

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Barack Obama's response to Bush's final State of the Union

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Barack Obama responds to George W. Bush's final State of the Union address.

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Barack Obama in Colorado: Iraq

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Barack Obama in Colorado: Iraq

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Excerpt: Speaking to a huge crowd at the University of Colorado, Barack Obama speaks of the most important foreign policy decision of recent times, the decision to invade Iraq.

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Virginia Jefferson-Jackson Dinner - Barack Obama Speaks

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Virginia Jefferson-Jackson Dinner - Barack Obama Speaks

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After winning the Nebraska, Washington State, Louisiana, and Virgin Islands Democratic primaries and caucuses, Senator Barack Obama addresses a roaring crowd at the Virginia Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. This occurred a couple days before the 'Potomac Primaries' in mid-February 2008.

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Barack Obama: Yes We Can

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Barack Obama: Yes We Can

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Barack Obama speaks in Nashua, New Hampshire on the night of the 2008 New Hampshire primary. Highlight footage from the past week in New Hampshire included.

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Barack Obama in New Orleans, LA

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Barack Obama in New Orleans, LA

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Barack addressed a crowd of 3,500 supporters at Tulane University on Feb 2, 2008

New Orleans represents a central theme of his campaign.. Change does not happen from the top down, but happens from the bottom up. "When we understand we are the United States of America, there is not anything we can do as a country" He uses New Orleans, specifically the Katrina hurricane aftermath, as an example of how America failed its people. "For all of its wealth and power, something is not right in America... a President who only saw America from the window of an airplane rather than down here on the ground with the people..."

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Olbermann on Newt Gingrich's call to destroy freedom of speech

First they came for the fourth amendment, then they came for Habeas Corpus, and then they came for Freedom of Speech but there was no-one allowed to speak up. This is Olbermann dissecting a recent speech by Newt Gingrich in which he spins a terror tale, and uses that fictional tale to justify eroding freedom of speech and freedom of association. Newt Gingrich describes Destroying Dangerous Free Speech

The Gingrich terror tale is told at 1:00 minute into the video. He proposes "they" want to destroy an American city, and that they're using freedom of speech, freedom of association, and especially the freedom of association over the Internet, as a cover under which to plot their nefarious schemes.

But, consider, what proof does Newt have that this danger even exists? We know from recent years that the Republican party, and most especially the Bush Administration, has been making a lot of hay by selling us on terror. That we are in danger of vague threats from the Islamics lurking behind every corner with a dirty bomb or worse ready to blow us up. Once they've scared us good and well, they spring on us an answer ... a solution to the danger ... Generally these solutions have made for a step-by-step destruction of our civil liberties and what makes America great.

"We have written a blank check on drawn our liberties"

This is Olbermann commenting on the recent law, the Military Commissions Act, which suspended Habeas Corpus. George W Bush and others lied to us a string of claims, lies, that led to the recent signing of this law which suspends Habeas Corpus and other guarantees. It was sold to us as a way to protect freedoms, but are we free if the government can just lock us up with no just cause, not required to show proof of our existence, etc? This has happened in the past, in the United States, when Habeas Corpus was suspended. At times Newspaper journalists and editors have been imprisoned, by the government, for the things they wrote in their newspapers. And more famously during World War II the Japanese descendants living in the U.S. were imprisoned, not because of anything they did, but because they were Japanese. We have entered a new era where the government is now free to do this again.

Here's another video talking about what Habeas Corpus is. It's pointed out the U.S. says, about Habeas Corpus, that it cannot be suspended unless the country finds itself in grave danger such as invasion or rebellion. Now, is the U.S. in actual danger of any invasion?

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend"

It's clear that if Hillary Clinton won the Presidency in 2008, then nothing would change in terms of this illegal war in the middle east. This video is former President Clinton explaining his view of the war.

Smoking gun on Bush's failure to catch Osama bin Laden?

In February 2001 in a White House press briefing someone asked: Ari, according to India Globe, the Taliban in Afghanistan, they have offered that they are ready to hand over Osama bin Laden to Saudi Arabia if the United States would drop its sanctions, and they have a kind of deal that they want to make with the United States. Do you have any comments? What was Ari's answer? MR. FLEISCHER: Let me take that and get back to you on that. There's no record of an answer.

At cooperativeresearch.org they have this listing, which shows that the offer wasn't very strongly securious. However that video clip is being promoted around on the Internet as if it is a smoking gun indicating Bush Administration in their malfeasance.

