Thus, I’d say its time to tell Joe to join his pharmaceutical lawyer wife in the private sector - I’m sure he’ll have no problem finding a nice seven-figure lobbying gig to round out the Lieberman’s as Washington’s next great corporate power couple.
Hatred flourishes in silence. Let’s make some noise.
"I said 'He's not from Texas and he ain't a cowboy, so let's stop trashin' Texans and cowboys.'"
This is a headline from NYT: "World Powers Fail to Agree on Plan to End Fighting." That is a flat out lie, of course. World powers all agreed, only the US disagreed.
Rice's visit showed how low American stock has fallen in the Middle East, since she came virtually empty-handed, merely as a go-fer on behalf of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with little positive to offer. Berri thunderously rejected her ultimatums, or rather those of her political bosses. She came with nice words but Israeli bombs hit Beirut before and after her visit, according to my sources. Her professions of sympathy rang hollow, since her government was encouraging the bombing raids and blocking any UN or European move toward a cease-fire. She played no more exalted a role than Mafia enforcer, lifting her suit coat at the corner to display the loaded pistol as she discussed just how much the owner of the Lebanese restaurant would be paying per month for "protection" from certain of her "friends," or else, you know, something bad could happen to this nice restaurant of yours.
"...the politics doesn't enter into it."
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused the international media Sunday of bias by not properly portraying the "murderous viciousness" of the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah in its war with Israel.
"The massive, brutal and murderous viciousness of Hezbollah is unfortunately not represented in its full intensity on television screens outside of Israel," Olmert told reporters.
Keep your bible off my balls.
One might argue, and many Americans today might agree, that Hezbollah and Hamas started this round of war with their provocative kidnappings of Israeli soldiers. Lost in the headlines, however, is the fact that the Israelis have 9,000 Palestinian prisoners, and have negotiated prisoner swaps before. Others will blame the Islamists for incessant rocket attacks on Israel. But the roots of this virulent spiral of vengeance lie in the permanent occupation of Palestinian territories by the overconfident Israelis. As it did in 1982, Israel now admits that the war is not about prisoner exchanges or cease-fires; it is about eradicating Hezbollah and Hamas altogether, if necessary by an escalation against Syria or even Iran. It should be clear by now that the present Israeli government will never accept an independent Palestinian state, but rather harbors a colonial ambition to decide which Palestinian leaders are acceptable.
"The more W. and his tough, by-any-means-necessary superbabe have tried to tame the Middle East, the more inflamed the Middle East has become," writes Dowd.Hat tip to Raw Story.
"Now the secretary of state is leaving, reluctantly and belatedly, to do some shuttle diplomacy that entails little diplomacy and no shuttling," Dowd continues. "It's more like air-guitar diplomacy."
Yes, this is a moment of clarity. The president will veto a law to protect frozen blastocysts stored in fertility clinic freezers--to preserve the sacredness of life. He won't do anything to stop missiles raining down on men, women and children caught in a war zone. In other words, he's pro-life--except when he's not.
When asked why he wouldn’t remember two five-figure settlements, Schlesinger said it’s because that’s "not that much money to me."
A local journalist told me bitterly this week that Iraqis find it ironic that Saddam Hussein is on trial for killing 148 people 24 years ago, while militias loyal to political parties now in government kill that many people every few days. But it is not an irony that anyone here has time to laugh about. They are too busy packing their bags and wondering how they can get out alive.
"You eight hours? Me, too. Russia's a big country and you're a big country," Bush said, at one point telling a waiter he wanted Diet Coke. "Takes him eight hours to fly home. Russia's big and so is China. Yeah Blair, what're you doing? Are you leaving."
RICE: Well, first of all, those hostilities were not very well contained as we found out on September 11th, so the notion that policies that finally confront extremism are actually causing extremism, I find grotesque.
The logical fallacy here is to describe a unilateral war of aggression and then a botched occupation with the euphemism of "confronting extremism." Of course the former can cause extremism. And did. That's not grotesque, that's just the fact of the matter.
Despite bitter lessons from the past, Israel's political and military leaders remain addicted to the notion that, whatever they have a right to do, they have a right to overdo, to the point where they lose what international support they had when they began their retaliatory measures.
[snip]
On the surface, the situations in Gaza and in Lebanon may seem similar, but there are important differences. No matter how one judges the rights and wrongs of the recent Hamas assaults and Israeli reprisals, in Gaza the fundamental spark is Israel's occupation, which has now lasted nearly 40 years. Israel's leaders continue to suffer from the delusion they can defeat violent Palestinian resistance to that occupation without offering the Palestinians a credible, non-violent political path to statehood, promised in various international agreements.
Technocrati tags: disco
Here is another rhetorical question for you: Why is saying "fuck you" worse than advocating violence against various public figures? And does this have something to do with the fact that the violence comes largely from the conservatives who are in power, whereas the foul language belongs to the currently powerless?
Um, not!"In my judgment, the best way to stop the violence is to understand why the violence occurred in the first place," Bush said. And that's because Hezbollah has been launching rocket attacks out of Lebanon into Israel and because Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers."
BUSH: I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq, where there’s a free press and free religion. And I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia will do the same thing. I fully understand, however, that there will be a Russian-style democracy.
PUTIN: We certainly would not want to have same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly.
[laughter from audience]
BUSH: Just wait.
