DNC Winter Meeting: Wrapping Up
"Meet the Candidates" Part II is wrapping up and people are filing out. I think everyone here would agree that the past few days have provided a lot of food for thought. We'll have the additional candidate videos soon, plus more photos and a few more posts over the next few days...
Use this as an open thread...
Comments (418) «
afternoon dems- "beyond oral sex: the bush investigations":
A recent ABC/Washington Post poll showed that the public (despite very little help from ABC News or the Washington Post) has it right. A majority picked the "should" option in response to both of these questions:
"Do you think Congress should or should not hold hearings on how the Bush administration handled pre-war intelligence, war planning, and related issues in the war in Iraq?"
"Do you think Congress should or should not hold hearings on how the Bush administration has handled surveillance, treatment of prisoners and related issues in the U.S. campaign against terrorism?"
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Congress is gearing up to investigate whether Halliburton might have cheated on its contracts a little. Hello?
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=161913
just passing by- happy saturday
The Candidates that spoke Truth to Power were GRAVEL and RICHARDSON!!!
The Democratic Party would be well advised to heed there Speeches!!!
"GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK."
PamB...."The Boss" sent you some goodies.....they are good....she knows how to cook....that is the reason I don't have any trouble keeping my weight up....Enjoy....John Boy.....
the deadliest single day of battles between the two sides, who have been locked in a violent power struggle since the Islamic militant Hamas ousted Fatah from power last year.
I wonder who will be first to blame Israel for this latest display of "Palestinian civilization"? The good news is at least if they're fighting with themselves, there will be less suicide bombers and enemy soldiers to harass Israel with in the future. Posted by BobVADemHawk-Gore-Clark2008 on February 3, 2007 at 09:50 AM
Well, Israel did "steal" all the Palestinian's money since they voted for "the wrong Party" and then they told Fatah they'd give it all to them (Fatah) if Fatah attacks Hamas. So nah, they can't be to blame, can they, warhawk?
IF ONE wants to see real joy, one has only to look at the faces of Israeli correspondents who appear every evening on television to report on events in Lebanon.
What delight! The "Christians and Sunnis" attack Shiite students at the Arab University in Beirut and kill them! Any moment, a new civil war may break out! Look, a female Sunni student interviewed on television says that "Nasrallah is worse than Olmert!" Look at her again! And again! And again!
"When two quarrel, the third laughs," as the proverb goes. When an Arab hits an Arab--whether in Baghdad, Gaza or Beirut--the government of Israel and its commentators in the media are glowing. That has been a dominant theme in Israeli thought since the founding of the state, and even before: when Arabs are fighting each other, that is good for us.
In war, that makes sense. A split between your enemies is a gift to you. In World War I, the German general staff sent Lenin back to Russia in the famous sealed wagon, hoping to create a split between Russia and her British and French allies. In the 1948 war, we were saved because the armies of Egypt and Jordan were more interested in competing with each other than in fighting us. In the 80s, the Israeli army sent officers to North Iraq in order to help Mustafa Barzani to tear the Kurdish region away from Saddam's country.
That is a good strategy in war, which states have followed since the beginning of history. In this respect, Israel is no exception.
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery01302007.html
You love it too, don't ya, Warhawk?
Bush makes a funny on the "Democrat Party" thing:
"At the State of the Union, I saw kind of a strange expression when I referred to something as the Democrat Party," Mr. Bush said. "Now look, my diction isn’t all that good. I have been accused of occasionally mangling the English language, so I appreciate you inviting the head of the Republic party."
George’s speech to the UK Parliament on Iraq, January 2007
The problem is not Iran, folks, the problem is Saudia Arabia. The problem is not Iran.
U.S. can't prove Iran link to Iraq strife
Despite pledges to show evidence, officials have repeatedly put off presenting their case.
WASHINGTON — Bush administration officials acknowledged Friday that they had yet to compile evidence strong enough to back up publicly their claims that Iran is fomenting violence against U.S. troops in Iraq.
Administration officials have long complained that Iran was supplying Shiite Muslim militants with lethal explosives and other materiel used to kill U.S. military personnel. But despite several pledges to make the evidence public, the administration has twice postponed the release — most recently, a briefing by military officials scheduled for last Tuesday in Baghdad.
"The truth is, quite frankly, we thought the briefing overstated, and we sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts," national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley said Friday.
The acknowledgment comes amid shifting administration messages on Iran. After several weeks of saber rattling that included a stiff warning by President Bush and the dispatch of two aircraft carrier strike groups to the Persian Gulf, near Iran, the administration has insisted in recent days that it does not want to escalate tensions or to invade Iran.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates seemed to concede Friday that U.S. officials can't say for sure whether the Iranian government is involved in assisting the attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq.
"I don't know that we know the answer to that question," Gates said.
Earlier this week, U.S. officials acknowledged that they were uncertain about the strength of their evidence and were reluctant to issue potentially questionable data in the wake of the intelligence failures and erroneous assessments that preceded the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
LA Times
Few doubt that Iran is working to increase its influence inside Iraq, but many of its beneficiaries have been political groups that also are allied with the United States.
Saudi Arabia is the central front in the War On Terror.
Mississippi is the central front in the War On Poverty
But, but, but, I thought a week before the election he said, "Democrats want the terrorists to win!" I guess he must be getting worried about being impeached for all the lies he told and all the crimes he commited.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. - President Bush squarely addressed the issue most on the mind of House Democrats, saying Saturday that deep divisions over the Iraq war need not bring anyone’s patriotism into question.
“You know, I welcome debate in a time of war and I hope you know that,” Bush said in opening remarks at the guest speaker at a retreat that drew about 200 lawmakers to a Virginia resort.
He said disagreeing with him over the war — as many in the room do — does not mean “you don’t share the same sense of patriotism I do.”
The problem is not Iran, folks, the problem is Saudia Arabia. The problem is not Iran.
Posted by Domingo on February 3, 2007 at 04:51 PM
Will.
They have been a problem from the beginning.
The Saudis got a free ride from the Bush administration. They have been sending their children into Iraq to cause trouble...for four years. Now Bush wants to blame the Iranians for the violence the Saudis' spurred when the Shiites were forced to ask them to help counter the madness.
We must free ourselves from foreign oil dependency and especially from dependency on the Saudis. Don't look for anything to happen if our leadership is too busy courting Bush for the next two years instead of crafting their own policy. He will stall, mislead, and make sure nothing is done.
Cheney promised the Saudis they will keep the spigot flowing.
“You know, I welcome debate in a time of war and I hope you know that,” Bush said in opening remarks at the guest speaker at a retreat that drew about 200 lawmakers to a Virginia resort.
We know no such thing. That sounded like a lie to me ...and it is.
Wow, this should thin the GOP presidential herd, shouldn't it?
“Pastor Patriot” Calls To Imprison Adulterers
Televangelist and Ohio "Patriot Pastor" leader Rod Parsley's Center for Moral Clarity is urging the revival of long-dormant laws against adultery in states such as Michigan, where adultery is technically a felony, although no one has been prosecuted for 36 years.
In an e-mail update to its supporters, the Center noted with approval the remark of an appeals court judge that a Michigan statute criminalizing sex involving commission of a felony, when combined with the law making adultery a felony, could lead to life in prison. "Lawmakers and judges in Michigan are holding married couples accountable for their vows of fidelity," touted CMC, adding that "The rest of the nation should take a look at the Michigan statute. Criminal laws are designed to force people to conform to certain acceptable standards of personal behavior. Most of society's code of conduct has its roots in the 10 Commandments."
"Adultery is a violation of biblical instruction as well as an offense against the other partner in what should be a sacred relationship," said Parsley. But given his history of involvement in Republican politics, where will that leave him in 2008, with frontrunning presidential candidates McCain and Giuliani, along with potential dark horse Gingrich, each allegedly carrying an adulterous past that, in Parsley's world, would put them behind bars?
Crooks and Liars
We’re Not Worried About Misinformation; We’re Worried About You Taping It
Over at Blue Jersey, we revisit the story of a Kearny high school teacher, David Paszkiewicz, who told his students that 'that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah's ark,' and "you belong in hell" if you "reject" Christianity. He also singled out a Muslim student to tell her that she is definitely going to hell.
Kearny school officials have certainly taken their time in handling the incident, which occurred at the start of the school year and became public in November.
In December, the Kearny school board continued to obfuscate who was at fault, silently implicating the young student who had secretly taped Paszkiewicz's classroom sermons for fear officials wouldn't believe him. In January, the teacher published a rambling letter in the local paper, explaining why the Constitution allows him to tell his students they are going to hell. He even insinuated the student who taped him was a part of a broader conspiracy:
It is my firm conviction that there is an effort afoot to undermine the very underpinnings of our freedoms.
This morning, the New York Times tells of Kearny's official reaction: Student's Recording of Teacher's Views Leads to a Ban on Taping
Crooks and Liars
Iraq war spawns growing refugee problem
By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
Sat. Feb 3
DAMASCUS, Syria - Decades after the Middle East was hit by the mass uprooting of Palestinians, it is again struggling with a gigantic refugee problem — this time from Iraq.
The exodus — one million to neighboring
Syria alone, according to the U.N. — is another unforeseen byproduct of the 2003 Iraq invasion. When it might peak, nobody knows, but if it continues at its present rate, the consequences for the region would be profound.
Iraqis now make up more than 5 percent of Syria's population, the U.N. refugee agency says. Jordan says its 700,000 Iraqis have swollen its population by 12 percent, and its officials say they have already moved to cut off the flow. So has Egypt, with 130,000 Iraqi newcomers...
Syria is poor and lacking in jobs, and many Syrians grumble about the newcomers pushing up the cost of food and housing. The U.N. refugee agency says it is struggling to help the Iraqis, many of whom are poor and running out of the meager funds they brought.
New York-based Human Rights Watch accuses the United States of doing too little, saying it should "significantly" increase the number of Iraqi refugees it will resettle this year and contribute generously to the U.N. appeal for funds to cope with the crisis.
"Washington is spending about $2 billion per week on the war in Iraq, but has barely begun to address the human fallout from the war," said Bill Frelick, Human Rights Watch's refugee policy director.
The U.S. resettled several hundred Iraqis in 2006, according to the U.N. agency, whose formal title, UNHCR, stands for U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. It wants Washington to take up to 20,000 in 2007...
Human Rights Watch says Jordan refuses entry to Iraqi men between ages 17 and 35. Government officials acknowledge restrictions on the entry of Iraqis, but won't give specifics.
The Iraqi presence in Jordan is a "burden," Jordanian government spokesman Nasser Judeh said. Jordan, he said, wants an international conference to discuss compensation for Arab nations hosting fleeing Iraqis...
Syria, population 18 million, is the refuge of choice primarily because of its relaxed entry regulations for Arabs, the relatively low cost of living and availability of schools and health care.
President Bashar Assad's government is reluctant to detail the costs. "There is indeed a burden, but Syria doesn't complain to anyone and is not asking anyone for help," Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa told reporters in Damascus in January.
The Damascus office of the UNHCR says about 40,000 Iraqis arrive monthly. They can stay for six months, then must leave and renew the visa process from scratch. The quickest way is a short trip to neighboring Lebanon, but at $20 a person or more, the sightseeing packages are too costly for the poor...
Some have settled in Palestinian refugee camps, where rents are lower, joining tens of thousands of Palestinians who came to Syria as refugees following the 1948 creation of
Israel and the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Iraqis also have set up a private university outside the capital, with Iraqi lecturers and a mostly Iraqi student body — a reflection of Iraq's war-driven brain drain...
The UNHCR is struggling to deal with the flood of Iraqis across the region — and within their homeland. It says some 500,000 fled their homes to other parts of Iraq in 2006 alone, and that the number of internally displaced people could reach 2.3 million — nearly one in ten Iraqis — by the end of 2007.
This month, the Geneva-based agency made an emergency appeal for $60 million to help fleeing Iraqis.
"Unremitting violence in Iraq will likely mean continued mass internal and external displacement affecting much of the surrounding region," it said.
Already, its resources in Syria are stretched thin. The waiting time for seeing a UNHCR official is five months, said Laurens Jolles, the UNHCR representative in Syria. He hopes it will drop to one month after his office recruits 10 new staff.
"Syria's generosity is admirable and must be noted," he said in an interview.
But many Iraqi families are running out of money and becoming increasingly dependent on aid from religious and political support groups, he said...
//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070203/ap_on_re_mi_ea/new_iraqi_diaspora
You have to wonder how many Iraqi terrorists are being recruited and trained from those living among the Palestinian refugees.
"Blame Iran" Campaign Stumbles
The Bush Administration has been telling us that 1) the recent killing of five American soldiers in Karbala may have been done by Iranian agents; and 2) the administration would soon provide the world with proof that Iran was providing IEDs and training in how to kill our soldiers.
Strike One; Strike Two.
It may not have been the Iranians who conspired to kill our soldiers in Karbala, but rather Iraqi Army generals. You know, the same Iraqi generals for whom we are sending more troops (by the way, twice as many personnel at a higher cost than Bush is admitting to.)
And we find out that the Bush Administration has pulled back on taking its case to the world about Iranian complicity in Iraq because (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) upon close inspection the “evidence” is questionable.
The Left Coaster
Who are the foreign fighters in Iraq?
An NBC News analysis finds 55 percent hail from Saudi Arabia.
An NBC News analysis of hundreds of foreign fighters who died in Iraq over the last two years reveals that a majority came from the same country as most of the 9/11 hijackers — Saudi Arabia.
Among the suicide bombers was Ahmed al-Ghamdi, a one-time medical student and son of a Saudi diplomat. In December 2004, he climbed into a truck in Mosul and blew himself up.
On an Internet video, another Saudi says goodbye to his mother, then drives an ambulance full of explosives into a building.
They are among more than 400 militants from 21 countries whose deaths were celebrated on Islamic Web sites over the last two years.
"By far the nationality that comes up over and over again is Saudi Arabia," says Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News terrorism expert.
Posted by Domingo on February 3, 2007 at 05:26 PM
If this nonsense is happening in New Jersey, imagine what's going on in other parts of the country.
Probably a Saudi, but ly'in Bush won't tell you that. He wants to steal Iran's oil.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide truck bomber struck a market in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad on Saturday, killing 135 people among the crowd buying food for evening meals, police and hospital officials said.
Posted by Domingo on February 3, 2007 at 05:19 PM
It's about time somebody threw Newt Gingrich in jail. He commited adultry so many times against so many wives that he might qualify for the three strikes law.
I wish the cable news networks would spend as much time on the destruction in Iraq after the car bombings as they do on the aftermath of natural disasters in this country.
If this nonsense is happening in New Jersey, imagine what's going on in other parts of the country. Posted by SandyH
I know, I usually think of your part of the country for that kind of stuff. :~)
The Democrats should be using the term as Bush does towards Iran, when it comes to Impeachment, "All options are not off the table."
I am really disappointed with the Democrats, actually all of them period. Everything this Man or so called President has done to our Country, and you sit back and bicker, instead of taking his butt to the Impeachment Hearings along with Dick Chaney. Lets make some history in this Country and Restore our World Wide Reputation, Impeach Bush and Chaney, then we can hang a Banner across the Military Ship stating "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED."
I don't understand what it takes for People to really wake up and see what is slowly happening to the Country we love so much. Dicatorship, Bush wants more Power than God.
God Bless us all and please wake up.
Lets make some history in this Country and Restore our World Wide Reputation, Impeach Bush and Cheney Posted by jpshotwheels
Keep track of the "Scooter" Libby trial. A CIA agent was "outted" and Bush ordered Cheney to "throw Scooter under the bus" to save Rove. It was in Cheney's notes read at the trial the other day.
Evenin' all
I'm pleased to see we are commenting on the Saudi connection with our occupation of Iraq.
Does anyone else see a link between Cheney's Saudi visit and the stepped up rehtoric against Iran?
Wait until May 1 when Chavez turns 90% of Venezula's oil into state run operations.
I almost wish I could go "back to the future" when Jimmy Carter was pushing for alternative fuel.
regardless of who is our president or who is in congress the kinds of changes we must make as a species to provide a liveable environment for future generations are way beyond anything most democrats and certainly most republicans are promoting at this point. carter was brilliant and could have possible set us on a correct path thirty years ago but he was sandbagged by the hostage situation which yielded reagan, the culture of greed, the tossing overboard of any governmental agenda toward population control, conservation and so on and helped bring us to where we are today....led by morons and clowns on the republican side and frightened nellies on the democratic.
i have tried to stay out of the discussions about who the democratic candidate for 08 should be but after reading a piece by kos yesterday ( who i often am at odds with ) i must say he made an impression on me. if gore wins an oscar and the nobel peace prize he could announce for a presidential run next october or so and probably blow away the rest of the field including obama and hillary. i believe this is one of the very few leaders our nation has who might be able to affect the kind of change in perception of where we stand in terms of the future of our planet that would be powerful enough in nature to overcome the greed and intertia that has built over the last thirty years against doing anything of significance other than looking up our own asses.
who knows if he is interested but congressman, senator, veteran, oscar winner, nobel peace prize winner and winner of the popular vote in the 2000 election are pretty good credentials. i am therefore hoping for a gore/obama or gore/richardson or gore/hillary ticket.