March 2001: US and Taliban Discuss Handing over bin Laden

Taliban envoy Rahmatullah Hashimi meets with reporters, middle-ranking State Department bureaucrats, and private Afghanistan experts in Washington. He carries a gift carpet and a letter from Afghan leader Mullah Omar for President Bush. He discusses turning bin Laden over, but the US wants to be handed bin Laden and the Taliban want to turn him over to some third country. A CIA official later says, “We never heard what they were trying to say. We had no common language. Ours was, ‘Give up bin Laden.’ They were saying, ‘Do something to help us give him up.’ ... I have no doubts they wanted to get rid of him. He was a pain in the neck.” Others claim the Taliban were never sincere. About 20 more meetings on giving up bin Laden take place up until 9/11, all fruitless. [Washington Post, 10/29/2001] Allegedly, Hashimi also proposes that the Taliban would hold bin Laden in one location long enough for the US to locate and kill him. However, this offer is refused. This report, however, comes from Laila Helms, daughter of former CIA director Richard Helms. While it’s interesting that this information came out before 9/11, one must be skeptical, since Helms’ job was public relations for the Taliban. [Village Voice, 6/6/2001]

Entity Tags: Rahmatullah Hashimi, Laila Helms, Osama bin Laden, George W. Bush, Taliban, Mullah Omar

Iraq War Profiteering

Iraq For Sale is Robert Greenwald's latest movie. It is about the war profiteering done by Halliburton and other contractor companies. The story told by the movie is one of the war process being twisted by these contractor companies, being twisted by those companies for the corporate profit motive, not for the stated purpose of bringing Democracy to Iraq.

We can debate the legitimacy of the war itself, and I am completely on record of saying this war in Iraq should never have been launched, and the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan himself has called this war illegal. But to think about war profiteering companies twisting the conduct of the war so they get more profit. That is astonishingly bad to consider.

Olbermann and Greenwald expose war profiteers is an interview of Greenwald about the movie.

"The nations marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propoganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would have quit"

Last week Bill Clinton was interviewed by Chris Matthews in what Clinton took as an attack. Now, the Clintons are famous for the lines about the vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and while we do know there is such a conspiracy, perhaps the Clintons are a little sensitive to that. Who is that Conspiracy? Well, it's the Neocons for one, the people who have become the leaders in the U.S. Administration. It was they who, in the 1990's, dogged the Clintons with overly hyped allegations, some of them false.

In the interview Bill Clinton became very angry and passionate. He compared his efforts against Al Qaeda with the Bush administration saying "At least I tried" saying that the Bush Administration did not try to do anything about the Al Qaeda threat. When Clinton left office it was very well understood what the threat of Al Qaeda was, through the attacks on U.S. Embassies in Africa, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and some other events.

In 1998 when Clinton launched cruise missles against Al Qaeda bases in Sudan and Afghanistan, what did the neocons do? They berated Clinton for his focus on Al Qaeda and for missing the obvious threat of Iraq. Hmm, where have we hard that line before?

In any case, the Bush groupthink machine launched into motion attacking Clinton for daring to say anything against the Bush Administration.

Olbermann's special commentary on Clinton vs Fox has some interesting commentary on the Bush Administrations slander of Bill Clinton, and of Clintons right to speak out as he is now doing.

The Bush Administration is trying to, Olbermann asserts, rewrite history and lay the whole blame for the September 11, 2001 attack on Bill Clinton's feet. Mr. Clinton is very right to refuse this, for it was the Bush Administration who ignored the warning signs, it was the Bush Administration who focussed on the distraction that is Iraq, etc. The rewriting of history is that Clinton was so distracted by the Lewinsky scandal that he could not bring any force to bear against Al Qaeda. Well, history shows that to be false, but what else can we expect from the lie machine that is the Bush administration? The outrageous thing about this is that the people pushing that theory were the ones who in the 1990's created that environment of the overly hyped witch-hunts such as the Lewinsky scandal.

"The nations marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propoganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would have quit"

Last week Bill Clinton was interviewed by Chris Matthews in what Clinton took as an attack. Now, the Clintons are famous for the lines about the vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and while we do know there is such a conspiracy, perhaps the Clintons are a little sensitive to that. Who is that Conspiracy? Well, it's the Neocons for one, the people who have become the leaders in the U.S. Administration. It was they who, in the 1990's, dogged the Clintons with overly hyped allegations, some of them false.

