Tucked away in the Bush administration’s recent budget is a proposal that has alarmed scientists and environmentalists. Under the plan, the Environmental Protection Agency will shut down its network of libraries serving the public and its own staff scientists.
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MyDD.com quotes AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham's response: "There is no substantive news here, just because some disparate groups of advocates have come together for an event reminiscent of the bar scene in the first 'Star Wars' movie."
Those danged Iraqis. They continue to disappoint by failing to be disappointing. Could it be that most of them value freedom, democracy and peace as much as white Christians do?
A new poll to be released today shows that U.S. soldiers overwhelmingly want out of Iraq — and soon. The poll is the first of U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq, according to John Zogby, the pollster. Conducted by Zogby International and LeMoyne College, it asked 944 service members, “How long should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?” Only 23 percent backed Mr. Bush’s position that they should stay as long as necessary. In contrast, 72 percent said that U.S. troops should be pulled out within one year. Of those, 29 percent said they should withdraw “immediately.”
Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad's main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.
The disclosure of the death tolls followed accusations by the U.S. military and later Iraqi officials that the news media had exaggerated the violence between Shiites and Sunnis over the past few days.
HE MAY be the most powerful man in the world, but proof has emerged that President George Bush cannot ride a bike, wave and speak at the same time.
[snip]
The official police incident report states: "[The unit] was requested to cover the road junction on the Auchterarder to Braco Road as the President of the USA, George Bush, was cycling through." The report goes on: "[At] about 1800 hours the President approached the junction at speed on the bicycle. The road was damp at the time. As the President passed the junction at speed he raised his left arm from the handlebars to wave to the police officers present while shouting 'thanks, you guys, for coming'.
"As he did this he lost control of the cycle, falling to the ground, causing both himself and his bicycle to strike [the officer] on the lower legs. [The officer] fell to the ground, striking his head. The President continued along the ground for approximately five metres, causing himself a number of abrasions. The officers... then assisted both injured parties."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency won't oppose the U.S. Department of Defense and DuPont Co.'s plan to dump a wastewater byproduct of a deadly nerve agent into the Delaware River.
As for me, I'm still saying that we've won in Iraq. Not that we're winning, not that we're going to win - that we've won. Millions of people voting in Iraq was the victory - all else is follow-up to victory. How some of my fellow Americans - and some quite smart and well-informed ones - can fail to see this is something that I think I'll never understand.
The headlines, as I noted on the MSM this AM, is that Iraq is disintegrating into civil war. Well, we'll see about that - but I do note that the MSM reporting has been rather broken-record like on Iraq...nothing but disaster. Given this, reports of an Iraqi civil war might be greatly exaggerated. To put it more bluntly, given the ignorance and dishonesty of MSM reporting on Iraq, it is more likely that Iraq is on the cusp of peace than civil war.
So just to recap: First the voters of Alaska were not allowed to see their own voting data from the 2004 Election because it was the proprietary "company secret" property of Diebold. Then they would be allowed to see it as long as the state and Diebold could manipulate the data" before releasing it. And now finally it's determined that allowing the voters to see how they actually voted in the 2004 Election would be a "security risk" to the state of Alaska.
But there's no excuse for exposing the integrity of our election system to computer hackers. Yet that's what California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson may have done last week by approving electronic voting machines from Diebold Election Systems for use in California elections through the end of this year.
But the experts were plainly troubled by flaws in Diebold's systems. The panel, which included David Jefferson of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and David Wagner of Berkeley, observed that the removable memory cards used by Diebold were vulnerable to undetectable acts of tampering.
The panel found 16 software bugs that could cede "complete control" of the system to hackers who might then "change vote totals, modify reports, change the names of candidates, change the races being voted on," and even crash the machines, bringing an election to a halt. Hackers wouldn't need to know passwords or cryptographic keys, or have access to any other part of the system, to do their dirty work. Voters, candidates and election monitors wouldn't necessarily know they'd been rooked.
The New York Times declared on its website early Friday in a headline that the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, had warned to U.S. was on the "precipice of full-scale civil war." Their headline? "U.S. Envoy in Baghdad Says Iraq Is on Brink of Civil War."
Within an hour and without explanation, the Times yanked the headline in favor of "U.S. Envoy Says Sectarian Violence Threatens Iraq's Future."