White House says Iraq bombing an "atrocity"
...yes today's bombing is one of hundreds of such atrocities that have occured since the 2003 war of choice was begun in iraq.
...another atrocity is that the swine who started this war are not in chains and are in fact still making descions about the allocation of the resources of the richest, most powerful nation on earth.
ok on a lighter note i don't know why mac keeps running those adds with the heavy guy in eyeglasses representing pc's and the slim hipster looing guy representing mac's. all the guys i know who can actually help me get computer problems solved look like the pc guy, all the guys trying to get me to buy more insurance look like the other guy.
Well, this looks like as good a time as anything to jump back in.
i must say he made an impression on me. if gore wins an oscar and the nobel peace prize he could announce for a presidential run next october or so and probably blow away the rest of the field including obama and hillary. i believe this is one of the very few leaders our nation has who might be able to affect the kind of change in perception of where we stand in terms of the future of our planet that would be powerful enough in nature to overcome the greed and intertia that has built over the last thirty years against doing anything of significance other than looking up our own asses.
Amen, my friend. Amen.
hey cyn how are you doing? haven't seen you here on campus in awhile. we should go over to the ratskeller and have a few beers!
evening all ... just driftin' thru so to speak...
*frosty** the blogger aka the whitehouse (whiteout) spokesperson tony snow(job)?
i didn't think anyone would ever beat out spirow agnew for being a stupid, nasty asshole of a vice president but it looks like cheney has left him in the dust. what a mendacious clown!:
Vice President's Shadow Hangs Over Trial
Libby Trial Testimony Points Out Cheney's Role in Trying to Dampen Wilson's Criticism
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 4, 2007; Page A05
Vice President Cheney's press officer, Cathie Martin, approached his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on Air Force Two on July 12, 2003, to ask how she should respond to journalists' questions about Joseph C. Wilson IV. Libby looked over the reporter's questions and told Martin: "Well, let me go talk to the boss and I'll be back."
On Libby's return, Martin testified in federal court last week, he brought a card with detailed replies dictated by Cheney, including a highly partisan, incomplete summary of Wilson's investigation into Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction program.
Libby subsequently called a reporter, read him the statement, and said -- according to the reporter -- he had "heard" that Wilson's investigation was instigated by his wife, an employee at the CIA, later identified as Valerie Plame. The reporter, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, was one of five people with whom Libby discussed Plame's CIA status during those critical weeks that summer.
After seven days of such courtroom testimony, the unanswered question hanging over Libby's trial is, did the vice president's former chief of staff decide to leak that disparaging information on his own?
No evidence has emerged that Cheney told him to do it. But Cheney's dictated reply is one of many signs to emerge at trial of the vice president's unusual attentiveness to the scandal and his desire to blunt it. His efforts included the extraordinary disclosure of classified information, including a one-sided synopsis of Wilson's report and a 2002 intelligence estimate on Iraq.
Under questioning from FBI agent Deborah S. Bond, Libby acknowledged that he and Cheney "may have talked" explicitly aboard the plane from Norfolk that day about whether to make public Plame's CIA employment, Bond testified on Thursday.
Her testimony brought Cheney closer than ever to the heart of the controversy surrounding the Bush administration's efforts to discredit Wilson, who had accused the White House of twisting intelligence he had gathered as it sought to justify the invasion of Iraq.
ding dong the witch is dead
Posted by Domingo on February 3, 2007 at 05:55 PM
We do have our flakes.
sometimes being left if oh so right:
Ecuador probes oil companies over pollution
Sat Feb 3, 2007 8:13pm ET
QUITO (Reuters) - Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said on Saturday the government would suspend contracts with any foreign oil company found to have needlessly damaged the environment.
"Any company ... state-run or private, that unnecessarily (damages) Ecuador's environment, or does not fulfill its contract, will face sanctions," Correa said in his weekly radio address.
Correa, a 43-year-old former economy minister, has made investors nervous by pledging to limit debt payments and rework foreign oil contracts to raise the government's share of booming oil revenues.
He said the government is investigating suspected irregularities committed by companies involving pollution in the country's Amazon jungle region.
The probe could be focused on Brazil's Petrobras, which is developing oil block 31, located at the heart of one of the world's biggest protected natural reserves.
"But of course, if we find out that Petrobras or any other company has committed irregularities we will terminate their contracts," said Correa.
In 2004, Petrobras won a license to explore block 31, part of which is located in a reserve considered one of the world's most bio-diverse areas and home to tribes who have maintained the same way of life for thousands of years.
Posted by gregg on February 3, 2007 at 08:50 PM
Let's give the devil his do. He hasn't testified under oath yet. I say he either throws Bush under the bus or he'll say he just doesn't remember...anything.
i really like fitz but i kinda hope dickhead starts getting steam coming out of his ears and then actually bites fitz....and then runs out of the courtroom on all fours howling like a werewolf with the court officers chasing him.
i love these charges sandy. they are the same kind of stuff ---lying to fbi agents--- that they use to flip mafia types and such....it is all so fitting that these piglets from cheney's office are being publically humiliated in the same way loan sharks, hit men and whore mongers are....too rich!
and monday the judge lets everyone know if fitz can play hours of the grand jury tapes where libby is lying his ass off....i guess fitzmas is a holiday best taken cold.
"Frosty" nutjobs
by algebrateacher
Sat Jan 13, 2007 at 02:24:58 PM PST
Is there something about the name "Frosty" that makes someone unhinged? Frosty Hardison is an activist in Federal Way, WA, trying to ban use of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" in the classroom. He's the one who has said that "condoms don't belong in the classroom and neither does Al Gore." His wife, an unsuccessful candidate for the school board, said she thinks the film is anti-America. Then there is Frosty Wooldridge, an anti-immigration activist whose first bugaboo (first of many; the fellow is anti-immigration the way Representative Goode, R-VA, is) is the 1965 Act of Congress legalizing the presence of Cuban refugees from Fidel.
Sure dosn't take the dialog long to go down hill when Frosty* shows up. What a disgusting turn.
just driftin' back and the "frosty" ... agreed too much attention to a flake aka tony snow(job).
According to M_W The asterisk (*) is used for various arbitrary meanings. I think in Frosty's case arbitrary is the key word. How can anyone perceive the world so differently than intelligent, sensible people?
The Heat is on, It's on the Streets, It's in the Air!!!
Fry all the Repugs!!!
if you will associate yourself with intelligent, sensible people they will lead you away from your weird views.
Frosty* you're living, posting proof that that isn't the case.
Is anyone still up?
If so, Good Evening.
:)
fos, evening young lady. here is a great recording of the band with the staple singers doing "the weight"
catch a cannon ball...
Democrats: Diversity made 'first 100 hours' work
POSTED: 1:06 p.m. EST, February 3, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The diversity of House Democrats led to the development and passage of an ambitious six-bill agenda in the first 100 hours of the new Congress, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said Saturday.
"The first 100 hours began a new direction for America under new leadership in Congress, leadership that reflects the diverse vision, experience and values of the American people," Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina, said in his party's weekly radio address.
Clyburn outlined the measures House members approved in their first 100 hours, which included raising the federal minimum wage, lowering interest rates on some student loans and expanding stem cell research.
"The Democratic caucus values the exchange of different ideas," Clyburn said. "It was the diverse ideas and perspectives of our caucus that came together to develop our successful 'First 100 Hours' agenda."
In the coming weeks, Democrats will tackle issues such as the Iraq war, global warming and balancing the budget, Clyburn said.
Clyburn, the second black lawmaker in history to reach as high as a party whip, also reflected on Black History Month.
"During the month of February, we celebrate the vast contributions of African-Americans to our country. It is part of our honoring the diversity that makes us who and what we are as a nation," he said.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, poised to submit his new budget to Congress next week, insisted Saturday that unless programs like Medicare and Social Security are changed, future generations will face tax hikes, government red ink or huge cuts in benefits.
...the little moron can "insist" all he wants. he can stomp his little cowboy boots and wave his 1/16 of gallon cowboy hat ( made especially for his pinhead) in the air and he can get mom to flap that goosy flesh under her arms and get laura to pull out the limeaid pants suits....he ain't getting any of his domestic shit passed for the next two years because we cleaned his clock in november and those drapes we ordered are just geting hung in the committee chair offices....hahaha
Posted by gregg on February 3, 2007 at 11:47 PM
I heard that song on a commercial. I like it. I'm saving it.
:)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, poised to submit his new budget to Congress next week, insisted Saturday that unless programs like Medicare and Social Security are changed, future generations will face tax hikes, government red ink or huge cuts in benefits.
That's Official Confirmation:
The Chimp is not aware that there are two FULL GROWN generations of voting age that he has NO CLUE exist. I mean, he acts as if everyone in this country is in his little group.
Filthy Rich , One Race , One Gender and One Religion.
This man is out of his flipping mind!
what's happenin out there in work land kid?
Posted by gregg on February 4, 2007 at 12:07 AM
I'm not at work. I'm at home watching SNL. I guess, I'm still on my regular schedule with regards to my sleep rutine. I took a "break" after the DNC Talent Show earlier today and woke up around 8:30 CT. there's like three or four threads that have been posted since then.
and fos after he has demonstrated for all generations what a f_ _ _ ing genius he is by invading iraq, ignoring global warming, letting the gulf coast rot, denying stem cell research federal funds, etc. i am soooo sure everyone is jump right on his little plan to turn the social security funds over to stock brokers and used car salsemen....and of course believe that he actually is defining the problem correctly and has the only possible solutions....what a schmuck!
Posted by gregg on February 4, 2007 at 12:18 AM
Dude thinks he's Jesus Christ. I tend to think of him, though, as one who has more Warren Jeff's qualities really.
;p
what a schmuck!
take a step back and think about this ... schmuck has spent billions to create a civil war. obliterated the pottery rule while trashing our world standing. responsible for more deaths than any 10 iraqi dictators could create ... not including american families trying to justify their children's or spouse's deaths in the name of his war on terror nor those injured or scared for life as veterans of what?
a schmuck's "mission accomplished."
i sincerly hope the demos in congress paste him with a lot more than a non-binding resolution ... that would be "mission accomplished."
i hope they crazy glue his ass to the dome of the capital and let him cheerlead sam brownback from up there for the next two years. anyhow i'm off to bed. see you in the morning.
i sincerly hope the demos in congress paste him with a lot more than a non-binding resolution ... that would be "mission accomplished."
Posted by america1st on February 4, 2007 at 12:26 AM
Barack Obama has introduced BINDING Legislation to end the War in Iraq. All one has to do , though, is spend an hour with Sen. Russ Feingold to know how difficult it will be for Barack Obama to get his Democratic colleagues to grow a pair and support the bill.
;p
I didn't watch the winter meetings yesterday but it sounds like Gravel and Richardson wowed the crowd with their speeches.
I didn't watch the winter meetings yesterday but it sounds like Gravel and Richardson wowed the crowd with their speeches.
Posted by ap215 on February 4, 2007 at 12:33 AM
Yes. One was like "The Undiscovered Real Deal" and the other was like a "Harvard Professor" . They both are going to Hollywood
"...Democratic colleagues to grow a pair and support the bill."
they're on a guilt trip... having originally voted for the misleader-divider-decider to have the authorization. that's why i said "hope."
since i've been away from the blog, looks like tony snow(job) has taken up a nite job as the "frosty?"
Ooops!
I postd the wrong link.
Here's the BINDING Legislation I was talking about.
BINDING
since i've been away from the blog, looks like tony snow(job) has taken up a nite job as the "frosty?"
Posted by america1st on February 4, 2007 at 12:39 AM
Don't worry about him. I have EXCLUSIVE video footage of him. Here's a behind the scenes look at what goes on at the White House. Frosty was there with the rest of his pals.
Take A Look
BINDING... Obama was ahead of his time when he voted against the resolution, is ahead of his time for proposing his own, and it remains to be seen if the other's see the light ... my guess is not. still too much guilt for having supported the deceiver's vision of an elusive "mission accomplished."
Posted by america1st on February 4, 2007 at 12:57 AM
Ahead? No, he's not ahead of his time. He's right in line with his time as is Sen. Russ Feingold. Their colleagues are BEHIND on time. This nation is more in line with Obama and Feingold than they are with the Congress as a whole. Because they are still stuck in the past thinking that the American people are but sheep, a "blind following" electorate, they will continue to be the wipms that they are not understanding that "We the People" see them as plain as day. We see them for the cowards they are and no amount of verbal flattery and Media hype is going to distract us. We know that there are but a few good men and women on Capital Hill. Members of Congress are the only ones in the dark.
thanks for the insight... "Take A Look" ... aka "monkey house" or a "day at the whitehouse circus" or "more fun than a barrel of chimps" ... time for sleep.
Posted by america1st on February 4, 2007 at 01:17 AM
You're goin to bed after that? I hope you don't have a bad dream. (LOL)
Sleep well, my friend. Sleep well.
;p
BBL......I'm off to Progressiville
;p
You know after listening to my daughter and quite few more young women who make less than $25,000 a year it has become apparent what I had suspected, but never took the time to check. The Earned Income Credit has been reduced each year and now is not what it was orignially intended for which was to help those under a certain tax bracket.
The Feds say off the welfare rolls, get training (of which most is for jobs that pay under $12.00 per hour), get a job. Fine. The majority of these young women need some tax assistence along with those low salaries.
Bottom line: now that Charles Rangel has that ways and Means Committee, I will be e-mailing and sending written comunication to resolve this problem.
I will definitely be letting that committee know that something has to be done for those that make under $20,000 a year tax wise.
FOS
Took a ride today and just a quater of a mile from me looks like Beirut. There is just devastation everywhere.
We were truly blessed early Friday morning that the initial touchdown was about one quarter of a mile from me. We heard the winds and roar, but thought that the thnunder storm was kicking up.
I know your sleep patterns are wacked out because you work graveyard. I've done it before and you never really get enough sleep and rest which is why I'm always telling you to get some.
Posted by J on February 4, 2007 at 02:13 AM
Good call. However, there should be tax breaks for people who make under 30,000 not 20,000. If they are single without kids, they still have to support themselves. Washington D.C. seems to think that in order to get some help, you have to have kids. That's not true. The cost of living is high and if you are single and not married, you have to pay for everything. That's AFTER you pay for shet you don't get like Social Security and somebody's Medicare Tax. All that is taken out of your check BEFORE you get yours and for some reason , they think it's okay to take more from Single people than everyone else. It's wrong. We still have to live off something. We pay for everything.
...and everything costs.
;p
Oh FOS, I agree wholeheartedly!!! Singles are just discriminated against something terrible with the tax makeup.
Oh FOS, I agree wholeheartedly!!! Singles are just discriminated against something terrible with the tax makeup.
Oh FOS, I agree wholeheartedly!!! Singles are just discriminated against something terrible with the tax makeup.
Posted by J on February 4, 2007 at 02:24 AM
51 % of American women live without a Spouse. Washington should really start paying attention. I don't know the specifics, but it's worth checking out, ya know?
Singles have nothing whatsoever to warrant them substantial deductions which is why many get into purchasing a home so that they can start itemizing something.
But you know if you itemize substantial payments for damages/or damages themselves and whatever else if there is some type of natural disaster or whatever, the IRS immediately gets red flags and audits you. Went through that in 2006 for expenses in 2005 because of 4 hurricanes in 6 weeks that just wrecked havoc with the entire state. Top it off, I had to fight my insurer and FEMA too? Now you see why I keep the war paint on :)
The entire tax code needs to be overhauled.
Women are discrimnated against just on general principle in this country. Doesn't matter what color you are.
The entire tax code needs to be overhauled.
Posted by J on February 4, 2007 at 02:33 AM
Exactly!
As far as the home buying thing goes. I will probably never purchase a home unless I was seriously banking because first of all, I refuse to live on the first floor anywhere. It would have to be custome built like on Cribs. Second, I refuse to live in a neighborhood that I can't depend on it staying the way it was when I first move there. Third, I am single and that means I would have to be responsible for.......Oh hell. Owning a home is a complete hassle and I would rather live in a condo complex where my car is parked for me and I have security guards and where not just anybody can come knocking on my door.
;p
I hear ya there. I hope to ascend from this "starter house" one day (dreamin'), but what I want runs anywhere between $400,000/$600,000 here in Florida and with land prices running on the ridiculous side ....... oh well.
But not givin' up, never givin' up.
Nothin' wrong with wantin' to live upscale.
With all the tax breaks that the wealthy and business have handed to them in the last 6/7 years, it's like everyday folk just didn't exist.
and I think what was so infuriating about the whole thing was that the Bush administration just got bold in folks faces and said: "Oh we're goin' to help our own the wealthy and there is nothing you can do about it."
I know for a fact that Rangel is going to turn some of that crap back and let other not be renewed.
Posted by J on February 4, 2007 at 02:50 AM
That's what pisses me off the most about them. The mock the American people right to their faces. The sick thing about it is, some of our Democrats just stand right there and let them too.
Grrrr!
;p
OMG!
....a skunk just scurried in. Who left the back door open?
bbl.........................