In the interview Bill Clinton became very angry and passionate. He compared his efforts against Al Qaeda with the Bush administration saying "At least I tried" saying that the Bush Administration did not try to do anything about the Al Qaeda threat. When Clinton left office it was very well understood what the threat of Al Qaeda was, through the attacks on U.S. Embassies in Africa, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and some other events.

In 1998 when Clinton launched cruise missles against Al Qaeda bases in Sudan and Afghanistan, what did the neocons do? They berated Clinton for his focus on Al Qaeda and for missing the obvious threat of Iraq. Hmm, where have we hard that line before?

In any case, the Bush groupthink machine launched into motion attacking Clinton for daring to say anything against the Bush Administration.

Olbermann's special commentary on Clinton vs Fox has some interesting commentary on the Bush Administrations slander of Bill Clinton, and of Clintons right to speak out as he is now doing.

The Bush Administration is trying to, Olbermann asserts, rewrite history and lay the whole blame for the September 11, 2001 attack on Bill Clinton's feet. Mr. Clinton is very right to refuse this, for it was the Bush Administration who ignored the warning signs, it was the Bush Administration who focussed on the distraction that is Iraq, etc. The rewriting of history is that Clinton was so distracted by the Lewinsky scandal that he could not bring any force to bear against Al Qaeda. Well, history shows that to be false, but what else can we expect from the lie machine that is the Bush administration? The outrageous thing about this is that the people pushing that theory were the ones who in the 1990's created that environment of the overly hyped witch-hunts such as the Lewinsky scandal.

G.W. Bush: It's unnacceptable to think

Recently in the news has been a lot about the torture being committed by U.S. forces, about the secret prisons, the extraordinary rendition, and more. It's my opinion those acts are very Unamerican, and it shocks and angers me that it is Americans who are performing them.

Colin Powell wrote a letter saying that the world is beginning to doubt the legitimacy of the war in Iraq and other things. I wonder what took Mr. Powell so long to realize this, but that's beside the point. What's on point is GW Bush's reaction, to throw a hissy fit rant of a press conference, and in the heat of his rant to demand that Americans stop thinking.

Keith Olbermann has some interesting thoughts on this (his blog entry)

9/11: A Closer Look

A video going over some of the questions surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The video tries to relate the WTC 7 collapse to a controlled demolition. And at the same time the video talks repeatedly about how the two towers collapsed at "free fall" speed. But the video fails to make a case that the two towers were collapsed as a controlled demolition.

What does "free fall" speed mean? If you know your high school physics you remember that "free fall" is a rate of acceleration when you drop an object. An object falling freely accelerates, in earth gravity, at 32 feet/second/second. If you do the calculations, an object falling from the height of the trade center towers would take a bit over 8 seconds to fall to the ground. And, if you watch the video of the collapse of both towers, their collapse was over in 8-9 seconds. This means the structure of the building was not resisting the falling of the buildings, but that the structure of the buildings were collapsing at the same speed as the building was falling.

The big question is, how did that happen?

The video shows some examples of controlled demolitions of office buildings. When a building is collapsed under controlled demolition, it falls into a neat pile, because engineering experts who specialize in this work have planted bombs in the building at precise locations where they know that by knocking out some support structures gravity will take over and make the building fall. An interesting factoid is these buildings generally have a cloud of dust billow around the bottom of the building, due to the explosives.

The collapse of WTC 7, as shown in this video, had a cloud of dust billowing around the base of the building. At the same time the upper floors collapsed down in a nice and orderly fashion. Just like a controlled demolition.

However, the collapse of the two towers did not happen that way. Instead it clearly started at the upper floors, at the location of the airplane strikes. The cloud of dust and debris formed at the upper floors, not at the base.

But what happened. I'm having a hard time imagining how the lower floors allowed the towers to fall at free fall speed.

The fire which supposedly weakened the building was only occuring in the upper floors. Proof? Firefighters and others were able to get to the upper floors, so if there was a fire raging that weakened the whole building then how did the firefighters get so high up in the building? This shows the fire was contained to the upper floors.

Then that leaves us pondering, just how did the building structure get weakened to allow the towers to collapse at free fall speeds?

9/11 Truth: Even More Video Proof of Controlled Demolitions: Videos from several sources of the collapses of the buildings. The collapse of the towers was not the same kind of controlled demolition that was done to WTC 7.