Originally, their lead paragraph had read: "The American ambassador to Iraq said Friday that the country was on the precipice of full-scale civil war, and that Iraqi leaders would have to come together and compromise if they wanted to save their homeland."
An hour later: "The American ambassador to Iraq said Friday that sectarian violence this week had endangered the future of Iraq, and that Iraqi leaders would have to come together and compromise if they wanted to save their homeland."
Catherine Mathis, the New York Times Company's Vice President for Corporate Communications, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Later in the morning, the Times changed the story again to reflect the relative calm that cloaked Baghdad in the day after a rash of bombings: "As Violence Ebbs, U.S. Envoy Warns of Danger to Iraq's Future."
They still, however, offered no accounting for how Iraq went from the "precipice of civil war" to "endangered" based on the same remarks by a U.S. ambassador.
Earlier tonight, the Washington Post had a pretty blistering article on Bush's foreign policy speech today to the American Legion. There was no question from reading that piece that Bush really thinks things are going well with his foreign policy. And, it left no doubt that Bush's optimism is not widely shared. I started to write a post because I was struck by this passage:Outlining what he called a "forward strategy for freedom," Bush painted
a generally optimistic picture of events overseas that have led critics to
charge that his foreign policy is built largely on geopolitical fantasy.(my
emphasis, not the Post's)
I cut and pasted the paragraph above and started to write the post. But, when I went back to the Post to get the link, the article was gone. The link is now to another story that incorporates Bush's foreign policy speech today in to the Iraq debacle.
More than 25 million Americans turned to the nation's largest network of food banks, soup kitchens and shelters for meals last year, up 9 percent from 2001.
Those seeking food included 9 million children and nearly 3 million senior citizens, says a report from America's Second Harvest.
[...]
The surveys were done before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. After the hurricanes, demand for emergency food assistance tripled in Gulf Coast states, according to a separate report by the group.
The new report, being released Thursday, found that 36 percent of people seeking food came from households in which at least one person had a job. About 35 percent came from households that received food stamps.
Cousin said the numbers show that many working people don't make enough money to feed their families. She said the food stamp numbers show that the government program, while important, is insufficient.
The US military rejected the idea of a brewing civil war in Iraq, saying the number of confirmed major attacks on mosques across the country were only seven.
"Some drive-by shootings against mosques have been reported ... that's where we are. So we are not seeing civil war igniting in Iraq. We are not seeing 77, 80, 100 mosques damaged in Iraq. We are not seeing death on the streets."
Shiites came out in the thousands all over the Shiite south on Wednesday to protest. Quoting Sunni Arab spokesmen, the wire services are saying 75 Sunni mosques have been attacked, with two burned to the ground and 3 Sunni clergymen assassinated, with 6 Sunni Arabs dead altoghether in the violence.
Amid reports of more than 100 killings nationwide -- many of them Sunni Muslims -- the Sunni Accord Front announced it is leaving political unity talks after meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Okie, dokie, I guess we can get started, as long as everyone has the, uh... I'm sorry, Mister President. I haven't met the gentleman with the, uh, headgear, and I'm not sure if I should continue...
That's okay, Karl, this is my cousin Bernie Bush. He's visiting us here today from Houston, and I told him I'd show him a little of how thing work here on the inside of the White House. Don't worry, I gave him Alpha security access, just for the afternoon.
Yes, it is true. Cousin George Walker Bush is showing me how to put a shine on the nickel.
Don't you mean 'drop a dime'?
Ha ha. That really made me laugh. Read the complete post here, courtesy of Fried Green al-Qaedas.
The Florida Board of Education unanimously approved Tuesday a plan that will grant bonuses to the state's top teachers, an assessment that will primarily be based on how their students perform on standardized tests and other measurements.
Teachers are now paid based primarily on their years of experience and their education.
"Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practised by the United States."
A Democratic report by ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee Louise Slaughter (D-NY) declares that Republican ties to lobbyists have cost millions of Americans basic social services, RAW STORY has learned.
The report, available here, blames lawmakers' ties to lobbyists -- who, they say, make an average of $650,000 a year.
"Contractors and corporations have purchased access to a government that is supposed to belong to the people," the Democrats write. The report's bullet points follow.
*14.2 million American seniors (including millions of our sickest and most vulnerable seniors) are stuck in a complicated, expensive, and inefficient Medicare prescription drug program because the Republican Congress and the Bush Administration allowed lobbyists from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to design this program.
