"I am absolutely certain Connecticut is going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to the U.S. Senate so he can continue to serve on our behalf," he (Barack Obama) said.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A letter from President Bush to Iraq's supreme Shiite spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was hand-delivered earlier this week but sits unread and untranslated in the top religious figure's office, a key al-Sistani aide told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The aide - who has never allowed use of his name in news reports, citing al-Sistani's refusal to make any public statements himself - said the ayatollah had laid the letter aside and did not ask for a translation because of increasing ``unhappiness'' over what senior Shiite leaders see as American meddling in Iraqi attempts to form their first, permanent post-invasion government.
The sculptor does not seem to realize this is the position you assume to give a blow job, not birth.
Someone had to say it.
Bush, a former Texas governor who speaks Spanish, increased his share of the Hispanic vote to more than 40 percent in 2004, up from 35 percent in 2000. Republican Bob Dole won just 21 percent of the Hispanic vote in the 1996 presidential race.
Maybe congressional candidate Howard Kaloogian's website is just being deluged by visitors trying to get a look at the picture he took of "Baghdad" on his recent sight-seeing visit. But it sure looks like his campaign has taken the page in question off the site. (Needless to say, we archived a copy.) Sure looks like this bozo was trying to pass off a picture from Turkey as one showing how great things are going in Baghdad. We shall see.
The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.
"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty," she said to me last week. "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."
When Governor Mike Rounds signed HB 1215 into law it effectively banned all abortions in the state with the exception that it did allow saving the mother's life. There were, however, no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. His actions, and the comments of State Senators like Bill Napoli of Rapid City, SD, set of a maelstrom of protests within the state.
Napoli suggested that if it was a case of "simple rape," there should be no thoughts of ending a pregnancy. Letters by the hundreds appeared in local newspapers, mostly written by women, challenging Napoli's description of rape as "simple." He has yet to explain satisfactorily what he meant by "simple rape."
Gonzalez rejected claims by advocates of the legislation that it would help protect the nation from terrorism, noting that it would hurt Hispanics the most.
"When did you ever see a Mexican blow up the World Trade Center?" he said. "Who do you think built the World Trade Center?"
Good. I was very concerned when Diebold was recently re-certified here in California, where I vote.MEDIA ADVISORY
March 17, 2006, San Francisco, CA
Contact:
Martha DiSario, Pacific Communications: (415) 235-1230Deborah Goodson of
Howard Rice: (415) 399-7882
Dolores Huerta Joins California Voters Filing Suit to Halt Use or Purchase of Diebold Electronic Voting Systems in the State
Voter Action to Hold March 21st News Conference, 10:30 -11:30 AM, PST
Who:Lowell Finley, Esq., Counsel for voter plaintiffs, Co-director of Voter Action, and expert on election law, election privatization, and electronic voting machine issues
John Eichhorst, Esq., Co-counsel, Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin
Holly Jacobson, Co-director, Voter Action
Dolores Huerta, Plaintiff, and social activist, co-founder, United Farm Workers
Bernice Kandarian, Plaintiff, and President of the Council of Citizens with Low Vision International
Voter Action, www.voteraction.org, is a not for profit organization dedicated to providing legal, research and logistical support for grassroots efforts to ensure the integrity of elections by guaranteeing that every citizen's vote is recorded and counted as intended. Voter Action led successful litigation in New Mexico to block purchase and use of the types of voting machines that are most prone to error and most vulnerable to tampering, and is now supporting similar efforts in numerous states across the country.
What:
Attorneys Lowell Finley and John Eichhorst, on behalf of more than 20 California voters including Dolores Huerta and Bernice Kandarian, will brief media on a legal action to be filed on Tuesday, March 21, in the Superior Court of the State of California, aimed at halting the use or purchase of Diebold electronic voting systems. Ms. Huerta and Ms. Kandarian will also speak and answer media questions.
Why:
Diebold's TSx touch screen voting system is a severe security risk, and does not accommodate all disabled voters as required by law. The Diebold system is difficult if not impossible to audit or recount, and has been proven vulnerable to malicious tampering in tests and studies. Diebold technology contains "interpreted" code, which is easily hacked, and illegal for voting systems in the State of California.
Where:
Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin
Three Embarcadero Center, 10th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94111
###
Rush was whining about how Democrats foolishly think all these numbers mean the rest of the country hates Bush like they do. Uh, dude, put the OxyContin down and back away from the mic...
