Hilton Head Island International Baccalaureate Elementary School officials have supplied yet another example of blind mindless application of policies. They has suspended a student for having a broken pencil sharpener.
The boy — a fourth-grader had no criminal intent and merely brought a broke sharpener to school. Officials in South Carolina treated the exposed razor as a weapon.
For the full story, click here.
CroMM: “But what I do know, is one would be quite naive to conclude the government had no involvement, whether passive or active, based on a report produced by the same government.”
Passive involvement would not be surprising, because the Bush Administration is foolish and incompetent. As I said before, there’s a lot we don’t know about the run-up to the attacks.
Active involvement by the government in the 9/11 attacks is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Otherwise they’re just loony conspiracy theories deserving of a tinfoil hat.
activecatalyst:
“The 9/11 Commission was not part of the Bush Administration. It consisted of five Democrats and five Republicans, appointed by the President and Congress.
If there’s a conspiracy theory to be had here, then it would have to start somewhere other than the unsupported assumption that the Commission was a mouthpiece for Bush.”
Eh hem….
“Unable to block [an] additional inquiry, Cheney again moved to control it. Bush and Cheney dropped their objections “after winning the power to appoint the chairman, who also has the power to block subpoenas.” And the White House had a chairman in mind: Henry Kissinger, a selection described by The Nation on December 23, 2002) as “a sick, black-is-white, war-is-peace joke — a cruel insult to the memory of those killed on 9/11.” Given Kissinger’s record of “coddl[ing] state-sponsored terrorists” and standing as “a proven liar, … Bush has rendered the independent commission a sham”
Kissinger didn’t last long, for he was unwilling to disclose his clients in his international consulting business to avoid any conflicts of interest, profit trumping his patriotism. Next The White House selected former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean, a fine man with absolutely no experience in national security matters, which made him a perfect selection. But the real reason the White House wanted authority to select the chairman was that, it wanted the ability to control the selection of the key staff, for this is where the investigation would be conducted. Co-chairman Kean, not by coincidence, selected as executive director for the commission Phillip D. Zelikow, who might as well have come directly from the Bush-Cheney White House. Zelikow had co-authored a book with Condi Rice (Germany Unified & Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft, 1995) and had served with Rice on Bush senior’s NSC. In addition, Zelikow had worked with Cheney on the transition.
Understandably, the 9/11 families felt the fix was in when they learned this, and requested his removal.13 But Zelikow remained. Those who know Zelikow, a highly ambitious fellow, say they would be amazed if he has not provided a back channel to and from the White House regarding the work of the commission – and if he has not, it is simply because he is taking good care of everything for them. With Zelikow in such a vital post, any report by the 9/11 commission is suspect. Regardless of the good intentions of the commission members, the staff can have a tremendous influence on their knowledge and focus, and thus their report. The White House successfully managed to reach inside the 9/11 commission to protect itself.
If Bush and Cheney and their aides had acted reasonably and responsibly before 9/11, why the endless efforts to block the investigation? A logical inference can be drawn from their behavior (for example, classifying previously unclassified information, launching an FBI investigation of Leah from the congressional inquiry, publicly trying to discredit it) is that Bush and Cheney want to hide what they were doing.”
(John Dean, Worse Than Watergate, pgs. 113-115)
And when that same government comes out suddenly and tries to claim that they never fed me the original story that they’ve been feeding me for the last 7 years, then I know whatever the truth is, they ain’t tellin it.
activecatalyst
1, September 13, 2008 at 10:03 pm
CroMM:
You haven’t pointed to anything in the 9/11 Commission Report is untrue, and how you know it’s untrue
Well, I know that the NTSB lead investigator\scientist was fired when he suggested the combination of materials would not produce enough heat to drop the building, much less both of them.
And I know a lot of other interesting tidbits that I won’t go into here because I am not making a case either way.
As I said the first time, I don’t know what happened.
But what I do know, is one would be quite naive to conclude the government had no involvement, whether passive or active, based on a report produced by the same government.
😐
Particularly when that government has been proven to routinely lie about pretty much everything.
Thats what I know.
Legacy. Mission Accomplished.
George W. Bush DOES NOT LIKE John McCain.
Thursday the White House Press Secretary announced that Osama Bin Laden wasn’t involved, and considering she did so in a deceptive way, that is, implying that we all should already know that, suggests that there is something just beneath the surface here, that we just can’t quite see yet.
What is it? Don’t know.But for SEVEN YEARS they’ve been telling me Osama Bin Ladens the guy, and last Thursday they acted like they’ve never even suggested that.
So I don’t know whats going on but what I do know is if they’re lips are moving they’re lying.
CroMM:
You haven’t pointed to anything in the 9/11 Commission Report is untrue, and how you know it’s untrue.
You say you don’t trust it, and that’s fine.
What I said is that I have no evidence that anything in the report is untrue. I might have added: “And neither do you.”
CMM,
You are right that you don’t ask any organization to investigate itself and expect to get honest and accurate information. I am still asking why Bush was allowed to bring Cheney with him and that they were not sworn in. No excuse for that and it only leads to more questions.
If you’d like to know whether or not the government was involved in 911 then the last ones you’d want to perform the investigation, would be the government.
And please, save your “conspiracy theory” red herrings.
That I am honest enough to say I don’t know what happened and smart enough to question leaders already proven to have lied to me, does not make me a “conspiracy theorist”.