*60 million American families who heat their homes with natural gas and 8 million families who heat with heating oil are paying higher bills this winter, even though the Republican Congress recently passed their "national energy plan" into law. Although this plan gives the energy industry billions in new tax breaks and subsidies, it doesn't lower prices for consumers or make our country more energy independent.
*The 150,000 U.S. troops currently deployed in Iraq may not have the equipment they need because of waste, fraud and cronyism by the Republican Congress and the Department of Defense. While Halliburton and other companies with Republican connections get their contracts, our soldiers still don't have the body armor and armored vehicles they need to fight the war.
*750,000 households in the Gulf region are still displaced today, more than 5 months after Hurricane Katrina hit that region, at least in part because the political hacks the Bush Administration put in charge of crucial homeland security functions were not adequately prepared to prepare for or respond to this disaster.
*More than 10 million students and their families will have larger student loans to repay because House Republicans, led by new Majority Leader John Boehner working hand-in-hand with his commercial loan industry allies, cut $12 billion from the student loan program in the recent reconciliation bill and shifted the costs on to students and their families.
Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and popular Democratic candidate in Ohio's closely watched Senate contest, said yesterday that he was dropping out of the race and leaving politics altogether as a result of pressure from party leaders.
Mr. Hackett said Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, the same party leaders who he said persuaded him last August to enter the Senate race, had pushed him to step aside so that Representative Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of Congress, could take on Senator Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent.
"This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me," said Mr. Hackett, whose announcement comes two days before the state's filing deadline for candidates. He said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving and said he would not enter the Second District Congressional race.
"For me, this is a second betrayal," Mr. Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me."
Mr. Hackett said he was unwilling to run for the Congressional seat because he had given his word to three Democratic candidates that he would not enter that race.
"The party keeps saying for me not to worry about those promises because in politics they are broken all the time," said Mr. Hackett, who plans to return to his practice as a lawyer in the Cincinnati area. "I don't work that way. My word is my bond."
"Hackett is seen by many as a straight talker, and he became an icon to the liberal bloggers because he says exactly what they have wished they would hear from a politician," Ms. Duffy said. "On the other hand, the Senate is still an exclusive club, and the party expects a certain level of decorum that Hackett has not always shown."
“The government is spending over a billion dollars per year on PR and advertising,” said Rep. Waxman. “Careful oversight of this spending is essential given the track record of the Bush Administration, which has used taxpayer dollars to fund covert propaganda within the United States.”
“The extent of the Bush Administration’s propaganda effort is unprecedented and disturbing,” said Rep. Miller. “The fact is that after all the spin, the American people are stuck with high prescription drug prices, high gas prices, and high college costs. This report raises serious questions about this Administration’s priorities for the country and I would hope that my colleagues
on both sides of the aisle would agree that changes need to be made to reign in the President’s propaganda machine.”
Democrats requested that GAO conduct the study after evidence emerged last year that the Bush Administration had commissioned “covert propaganda” from public relations firms. Several federal departments had hired firms to develop “video new releases” to promote department initiatives which appeared to television viewers to be independent newscasts. Other revelations that triggered the GAO report included the disclosure that the Department of Education paid conservative commentator Armstrong Williams to promote the No Child Left Behind Act on the radio and in his columns.The deficit is soaring, and this administration cut basic programs that helped the poor, the starving and the old, in order to afford the continued billion being spent on propoganda. This administration spends more of the taxpayer's money on selling bogus ideas, when it could actually use the money to beef up existing programs. But, that would be an intelligent idea, and that's not what this administration is about.
GAO’s accounting of the Bush Administration’s public relations and advertising contracts is limited. GAO surveyed only seven of the 15 cabinet-level departments, relied on self-reported information from the agencies, and did not include subcontracts, task orders on existing contracts, or public relations work done by government employees.See, that's only half of the departments. You can double that Billion Dollar amount.
Thomas W. Noe, the coin dealer and prominent Republican contributor whose $50 million state coin investment sparked one of the biggest scandals in Ohio state government history, was indicted today on 53 felonies, including theft of more than $1 million.
The charges include engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, 11 counts of theft, 11 of money laundering, 8 of tampering with records and 22 of forgery. He could be sentenced to a maximum 175 years in prison, although such a sentence is considered unlikely.