;p
good morning friends and neighbors. super sunday!
dpd must be slathering that hog back with his famous wd30/maple syrup/gunpowder bbq as i write...
hey, hey , hey who are these dummies to make suggestions as to how our brilliant field marshals bush and cheney should command the forces??? have they not witnessed the greatness of our leaders strategies??
from salon:
Ex-U.S. Military Leaders Urge Iran Talks
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press Writer
February 03,2007 | LONDON -- Three former high-ranking U.S. military officers have called for Britain to help defuse the crisis over Iran's nuclear program, saying military action against Tehran would be a disaster for the region.
In a letter to the Sunday Times newspaper, the three former officers urged President Bush to open talks "without preconditions" with the Iranian government to find a diplomatic solution.
The signatories were retired Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard, a senior military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington; retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, former head of U.S. Central Command; and Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, former director of the Center for Defense Information.
They said Britain "has a vital role to play in securing a renewed diplomatic push" and urged Prime Minister Tony Blair to make it clear he would oppose any military attack on Iran.
The officers said an attack "would have disastrous consequences for security in the region, coalition forces in Iraq and would further exacerbate regional and global tensions."
"The current crisis must be resolved through diplomacy," they said....
Debate on Iraq healthy, Bush tells Democrats
Sat Feb 3, 2007 2:30pm ET
...what is not healthy is that fact that this moron is the one making decisions as to what actually happens in iraq...
Morning, gregg and everyone else. Superbowl Sunday and my grandson's 10th birthday!
Sunday talk from Kos:
MTP: John Edwards.
This Week: Hagel vs McCain.
CNN: Bob Baer and John McLaughlin on Iran and the NIE.
Feinstein vs Lugar.
Tom Vilsack.
Ralph Nader
Fox: Webb vs Lindsey Graham.
Face the Nation: Super Bowl episode with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, Hall of Fame QB Dan Marino, Super Bowl XXI MVP Phil Simms and CBS announcer Jim Nantz.
frank rich via the wonderful blog, welcome to pottersville:
Sunday, February 04, 2007
FRANK RICH: Why Dick Cheney Cracked Up
In the days since Dick Cheney lost it on CNN, our nation’s armchair shrinks have had a blast. The vice president who boasted of “enormous successes” in Iraq and barked “hogwash” at the congenitally mild Wolf Blitzer has been roundly judged delusional, pathologically dishonest or just plain nuts. But what else is new? We identified those diagnoses long ago.
The more intriguing question is what ignited this particularly violent public flare-up.The answer can be found in the timing of the CNN interview, which was conducted the day after the start of the perjury trial of Mr. Cheney’s former top aide, Scooter Libby. The vice president’s on-camera crackup reflected his understandable fear that a White House cover-up was crumbling. He knew that sworn testimony in a Washington courtroom would reveal still more sordid details about how the administration lied to take the country into war in Iraq.
He knew that those revelations could cripple the White House’s current campaign to escalate that war and foment apocalyptic scenarios about Iran. Scariest of all, he knew that he might yet have to testify under oath himself.Mr. Cheney, in other words, understands the danger this trial poses to the White House even as some of Washington remains oblivious. From the start, the capital has belittled the Joseph and Valerie Wilson affair as “a tempest in a teapot,” as David Broder of The Washington Post reiterated just five months ago.
When “all of the facts come out in this case, it’s going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great,” Bob Woodward said in 2005. Or, as Robert Novak suggested in 2003 before he revealed Ms. Wilson’s identity as a C.I.A. officer in his column, “weapons of mass destruction or uranium from Niger” are “little elitist issues that don’t bother most of the people.” Those issues may not trouble Mr. Novak, but they do loom large to other people, especially those who sent their kids off to war over nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and nonexistent uranium.
In terms of the big issues, the question of who first leaked Ms. Wilson’s identity (whether Mr. Libby, Richard Armitage, Ari Fleischer or Karl Rove) to which journalist (whether Mr. Woodward, Mr. Novak, Judith Miller or Matt Cooper) has always been a red herring. It’s entirely possible that the White House has always been telling the truth when it says that no one intended to unmask a secret agent. (No one has been charged with that crime.)
The White House is also telling the truth when it repeatedly says that Mr. Cheney did not send Mr. Wilson on his C.I.A.-sponsored African trip to check out a supposed Iraq-Niger uranium transaction. (Another red herring, since Mr. Wilson didn’t make that accusation in the first place.) But if the administration is telling the truth on these narrow questions and had little to hide about the Wilson trip per se, its wild overreaction to the episode was an incriminating sign it was hiding something else.
According to testimony in the Libby case, the White House went berserk when Mr. Wilson published his Op-Ed article in The Times in July 2003 about what he didn’t find in Africa. Top officials gossiped incessantly about both Wilsons to anyone who would listen, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby conferred about them several times a day, and finally Mr. Libby, known as an exceptionally discreet White House courtier, became so sloppy that his alleged lying landed him with five felony counts.
The explanation for the hysteria has long been obvious. The White House was terrified about being found guilty of a far greater crime than outing a C.I.A. officer: lying to the nation to hype its case for war. When Mr. Wilson, an obscure retired diplomat, touched that raw nerve, all the president’s men panicked because they knew Mr. Wilson’s modest finding in Africa was the tip of a far larger iceberg. They knew that there was still far more damning evidence of the administration’s W.M.D. lies lurking in the bowels of the bureaucracy.
Thanks to the commotion caused by the leak case, that damning evidence has slowly dribbled out. By my count we now know of at least a half-dozen instances before the start of the Iraq war when various intelligence agencies and others signaled that evidence of Iraq’s purchase of uranium in Africa might be dubious or fabricated. (These are detailed in the timelines at frankrich.com/timeline.htm.) The culmination of these warnings arrived in January 2003, the same month as the president’s State of the Union address, when the White House received a memo from the National Intelligence Council, the coordinating body for all American spy agencies, stating unequivocally that the claim was baseless.
Nonetheless President Bush brandished that fearful “uranium from Africa” in his speech to Congress as he hustled the country into war in Iraq.If the war had been a cakewalk, few would have cared to investigate the administration’s deceit at its inception. But by the time Mr. Wilson’s Op-Ed article appeared — some five months after the State of the Union and two months after “Mission Accomplished” — there was something terribly wrong with the White House’s triumphal picture.
More than 60 American troops had been killed since Mr. Bush celebrated the end of “major combat operations” by prancing about an aircraft carrier. No W.M.D. had been found, and we weren’t even able to turn on the lights in Baghdad. For the first time, more than half of Americans told a Washington Post-ABC News poll that the level of casualties was “unacceptable.” It was urgent, therefore, that the awkward questions raised by Mr. Wilson’s revelation of his Africa trip be squelched as quickly as possible. He had to be smeared as an inconsequential has-been whose mission was merely a trivial boondoggle arranged by his wife.
The C.I.A., which had actually resisted the uranium fictions, had to be strong-armed into taking the blame for the 16 errant words in the State of the Union speech. What we are learning from Mr. Libby’s trial is just what a herculean effort it took to execute this two-pronged cover-up after Mr. Wilson’s article appeared. Mr. Cheney was the hands-on manager of the 24/7 campaign of press manipulation and high-stakes character assassination, with Mr. Libby as his chief hatchet man. Though Mr. Libby’s lawyers are now arguing that their client was a sacrificial lamb thrown to the feds to shield Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby actually was — and still is — a stooge for the vice president.
Whether he will go to jail for his misplaced loyalty is the human drama of his trial. But for the country there are bigger issues at stake, and they are not, as the White House would have us believe, ancient history. The administration propaganda flimflams that sold us the war are now being retrofitted to expand and extend it.In a replay of the run-up to the original invasion, a new National Intelligence Estimate, requested by Congress in August to summarize all intelligence assessments on Iraq, was mysteriously delayed until last week, well after the president had set his surge.
Even the declassified passages released on Friday — the grim takes on the weak Iraqi security forces and the spiraling sectarian violence — foretell that the latest plan for victory is doomed. (As a White House communications aide testified at the Libby trial, this administration habitually releases bad news on Fridays because “fewer people pay attention when it’s reported on Saturday.”) A Pentagon inspector general’s report, uncovered by Business Week last week, was also kept on the q.t.: it shows that even as more American troops are being thrown into the grinder in Iraq, existing troops lack the guns and ammunition to “effectively complete their missions.” Army and Marine Corps commanders told The Washington Post that both armor and trucks were in such short supply that their best hope is that “five brigades of up-armored Humvees fall out of the sky.”
Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of Colin Powell’s notorious W.M.D. pantomime before the United Nations Security Council, a fair amount of it a Cheney-Libby production. To mark this milestone, the White House is reviving the same script to rev up the war’s escalation, this time hyping Iran-Iraq connections instead of Al Qaeda-Iraq connections. In his Jan. 10 prime-time speech on Iraq, Mr. Bush said that Iran was supplying “advanced weaponry and training to our enemies,” even though the evidence suggests that Iran is actually in bed with our “friends” in Iraq, the Maliki government.
The administration promised a dossier to back up its claims, but that too has been delayed twice amid reports of what The Times calls “a continuing debate about how well the information proved the Bush administration’s case.” Call it a coincidence — though there are no coincidences — but it’s only fitting that the Libby trial began as news arrived of the death of E. Howard Hunt, the former C.I.A. agent whose bungling of the Watergate break-in sent him to jail and led to the unraveling of the Nixon presidency two years later.
Still, we can’t push the parallels too far. No one died in Watergate. This time around our country can’t wait two more years for the White House to be stopped from playing its games with American blood.
morning cyn, sunny and bright here with an inch or two of snow and a temp of about 10. is it time for that first superbowl long island iced tea??
The Heat is on, It's on the Street, It's in the Air, It's Everywhere!!!
*Fry The Repugs**
gg, 13 degrees here and sunny also. And, it's never too early for a long island iced tea. Alla Salute!
Brazile Thinks Gore Might Run
In a recent speech, former Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile "strongly implied" that her former boss could be "waiting to make a dramatic entrance into the 2008 presidential race, especially if he wins an Oscar next month," the Allentown Morning Call reports.
Said Brazile: "'I believe he is ready for this moment. He is a good leader. I think he can be one of the few leaders who can bring this country together."
"She acknowledged it will be a tough decision for Gore, noting Kerry's announcement last week to bow out of the race. Gore believes he is now doing his life's work, Brazile said. However, she conceded that Gore might be able to do more about global climate change from inside the Oval Office."
Army and Marine Corps commanders told The Washington Post that both armor and trucks were in such short supply that their best hope is that “five brigades of up-armored Humvees fall out of the sky.”
Morning gregg and anyone else lurking,
During WWII Dwight Eisenhower was acutely aware of the problem with supply lines. He made it a point to have more than enough weaponry, fuel and food in the pipeline for the troops in their drive across Europe after D-Day. Without an abundant supply of these items, he didn't feel that we would be successful.
The moron in the White House never kept up with history yet he thinks he is the Commander in Chief. He has failed and will continue to fail miserably until he is REMOVED from our White House. Of course the White House will have to be
fumigated for several years before it is habitable again.
It's a balmy 23 Degrees here in beautiful central New Mexico. I will take some of that iced tea.
i have no idea gotv but i wouldn't be surprised if the whole crowd was infected with a case of lithuanian exploding cabeza virus and the clean up crew from langley is taking care of bizznezz....
Good morning, everyone.
Earmarks battle cast as good vs. evil
If you've watched "Lord of the Rings," you may have noticed a similarity between the movie and the congressional battle over earmarks. Like the Ring, earmarks bestow amazing power on their bearers.
morning john....one l.i. tea coming up and just wait till dpd gets that hog back off his chipped car tire bbq fire out back....
Yes, yes, yes, ****Fry the Repigs****
I always did like roasted pig at a Hawaiian Luau.
I think the slogan for the next Congressional elections should be "Got Balls"? If not do not apply.
No ice tea for me, I purchased a bottle from Raven's Glenn (local vineyard) for tonight's game.
I have no idea the stats on the teams, and really don't care, (it's ignorance & apathy at it's finest) but I'm cheering for this team, only because my HS mascot is the same.
GO COLTS!
Posted by Cyn_NY on February 4, 2007 at 07:59 AM
I hope DB isn't giving us false hope. And if Gore does run, he doesn't retain her in any campaign position.
Other than figure skating and golf, the only game I like is football. Football really takes a lot of skill. It you don't have a brain you won't go very far.
I can't stand basketball (back and forth back and forth, yawn) or baseball (yawn).
And if he says it, he believes it.
Do we need to revive the draft?
Bush said he'd considered a draft but rejected it. "I think the volunteer army is working, and we've got to keep it strong," he told PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer in an interview Jan. 16.
Morning, Esme! I know nothing about football or the teams, either. But, I did go halves with my husband on a square in a superbowl pool so I have to remain neutral until I find out with our square says. ;-)
Posted by Johnedwrd on February 4, 2007 at 08:13 AM
It boggles my mind at the amount of money they make a year. Rappers are another group. My Necee watches Cribs on MTV. I can't even imagine their lifestyles. I'm happy if I have an extra $50 after I pay my bills to buy groceries!
Hi Cyn. I didn't get into any pool. I have before and it's lots of fun. I never spent over $10 though. ;)
Blair's Watergate?
'I GOT FED UP with all the sex and sleaze … of rock 'n' roll," Tony Blair said before he was elected, "so I went into politics." Yet today he stands accused of bringing sleaze closer to the center of British democracy than any leader since the dawn of universal suffrage.
Cheney Is Neck Deep In "Plamegate"
by FWIW
Sun Feb 04, 2007 at 04:39:01 AM PST
An article in today's WaPo reports that testimony in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby reveals that Dick Cheney was intimately involved in the smearing of Joseph C. Wilson IV. While on board Air Force II July 12, 2003, Cathie Martin, Dick Cheney's press officer asked "Scooter" Libby how she should respond to journalists' questions about Joe Wilson. He said, "Well, let me go talk to the boss and I'll be back." Upon his return he brought a detailed and "highly partisan" reply dictated by Cheney.
Libby then called Matt Cooper of Time magazine and read the same statement to him. He also told Cooper that he had "heard" that Wilson was involved because of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. Libby discussed Valerie Wilson's CIA employment status with five people before it was made public in a column by Robert Novak. It was also revealed in testimony that at the same time, Libby, Ari Fleischer and Karl Rove "inaccurately told or suggested to five reporters that Wilson had been dispatched to Niger by Plame." Ari Fleischer testified that the intent was to imply that Wilson was involved because of nepotism, rather than any knowledge and experience he might have.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/4/7391/21463
So, when are the Dems going to hold hearings for the impeachment of one Dickhead Cheney?
I really enjoy Politico! Thanks, Cyn!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My self alloted blog/internet time has gone over by 15 mintues.
Enjoy the day, everyone.
GO COLTS!
By the way, good morning ... I can't figure out what's the open thread but this one seems way smaller than ones below.
It's time to take the impeachment of Cheney seriously. We'll get to Bush in time.
... No evidence has emerged that Cheney told him to do it. But Cheney's dictated reply is one of many signs to emerge at the trial of the vice president's unusual attentiveness to the controversy and his desire to blunt it. His efforts included the extraordinary disclosure of classified information, including one-sided synopses of Wilson's report and a 2002 intelligence estimate on Iraq ... Time after time at the height of the controversy, they said, Cheney directed the administration's response to Wilson's criticism and Libby carried it out.
Cheney personally dictated other talking points for use by the White House press office; helped negotiate the wording of a key statement by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet; instructed Libby to deal directly with selected reporters; told Libby to disclose selected passages from the national intelligence estimate and other classified reports; and held a luncheon for conservative columnists to discuss the controversy.
Throughout this period, Cheney kept a news clipping of Wilson's criticisms on his desk, annotated with the question, "did his wife send him on a junket?" according to court statements. Libby told a grand jury that he and Cheney discussed it on multiple occasions each day...
****
This is just dancing around the issue. Cheney clearly directed the smear campaign against Wilson. It's also plain that Cheney was manipulating intelligence and in general lying to everyone.
In a recent speech, former Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile "strongly implied" that her former boss could be "waiting to make a dramatic entrance into the 2008 presidential race, especially if he wins an Oscar next month," the Allentown Morning Call reports.
****
I would welcome an Al Gore candidacy. After all, he did win last time! Bush was selected not elected.
Cheney is a bigger POS than Bush. He is the real evil in this administration. Bush is, was and always will be a stupid cheerleader.
Impeach Cheney first!
Dick Cheney Was Briefed by CIA on Niger
Submitted by davidswanson on Sun, 2007-02-04 05:19. Evidence
By Larry C Johnson, www.NoQuater.typepad.com
One of the peripheral benefits from the Scooter LIbby trial (apart from the pleasure of watching the Bush Administration lies exposed) is the release of documents that provide concrete evidence of the events that produced Nigergate (or, if you prefer, Plamegate). Scooter may be claiming a foggy memory but if you read and compare the new documents with previous material, such as the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Iraq released in the summer of 2004, the fog will lift and you'll glean some new insights.