SCHIEFFER: Mr. Vice President, all along the government has been very optimistic. You remain optimistic. But I remember when you were saying we’d be greeted as liberators, you played down the insurgency ten months ago. You said it was in its last throes. Do you believe that these optimistic statements may be one of the reasons that people seem to be more skeptical in this country about whether we ought to be in Iraq?
CHENEY: No, I think it has less to do with the statements we’ve made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does the fact that there is a constant sort of perception if you will that’s created because what is newsworthy is the carbomb in Baghdad, it’s not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces in terms of making progress in rebuilding Iraq.
In Saudi Arabia, the home of Wahhabi Islam, Shias are known as rafida, which means “rejectionists.” A highly pejorative term, it implies that Shias are outside Islam, and to Shias it is the equivalent of being called “nigger.” This is the same word Sunni radicals in Iraq and the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, use to describe Shias. Saudi Arabia’s two million Shias have been persecuted, prevented from celebrating their festivals, and occasionally threatened with extermination. Saudi Arabia is also the main exporter of foreign fighters to the Iraqi jihad to fight both the Americans and the Shia “rafida” collaborators.
A federal appeals court blocked the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday from easing clean-air rules on aging power plants, refineries and factories, one of the regulatory changes that had been among the White House's environmental priorities.
But contrary to what many many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of airpower since the start of the war.("Air Assault" is a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area.) In fact, there were no airstrikes and no leading insurgents were nabbed in an operation that some skeptical military analysts described as little more than a photo op. What’s more, there were no shots fired at all and the units had met no resistance, said the U.S. and Iraqi commanders.
“Operation Swarmer” is really a media show. It was designed to show off the new Iraqi Army — although there was no enemy for them to fight. Every American official I’ve heard has emphasized the role of the Iraqi forces just days before the third anniversary of the start of the war. That said, one Iraqi role the military will start highlighting in the next few days, I imagine, is that of Iraqi intelligence. It was intel from the Iraqi military intelligence and interior ministry that the U.S. says prompted this Potemkin operation. And it will be the Iraqi intel that provides the cover for American military commanders to throw up their hands and say, “well, we thought bad guys were there.”
It’s hard to blame the military, however. Stations like Fox and CNN have really taken this and ran with it, with fancy graphics and theme music, thanks to a relatively slow news day. The generals here also are under tremendous pressure to show off some functioning Iraqi troops before the third anniversary, and I won’t fault them for going into a region loaded for bear. After all, the Iraqi intelligence might have been right.
Tony Perkins, FRC's president, said he'd support reducing unwanted pregnancies, so long as it doesn't include contraceptives, family-planning programs, or comprehensive education on sexual health.
The Senate voted Thursday to allow the national debt to swell to nearly $9 trillion, preventing a first-ever default on U.S. Treasury notes.
The bill passed by a 52-48 vote. The increase to $9 trillion represents about $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. The bill now goes to President Bush for his signature.
[snip]
The debt limit will increase by $781 billion. It's the fourth such move — increasing the debt limit by a total of $3 trillion — since Bush took office five years ago.
Such bright contradictions were on display in Bush’s latest strategically bankrupt “plan” for victory: spending $3.3 billion to fight the improvised explosive devices(IEDs) that Bush now claims Iran is smuggling into Iraq — to the very Shiite forces that won the U.S.-engineered election and are positioned to form the first real post-Hussein government. The IEDs, mentioned a whopping 26 times in the president’s speech, have obviously come to replace that nonexistent WMD threat as the centerpiece of Bush’s Iraq policy. We will stop them, he says, by bumping anti-IED-related spending by a factor of 22, from $150 million in 2004 to $3.3 billion. “We’re putting the best minds in America to work on this effort,” Bush said.
Why not put a few of them to work on figuring how to extract the U.S. military from Iraq instead? After all, that is where all the IEDs happen to be exploding.
US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzadattended a meeting with top Iraqi politicians to try to break the deadlock on forming a government.
Minister of Interior Bayan Jabr announced that a plot had been foiled to place hundreds of Sunni Arab troops actually loyal to the insurgency in position at the Green Zone and then to have them rush embassy offices and take diplomatic hostages. The Green Zone is a barricaded area of downtown Baghdad. There have been rumors for weeks that the Sunni Arab guerrillas were preparing to "rise up" and take the capital. This was probably the plan to which the rumor mongers were referring. Or, a more frightening thought: the rumors refer to yet another plot. Anyway, apparently the US and the new government barely dodged this bullet. It would have been horrible. But you do have the sense that with the siege of Baghdad going on, the Green Zone is becoming vulnerable and could ultimately fall.
