US Military Censors Details Of Torture Information From The President!

Seems the military has been playing lots of non-consensual games in their little dungeon at Gitmo. The problem is, other than they have been torturing people, is they are refusing to give an uncensored account of their SM games to the Commander in Chief!

For the faint at heart I will warn you to read no further.

Lawyers for Binyam Mohamed a British resident and current Guantanamo Bay detainee have been trying to prove his innocence and prove that the techniques used by the US Military were torture. The problem comes when a British High Court ruled against releasing documents describing torture techniques used against Mohamed while in U.S. custody, reportedly because the documents also prove British collaboration in his torture.

The Center For American Progress has more.

Here is the kinky part. According to a source with the London Telegraph,

The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, “is very far down the list of things they did,” the official said.

It's time these amateur sadists got out of the SM business and left it to real sadists like me. Guess they never heard of "safe, sane and consensual"?

Satellites Collide Over Siberia

Back in the 1960 a movie came out titled, "The Crowded Sky". It was about a military aircraft that collides with a civilian airliner. The implication was that though things look clear over our heads, it's actually quite a busy place.

The same can be said for space, or at least the space surrounding our planet. Thousands of satellites and various bits of space debris orbit the earth and amazingly are tracked by scientists on the ground. Those small bits of used rocket boosters and chunks of old space craft that have not fallen into the atmosphere and been incinerated pose a threat to space travelers. Think of that space junk as the pellets of a shotgun. The speed they travel makes them lethal to other spacecraft.

Today comes news that two satellites have collided. The event took place about 500 miles above Siberia when a dead Russian communications satellite smashed into an operating "Iridium" communications satellite. Iridium was the system of low orbiting satellites Motorola put into orbit back in the late 1990's. Economically unsuccessful due to the high cost of Iridium phones the system was later resurrected and forms a big part of our communications network, especially the military.

Luckily, the Iridium system has spare satellites in orbit to take up the slack, some 60 in all. However, the cloud of debris caused by the violent impact will bear watching. Another couple of hundred chunks of space junk must now be tracked and it all makes getting off our small blue planet just that much more difficult.

The craft weighed about a ton each, far from the Sputnik sized image many of us have of what satellites look like. Imagine a couple of Volkswagens colliding at a few hundred miles an hour and you get the picture.

Citi Group President Contrite To Congress While Co-President Hands Out Bonuses!

Vikram Pandit was telling Congress today that "I get the new reality and I will make sure Citi gets it as well" at the same time his Co-President James Gorman was having a conference call reassuring top management that they would receive fat bonuses discuised as "Retention Awards".

See my previous entry.

Nice to see these guys know how to lie with a straight face. "I'll take $1 in salary"...of course they have already fleeced their corporations for millions in "awards" and "bonuses" before the current fad of fiscal responsibility!

Bailed Out Banks Hand Out Bonuses Disguised As "Retention Awards"

The Ultra-rich who run America's failing financial institutions are once again sticking their hands in the lucrative cookie jar. The firms, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup's Smith Barney which are soon merging following the huge losses on their balance sheets, are planning to distribute to their top managers, "retention awards". Never heard of this? Well it would be called a bonus in English, but in the corporate double speak of the board room it's considered an award to keep top employees at the companies.

Now considering how many people including "top financial experts" are out of work, retention would seem to be something that would be of little concern. The award would be keeping your 7 or 8 figure a year job!

In a recorded conference call obtained by Huffington Post one senior executive described the "very generous" awards and then urged all the listeners "Please do not call it a bonus." The quote was from James Gorman, co-president of Morgan Stanley.

"It is not a bonus. It is an award. And it recognizes the importance of keeping our team in place as we go through this integration."

I have to wonder if I were someone like a board member who actually had the interests of the company in mind, would I want the same bad management who got us into hot water to stay in place? Hell no! But I am not a Wall Street boys club member.

You and I gave this firm $60 billion to save its collective butt, and now they are handing out jumbo party favors in the tune of MILLIONS to the bad management who drove the company into near failure?

Excuse my righteous anger, but the hell you say!

This is being done just in advance of any kind of salary cap imposed by the government on these bums and so , now, they are taking a big grab from the cookie jar before pretending to suffer the same economic deprivation as the rest of us.

Listen to the audio on Huffington Post and don't slug your computer!

Obama's First News Conference A Masterful Display

I am watching the Presidential New Conference and smiling with a broad grin. President Obama is doing a masterful job of taking control of the conference and keeping his answers on point. I have never seen a president give such complete and comprehensive answers. He is not letting the press set the agenda or guide him into a framing that works against his agenda. What's equally amazing is that he is actually answering questions without dodging them in a cloud of platitudes

Now it's a more structured conference since he is calling on the reporters by name rather than just pointing at waving hands in the crowd. The outstanding thing is that he is speaking in complete sentences with thought and genuine intelligence. What a refreshing break from the half sentences and psuedo-English of President Bush.

He is hammering home his intent to save or create 4 million jobs with this package. He also wants to see the credit markets operating again as they should. He isn't mincing words, when he assures the public that it's going to be a difficult year, but he offers hope for the future and that is what we must have.

On Afghanistan he gave a clear answer that he will not allow a safe haven for Al Quaeda and he will work with his advisiors and the other nations involved to assure that the outcome will be successful. No tough talk of bring it on, just honesty about the process and goals in the regions.

It's great to have a REAL president in this great country again!

More Sex Charges At Ted Haggard's New Life Church

Michelangelo Signorile sometimes makes me angry, but most of the time he has something interesting to say. That latter comment is certainly what he is saying today on his Sirius Radio show The Gist.

He has been speaking with people involved in the New Life Church scandal of Ted Haggard, former minister to the Colorado Springs Megachurch. According to his guest, a Colorado Springs bail bondsman, Haggard was implicated in ten more cases of sexual missconduct, some with minors that were hushed up by the church. To make matters worse, other pastors at the church have similar implications. According to what his guest said was a dectective's affidavit, "Stephen Evans, (a former pastor) was convicted in 1999 of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy and admitted to sexual contact with his own 14-year-old son and his own 15-year-old daughter."

Seems the New Life Church was a hot bed, (no pun intended...well, maybe) of illicit sex!

Ann Coulter Under Investigation On Federal Charges

The anorexic darling of the right, Ann Coulter is under investigation for voter fraud. Coulter is a resident of Connecticut but has been voting in New York. However the story is not so simple. Coulter actually has listed her parents residence in New Canaan as her home, but she really lives in New York. The details of this mess are myriad, but the real issue is whether she listed the address she actually live at on her voter registration in Connecticut. If not, she is committing fraud.

The investigation by Connecticut’s Elections Enforcement Commission should be interesting.