We have known all along that Dick Cheney asked the CIA to follow up on a DIA report about Iraq's effort to get uranium from Niger. Thanks to the latest document dump we now know that Dick Cheney received a preliminary brief from the CIA and the the Senate Intelligence Committee, in its 2004, covered up this fact.
On a chilly Tuesday morning almost five years ago, February 12, 2002, Dick Cheney’s CIA briefer arrived with a piece of finished intelligence that set in motion a series of events the exposed the identity of a CIA undercover officer, destroyed a CIA front company and compromised its various assets, and sent Scooter Libby to trial for perjury and obstruction of justice.
Dick Cheney read an article written by an analyst at the Defence Intelligence Agency titled, "Niamey signed on agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium to Baghdad". This report was based on intelligence obtained by CIA field operatives and published as an intelligence report (i.e. TD) on 5 February 2002. The source, our buddies the Italians. Thanks to the CIA memo introduced during the first week of the Libby trial, the CIA reported that Iraq and Niger allegedly signed an agreement in July of 2000 to purchase uranium. This TD was a follow up to information the CIA obtained in October 2001, also from the Italian intelligence service, which claimed the negotiations had started in 1999 and came to fruition in 2000.
Second, on Tuesday morning, 19 February 2002, the CIA's Counter Proliferation Division chaired an interagency meeting to discuss whether to send Ambassador Joe Wilson to Niger. As noted in a previous post (see Joe Wilson Vindicated), Joe even tried to talk them out of sending him but, as a good American, accepted the so-called boondoggle to Niger. And, when he returned, an intelligence report was generated.
Be sure of this, Dick Cheney was briefed on the results of Joe's trip. He may not have remembered the substance because the report based on debriefing Joe Wilson told a story that Dick Cheney did not want to hear. There is no way that a CIA Briefer, who knew of the Vice President's keen interest in the issue of Iraq, Niger, and uranium, would not present a piece of raw intelligence to the Vice President that addressed Cheney's question. In fact, the Vice President received the report on March 8, 2002 or March 9, 2002. Look for yourself. On page DX64.4 of the CIA memo, paragraph 6, we are informed that the CIA's Directorate of Operations widely disseminated the report and that the sensitive source, Joe Wilson, is highly reliable.
Cheney was given an intelligence report in response to his original query on 12 February, 2002. The report made clear that Niger was playing ball with the U.S. and was not about to even meet with Iraqis, much less sell them uranium. But Cheney and Bush had other plans. They were going to go to war with Iraq regardless of what the intelligence said. But we now have a clear picture that the intelligence community was trying to tell them uncomfortable truths that Bush and Cheney did not want to hear. Just remember that as the U.S. death toll in Iraq continues to soar.
Good morning
Been awhile since I did the reasonable hour for the morning thing.
Superbowl/Soul Bowl. Oh well didn't get to the family party in Fort Lauderdale because of the storm/tornado, but I'll just take it in at home.
This new GOP governor that we have so far has the state DEMS giving him thumbs up. For how long I don't know, but we'll see. Course as some in the state have said including me, they could have sworn in Bozo the Clown and it would have been fine as long as Jeb Bush was headed down the the road. But then I read someone from Florida say that he should have been since he spent the last 8 years on the "rape" of the state.
Good Morning,
MTO with John Edwards is on now.
bbb............................
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
Sun Feb 4, 4:28 AM ET
WASHINGTON - President Bush, poised to submit his new budget to Congress next week, warned Saturday that unless programs like Medicare and Social Security are changed, future generations will face tax hikes, government red ink or huge cuts in benefits.
ADVERTISEMENT
Controlling spending requires the government to address the unsustainable growth of entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Bush said in his weekly radio address. He said spending for the programs is growing faster than inflation, faster than the U.S. economy and faster than taxpayers' ability to pay for them.
"Unless we act, we will saddle our children and grandchildren with tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded obligations," Bush said. "They will face three bad options: huge tax increases, huge budget deficits or huge and immediate cuts in benefits."
......Sigh.....Cuts in benefits is Bush's real priority here. Bush wants uncountable BILLIONS for his failed Iraq War, huge tax cuts for the rich all just so he can starve all social contracts with the American public. I don't know why Bush hates working class Americans but he apparently does. Hundreds of billions of dollars for the Pentagon and war profiteers while cutting funding for social programs is obscene. The Bush Mis-Administration is more dangerous to the American public than any worthless terrorist can hope to achieve......Sigh...........
Cheney is a bigger POS than Bush. He is the real evil in this administration. Bush is, was and always will be a stupid cheerleader.
Impeach Cheney first!
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 08:56 AM
Cheney has always been the "real" President. Bush has only been the idiot put out front for show.
He's seriously attacking Edwards, but at least John is holding his ground.
Controlling spending requires the government to address the unsustainable growth of entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Bush said in his weekly radio address. He said spending for the programs is growing faster than inflation, faster than the U.S. economy and faster than taxpayers' ability to pay for them.
****
Excuse me, how about 500 billion per year on militarism? That's not out of control. How about over 700 bases opened throughout the world? That's not out of control imperialism.
Chalmers Johnson is right. At some point, Americans are going to have to choose between Democracy and Fascism.
Why won't Congress appoint a special prosecutor to investigate POS bush and POS cheney? It appears that they could dig up an unending list of charges against both these Pieces of Scheiss.
Why won't Congress appoint a special prosecutor to investigate POS bush and POS cheney? It appears that they could dig up an unending list of charges against both these Pieces of Scheiss.
****
John, there's so much more on these two than the silly stuff they brought against Bill Clinton. I am sick and tired of hearing that we must avoid looking like it's revenge for Clinton. Revenge has nothing to do with it. It's our constitutional responsibility to hold the executive branch accountable. Otherwise, we are a fascist nation.
Posted by Johnedwrd on February 4, 2007 at 09:09 AM
Same reason why they won't end this war.
No Spine!
Edwards is being VERY careful in his comments about Obama.
;p
Cheney has always been the "real" President. Bush has only been the idiot put out front for show.
****
J, I agree. Cheney is the real monster in the Bush admin. Rove carries out the propaganda but Cheney comes up with the plans. Bush is just the chief cheerleader for the neocons led by Cheney.
Americans better wake up soon. The neocons are the result of unrestrained growth of the military -industrial complex. You can see how they are robbing social spending (what they derisively call entitlement programs) in favor of militarism.
Chalmers Johnson thinks we won't make a choice between Democracy (taking care of our people) and militarism. The end result will be a financial collapse. What happens after that is anyone's guess. You could get anything from socialism to
dictatorship from such a collapse. At the very least, a nation loses control over it's economy as the IMF steps in.
You could get anything from socialism to
dictatorship from such a collapse. At the very least, a nation loses control over it's economy as the IMF steps in.
Before any of this happens, I hope to God the Democrats will have the balls to impeach both Cheney and Bush! Don't tell me that we have more important things to address - yes, there are important things we need to look at and fix but it won't matter if we let Bush continue to destroy this country. Get rid of them and them we can fix what they hace torn apart!
Same reason why they won't end this war.
No Spine!
***
fos, I agree. With the exception of the Out of Iraq caucus and the progressive House caucus and a few Senators such as Feingold we gave a spineless bunch. I can't believe they won't even vote on a binding bill to redeploy. That's what the people voted for in 2006. I realize that the POS in the WH won't go along but at least we can stick to what we campaigned on.
Chalmers Johnson thinks we won't make a choice between Democracy (taking care of our people) and militarism. The end result will be a financial collapse. What happens after that is any one's guess. You could get anything from socialism to
dictatorship from such a collapse. At the very least, a nation loses control over it's economy as the IMF steps in.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 09:17 AM
We can definitely do both. We don't have to stay at war all the time, but we have to take care of people all the time. There should be no deciding between the two. We need both, but we need to address both issues the right way. We have billions of tax payer dollars spent on Iraq that are currently " MIA " and those funds could have been placed in our entitlement programs instead of making the working class pay for it all.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 09:22 AM
They have one more chance. Barack Obama just introduced an actual binding bill that would comprehensively, end the War in Iraq. Let's see what happens when they come back into Session.
They have one more chance. Barack Obama just introduced an actual binding bill that would comprehensively, end the War in Iraq.
****
fos, good for Barack! That's what I waht to see.
They should keep introducing bills in the Senate. There are quite a few bills in the House. Pelosi and Hoyer got to stop bad mouthing these efforts. Dems in the House were elected to bring Iraq to an end.
Beyond the immediate goal of ending the Iraq debacle, this nation has to face up to the deeper problem of corporate control of our government. The militarist corporations, defense industry, are the most dangerous. But, the health care insurers and industrial polluters are another problem.
It all comes down to whether we really want a Democracy (control by the people) or a Fascism (with some trapping of democracy such as voting that really doesn't matter when both candidates are corporatists).
We can definitely do both.
****
fos, I am not saying that we should cut defense spending to zero. I am not blind to the threats in the world. But, we need to take a look at what we are really doing. Is there a reason to have 700 bases opened throughout the world? What exactly are we protecting if not the interests of corporations overseas? Do we really need to do that? Our defense spending is way out of line with what the rest of the world spends. It;s forcing these terrible trade offs. Do we really want three bases in Okinawa rather than helping our children afford college? There are many many more trade offs we can come up with. So now, Bush says we must cut spending on social security. Oh great! At a time when the corporations have ended pensions we are telling the next generation of retirees to expect less money from social security? That's nonsense!
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 09:30 AM
Yeah, see now, the House, I'm less critical of because I see them actually putting forth more effort. I'm okay with the House right now. When you see me post about members of Congress being wimps, I'm talking mainly about the Senate. They have been, with the exception of a handful, total and complete cowards with their fake fluff-n-puff non-binding resolutions. As if. They keep slapping the American people in the face when they insult our understanding of the way things work up there in Capital Hill. Ya know?
Instead of writing a friggen book, they need to be writing a bill to get us out of Iraq.
;p
5 more dead American soldiers in Iraq yesterday and the brillant response in the Senate is to try and pass a watered down "resolution". Why are Senate Democrats even listening to the rubber-stamp republicans on this? Who cares what a bunch of fools who have been wrong about Iraq from the beginning want. The Senate republicans tried to filibuster the minimum-wage bill until they heard from their constituants but still somehow ruined it by adding more tax cuts for their rich business owners. Major league asshole and Bush cheerleader Brit hume just stated democrats hope Iraq fails, he's wrong again! Bill "idiot" Kristol, Cal "clueless" Thomas and all other empty headed "experts" are blaming anti-war activists for the wars failure, they apparently seriously believe this. They think Jane Fonda is somehow responsible for the mess they got us into.......AARGGGH......... I don't get it.
The War in Iraq - I know it sounds too simple and plausible, but it really does come down to a money issue. The war was engaged and started for the purpose of making money and it will not end until the determined time of the money mongerers of the world and US decide so.
This war is a money churning machine globally for all involved. First and foremost take a look at the number of contractors that are listed through the Pentagon as doing business in Iraq. There are the big corps such as Lockheed and Northrup and then all the other contractors that supply everything from security personnel to building construction. There are several contractors that hire out as consultants to the Pentagon informing them as to how to hire contractors. As for Halliburton and the Carlyle Group, we won't even go there. Between the two of them they have raked in tons of money. And that doesn't begin to take in all that the foreign contractors doing.
Money making machines do not stop on a dime because we the American public want so desperately for them to and this one won't either. It is always a good premise that when something doesn't make sense, step back and start widening the picture. And if it's still fuzzy take another step back. As the pic gets bigger it gets simpler and if there is money involved jsut follow the dollar bill trail and it's guaranteed you will find another agenda.
Warning, warning, warning! Do not support Wyden's health care plan. It's bad! The Republicans are trying to destroy employer sponsored health care by taking away their tax deduction. They claim they will give individuals the deduction insread. That's all well and good but then where's the price control? If everyone had to buy their own insurance, you lose the bargaining power of group plans. You also lose the leverage that corporations have with health insurers. An individual is powerless against something with no regulatory control! In effect, if Wyden's plan, which is basically what Bush pushed for in the SOTU, goes through health insurance will be worthless! Don't fall for this trap. Health insurance should be regulated - price controls! But, then we have our gutless politicos who just won't take on the health care corporations. It's the same problem as the defense industry.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 09:38 AM
Oh, of course, I hear you. You were dead on . I was just saying that we can do both. The argument that it would lead to "financial collapse" is what I was talking about. We have the money. We just have idiots spending it on the wrong things. This nation is way too rich for 47 million people to have no health care. We are way too rich for our men and women overseas to be using silly string to detect bombs. I just think we have the wrong people looking over our finances.
When you see me post about members of Congress being wimps, I'm talking mainly about the Senate.
***
Right, I agree. The House has taken quite a bit of action so far. The Senate is dragging it's feet.
Major league asshole and Bush cheerleader Brit hume just stated democrats hope Iraq fails, he's wrong again!
****
This is what the Reich wing don't get - actually they do get it but they are propagandizing. The war was a failure from the start because the reasons were all lies. It's even pointless to examine why it became so unstable. It was obvious that would be the outcome. Just read Woodward's State of Denial for the quotes from Iraqi right at the start that they would turn to suicide bombings to get the Americans out! They also said loud and clear that they are glad Hussein is out but now they want us out. It's only the handpicked Iraqi puppets that say they want us there for security. Clearly, the people of Iraq want us out.
How can wanting world peace be considered unpatriotic? Why are people with a conscience considered to be enablers of terrorism? The idealogues who promote these statements are the real problem, not the ones who want to stop the bloodshed.
This nation is way too rich for 47 million people to have no health care.
****
fos, I agree. I don't like the "Bush plan" or the Wyden plan. I do like the Kennedy Medicare for All plan and Conyers/Kucinich plan HR676 (also a Medicare for all). I would entertain a multi payer insurance system like the one in Netherlands but it must have government price controls just like in the Netherlands. So far, no one has offered such a plan to my knowledge.
Be wary about Wyden's plan. He may mean well but I don't think it's well thougt out.
Is there a reason to have 700 bases opened throughout the world? What exactly are we protecting if not the interests of corporations overseas?
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 09:38 AM
If you had read any of the posts that I made about a month ago about the Bush family and the purchase of over a million acres in Paraguay, you would see that immediately after the land buy troops were sent to a base that the US has in the country and activity began taking place such as over running the farmers that plant soybeans. Unbeknownst to the public was the fact that retired military personnel and special ops folks had been down there about a year before getting the base ready for occupation.
Do we need 700 bases world wide. For legit military purposes - yes. For the personal use of political families and for secret operations to conduct havoc in neighboring countries to topple governments not friendly towards folks stealing their resources - no!
rjsnj, rather than watching brit fume i just take a 1/4 carbide bit, load it into the drill and run it into my forehead.
The idealogues who promote these statements are the real problem, not the ones who want to stop the bloodshed.
****
wldj, the last refuge of war mongering is to call anyone that don't the war unpatriotic. Basically, they are pulling out the "patriot card". It's a worn out tactic. We seen it before in 'Nam.
Being the social justice drum major that I am, can anyone even begin to imagine what the amounts of money being spent in Iraq could do for the this country, specifically the disadvantage and oppressed??
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 09:52 AM
Here's what I want. I want every single American citizen to be able to walk into the Doctors office without paying. The MEDI W/H portion of our paycheck deductions should pay for it.
;p
Good morning everyone! I haven't had much to share these days but thought I would put this one out there for FOS in her quest for everything Obama. :)
Psst: Obama's a black man
If you had read any of the posts that I made about a month ago about the Bush family and the purchase of over a million acres in Paraguay, you would see that immediately after the land buy troops were sent to a base that the US has in the country and activity began taking place such as over running the farmers that plant soybeans
****
J, I read about that. I think the militarists are trying to find a way to counter the rise of Chavez in Latin America.
Being the social justice drum major that I am, can anyone even begin to imagine what the amounts of money being spent in Iraq could do for the this country, specifically the disadvantage and oppressed??
Posted by J on February 4, 2007 at 09:58 AM
WORLDS!
1. Better Schools (Real Teachers)
2. More money for Social Entitlement Programs
3. Strengthen the FBI ( Update their Technology )
4. Funding for Medical Research Stuff
5. Funding for Alternative Energy Research and Implementation (Because we already know what we can do)
Here's what I want. I want every single American citizen to be able to walk into the Doctors office without paying. The MEDI W/H portion of our paycheck deductions should pay for it.
;p
Posted by FreedomOfSpeechForBarackObama2008 on February 4, 2007 at 10:00 AM
I am a cardiac patient with no health insurance and it is only because my cardiologist is the human, God fearing man that he is that I get excellent care, even down to my meds. I feel there are many doctors that would want what you want FOS, but "managed care' ties their hands from being committed to their patients.
It is shameful in this country that people die, go without medication, medical procedures all because they do not have insurance or the funds to pay for it.
Meantime, I've got two words of advice for those folks who are surprised to learn Barack Obama is black:
Eye. Doctor.
Kristen,
I love it! Thank you. That was cute. I think, I'll use that artical.
;p
Do we need 700 bases world wide. For legit military purposes - yes.
****
Remember that warfare is politics by other means! It all depends on our foreign policy and
how our economic policy interacts with the world.