ROCK HILL, S.C. (AP) - Democrats pulled an Internet ad that showed flag-draped coffins Friday after Republicans and at least two Democrats demanded it be taken down on grounds the image was insensitive and not fit for a political commercial.
The ad by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called for a "new direction" and displayed a staccato of images, including war scenes, pollution and breached levees as well as a photograph of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay doctored to look like a police mug shot.The campaign committee replaced the ad with a radio commercial that targets Rep. John Hostetler, R-Ind., for opposing an increase in the minimum wage. Democrats have made a minimum wage increase a central theme of this year's election.
Democrats had featured the video ad for nearly two weeks on the DCCC Web site where it had gone largely unnoticed until Republicans began objecting to it this week. On Thursday, more than a dozen Republicans, many with military backgrounds, called on DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., to apologize. Democratic Reps. John Spratt of South Carolina and Chet Edwards of Texas asked Emanuel to pull or alter the ad.
"We're moving to another major effort that we're highlighting on our Web site," DCCC spokesman Bill Burton said.
In South Carolina, Spratt's Republican challenger, state Rep. Ralph Norman, commended the removal. It was "the right thing to do for the state, country and especially the brave men and women who serve in our military," said Norman's spokesman, Nathan Hollifield.
Bonus Track:
245 - Tom Tom Club - Genius of Love
More legroom, an upper deck lounge and the freedom to smoke to one's heart's content are the promises of the new SMINTAIR which hopes to make a maiden voyage from Dusseldorf to Tokyo in March 2007.
Alexander Schoppman, Managing Director at SMINTAIR, assures his future flyers that smoking in airline cabins is safe, and he says that airlines only stopped allowing their passengers to smoke in order to save money on fuel and air conditioner filters. On SMINTAIR's website, Schoppman also denies that second-hand smoke is a health threat and compares today's anti-smoking campaigns to those of the Nazis.
A report issued last month by the U.S. Surgeon General concluded that secondhand smoke exposure can cause heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults and is a known cause of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), respiratory problems, ear infections and asthma attacks in infants and children.SMINTAIR promises to take passengers back to the glory days of air travel by providing elegant meals and attentive service. This step back in time also includes the promise of "charming and beautiful flight attendants."
"In the 50s, 60s and 70s, I was always looking forward to every flight, enjoying a luxurious experience above the clouds," Schoppman says. "The stewardesses (yes, that was the job title, and they were proud of it!) were all friendly, very pretty and in their fresh uniforms."
Tickets have not yet gone on sale for the maiden flight, but SMINTAIR has 120 open positions for flight attendants, according to their website.
Well, harkening back to the "good ole days," eh? Any stewardesses ready to breathe in more of that smoke?
But the losers in the corrupted game are the workers (voters), including honest entrepreneurs and innovators, who are left frustrated and anxious by a system that rewards cheaters. Everyone is being eaten alive by the sharks in the water. The endless cycle of mergers and acquisitions keeps the money flowing up the pyramid, where it is then siphoned off for personal gain by pyramid-squatting CEOs.
Friday's Random Ten - Apologies For The Christmas Songs Edition
1897 - Beatles - I Wanna Hold Your Hand
2474 - Dixie Chicks - Cold Day In July
7659 - Bill & Gloria Gaither - Your First Day
6395 - Perry Como - Hark, The Herald Angel Sings
(Sorry, but, I did load up all 10,000+ song titles)
2525 - Donald Fagen with Michael McDonald (live) - Madison Time
6058 - Ella Fitzgerald - Let It Snow (man ...)
7009 - Crystal Gayle - Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue
519 - Otis Redding - Do You Like Good Music
5319 - Tanya Tucker & Paul Overstreet - Won't Take Less Than Your Love
(admit it, you've seen at least one episode of Tuckerville!)
4897 - Salt-N-Peppa - I Am The Body Beautiful
Bonus Track:
9624 - Vanessa Williams - Save The Best For Last
Bonus Bonus Track:
3216 - Irma Thomas - Don't Mess With My Man
CNN’s Larry King started his interview with President Bush by asking him about North Korea: “You’re into taking the lead on these things. You took the lead on Iraq, the U.N. went along, you got other countries to go along, why not take the lead here?”
Actually, the U.N. did not “go along” with the invasion of Iraq. President Bush promised to take the issue to the U.N. Security Council “no matter what the whip count,” but never did. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan described the invasion of Iraq as “not in conformity with the UN charter…from the charter point of view, it was illegal.”
Jack Strain: "Now I don’t get into calling people names and all that fact, but if you’re gonna walk the streets of St. Tammany Parish with dreadlocks and "Chee Wee" hairstyles, then you can expect to be getting a visit from a sheriff’s deputy."
The explosive announcement today by Sen. Joe Lieberman telling Connecticut that he is leaving the Democratic Party gives us a very rare glimpse into exactly how the Democratic Party in Washington views Democratic Party voters. In the last 24 hours, both Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) have refused to commit to supporting the eventual winner of the August 8th Connecticut Democratic primary. Schumer is head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee while Dodd is the other sitting Senator in Connecticut where this primary election is happening - and understanding their behavior is critical for those of us who want to see America’s democracy restored.
"This is the time, therefore, to hold firm, to make the right decisions for the country, no matter how difficult ... and to renew not by returning to the past but by showing we have the drive, determination and vision to make the future work," he (Tony Blair) said. "What sustains a government at this point is self-belief."
June 30 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.