Also, a 28-gauge is used pretty much exclusively for small birds. And because of its lack of recoil, it would make sense that the Veep, with his heart and other health issues, would want to minimize any shocks to his system (so to speak). In my family, we just have "the talk" with the member of the family who ought not touch a shotgun any more. Guess it doesn't work that way in the Cheney family -- much to the Whittington family's dismay, I'm sure.
Terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden may have escaped capture for years, but he's on the run with his al-Qaeda group "significantly weakened", American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday.
Speaking on ABC television, Rice defended the US effort to nab Bin Laden that has drawn fire from Democratic critics, including a potential presidential candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton.
"Yes, we are dealing with a figure who has been able to hide, but he's on the run," Rice said.
"His organisation has been significantly weakened because of the international effort against al-Qaeda in places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia."
"We now have an ally in Afghanistan that is fighting against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda," Rice said.
"We now have allies in Pakistan, who are fighting against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
Peter Simonson, executive director of the ACLU of New Mexico, told The Progressive magazine: "We were shocked to see the word 'sedition' used. Sedition? That's like something out of the history books."
In a press release, Simonson also said: "Is this government so jealous of its power, so fearful of dissent, that it needs to threaten people who openly oppose its policies with charges of 'sedition'?"
DAVID BROOKS: Whoever the Democratic candidate, that is the weakness of the Democratic party, they’ve got the blogs and the netroots who are semi-nuts and they insist on a Stalinist line of discipline.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I love your objectivity.
DAVID BROOKS: It’s objectively true. I did a psychoanalytic test.
The Bush White House seems to enjoy the joke about Clinton being the president's new sibling, but for many of us, the question will always be, "Why can't you be more like your brother?"
President Bush's budget calls for elimination of a $255 lump- sum death payment that has been part of Social for more than 50 years and urges Congress to cut off monthly survivor benefits to 16- and 17-year-old high school dropouts.
Hauling everything he owned in a plastic garbage bag, Darryl Travis walked out of the chandeliered lobby of the Crowne Plaza, joining the exodus of Hurricane Katrina refugees evicted from their hotel rooms across the country Tuesday.
The occupants of more than 4,500 government-paid hotel rooms were ordered to turn in their keys Tuesday, as the Federal Emergency Management Agency began cutting off money to pay for their stays.
Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.
"It's hardball all the way," a senior GOP congressional aide said.
The sources said the administration has been alarmed over the damage that could result from the Senate hearings, which began on Monday, Feb. 6. They said the defection of even a handful of Republican committee members could result in a determination that the president violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such a determination could lead to impeachment proceedings.
Over the last few weeks, Mr. Rove has been calling in virtually every Republican on the Senate committee as well as the leadership in Congress. The sources said Mr. Rove's message has been that a vote against Mr. Bush would destroy GOP prospects in congressional elections.
"He's [Rove] lining them up one by one," another congressional source said.
So my informed hunch is that this document is real. If so, how will the White House respond? Will members of the press corps at 1600 Pennsylvania press the point? This revelation--which is more shocking than anything in the Downing Street Memos--should be major news here. But will it?
"No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts wrote, calling [Christine] Whitman's actions "conscience-shocking."
The EPA's internal watchdog found the agency, at the urging of White House officials, gave misleading assurances there was no health risk from the dust in the air after the towers' collapse.
I usually reserve my media criticism for the "Single Storyline" project at the Daou Report, but this one was too egregious not to share.Sheehan's T-shirt made referenceThis was in the national AP story that ran in hundreds of newspapers across the country.
to the number of soldiers killed in Iraq: "2245 Dead. How many more?" Capitol
Police charged her with a misdemeanor for violating the District of Columbia's
code against unlawful or disruptive conduct on any part of the Capitol grounds,
a law enforcement official said. […]
Young's shirt had just the opposite
message: "Support the Troops — Defending Our Freedom." (emphasis
added)
Forget whether you like Sheehan or not; the AP has no know better than to frame the debate this way. Asking how many more U.S. troops are going to die in Iraq is not "the opposite" of supporting the troops. For most people, they're one in the same.
President Bush defended the huge profits of Exxon Mobil Corp. on Wednesday, saying they are simply the result of the marketplace and that consumers socked with soaring energy costs should not expect price breaks.
In this sense, Sheehan's arrest was predictable. Sad, but inevitable.