I think we got it dead wrong. We are pursuing a policy of imperial globalization. The pain is being felt at home with stagnant / falling wages as workers compete more and more with the world. It's also being felt as starving social programs as more money is diverted to the military machine that protects the corporate globalists.
It is possible to pull back. But, we need to have a genuine debate on tough philosophical issues.
By the way, I do think it's possible that our economy could meltdown. It's an illusion that we are so wealthy. You got consider that the wealth is concentrated in a small number of hands who just may sell dollars for euros in a pinch!
If we want to save our country, we must bring our troops home, repair our military, both people and equiptment,take care of our vetrans, end the wasteful expense on "military adventures", secure our borders,secure our ports, prepare for a real threat to our nation and fund the social programs that are needed to care for our own people....It appears that we can not waite until the '08 elections, we need to start now....In order to do these things we must stop Bush and Cheney on their insane march to destroy our great nation.......in order to do this, we must block funding for more troops in Iraq, we must provide adequate funding to get our troops and supplies out of Iraq as safely as possible....in oder to do these things, it appears that we have no choice but to impeach Bush,Cheney,Rice, et al, all the criminals who have brought this nation down.....
Bush has the nerve to say that Obama has a long way to go to be President? Geez ... he should know. So when will Bush ever be qualified to be President? More like the chief crackhead than President.
J, I read about that. I think the militarists are trying to find a way to counter the rise of Chavez in Latin America.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 10:06 AM
Oh yeah, rj. I'm not saying that Hugo Chavez is a saint, but when you look back and also into how private interests, namely the Bush family and all the other money mongerers are doing all within their power to just take the natural resources of the Latin American countries, you can't blame how they act and how Chavez shows contempt for the US.
It is shameful in this country that people die, go without medication, medical procedures all because they do not have insurance or the funds to pay for it.
Posted by J on February 4, 2007 at 10:08 AM
There's no reason for it. No reason at all other than the fact that we have greedy freaks and little wimps who won't call their hand in Washington D.C.
:[
Oh yeah, rj. I'm not saying that Hugo Chavez is a saint,
***
J, nor am I. I have been disappointed by Chavez of late. He seems to be getting more dictatorial - suppressing the media for instance.
As far Chavez's contempt for the American free trade globalization agenda, I agree with him! I think it's our weakness not our strength. I can certainly understand how nations that have been victims of the corporate globalists are disgusted and have thrown them out!
Bush has the nerve to say that Obama has a long way to go to be President? Geez ... he should know. So when will Bush ever be qualified to be President? More like the chief crackhead than President.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 10:13 AM
I saw that three times already and everytime I hear him say, I picture him sitting on a porch with a toothpick in his mouth, holding a rifle with a big ole ugly dog sitting next to him with a noose hagin off the door with nats flying around his head.
It's classic George Bush.
;p
Good morning, everyone.
Just saw the end of the Edwards interview on MTP. He talks like a President, but I don't see any point in asking him what he would do in Iraq now....nothing can be done till after Bush leaves office.
I guess that is what has become more and more clear to me. The Axis of Evil will not talk to Bush. He does not have that option. He called them evil and they are intent on making him and his supporters pay for that.
Bush has backed himself and all Republican candidates into a corner. The solution lies in new leadership not identified with Bush. No Republican candidate will be able to execute any change in Iraq. But any of our presidential candidates could.
So the table is set. The choice is clear. The American people can vote to end the diaster in Iraq in 2008 or they can vote Republican.
Because of that, it doesn't matter what our candidates say about Iraq. Any of them will be able to negotiate a responsible withdrawal and end the madness when the time comes. But no Republican president can.
Therefore, we have the luxury instead to take a long hard look at each of our candidates' stands of various domestic issues. I suggest we ignore the hubris from the Bush administration and the MSM and do just that.
And that's what we tell the American people every chance we get...over and over again. They need to know that the Iraq situation has been settled. Bush failed this country and so did the Republicans who enabled him.
To paraphrase Chalmers Johnson:
Democracy is inconsistent with empire. That;s the dilemna that Americans must face here at home where our civil liberties have already been eroded and overseas where we have started unjust wars that benefit the empire.
Bush has the nerve to say that Obama has a long way to go to be President? Geez ... he should know. So when will Bush ever be qualified to be President? More like the chief crackhead than President.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 10:13 AM
When I sit back and actually take a good look, it is just hard to imagine a country electing someone as dumb and ignorant as George W. Bush, Jr. The man cannot communicate on any level, it is very apparent that he is not well read and many times he just doesn't get it. Cheney and rove have been the brains behind this Presidency which says volumes on why/how this administrtion operated.
Brother Jeb was no better here in Florida only he didn't have someone calling the shots for him. He was stupid enough to think he could call his own which explains why the state is in the shape it is in.
Can anyone imagine what it has been like living in a state with a Bush for governor and then another Bush for President of this country?
The Axis of Evil will not talk to Bush. He does not have that option. He called them evil and they are intent on making him and his supporters pay for that.
****
Bush's stupidity in calling Iran part of Axis of Evil and invading Iraq is the reason for:
Ahmadinejad
Without those factors, the Iranian moderates would have won the last election.
As far Chavez's contempt for the American free trade globalization agenda, I agree with him! I think it's our weakness not our strength. I can certainly understand how nations that have been victims of the corporate globalists are disgusted and have thrown them out!
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 10:18 AM
Now I don't have the info to verify, but in my Latin America digging I found many of the nations within the continent said that the US free trade agreements has actually plunged their nations into further poverty.
Can anyone imagine what it has been like living in a state with a Bush for governor and then another Bush for President of this country?
****
That must stink. I agree that Jeb has made a mess of Florida. From what I can see, and it's just the tip of the iceberg, there has been out of control building everywhere. I can't even imagine what damage Jeb has caused to the environment and how he has starved social spending.
Just getting milk toast Timmah on now. I have no respect for Timmah as Cheney says he can use him anytime he wants. Timmah is a wimp.
So, I wonder when the dark master Cheney is on with Timmah does he try to make him look bad like he is doing with Edwards? I doubt it. The MSM sucks.
Now I don't have the info to verify, but in my Latin America digging I found many of the nations within the continent said that the US free trade agreements has actually plunged their nations into further poverty.
****
J, I could dig up. Bernie Sanders had that data in 2004. Even Mexico has in general became poorer. That's why so many people have fled Mexico to come here. It's also why there is so much unrest in various Mexican provinces that were decimated by free trade - many farmers who lost their land to the global farming corporations.
That must stink. I agree that Jeb has made a mess of Florida. From what I can see, and it's just the tip of the iceberg, there has been out of control building everywhere. I can't even imagine what damage Jeb has caused to the environment and how he has starved social spending.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 10:29 AM
Evidently you must keep up with Florida news because everything you mention is what he wrecked havoc over.
He starved social agencies and then privitized many of the services. State government agencies will have to be totally realigned and the developers will have paved over the damn state in about 10 years.
Evidently you must keep up with Florida news because everything you mention is what he wrecked havoc over.
****
J, to an extent, I have relatives that live there on the West Coast. I generally get there one to two times a year. I couldn't believe all of the building I seen when I was last there. They must be completely trashing the environment. I read more than enough complaints about how Jebby has starved all manners of social spending in the local Florida papers.
many farmers who lost their land to the global farming corporations.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 10:34 AM
Yeah! Same thing in Paraguay with the soybeans. Monsanto (global corp) came in and wanted the farmers to plant a genetically engineered bean that was resistant to even Roundup and they wouldn't go for it. Needless to say there was violence, demonstrations, boycotts, etc. But in the end the farmers lost and land was confiscated and the genetically engineered bean planted by larger farming corps.
Oh yeah by the way the engineered bean does not have the benefits of the natural bean and will wreack havoc with enzymes in the human digestive system which is why one sees all the warnings on labels.
Monsanto (global corp)
****
yes they are one of the worst as is Cargill.
It is truly a disgrace that these global corporations, many are based in this country, have worked with governments to confiscate land.
These people have been living off the land for generations! This is why I despise the global corporations and believe that the world's salvation is to kick them out of the political worldwide. I see them as a plague of locusts eating up the world's resources and starving the people.
The Bush adminstration is the Axis of Evil!
J: You are right on. That's why we have so many people trying to get into this country. I read an article in the El Universal, a Mexican paper, about illegals coming into Mexico from Honduras and Guatemala. There are no jobs in Mexico, so they travel north through Mexico, and cross into the US. Not all the illegals coming here are Mexican, increasingly we are getting Central Americans coming here too. Most of these people are Native Americans (Indios y Mestizos) who are at the bottom of the economic ladders in their countries.
Coupled with that is the tortilla crisis in Mexico right now. The big agri-businesses dumped low cost corn on the Mexican market, putting the small farmers out of business. They left their land, and moved to the cities or came to the US because they couldn't support their families. Now the big agri-businesses have raised the price of corn, because they can sell it to methanol plants for more money, and the price of corn for tortillas has gone sky high. Tortillas is the main staple in the diet of poor Mexicans. It would be the equivalent of paying $20 for a loaf of bread, or a box of macaroni & cheese or a couple of pounds of potatos here. It's created a crisis in the Mexico's national government.
Another expense of "free" trade.
I'm Supporting The Chigaco Bears in the Super Bowl.
For the Midwest. For Barack Obama and for DPD.
;p
VIDEO.
Most of these people are Native Americans (Indios y Mestizos) who are at the bottom of the economic ladders in their countries.
***
butte, excellent point! That is absolute fact. The governments in many of these Latin American nations are racists. The "spanish" people are bigoted against the native people. Vicente Fox in Mexico is a disgusting bigot for example.
You are also right that many of people coming here are from other Latin America nations. It;s not all Mexico but I think it's approximately the same reasons - the globalists have actually made life more miserable for these people!
Coupled with that is the tortilla crisis in Mexico right now. The big agri-businesses dumped low cost corn on the Mexican market, putting the small farmers out of business.
****
Right! I forgot to post on that one - seen it a couple of weeks ago. I think globalization is a race to the bottom. I simply will not support politicos who are against changing the direction in trade policies. Dems have been on the wrong side of this issue for too long.
How do you get 47 million covered? Come up with a system of shared value and risks for everyone. Once we are all in it together, these sort of problems won't occur.
No more health care bandaids! Edwards is getting close but he's looking for many different programs and patches to the issue. One system, one set of values, one set of risks! Single Payer Universal Health Care is the answer.
The candidates for the 2008 Presidential election that I like best are:
1. Barack Obama
2. John Edwards
3. Bill Richardson
The candidates for the 2008 Presidential election that I like best are:
****
Sounds about right! Of course, if Gore did enter the race that would change everything. So, I think it's safe to say that most of us are in the anything but Hillary camp. Mind you, I'll support Hillary if she wins the nomination but I don't think she's the person that best represents my values.
I may also consider:
1. Hillary Clinton (but she is going to have to work hard to get my vote)
2. Wesley Clark (if he gets into this thing)
3. Mark Warner (if he gets back in this thing)
4. Al Gore (if he gets into this thing)
5. Dennis Kucinich
I will not consider:
1. Ravell (he is too old and haven't been in politics for a long time (the 1970s))
2. Joseph Biden (because of the remark that he made about African Americans)
3. Christopher Dodd (I don't think that he could get the nomination or the general election.)
4. Tom Vilsack (I don't think that he could get the nomination.)
The candidates for the 2008 Presidential election that I like best are:
1. Barack Obama
2. John Edwards
3. Bill Richardson
Posted by LavoniaW on February 4, 2007 at 11:12 AM
Me too. Exactly in that order too.
:)
I have no others to consider,though.
(LOL)
;p
Kucinich Was There
Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2007-02-03 22:01. Elections | Media
On The Media
Congressman Dennis Kucinich is again seeking the Democratic nomination for the President. He’s serious, but the media, when they cover him, are not. This despite the fact that his anti-war position is far more popular in ’07 than it was in ’03. We speak with Kucinich and his former media advisor Jeff Cohen about getting treated like an oddball.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/18098
****
Dennis is also in it to win it. I don't think we should write him off. I agree with him on many issues.
Lavonia,
This is for you. You will bust up laughing. I did.
VIDEO
:)
Vincente Fox indeed did little to help the indigenous people of Mexico.
Felipe Calderon is now president of Mexico.
There was a close race with Mr Lopez Obrador which was decided by the Federal Electorial Judicial Tribunal. (sounds familiar somehow)
There were protests in Mexico City after the decision, with protesters blocking the streets around the capitol, which were finally broken up by police.
Then almost right away, the Calderon government runs into the tortilla crisis.
I will give him credit for bringing in Federales in several places to shut down narcotics gangs, though.
But I sure wouldn't want to be in his shoes.
58 minutes ago
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Sunday renewed his appeal to Catholics to reject abortion and euthanasia, saying life was God-given and could not be cut short under "the guise of human compassion."
ADVERTISEMENT
His appeal came days after an Italian doctor who switched off the life support of a paralyzed man at the center of a euthanasia battle was cleared of wrongdoing by a medical panel.
"Life, which is the work of God, cannot be negated by anyone, neither at the very young and indefensible unborn stage, nor when grave disabilities are present," he said in his weekly address to pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter's Square.
.....This guy is a real compassionate person. Does he really want people to suffer, is he against pain medication being given to terminal patients? He may, as some believe, to be "god's" mouthpiece but I kinda doubt this god, if it really exists wants people to suffer needlessly. I seriously doubt much can be done to stop individuals from commiting suicide no matter what the reasons may be. These religious leaders should pay just a little more attention to their own "souls" before condemning others but I'm doubtful that's gonna happen.
peace
Vincente Fox indeed did little to help the indigenous people of Mexico.
Felipe Calderon is now president of Mexico.
There was a close race with Mr Lopez Obrador which was decided by the Federal Electorial Judicial Tribunal. (sounds familiar somehow)
****
Right! So it was decided. I lost track of the story. I know there is still considerable unrest and Obrador is not going away anytime soon. I'l make a guess that if Calderon doesn't make headway in improving life for people at the bottom, he'll lose outright next time around.
The tortilla crisis is not a good start for Calderon.
I agree with the order of candidates
Obama
Edwards
Richardson
But as I have stated, Kucinich is my first choice though I know he will not get far, but I admire his stance for geting his voice out there. He's more liberal than progressive. More in tune with a fossil like me, but I do support the campaigns of the above listed because they address the issues of everyday people.
Pope Benedict on Sunday
****
No offense to Catholics on this blog, I don't like this Pope. He is a reactionary - exactly the sort of person we didn't need.
Vincente Fox indeed did little to help the indigenous people of Mexico.
Posted by Butte on February 4, 2007 at 11:27 AM
All Fox did was pack off the entire country across the border because he knew the free trade policies were going to further impoverished is alreadypoverty stricken country.
But as I have stated, Kucinich is my first choice though I know he will not get far, but I admire his stance for geting his voice out there.
****
J, I agree. It's hard not to love Dennis Kucinich. He is someone who has guts and is a true progressive. I'll back whomever emerges from this process but I am glad that true progressives are in the contest.
No offense to Catholics on this blog, I don't like this Pope. He is a reactionary - exactly the sort of person we didn't need.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 11:34 AM
Didn't I hear somewhere that he was connected with the Nazis?
All Fox did was pack off the entire country across the border because he knew the free trade policies were going to further impoverished is alreadypoverty stricken country.
****
Yes indeed! I don't know if Calderon will be any better. Early indications aren't good with the tortilla crisis.
I'll support Hillary if she wins the nomination but I don't think she's the person that best represents my values.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 11:15 AM
Since she's pretty much the only one running that I don't care for, if there are enough 'ignits' out there who vote for her (ahem) I will leave her spot on the ballot blank or just fill in someone else's name and just vote for the Democratic Vice President. Then, I will send the White House a bag of Pretzels.(jk)
;p
Bush admonishing CEO's for their fat paychecks!
Hey Dumbya - go talk to Daddy Cheney about his Halliburton loot!
How about cutting off tax giveaways to Exxon Mobil? Oh, the Dems already did that in the House.
Bush has no credibility. It's back to wood chipping for him.
So how many chins did the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, Lee Raymond, actually have? To think, Bush put that pig in charge of a committee to investigate alternate energy. What a sick joke.
mclaughlin group is funny today. What a fat obnoxious right pig Tony Blankley is. How does a gas bag like that stay in a chair without floating away? There must be invisible ropes bolting him to the ground.
Yep, Bush gives a hoot about income inequality. About as much as he cares about global warming.
Then, I will send the White House a bag of Pretzels.(jk)
****
LOL ... Pretzels for Bush ...
Oh man, is Dumbya just getting more daffy by the minute? So now, he's is against CEO getting paid so much money. So why give them huge tax breaks?
My problem with Hillary is that she more DLC DEM than DNC mainstream and my reading and interpretation of their goals is more conservative than I like. Actually centrist if the truth be known.
No offense to Catholics on this blog, I don't like this Pope. He is a reactionary - exactly the sort of person we didn't need.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 11:34 AM
I also heard his job at the Vatican before he became Pope In Chief, he was the one in charge of the office that was suppose to keep Priests from molesting children. Kinda reminds you of Foley and we all know what happened to him.