9/11 Truth: David Ray Griffin Speaks @ Santa Rosa: A very nice and thoughtful presentation discussing the rapid collapse of the buildings.

Jim Marrs: 9/11 Truth in 10 Minutes: Jim Marrs is a long-time conspiracy researcher. In 10 minutes he goes over the official September 11, 2001 story, completely deconstructing it, and explaining why he thinks the official story is the real conspiracy. Kinda makes me think of the Kennedy assassination and how nobody believes the one-bullet theory.

NORAD Stand-Down on 9/11: Not Just Simple Incompetence: Leaving aside the issue of the quickness of the buildings falling, why weren't the airplanes stopped? The U.S. has an excellent Air Force. Between the FAA and the Air Force there are already known and understood procedures for handling planes who go astray from their flight plan. For example in the late 90's a Lear Jet became unresponsive to controllers and within four minutes the procedures kicked in, the FAA had contacted the Air Force, and within 20 minutes an Air Force jet was next to the Lear Jet and trailing it.

On September 11, 2001 there were several wargames excercises being conducted. Coincidentally. Some involved injecting false radar signals into the air traffic tracking system. The false signals increased the confusion of the day. The mere existance of the exercises meant some of the planes were diverted to thousands of miles away, and that at some moments questions were made whether a report was part of the exercise or real life.

9/11 Truth: Dick Cheney was in command of NORAD on 9/11: On September 11, 2001 a new situation was in place regarding to NORAD. Never had NORAD been under civilian control, but Dick Cheney had, earlier in 2001, ordered that he was to be in control of NORAD. Meaning that on September 11, 2001 it was Dick Cheney telling NORAD what to do about the airplanes including whether to shoot them down.

Michael Ruppert: 9/11, Peak Oil, and the Fascist State: Discussing how it was clear in the earliest days of the Bush Administration, that it was a "War Cabinet" and that their intent was to push the U.S. into a major war. Namely, that this is a war which would never end whose purpose is to gain control over the remaining oil.

9/11 Truth: Mohammad Atta & The Patsies: Goes over a way of understanding conspiratoriatal plots. You have your patsies, your moles, and your government insiders handling them. The patsies are the ones lined up to take the fall, but they're really being minded over by the moles and insiders.

Keith Olbermann's special commetary for the anniversary of 9/11

On the 5th anniversary of September 11, 2001 we had G.W. Bush and several ceremonies commemorating the events. Here we have Keith Olbermann reminding us of the incompetency and impeachability of the Bush administration. The guy who promised he was a Uniter, not a Divider, who went on to be the most divisive person one could imagine in the Presidency. The guy who had overwhelming support in the fall of 2001, and who squandered it with lies and incompetency and going against the grain of world opinion.

Washington Insider says Powell's Speech was a Hoax

February 2003 and Colin Powell appears before the United Nations to lay the case for the subsequent invasion of Iraq. A big multimedia presentation purporting to show secret evidence that Iraq's government was full of bad people, and that counter to United Nations resolutions and embargo's Iraq had managed to collect several forms of weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear, biological, chemical, rockets, unmanned aircraft, etc. The problem is that it was all a lie. A lie which has not received much official attention.

The following video allows Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's senior aide at the time, to speak out about this. He feels like he was part of a hoax played upon America, the International Community, and the United Nations.


I've covered this story before:

The "case" for War: was written in the summer of 2003. I took each point Powell laid before the United Nations and showed that, near as I could tell, every single one of them was known to be false. Further that the administration knew at the time that these points were false. But they put Powell up on the international stage and had him say those things.

Now, if I, an individual with a busy life, can discover in 2003 that everything Powell said was false -- why the heck hasn't the media figured this out ??? Why hasn't the media made a big stink about this???

Is the Gulf War II Impeachable?: Consider the previous President. He was hounded by the press, and eventually impeached for lying about sex. Consider this President, being given carte blance while he commits high crimes and misdeameanors of hugely greater scope and magnitude than lying about sex.

The Man who Knew: More about the Lies: I wrote in October 2003, "The steps to create a war are ones which ought to be taken carefully, because people will be dieing as a result of your decision. Thousands of people have died since the decision to launch this war. I would wish that the claims he made that day were true, and that I did not have to be writing this. I would rather know that those people had died in a just cause, not a misbegotten lie."