Saddam allowed intrusive inspections only because of the threat of force. Containment of his regime would have meant continuous military deployment in neighbouring states and the no-fly zones; intensified economic sanctions; inspections coercive enough to withstand Saddam's intimidation and fraud; and the support of France and Russia. Even with personalities of greater competence than Hans Blix and higher morals than Jacques Chirac, that commitment would have been inconceivable. Of the permanent members of the security council, only the US and UK could have been relied on.
The failures of the occupation are legion: delayed elections, inadequate security, eroding infrastructure, complacency over the tortures at Abu Ghraib, and a heavy death toll among Iraqi civilians and our troops. But had we allowed Saddam's regime to persist, in defiance of its obligations under 17 UN security council resolutions, the consequences would have been an unalloyed catastrophe.
Against those disastrous scenarios, there are clear advances. We no longer have to bear one major risk: a psychopathic despot overcoming a porous sanctions regime, and using oil sales to pay for resumed WMD production.
O'Leary will enjoy his corned beef on Friday with a clear conscience -- thanks to a special dispensation from another Irish-American, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee.
Dolan is among dozens of bishops -- from Portland, Maine, and Green Bay, Wis., to Arlington, Va., and Boston -- granting one-day dispensations from Lenten rules that prohibit Roman Catholics from eating meat on Fridays to observe the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In many cases, the bishops are asking for a similar day of penance in exchange for relaxing the rules this Friday.
Whew. I'm glad that's been straightened out! Of course, how many real Irish actually make corned beef and cabbage specifically on St. Paddy's day? The Kelly clan in my family usually went out to dinner on that day, at a fancy restaurant, and we all ordered steak.
President Bush said Monday insurgents in Iraq were trying to ignite a civil war by escalating violence and warned there will be more "chaos and carnage in the days and months to come."
The insurgency in Iraq is "in the last throes," Vice President Dick Cheney says, and he predicts that the fighting will end before the Bush administration leaves office.
Wayans, whose application was submitted early last year, could argue that the word he hopes to trademark, "Nigga," is different, says Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California and author of the book "The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop."
"I don't think it's the same thing," Boyd says. "Hip-hop has redefined the word. It can mean a number of things. It can be a term of admiration. It can be a term of recognition."
Earlier this month, for example, a mostly white jury in Boulder, Colo., cleared a man of ethnic intimidation for using the N-word during a fight in which he broke a black man's jaw, but some younger jurors didn't think the word was offensive because it's so conversational in hip-hop culture.
I'd bet most of us have better resumes than most of our critics.
"The prospective increase in the budget deficit will place at risk future living standards of our country," [Ben] Bernanke said. "As a result, I think it would be very desirable to take concrete steps to lower the prospective path of the deficit."
The top U.S. military officer said on Tuesday the United States does not have proof that Iran's government is responsible for Iranians smuggling weapons and military personnel into Iraq.
President George W. Bush said on Monday components from Iran were being used in powerful roadside bombs used in Iraq, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week that Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel had been inside Iraq.
Asked whether the United States has proof that Iran's government was behind these developments, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon briefing, "I do not, sir."
During his speech about Iraq on Monday, President Bush criticized a newspaper article that he said revealed sensitive information about the Pentagon's effort to combat improvised explosive devices, the makeshift roadside bombs responsible for thousands of injuries and deaths. White House officials later said that Bush was referring to a Feb. 12 report in the Los Angeles Times.
"Within five days of the publication, using details from that article, the enemy had posted instructions for defeating this new technology on the Internet," Bush said. "We cannot let the enemy know how we're working to defeat them."
[snip]
Even before The Times published its article, the technology was featured in several news reports. Last year, NBC News broadcast a segment about the neutralizers, showing video footage of the device detonating improvised explosives in its path.
Documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigations has indeed monitored political groups solely on the basis that they opposed a U.S.-led war.
[snip]
"Something is seriously wrong in how our government determines who and what constitutes terrorism when peace activists find themselves targeted," remarked Jim Kleissler, Executive Director of the Thomas Merton Center for Peace & Justice.