My problem with Hillary is that she more DLC DEM than DNC mainstream and my reading and interpretation of their goals is more conservative than I like.
****
J, DLC = corporate globalists
That's the problem with the DLC. They are basically a corporate lobby group that targets Democrats.
The Clintons just won't admit that they got it wrong on free trade.
By the way, if Pappy Bush beat Bill Clinton he would have passed NAFTA as well! In fact, Pappy laid the groundwork for both NAFTA and the China most preferred nation agreements. Ross Perot was the only candidate that was against the "Washington Concensus". The free trade plague of locusts that have infected the world.
Didn't I hear somewhere that he was connected with the Nazis?
Posted by J on February 4, 2007 at 11:38 AM
No. It's just that he's a German and some have stated that they feel uncomfortable with that. We all know what the last Christian German who had control over the masses did. That's really all. Unless, there's something else I don't know about. I personally, don't care for him as much as I did the last Pope. But then, I'm COGIC so I guess my opinion doesn't really matter.
;p
By the way, if Pappy Bush beat Bill Clinton he would have passed NAFTA as well! In fact, Pappy laid the groundwork for both NAFTA and the China most preferred nation agreements. Ross Perot was the only candidate that was against the "Washington Concensus". The free trade plague of locusts that have infected the world.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 11:55 AM
Which is why Walmart ran to China to get cheap goods thereby negating their slogan that Daddy Sam had about "Buying American".
I think I just figured out who our local troll *frost** is.
I just herd him say one of my quotes on this blog. George Stepanoulpalis had hagel on and ran a video of Rash saying something about Hagel.
Just what I say here about a certain person>
The one and only Rash Limbdic-.
I personally, don't care for him as much as I did the last Pope.
Posted by FreedomOfSpeechForBarackObama2008 on February 4, 2007 at 12:00 PM
Neither do I. Just doesn't give out that inspirational/spiritual view to me. But I'm like you, can't say much. I'm AME (African Methodist Episcopal).
Which is why Walmart ran to China to get cheap goods thereby negating their slogan that Daddy Sam had about "Buying American".
****
What an Orwellian slogan that was. Buy American indeed! Meaning buys in Sam's Club irrespective of where the goodies come from.
By the way, Pappy Walmart was responsible for destroying small businesses particularly in small town USA. One helluva guy who is only exceeded by his greedy children. The Walmart babies were behind the effort to kill off the estate tax! Pigs! There is no bounds to their greed.
Capitalism is okay but this cowboy capitalism we have been living with for twenty plus years is out of control.
good morning all, can't stick around today, (Baby Christening coming up shortly) but J's comment on DLC and Centrists made me want to mention that I happened upon Fox this morning, and the guy was interviewing a Republican state Senator who is thinking of maybe running for President. I think his name was Schuler.
Anyways, he was saying he that the last election showed that Americans want Centrists so that is why he is going to run. Now the guy is anti-abortion, anti any kind of gun controls, anti-gays, yet he thinks that the American public, which polls over and over that they are FOR Abortion, FOR gun control are going to vote for him or his ilk!
These guys throwing around the "Centrist" label like it is some kind of Intelligent idea! I would just like to ask them all, at what point did you decide you were a Centrist Democrat as compared to being a Centrist Republican??? Or vice versa? If they all ride the center line, then why even declare a Party? Why not just remain an Independent and vote your conscience on issues?
I believe there has now grown a much larger Democratic base that is soundly liberal, than moderate or centrist, selling off a piece of their soul to the Republican view on Corporate welfare, anti-worker rights, anti-minority rights, anti-women's rights, and don't restrict guns in any way-just let every kid, every wacko, every criminal buy them at Walmart and load them up with bullets that are made to kill, and send them all out in case somebody says BOO to them!
The Democratic-controlled Senate heads toward a showdown this week on the bipartisan resolution by Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va. In a bid to attract more GOP support, Warner added a provision pledging to protect money for troops in combat.
The newly worded resolution states that Congress "should not take any action that will endanger United States military forces in the field, including the elimination or reduction of funds for troops in the field."
That compromise, however, drew the ire of some Democrats, including Sens. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record) of Connecticut and Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, who said it leaned too far in endorsing the status quo. They want to see binding legislation to cap troop levels, force a new vote to authorize the war or begin bringing troops home.
Republican leaders worked to block a vote on Warner's resolution. They insisted that several proposals be considered and each be subject to 60 votes — a strategy that could dilute support for Warner's measure and make it tougher for any measure to pass.
.....The do-nothing republican Senate is no longer the majority and if they continue to rubber-stamp Bush's bullshit they need to be fired! They criticised Democrats as obstructionists and threatened the "nuclear option" to eliminate fillibusters and now they INSIST on 60 votes, what hypocrits, why am I not surprised. This worthless "resolution" is becoming even weaker than it should be because the do-nothing republicans have the need to cover their worthless asses.
I believe there has now grown a much larger Democratic base that is soundly liberal,
****
hi pam, I agree! I think the largest growing base is the progressives - DFA, Moveon, etc...
Also, the progressive caucus has made considerable gains in the House. The Senate is stlll lagging behind. It's definitely a mistake to cater to a fictional middle. Politicos should stand up for what they believe in.
If anything the last election showed that economic populists did well while DLC economic concensus types (supporters of free trade and corporate welfare) didn't do well. There was a wide variation on social issues.
That compromise, however, drew the ire of some Democrats, including Sens. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record) of Connecticut and Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, who said it leaned too far in endorsing the status quo. They want to see binding legislation to cap troop levels, force a new vote to authorize the war or begin bringing troops home.
****
The Warner bill is garbage. There's no point in even allowing it to the floor. Are we in control of the Senate or not? There is no teason to allow a nonsense bill to come out of committee.
majority and if they continue to rubber-stamp Bush's bullshit they need to be fired! They criticised Democrats as obstructionists and threatened the "nuclear option" to eliminate fillibusters and now they INSIST on 60 votes, what hypocrits, why am I not surprised.
****
Republicans including Bush are the obstructionists. They are obstructing the will of the people who voted for change in 2006.
By the way, Pappy Walmart was responsible for destroying small businesses particularly in small town USA. One helluva guy who is only exceeded by his greedy children. The Walmart babies were behind the effort to kill off the estate tax! Pigs! There is no bounds to their greed.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 12:09 PM
And kill off small town America he did. I can't say if this was his intention because the stores originally started off as just large versions of old fashioned 5/10 stores. Once the big box concept came into being with the grocery and all in one place the money mongering kids took over and ran with it.
As far as the inheritance tax is concerned, the hogs definitely want that cancelled out.
I told FOS this morning that the tax code needs a major overhaul.
Neither do I. Just doesn't give out that inspirational/spiritual view to me. But I'm like you, can't say much. I'm AME (African Methodist Episcopal).
Posted by J on February 4, 2007 at 12:06 PM
Oh, Okay. Right on!
AME in Da HOUSE!
;p
I told FOS this morning that the tax code needs a major overhaul.
Posted by J on February 4, 2007 at 12:31 PM
Major!
FOS and anyone that's left gotta take a break and eat :) (had a good time talking)
check ya later.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Cisneros co-sponsors bill to impeach Bush
By Kristen Davenport, The Taos News
Feb. 3 - 7:27 p.m.
Not only do the lawmakers from Taos like the idea of impeaching president George Bush, one of them signed on as a co-sponsor of a bill in Santa Fé asking the federal Congress to do just that.
Sen. Carlos Cisneros, a Democrat from Questa, said he signed on with sponsors John Grubesic and Gerald Ortiz y Pino, both Democratic Senators. Their memorial sends a message from New Mexico asking Congress to impeach Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for violations of the Constitution.
The memorial — introduced last week in Santa Fé — cites four primary violations, including lying to Americans about the need for war in Iraq, violating the civil rights of Americans with its domestic spying programs, and holding prisoners without charges or timely trials.
The bill faces an uphill battle at the current 60-day session of the legislature, which ends March 17. It has been assigned to three committees in the Senate, which increases the legislation’s chances of being killed before reaching the Senate floor.
“You know, after the escalation of the troops into this already hideous war, and not to listen to the consensus of the populace of this country, it really disappointed me in the leadership of our president and vice president,” Cisneros said.
“That was what essentially prompted me to recognize that we need to do this,” he said.
Just the same, Cisneros acknowledged, impeachment is a federal issue — not a state one.
“This is symbolic,” he said. “Realistically, we’re not going to do anything by our resolution, even if it passed, and that’s not likely to happen. But it’s important that the message be conveyed.”
Taos Democratic Rep. Bobby Gonzales, who probably will not have to vote on the bill, said he nonetheless might support it if it made it all the way to the House floor.
“It’s sending a very strong message, about the concern we have over our involvement in the Iraq war,” Gonzales said. “We’re seeing more of this in Congress and even people breaking party lines on this issue.”
Gonzales said even some Republicans are feeling that they may not have agreed to the war in the first place “if more information had been provided, or if the facts had actually been presented.”
“What’s really not helping at all is the president’s being so insistent about sending more troops,” he said. “Everyone is against the war. He’s lost the support of the people. His rating is very, very low.”
Cisneros said the president seems unwilling to believe the obvious: “We are not winning this war and there is no way to win it. It’s civil in nature.”
“Every day we hear another American soldier is killed for what is very clear to be of no value to us as a country,” he said. “It’s time we take a stand as best we can — there’s not much else we can do. My prayer is that the president will stop and come to his senses. He’s got to bring the troops home. That’s all there is to it."
I wonder how Rummy feels about this? He has a home in Taos one of the most democratic county in the nation. Taos County is 85% Democrat......
Really "Bear weather" today.
Currently zero degrees in Chicago
I’ve been lurking here on and off since the election. Have not had much time to post things. Usually, by the time I get through all the posts, I have run out of time. I’ve read this open thread from the start of this day (Sunday).
Thanks for entertaining and informing me all morning.
I especially got a kick out of the idea of super-gluing to the capital dome...
Good afternoon, all.
Are you ready for some football? I'm sick of the h celebrity entertainers and commentators. But I can't wait for the actual game.
Is this man a sell out or what?
McCain blasts 'vote of no confidence'
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The top Republican on the
Senate Armed Services Committee sought to weaken support for a resolution opposing
President Bush's Iraq war strategy, saying Sunday that supporters are intellectually dishonest.
Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), a 2008 presidential candidate, contended the bipartisan nonbinding resolution amounted to a demoralizing "vote of no confidence" in the U.S. military because it criticized Bush's plans to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq without offering concrete alternatives....
//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070204/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq
(Bold emphasis mine)
McCain has become such an White House apologist. What makes him think that carrying the weight for Cheney's incompetence will get him anywhere with conservatives? I hope they send him home packing during the primaries. He doesn't believe in their philosophy and hides behind the troops for cover just like Bush.
There already was a vote of "no confidence" among the American people. It was for the Republicans not the troops.
I guess McCain likes to insult the people he wants to vote for him. Interesting strategy.
These guys throwing around the "Centrist" label like it is some kind of Intelligent idea! I would just like to ask them all, at what point did you decide you were a Centrist Democrat as compared to being a Centrist Republican??? Or vice versa? If they all ride the center line, then why even declare a Party? Why not just remain an Independent and vote your conscience on issues?
Posted by PamB on February 4, 2007 at 12:17 PM
Pam,
I agree. Centralist now means nothing but opportunist for both parties. It's a shame they have highjacked that term.
A lot of voters are moderates on a variety of subjects but are progressive or conservative on others. By confusing the term Centralist these political opportunists seek to maintan the current status quo which only benefits the multinationals and the neocons.
Both parties should show them the door. They have sold out our country to foreign interests and weakened our economy, military, and Bill of Rights. There are some things you cannot compromise on.
Opposing philosophies can be tolerated as long as all are respected, but denigrating our American national interests for personal political gain cannot.
I am glad to see everyone is ignoring the idiotic trolls.
Note to the Democratic Centralists:
Nader strongly hinted this morning on one of the talking head shows that he will run third party if Hillary is nominated.
Sandy,
McCain is a sellout. It is the only way he can get the nomination. That party has shifted so far right, most republicans cannot even identify with them anymore. That is why they will continue to lose elections.
Why so many people are trying to get here from Mexico.
Look at the “gini index”. It represents the distribution of wealth in a country. In Mexico, their wealth is concentrated in the top 5%. They make all the money, own all the businesses, keep wages very low. That is where we are headed in this country if we continue to follow the Reagan/Bush agenda of trickle-down economic policies.
I checked my Funk and Wagnall's dictionary and look what I found.
dumbf**k bush
I would hope that by now, all see that a vote for Nader is a vote wasted. He will be a non-factor in 2008.
How Bush go into office.
One word – propaganda. The media controls (to a large degree) what we know. Bush got into office in spite of the fact that he was not qualified and was and is an idiot. Look back at the elections and see how the treatment was different for Bush than for Gore. They attacked Gore for stupid, non-issue things. The MSM gave Bush a pass even though he was a fool who could not name the leaders of other countries much less find them on a globe. George Bush owes both his terms in office to Fox news and idiots who watch that propaganda outlet.
Bush Backers Offer Payoffs to Undercut Global Warming
By Chris Floyd
t r u t h o u t | UK Correspondent
Saturday 03 February 2007
The new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just been released, and it looks like bad news for the home team, i.e., the entire human race. Things are going to get hotter, coastlines are going to go under, deserts are going to get wider, and millions if not billions of people are going to be on the move. In need, in conflict, in increasingly desperate straits - and it's all our own fault. What's more, the effects set in motion by our epic debauch with fossil fuels are going to keep on keeping on - although the worst outcomes can still be avoided, if the leaders of the world can bestir themselves to take action to slow the poisoning of the planet.
This is the consensus of more than 2,500 leading scientists from more than 30 countries - including the United States. But not to worry: That nattering nest of neo-cons, the American Enterprise Institute - which also functions as an employment agency for the Bush White House, sending innumerable nabobs into the higher reaches and greasy guts of the administration - has come up with a perfect solution to this threat to the life of the world: bribing scientists to say it ain't so.
As the Guardian reports, the good folks at AEI - whose members were instrumental in bringing us the "splendid little war" in Iraq and are now agitating for an even more glorious bloodletting in Iran - are offering scientists and economists $10,000 each (plus extras) to tear down the IPCC report and snowjob the hoi polloi into believing that the crack pipe of the Carbon Era will never be empty.
AEI, its coffers bulging with funding from Exxon Mobil (whose former honcho, Lee Raymond, is vice-chairman of the group's board of trustees), is flashing ten grand (plus "travel expenses" and "additional payments") to any scientist, economist or policy analyst willing to rip the IPCC report as "resistant to reasonable criticism - and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work." These bold global warming revisionists can trouser the loot in exchange for their scholarly contributions to an "independent review" of the IPCC report, the Guardian reports.
Here we see the Bush gang playing the usual double game. With the weight of virtually the entire scientific world against him, George W. Bush has finally, grudgingly, acknowledged that there might be a little problem with oceans boiling and cities submerging after all. So the tack has been a sudden flip-flop: from denying that global warming is a reality to claiming that he is actually leading the fight against this atmospheric terrorism. Thus, after spending months trying (and partially succeeding) in watering down the IPCC report, the Bush-appointed US delegation to the conference signed off on the document in the end.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020307C.shtmlhttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020307C.shtml
Lee Raymond reminds me of Jabba The Hut. How many chins does one person need? This is the person Bush put in charge to investigate alternate energy. Yeah right!
George Bush 838 up, 335 down
GW in College
A retard who only got into Yale because his Daddy has money and barely got through wth a C- average. A cheerleader and cocaine addict who was commonly arrested for drunk driving.
GW in business
A financial flop who owns several corporations who should be bankrupt except for the fact that his daddy put more money into it. Overall.. cant run a company... so how the hell is he going to run a country?
****
LOL. How about Shotgun Dickhead Cheney?
"Frosty" nutjobs
by algebrateacher
Sat Jan 13, 2007 at 02:24:58 PM PST
Is there something about the name "Frosty" that makes someone unhinged? Frosty Hardison is an activist in Federal Way, WA, trying to ban use of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" in the classroom. He's the one who has said that "condoms don't belong in the classroom and neither does Al Gore." His wife, an unsuccessful candidate for the school board, said she thinks the film is anti-America. Then there is Frosty Wooldridge, an anti-immigration activist whose first bugaboo (first of many; the fellow is anti-immigration the way Representative Goode, R-VA, is) is the 1965 Act of Congress legalizing the presence of Cuban refugees from Fidel. Links below:
White House Rejects Mandatory CO2 Caps
By John Heilprin
The Associated Press
Friday 02 February 2007
Washington - Despite a strongly worded global warming report from the world's top climate scientists, the Bush administration expressed continued opposition Friday to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman warned against "unintended consequences" - including job losses - that he said might result if the government requires economy-wide caps on carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
"There is a concern within this administration, which I support, that the imposition of a carbon cap in this country would - may - lead to the transfer of jobs and industry abroad (to nations) that do not have such a carbon cap," Bodman said. "You would then have the U.S. economy damaged, on the one hand, and the same emissions, potentially even worse emissions."