I don’t know what happened, and neither do you.
activecatalyst
1, September 13, 2008 at 8:56 pm
The 9/11 Commission was not part of the Bush Administration. It consisted of five Democrats and five Republicans, appointed by the President and Congress.
If there’s a conspiracy theory to be had here, then it would have to start somewhere other than the unsupported assumption that the Commission was a mouthpiece for Bush.
What are you kidding me?
First, it was signed into law by President Bush, and pushed by the REPUBLICAN CONGRESS.
Did a lot of the democrats fall in line? Oh sure. The “usual suspects”. The ones complicit with voting for the Iraq war, and permitting the President to break the law with Domesitic spying.
The commission was headed by the Governor of NEW JERSEY. Tom Keane was a right wing crony with no qualifications for heading up such an investigation. Just another republican stooge all choked up over one of Bush’s speeches.
And it was co Chaired by an intelligence community insider, Lee Hamilton, who sits on several commissions, advisory boards, etc including the President Homeland Security Advisory board and the Permanent House Select Committee on Intelligence, the guys who knew about the Presidents domestic spying and let it fly.
This was no “investigation”. It was a bunch of interviews and already available data compiled together in such a way as to be thouroughly unreadable and wholly unreliable.
The reason the report is so long, is because thats how they do it. They “bury it in bullsh$t”.
But no real investigation could come out of such an event if its perpetrated by the govt.
After all, IF the governments a suspect, then it would be less than logical to conclude that they should be the ones to investigate themselves.
The 9/11 Commission was not part of the Bush Administration. It consisted of five Democrats and five Republicans, appointed by the President and Congress.
If there’s a conspiracy theory to be had here, then it would have to start somewhere other than the unsupported assumption that the Commission was a mouthpiece for Bush.
On the contrary, the Bush Administration and some of its agencies did a lot to impede the Commission’s investigation. The result of that is that there is still a lot we don’t know, which is what I said above. But I still have no reason to believe that anything in the 9/11 Commission Report was untrue, which is also what I said above.
I don’t know about the 911 commission report which was comprised mostly of talking points rehashed along with questionable intelligence.
Whether there is reason to doubt the offical story from an administration proven to rely on deceit and deception, well, given their character one would need to be braindead to not question it.
What is the truth? Haven’t a clue. But one things for sure.
If anyone believes the official report from the Bush administration on what happened, then I’d really like to talk to you about a wonderful little piece of … er…. “wetlands” I have for sale.
😐
I might even be willing to toss in the towns local bridge, for the right price.
There’s a lot we don’t know about warnings received prior to the attacks and the response (or lack thereof) to these warnings.
There’s a lot that could be said about the way the Bush Administration, Congress and the Supreme Court have responded to 9/11.
But I have no reason to believe that anything in the 9/11 Commission Report was untrue.
activecatalyst and CroMM,
Thank you both, ac for the link, and CroMM for telling me where to go! That is quite an amazing statement. Today I received the article below written by David Griffin. I think many of the people in the 9/ll truth movement are sleazy, but I don’t know what I think of David Griffin. I would like to hear the opinion of others should anyone care to comment. One thing I do know is the story of 9/ll as we’ve been told it, just doesn’t hang together in many ways.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20722.htm
CroMM: “I tell you they must think that we are as stupid as they act.”
Just remember that 50% of all Americans have below-average intelligence.
That’s part why spin, stonewalling and mendacity work as well as they do.
Ideological blinders account for the other part.
What I don’t get is how this doesn’t hit the fan for McCain.
He’s ready to pursue bin Laden to the gates of Wasilla, but the Bush Administration is giving us yet another “mission accomplished”.
I tried to gauge one afternoon, the volume of raw hubris it takes every day for a woman who is so sorely underqualified for her position, that she had to ask what the Cuban Missle Crisis was, to get up in front of the mic and act smug and superior to the White House Press corp.
Heres a woman, who is supposed to be the source for information from the highest office in the land, and she doesn’t even know about the most dangerous nuclear standoff ever encountered in this world. She didn’t know what the Cuban Missle Crisis was, yet she manages smuggery on a level worthy of Karl Rove himself.
And now, after 7 years of official reports on Osama Bin Laden and his masterminding of the 911 attacks, she has the stuff to get up in front of the podium, and act like everyones stupid for thinking Osama Bin Laden masterminded the 911 attacks.
I tell you they must think that we are as stupid as they act.
Jill
1, September 13, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I didn’t hear about the wh admitting it wasn’t bin Laden. Can you send a link?
Thanks,
Jill
Hey Jill,
I don’t have a link but you can follow the one to ThinkProgress that ActiveCat posted for you.
It happened on Thursday, when Dana-“whats the cuban missle-crisis”-Perino stated that Osama Bin Laden was NOT the mastermind behind the 911 attacks.
😐
7 years they’ve been saying it was him, then Thursday morning she acts like they never said it and declares that Osama Bin Laden was NOT the mastermind behind the Sept 11th attacks.
It was surreal.
Alfredo: “I think they’re watching too much O’Reilly and TV cop shows.”
Besides, Columbine events are bad for business. Let them play with a broken pencil sharpener and, before you know it, they’ll be spraying the school cafeteria with an Uzi. The bad publicity would just kill next year’s budget.