This Financial Times story is truly incredible: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is once again going out in public and demanding America prioritize corporate profits over national security. It would be one thing if this was coming from the Secretary of Commerce - but for America's top security official to keep running around saying this kind of thing really brings up questions about where his focus is. And remember -this is the second time in three weeks he's made statements like this.
The FT's headline really says it all about his thinking: "US focus on risk ‘poses threat to economy.'" The story goes on to quote Chertoff opposing Congressional efforts to make sure all containers are inspected because he says it would supposedly stop all commerce. That's right folks: under the Bush administration, America's top security officials care about one thing and one thing only: making the President's corporate campaign donors happy.
"Just look at the way so many Democrats caved in the runup to the war. In 2003, a lot of us were saying, where is the link between Saddam and Bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bulls—.
"Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, 'We were misled.' It makes me want to shout, 'F— you, you weren't misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic.'"
The upcoming New Orleans mayoral primary faces logistical problems because “tens of thousands of evacuees are still scattered across the country and eligible to cast ballots in the April 22 election, either by mail or at satellite polling places around the state.”
An estimated 75 percent of the New Orleans Parish’s displaced voters are African-American, and serious questions remain about how African-American voters will be adequately represented in the primary.
The NAACP estimates that “66 percent of those displaced are outside of Louisiana,” but a federal judge last month refused to “order Louisiana officials to provide out-of-state satellite polling places for displaced voters” in the primary. Instead, over 700,000 former city residents will receive “information packets” about how to vote by absentee ballot. (Worse, the address the city has on file may be unreliable.)
In response, local leaders have wondered why Iraqis living in the U.S. were given this right, yet African-Americans are not. “[Louisiana] had all kinds of excuses why that couldn’t happen,” New Orleans City Council President Oliver M. Thomas Jr. said. “But the Iraqi people voted [at satellite offices]. Why can’t we do that for all of our voters?“
U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border.
They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor.
What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures — certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.
Another way Brian Ross is failing to be in any manner "investigative" is in failing to find out or inform the public that this isn't any kind of exclusive - it is actually old news from
way back in October last year.
Back then, the British media were full of the accusations that improved IED's using motion detectors as triggers were being sent to Iraq from Iran. They were being sent, according to British claims, to the Sadr militia - an organisation that the US has gone out of it's way to placate - but that too isn't mentioned by Ross. Just as now, absolutely no evidence was brought forward to show that the Iranian government were at all involved... and then the kerfuffle suddenly stopped. Why?
Well as I wrote at the time, it was discovered that the new, deadly IED's were using a British design that had been stupidly given to the IRA by British intelligence and then passed around various terror groups the IRA were allied with. Major egg on faces - story dropped.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has told British MPs that military action could bring Iran's nuclear programme to a halt if all diplomatic efforts fail. The warning came ahead of a meeting today of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which will forward a report on Iran's nuclear activities to the UN security council.
However the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, visiting Washington last week, encountered sharply different views within the Bush administration. The most hawkish came from Mr Bolton. According to Eric Illsley, a Labour committee member, the envoy told the MPs: "They must know everything is on the table and they must understand what that means. We can hit different points along the line. You only have to take out one part of their nuclear operation to take the whole thing down."
What does it matter whether "overtopped" or "breached" was used. The fact is that thousands of folks who otherwise would not have died, did lose their lives; with hundreds of thousands displaced and homeless. For Bush apologists to grab this thin straw, and use it to excuse his sleeping on his watch, is the apex of hypocrisy. Humans, fellow Americans, died, and others are homeless. Could their deaths had been prevented had Bush not continued his vacation, attending birthday bashes, or doing photo ops. with a guitar. Those are the facts we should be discussing, not whether one word or the other was used to warn Bush. And I thought blind sychophancy does not exist in America!!
I can't see glorifying Michael Brown. He shouldn't have been in the job. He screwed up in a lot of different ways. He then carried the administration's water in trying to pin the blame on the locals, what must be a mortal sin in a FEMA Director. But he does get some credit for coming clean now and spilling at
least some of the beans. And the beans he's spilled so far show that he's hardly the most blameworthy figure in the administration's shameful and pitiful response to the disaster that befell the Gulf Coast.
The lead headline at CNN.com right now reads, "Transcript shows governments underestimated Katrina." That's false. The transcript shows that the various government agencies recognized exactly how serious Katrina was, but also shows a detached president who was confident that everything would work out fine because, well, he said so.