President Bush used the same economic reasoning when he rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, an international treaty requiring 35 industrial nations to cut their global-warming gases by 5 percent on average below 1990 levels by 2012. The White House has said the treaty would have cost 5 million U.S. jobs.
"Even if we were successful in accomplishing some kind of debate and discussion about what caps might be here in the United States, we are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the world. And so it's really got to be a global solution," Bodman said.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020307Y.shtml
Hey Bodman you hack, the world already has a global agreement it's called Kyoto accord! Doing nothing because you don't think Kyoto is perfect is no excuse. Engage the world in a better agreement if Kyoto isn't good enough.
It's also a lie that we are not a major contributor to the problem.
So now the Puggies have progressed from not agreeing with global warming to the US is not to blame. What crap, we are all to blame!
Good Afternoon, ALL!!
3-ish hours to go. Good Luck, Bears; Good Luck Colts. I hope what happened when the Chimp called the White Sox when they won the World Series in 2005. Ozzie hung up on the Shrub.
Panel Sees Centuries of Warming Due to Humans
By Elisabeth Rosenthal and Andrew C. Revkin
The New York Times
Friday 02 February 2007
Paris - The world is already committed to centuries of warming, shifting weather patterns and rising seas from the atmospheric buildup of smokestack and tailpipe gases that trap heat, but warming can be substantially blunted with prompt action, an international network of climate experts said today.
In a report released here today, the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, in its fourth assessment since 1990 of the causes and consequences of climate change, for the first time expressed with near certainty - more than 90 percent confidence - that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases were the main drivers of warming since 1950.
In its last report, in 2001, the panel, consisting of hundreds of scientists and reviewers, put the confidence level at between 66 and 90 percent. Both reports are online at www.ipcc.ch.
Should the concentration of carbon dioxide reach twice the pre-industrial average of 280 parts per million, the report said, the climate will likely warm some 3.5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit, and there would be more than a one in 10 chance of much greater warming - a situation many earth scientists say poses an unacceptable risk.
Many energy and environment experts see such a doubling as a foregone conclusion sometime after midcentury without a prompt and sustained shift away from the 20th-century pattern of unfettered burning of coal and oil, the main sources of carbon dioxide, and an aggressive quest for expanded and improved nonpolluting energy options.
McCain is a traitor. Look who is supporting him, sen. liverlips.
mcain strikes again
Ozzie hung up on the Shrub.
****
That's what I would do! Get me the real President - namely, Al Gore!
"Frosty" nutjobs
by algebrateacher
Sat Jan 13, 2007 at 02:24:58 PM PST
Is there something about the name "Frosty" that makes someone unhinged? Frosty Hardison is an activist in Federal Way, WA, trying to ban use of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" in the classroom. He's the one who has said that "condoms don't belong in the classroom and neither does Al Gore." His wife, an unsuccessful candidate for the school board, said she thinks the film is anti-America. Then there is Frosty Wooldridge, an anti-immigration activist whose first bugaboo (first of many; the fellow is anti-immigration the way Representative Goode, R-VA, is) is the 1965 Act of Congress legalizing the presence of Cuban refugees from Fidel. Links below:
Why Dick Cheney Cracked Up
By Frank Rich
The New York Times
Sunday 04 February 2007
In the days since Dick Cheney lost it on CNN, our nation's armchair shrinks have had a blast. The vice president who boasted of "enormous successes" in Iraq and barked "hogwash" at the congenitally mild Wolf Blitzer has been roundly judged delusional, pathologically dishonest or just plain nuts. But what else is new? We identified those diagnoses long ago. The more intriguing question is what ignited this particularly violent public flare-up.
The answer can be found in the timing of the CNN interview, which was conducted the day after the start of the perjury trial of Mr. Cheney's former top aide, Scooter Libby. The vice president's on-camera crackup reflected his understandable fear that a White House cover-up was crumbling. He knew that sworn testimony in a Washington courtroom would reveal still more sordid details about how the administration lied to take the country into war in Iraq. He knew that those revelations could cripple the White House's current campaign to escalate that war and foment apocalyptic scenarios about Iran. Scariest of all, he knew that he might yet have to testify under oath himself.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020407D.shtml
Lying Dickhead Cheney - a real POS
On President
I would like to see a Gore/Obama ticket. I think, knowing what we know now, Americans would like another chance to vote for Al Gore. I think most all of us with a brain now know that a vote for the shrub was a vote for stupidity, incompetence and corruption. Give the people a chance to make it right for the good of the country and the world. And I would love to see Gingrich ANYWHERE on the republican ticket. I think Juliani/Gingrich would be a great ticket to run against.
Impeachment by the People
By Howard Zinn
The Progressive
February 2007 Issue
Courage is in short supply in Washington, D.C. The realities of the Iraq War cry out for the overthrow of a government that is criminally responsible for death, mutilation, torture, humiliation, chaos. But all we hear in the nation's capital, which is the source of those catastrophes, is a whimper from the Democratic Party, muttering and nattering about "unity" and "bipartisanship," in a situation that calls for bold action to immediately reverse the present course.
These are the Democrats who were brought to power in November by an electorate fed up with the war, furious at the Bush Administration, and counting on the new majority in Congress to represent the voters. But if sanity is to be restored in our national policies, it can only come about by a great popular upheaval, pushing both Republicans and Democrats into compliance with the national will.
The Declaration of Independence, revered as a document but ignored as a guide to action, needs to be read from pulpits and podiums, on street corners and community radio stations throughout the nation. Its words, forgotten for over two centuries, need to become a call to action for the first time since it was read aloud to crowds in the early excited days of the American Revolution: "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government."
I would like to see a Gore/Obama ticket. I think, knowing what we know now, Americans would like another chance to vote for Al Gore.
****
Gore/Obama would win!
McCain is a traitor. Look who is supporting him, sen. liverlips.
****
mccain/Wealselman - that would lose!
I have to go. Basketball game, Superbowl preperations, all that stuff.
Go Bears.
UN Panel Blames Humans for Warming
By Alister Doyle
Reuters
Thursday 01 February 2007
Paris - The U.N. climate panel agreed in its starkest warning yet on Thursday that human activities are causing global warming that may bring more droughts, heatwaves and rising seas, delegates said.
The report, due for release on Friday and bolstering conclusions from a 2001 study, may put pressure on governments and companies to do more to curb greenhouse gases mainly from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.
Scientists and government officials in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most authoritative group on global warming, agreed it was "very likely" that human activities were the main cause of warming in the past 50 years, delegates said.
In IPCC language, "very likely" means at least 90 percent probability and is the strongest link to human activities since the IPCC was set up in 1988. The previous study in 2001 said a link was "likely," or 66 percent probable.
IPCC officials declined comment, saying that the report would be issued on Friday at 0830 GMT. "Nobody's challenging the scientific findings, just the wording," one delegate said, adding the talks might last until early Friday.
The Eiffel Tower, near the meeting hall, and some French homes shut off lights for five minutes on Thursday night in an action to highlight energy waste and global warming, briefly cutting France's power consumption by one percent.
The IPCC, grouping 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, is also set to say that oceans will keep rising for more than 1,000 years even if governments stabilize greenhouse gas emissions.
McCain blasts 'vote of no confidence' By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
****
mccain sucks. He is just playing the "patriot card". When these jerks run out of "reasons", they always reach for the "patriot card". The troops don't agree with the ESCALATION. They know it was tried before and just increased the violence.
Soldiers in Iraq View Troop Surge as a Lost Cause
By Tom Lasseter
McClatchy Newspapers
Saturday 03 February 2007
Baghdad, Iraq - Army 1st Lt. Antonio Hardy took a slow look around the east Baghdad neighborhood that he and his men were patrolling. He grimaced at the sound of gunshots in the distance. A machine gunner on top of a Humvee scanned the rooftops for snipers. Some of Hardy's men wondered aloud if they'd get hit by a roadside bomb on the way back to their base.
"To be honest, it's going to be like this for a long time to come, no matter what we do," said Hardy, 25, of Atlanta. "I think some people in America don't want to know about all this violence, about all the killings. The people back home are shielded from it; they get it sugar-coated."
While senior military officials and the Bush administration say the president's decision to send more American troops to pacify Baghdad will succeed, many of the soldiers who're already there say it's a lost cause.
No more health care bandaids! Edwards is getting close but he's looking for many different programs and patches to the issue. One system, one set of values, one set of risks! Single Payer Universal Health Care is the answer.
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 11:11 AM
This would also improve Medicare and take away another excuse from the Republicans for messing with it....and free up more money for Social Security. It's what voters want done.
The middle class and working poor NOW know that when Republicans talk about "reform" they are really talking about "destroying" benefits we worked for, so the wealthy can have tax cuts they don't need or deserve.
mccain/Wealselman - that would lose!
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 02:39 PM
rjsnj,
Let them run as "maverick" independents.
McCain's Flip Flop On Iraq
by BarbinMD
Sun Feb 04, 2007 at 11:14:12 AM PST
Appearing on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, it took John McCain less than a minute to flip flop on the escalation. Courtesy of Think Progress:
MCCAIN: Took us a long time to get in the situation we’re in, and to say that — and somehow assume that in a few months, that things are going to get all better I think is not realistic.
And 47 seconds later:
STEPHANOPOULOS: You say it’s all in. How long are you going to give it to work?
MCCAIN: I think in the case of the Iraqi government cooperating and doing what’s necessary, we can know fairly well in a few months.
****
McWindVane!
Posted by rjsnj on February 4, 2007 at 02:34 PM
Not only that, but when the team went to the White House for their photo op, Ozzie refused to go.
Let them run as "maverick" independents.
****
Sandy, that's it. They could be the Maverick Party. LOL
McWindVane and Weaselman - what a team.
Not only that, but when the team went to the White House for their photo op, Ozzie refused to go.
****
I am sure he can visit the real President ... Al Gore that is! Bush was selected not elected.
"Frosty" nutjobs
by algebrateacher
Sat Jan 13, 2007 at 02:24:58 PM PST
Is there something about the name "Frosty" that makes someone unhinged? Frosty Hardison is an activist in Federal Way, WA, trying to ban use of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" in the classroom. He's the one who has said that "condoms don't belong in the classroom and neither does Al Gore." His wife, an unsuccessful candidate for the school board, said she thinks the film is anti-America. Then there is Frosty Wooldridge, an anti-immigration activist whose first bugaboo (first of many; the fellow is anti-immigration the way Representative Goode, R-VA, is) is the 1965 Act of Congress legalizing the presence of Cuban refugees from Fidel. Links below:
A Budget for the Middle Class
By Bernie Sanders
MotherJones
Tuesday 30 January 2007
On the eve of President Bush's 2007 budget proposal, freshman Senator and Senate Budget Committee member Bernie Sanders (I-VT) demands a financial plan for America that rolls back tax cuts for the wealthy and stands up for the middle class and working poor.
Early next month, the president has an historic opportunity to submit a federal budget to a Democratically-controlled Congress that will expand the middle class, reduce the enormous gap between the rich and the poor, and lower the poverty rate. But don't hold your breath. The president's pledge to make all of his tax cuts permanent, including hundreds of billions to the wealthiest people in our country, while balancing the budget within five years, is not an encouraging sign of things to come.
While there is still time to change course, it appears that the president's budget proposal will be closer than ever to meeting Grover Norquist's goal of cutting government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that when the Republicans controlled Congress, Vice President Dick Cheney infamously declared that "deficits don't matter."
Or, when then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, upped the ante by telling a group of bankers that "Nothing is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes."
In large part by ramming through massive tax giveaways to millionaires, billionaires, and wealthy corporations, President Bush and the Republican Congress were responsible for racking-up the three largest deficits in U.S. history and accumulating a record-breaking $8.6 trillion national debt.
More from SENATOR Bernie Sanders (gawd I like the sound of that):
As a member of the Senate Budget Committee the choice is pretty clear to me. I will not be voting for more tax breaks for the outgoing CEO of Home Depot who recently received a $210 million golden parachute. Rather, I will be voting to substantially increase financial aid for low and middle class families so that every American, regardless of income, can receive a college education. I will not support a tax cut for the former CEO of Pfizer who received a $200 million compensation package. Instead, I will vote to substantially increase funding for child care so that working families can find affordable and quality care for their children.
I don't think that the former CEO of Exxon-Mobil, who managed to get a $400 million retirement package, needs more tax relief. In my view, it is far more important that we keep our promises to the veterans of this country who now find themselves on waiting lists to get the health care they need.
If, as a nation, we are serious about addressing the long neglected needs of the working people of this country and creating a more egalitarian society, we have got to invest in education, health care, housing, infrastructure, environmental protection and sustainable energy as well as many other areas. We also have to reduce our national debt. Given that reality, Congress must develop the courage to stand up to the big money interests and roll-back the tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent, eliminate corporate welfare and demand that the wealthy and powerful rejoin American society.
We should do no less.
Tom Lantos talking about Iraq trip on C-Span from Tuesday.
He said you can unscramble the egg ... wait a minute ... Bush said the egg wasn't broken just cracked (on Jim Lehrer). Hmmm, maybe too much crack for crack head Bush.
Timetables
by Trapper John
Sun Feb 04, 2007 at 09:10:06 AM PST
The Republican Party used to like to portray itself as the efficient party, the party that could make the trains run on time. (Some Republicans still try to cultivate this image, despite their manifold faults.) But how can you make the trains run on time, or successfully manage any task, without a timetable, or a schedule? Just ask America's most noted scheduling/time management cult leader guru and noted Republican Stephen Covey: you must "learn to plan your weeks and organize your days so you can accomplish the things that matter most to you." Yet in recent years, Bush has become nearly as enamored with rejecting timetables for withdrawal from Iraq as he is with mindlessly parroting "9/11! 9/11!" Surely, this refusal to engage in sensible planning is not one of the Seven Habits of the Highly Effective Decider.
Thankfully, the current crop of Democratic presidential candidates are far more attuned to "sharpening their saws," or whatever Covey would call it -- they're adopting pragmatic, reasonable timetables for the withdrawal of American forces. (I'd just call it common sense.) Today's Washington Post has an analysis of where some of the Dems are with regards to timelines; I thought that I'd expand on that, and check out each candidate's position on a simple, yet critical, question: Do you have a time table for complete withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq?
"We Can't Say We Weren't Warned"
By Jean-Marcel Bouguereau
Le Nouvel Observateur
Wednesday 31 January 2007
What's happened? Why this sudden keen interest in climatic phenomena? I have to say that each of us has had an opportunity to become aware of the seriousness of the situation with the mood swings of a climate that's become erratic. But the 500 delegates meeting in Paris under the aegis of the United Nations, the same ones whose first work had served as the foundation for the famous Kyoto Protocol, will - between now and Friday - give new bases for this recent anguish. "Indefinite growth is impossible, we only have one Earth, but a civilization of happiness is possible. Solutions exist, but public opinion ignores them, since the present power structures and those who wield economic and political power oppose those solutions." That's what René Dumont, the first ecologist candidate for [French] president, said as early as 1974. While he was preaching in the desert then and only garnered a weak 1.3 percent of votes, thirty years later all the candidates are pushing one another to sign Nicolas Hulot's "ecological pact." Suddenly, people are sounding the alarm everywhere. Not without some hypocrisy. Even George Bush mentions, thanks to new technologies, a "post-Kyoto strategy" - while he's refused to sign that protocol. And in Davos, the heads of companies have just salved their collective conscience by increasing the numbers of debates and roundtables on climate change. But only 20 percent of them consider protection of the environment to be a priority. These company bosses know that the break with growth that the Rome Club advocated as far back as 1972 is a death sentence for a capitalism that can't allow itself a drastic reduction in production and material consumption. It's a whole different economy that must be put into effect, based on other values. And unless we confront that unknown, we are in the process of compromising the life of future generations. The problem is that when they are questioned, the ardor of the French to act against global warming is as hypocritical as that of company bosses: 93 percent are ready to systematically sort their garbage or to decrease their electricity and water consumption, but that proportion falls to 61 percent when it comes to using the car less often. We are running into a wall. But no one can say we weren't warned.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020107H.shtml
****
Only frosted synchophants don't beleive that Global Warming is caused by humans and that it must be addressed.
Murtha speaking:
You had to speak over contractors to get into the US embassy in Iraq. No doubt! Did you hear about the new Iraqi police station built by Parsons that was falling apart in a few months time? Apparently everything that Parsons has built is sub-standard.
Bunch of Republican crooks, ripping us all off.
From the Speaker:
“The conclusion by the Congressional Budget Office that President Bush’s military escalation plan in Iraq could require the use of a support force as large as 21,500 additional combat troops puts the cost of the President’s decision in even starker terms. If the President proceeds with his plan, thousands more U.S. troops will be at risk, billions more dollars will be required, and there will be a much more severe impact on our military’s readiness.
“A plan with a commitment of resources on this scale should have a much greater likelihood of success than I heard expressed when I was in Iraq last week. It is time for a new direction in Iraq.”
****
Yes, it's time to get out of Iraq. Redeploy now!
Okay ... getting close to Super Bowl preparation time. BBL
Posted by Butte on February 4, 2007 at 11:02 AM
Instead of investing the money into research that will come up with a reliable source of low cost energy, the multinationals want to go with "cheap" unreliable sources like ethenol?
Why aren't any of the outrageously high profits from oil companies going to long-term solutions to cut our dependence on Arab oil? It's obvious that all these forces are working together to keep us tied to a politically unstable region....and exploit the natural resources of underdeveloped countries to the detrement of their poorer citizens.
There are surely other more technological answers to the world's fuel problem that could be developed with a little capitol investement, but they could not be controlled as easily by the forces who now have a monopoly. I predict that the Communist Chinese will some day undermine them.
In the meantime, there is something really sick and unChristian about taking corn out of the mouths of hungry people to burn it for fuel for the rich.
The Evangelicals have already caught on to how the Republicans have neglected the dangers of global warming and are close to figuring out what's going on with energy.
The New Republican Base is about to defect on "moral" grounds. Isn't that ironic? The fundamentalists must have had a inkling that something was wrong when it became clear that so many Repubican "conservative" leaders seemed to have a fetish for drugs and sex...or at least make excuses for it.
The so-called "immoral" progressive peaceniks and enviromental activists are just as likely to be members of community churches and social organizations these days. While the neocons and corporations operate like cults of corruption.
It's getting easier to figure out all the time. And those that have been manipulated and fooled are getting angrier about it all the time.
I'm ready to get the preparations going for our Super Bowl feast. Enough with the hype from the Sunday morning pundits, it's on to the game.
bbl. Go Bears.
I saw that three times already and everytime I hear him say, I picture him sitting on a porch with a toothpick in his mouth, holding a rifle with a big ole ugly dog sitting next to him with a noose hagin off the door with nats flying around his head.
It's classic George Bush.
;p
Posted by FreedomOfSpeechForBarackObama2008 on February 4, 2007 at 10:18 AM
FOS,
Make that more like Bush sitting in private club snorting coke and drinking martinis, while he screams at the servers for not refilling his glass fast enough. He's too stupid to figure out what is going on in any sports competition, so the televison won't be on. Instead he'll be playing video games and cheating even at that.
There was a reason why the Civil Service system was instituted.
Contractors Take On Biggest Role Ever in Washington
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE and RON NIXON
Published: February 4, 2007
Paul C. Light of New York University says hiring contractors lets the government claim it has trimmed its work force.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — In June, short of people to process cases of incompetence and fraud by federal contractors, officials at the General Services Administration responded with what has become the government’s reflexive answer to almost every problem.
They hired another contractor.
It did not matter that the company they chose, CACI International, had itself recently avoided a suspension from federal contracting; or that the work, delving into investigative files on other contractors, appeared to pose a conflict of interest; or that each person supplied by the company would cost taxpayers $104 an hour. Six CACI workers soon joined hundreds of other private-sector workers at the G.S.A., the government’s management agency.
Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does...
//www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/washington/04contract.html?ei=5088&en=a83345d9bbee5e25&ex=1328245200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1170592820-6DaMIiuNIGhIAkSvQRiBsA
Can you say Republican corruption and waste?
That's why it's called "global warmING" not "global already been warmed". Learn to conjugate verbs, sometime.
I was here when you were falsely claiming that pulling tons of fossil fuels out of the ground and burning them didn't add carbon to the environment, although they had been contained for millions of years, and have been unleashed into the atmosphere starting about 100 years ago.
You also claimed that the temperature has only gone up 1.4 degrees, but haven't explained how a 33.4 degree ice cube is anything but water. Keep up the denial.
O.K., the Heineken keg has been tapped, so it's time to get ready for the guests.
Bear Down!!
Hey moron, didn't you get my note the other day? National Weather Service said no "El Nino" this year.
70% of people polled think Bush is doing a poor job as president......The remaining 30% think Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church. And Frosty-the-moron is one of them.
Keep up the denial. Posted by DPD
Obfuscation and denial. That's all moron trolls know how to do. One trick ponies they are.
Why are glaciers melting? Posted by pee-wee
Dumbass morons can't tell the difference between weather and climate. Climate is why glaciers are melting. Weather is why the ice in the moron's yard is cold. Idiot thinks winter is the proof there is no global warming. He also thinks Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church
I guess it is just a coincidence that glaciers are melting.
Came home and am reviewing the videos of the candidates again (thanks DNC for posting these). This is our time, Democrats, and I am so proud that we have such great candidates. Please share the links for these videos of the speeches with all the Democrats in your state. I'll share with Democrats in Oklahoma through OK Blue Notes (www.okbluenotes.blogspot.com). While the candidates were "preaching to the choir" they were also speaking to the cameras to reach out to America. It's worth your time to listen carefully to each of them. There are clear differences and there is obvious common ground. Now let's take those differences and that common ground to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
dpd, don't overdue the axle grease when q'in up those iguana ribs...my pick for the big game ( i am terrible at this ) is chicago 35/colts 21....rock on!
Hillary was the keynote speaker at last night's AIPAC meeting in New York, and John Edwards was there working the crowd. Apperently the transcript of Hillary's keynote speech is not being made public. This was all I could find:
Hillary Clinton calls Iran a threat to U.S., Israel
NEW YORK: Calling Iran a danger to the U.S. and one of Israel's greatest threats, U.S. senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said "no option can be taken off the table" when dealing with that nation.
"U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons," the Democrat told a crowd of Israel supporters. "In dealing with this threat ... no option can be taken off the table."
Clinton spoke at a Manhattan dinner held by the largest pro-Israel lobbying group in the U.S., the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/02/america/NA-GEN-US-Clinton-Iran.php
Dailykos
Frosty* looks for his relatives whenever there is a crowd scene on the Flintstones.
Oh jeez, moron makes me have to go get it again. No biggie.
NOAA said the latest weather and ocean temperature data now show that El Niño will have "minimal effects" across California and the rest of North America, following the lead of other forecasters, who in recent weeks said El Niño was fizzling.
"The problem with forecasting El Niño is that it's like shooting craps," said William Patzert, a climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. "The dice are loaded with this global warming thing, but we don't know exactly how they're loaded."
Some forecasters now believe the region is in for a record dry spell.
California was hit by a record heat wave that killed more than 100 people in the summer, and is just now emerging from a near-record cold snap that destroyed at least $800 million worth of crops and brought a dusting of snow to unexpected places, such as Westwood.
The one thing the weather extremes have in common is arid conditions — so much so that the Metropolitan Water District is urging residents in parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties to temporarily conserve water because usage is double the normal for January, making it difficult to repair equipment.
"It's been hot and dry, mild and dry and freezing and dry," said Patzert. "The word that keeps popping up is 'dry.' "
LA Times
Just what part of "El Niño will have 'minimal effects' across California and the rest of North America" don't you understand, dummy?
ExxonMobil talking points. Already discredited.
Don't be a member of the Koolaid democracy!
gregg! gregg! Save this post. We're gonna have lots of fun showing the dummie how dumb he is with this one.
Giuliani will be the Republican nominee.
Giuliani will carry New York and Jersey.
Ohio? fuggitaboutit - won't need it.
Giuliani/Gingrich - unbeatable.
Posted by *Frosty**the-moron
LET'S PLAY: (((("WHO SAID THIS?"))))
Quote:
"I've heard these pundits, they are people that are paid by Democrats, many of them were in the Clinton administration, these are paid political pundits and paid political consultants who make their living coming up [to] the Capitol and telling the Democratic leadership this is a loser," (........) says. "It is bad advice. It is advice we got in 2002 and 2004. And we lost because we were perceived as unable to take the tough stands that are needed to change the course in the fight against terrorism."
Hint: He has balls.
bbl
;p
ExxonMobil talking points. Already discredited. Posted by pee-wee
See, ExxonMobil puts the global warming pollution in the air, and the insurance industry has to pay for all the damage it causes, drought, crop damage, hurracanes, tornados, destroyed buildings. They're getting sick of that and are going to "take on" the oil companies over it. Keep an eye out for moves to do something about global warming by the insurance industry.
WHO SAID THIS? Posted by FreedomOfSpeech on February 4, 2007 at 06:08 PM
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin)
Interview With The Fix's Chris Cillizza and The Post's Dan Balz
Posted by Domingo on February 4, 2007 at 06:20 PM
Good Job!
Hey, is the game on yet?
Well, DPD. I said my prayers to saint Grizzly and saints George, Syd, and Walter. And I went to confession.
Didn't you hear. Frosty has positive proof (delerium tremons) that dinosaurs were on the Ark with Noah.
Wow, I didn't know that.
Talk about illiterates.
And what a way to start off the SB Devin Hester on a kickoff return for a TD. Bears 7 Colts 0. Wow
You know, the sad thing is that frosty has kids and they no doubt attend some religious school where they teach people to be morons. Poor kids.
This is "Clintonista advice". It's "loser advice".
I've heard these pundits, they are people that are paid by Democrats, many of them were in the Clinton administration, these are paid political pundits and paid political consultants who make their living (Carville and Bagala) coming up to the Capitol and telling the Democratic leadership this is a loser. "You can't do a timetable. You can't talk about censure. You can't talk about illegal wiretapping. What you just have to talk about is domestic issues or sort of just talk about homeland security in the sense of port security."
This is the advice. I've heard it given. It is bad advice. It is advice that we got in 2002 and 2004. And we lost because we were perceived as unable to take the tough stands that are needed to change course in the fight against terrorism.
Washington Post
I'm a self-centered little prick and I don't care how many people have to die so I can be warmer in Minnesota.
California was hit by a record heat wave that killed more than 100 people in the summer.
DPD,
Have a beer for me!
I have to work tonight so "I caint's"
;p
SWITCH TO HYDROGEN FUELS NOW!!!!
CUT OFF MIDDLE EAST OIL!!!!!!
REQUIRE NEW HOMES AND BUSINESSES TO HAVE SOLAR PANELS NOW!!!!!!
RETROFIT ALL H0MES AND BUSINESSES WITH SOLAR PANELS NOW!!!!!!
RAISE TAXES FOR ALL MILLIONAIRES NOW!!!!!!
IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY NOW AND TRY THEM FOR TREASON!!!!!!!
SEND ALL REPIG CONGRESSPERSONS TO GUANTANIMO NOW!!!!!
SEND ALL EXECUTIVE BRANCH APPOINTEES TO GUANTANIMO NOW!!!!!!!
SHUT DOWN HALLIBURTON NOW AND CHARGE THEM WITH TREASON!!!!!!!
Domingo,
California is facing water shortages next summer. Appartently there was very little snowfall in the Sierras. This will raise electric rates because a substantial portion of power is hydropower.
Good evening everyone
GIG ! Got plenty of rain down here for you.
DPD - I'm pulling for the Bears
johnedwrd - we've been fighting water shortages for decades here in the Sunshine State and the developers just keep building
FOS - how's it goin' girl?
DPD.
Good luck on the game. Don't drink too much Heineken. It's a great beer. We get Heineken at the NCO club in Rothwesten, Germany for a Nickel a bottle on Nickle night. Of course we got wasted every week and then some.
{{J}} I've had plenty so please just keep it down your way.. and I'm so relieved to hear that you are ok!
California is facing water shortages next summer. Appartently there was very little snowfall in the Sierras. This will raise electric rates because a substantial portion of power is hydropower. Posted by Johnedwrd
We've had 12 years of drought over here thanks to global warming. All the man-made lakes along the Colorado River are way, way down. States are fighting with each other over who gets the remaining water, and Forsty-the-moron thinks it's funny. He just loves all death, destruction, and suffering where ever he can find it. That's what kind of a sicko the pervert really is.
J,
I had a cousin who lived in West Palm Beach. I can see where water would be a problem.
Why didn't chimp, jr. require the developers to build desalinization plants to solve the problem. Perhaps his rich buddies didn't like that idea.
FOS - how's it goin' girl?
Posted by J on February 4, 2007 at 06:47 PM
Sup?
"I'm ready for the Bears to go al the way baby! Duh Duh Da Duh"
;p
Domingo,
I agree. New Mexico gets 10% of the Colorado River water. We have had shortages for the last 10 years also. Frosty should be sent to the Sahara Desert to survive. Then let us see if its funny.
Johnedwrd on February 4, 2007 at 06:50 PM
Hey, you are in my neck of the woods where I grew up, in a tiny town close to Giessen... Try Giessener or Licher Bier... they are awesome ;)
OMG! Look at THIS Fool!
GOP Tancredo: Multiculturalism Makes US "A Tower Of Babel" (I HOPE He wind the GOP Nom)
Saying that illegal immigration has diluted the country's patriotism, Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo advocated that border security be the nation's top priority. He spoke during a visit Saturday with supporters in western Iowa.
The Republican presidential candidate spoke to about 60 people Saturday afternoon at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 737 hall in Council Bluffs. He also visited Sioux City.
What a racist bastid!
I guess everyone is glued to the screen. I guess, I'll go plop on the couch myself.
Go Bears!
C-Ya later.
:)
GIG,
Small world. I spent a year and a half in Rothwesten. Twenty years later I found that my gg grandfather immigrated from Zimmersrode. I wish I had known at the time.
GiG,
I drank a lot of Herkules Beer. Kassel was our closest city. I just love non-pastuerized beer. They had the Weinachten beer at Christmas in the snap-cap bottles (18 ounces). What a hangover.
Were you in the Army in Giessen? I was at Rothwesten from 1960 to 1962 with the Army Security Agency.
What's with these racist pig repugs. They seem to only talk with military groups. They are deathly afraid of answering for their criminal activities before a mixed group.
{{FOS}}
I thought you might like this op-ed from my favourite AJC editor
Obama stands in mainstream, as Biden trips
.......
We've come a long way since then. Obama's campaign will show us just how far.
Johnedwrd on February 4, 2007 at 07:44 PM
No, I was born and raised in Germany, only to become an Army brat in my teens because of my stepdad...I moved here in 1992 and became a citizen last year. But you're right, it truly is a small world.. and German beer rocks :)
Just a quick drive by during half time
Oh yeah, Bears gonna pull it out.
Our new Governor came and went to church with the membership that lost their entire church in Lady Lake and then he continued to tour and check out the relief efforts by volunteers and FEMA. He semed very sincere and compassionate to the losses that these people have suffered. He also had adjusters set up in open tents by Friday afternoon so they could see the untouched damage.
So far.....................
GiG,
Congratulations on becoming a citizen. German beer is the best.
THE TURQUOISE ONE!
With a purple du-rag
doo rag
deau r.................forget it.
Al would have announced the end of his retirement tommorrow if the purple one had sung Head on national television.
Posted by Johnedwrd on February 4, 2007 at 08:05 PM
Thank you :) The best benefit is that I can vote now ...2008 here we come ;)
Oh. You don't know, GiG?
Mr. Rogers and Mr. Gore used to have beef back in '81.
I'll say this and run
Jeb never toured any of the damaged areas on foot after hurricanes and followed up with rescue crews to see that the citizens were being helped.
checkin' out
Peace \/
Posted by pee-wee on February 4, 2007 at 08:29 PM
I'm afraid not, I have no idea what you're talking about. But, I do like Al Gore if this has anything to do with what you're posting about ;)
Mr. Nelson got Mr. Albert and his wife Tipper so mad that Mr. Albert, Jr. pushed the warning labels that we now see on every CD cover through Congress.
Posted by J on February 4, 2007 at 06:47 PM
Hey, J.
What do you people in Florida call this game? The Water Bowl? I hope they aren't forcasting any tornados for the second half.
No offense, but I think it would have been better to play this game in Frosty's covered Viking Dome or whatever they call it in Minnesota.
Excuse me. But does this explanation ring true? Any of it?
O'Connor says she would've stayed longer
Sun Feb 4
WASHINGTON - Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor would have preferred to stay on the Supreme Court for several more years until she was ill and "really in bad shape" but stepped down because of her ailing husband.
O'Connor, 76, also says she accelerated her retirement announcement by at least a year because then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who was battling thyroid cancer, told her he was not ready to leave the court, according to a Newsweek interview released Sunday.
"I was concerned about whether he had an intention to step down since his plans might have altered my own. It's hard for the nation to grapple with two (retirements) at once," she said.
After Rehnquist said he was staying, O'Connor announced her retirement in July 2005. Rehnquist died two months later...
O'Connor currently divides her time between Washington and Phoenix, where she cares for her husband, John, who has Alzheimer's. Last summer, she reluctantly placed him in a care center in Phoenix and visits him often.
As a retired judge, O'Connor maintains an office at the Supreme Court, still draws a salary and fills in as a judge on the federal appeals courts.
O'Connor also recently served on the 10-member bipartisan Iraq Study Group and said she was surprised when the GOP leader of the panel, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, asked her to serve on the group.
"I wasn't sure I should do it," she said. "It was so out of my field of judging. I don't know anything about the military."...
"There are probably no perfect answers," she said.
//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070204/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_o_connor
She retired because of her husband's condition, but now spends most of her time half way across the country? Why didn't she put her husband in a nursing facility in Washington?
She accepted a place on the Baker Iraqi study group but admits she knows nothing about the military?
And she retired so Reinquest didn't have to when she knew he was going to die soon anyway? Why is she still on the government payroll? Something is wrong here.
What is the real story, lady?
SandyH,
Could she have been threatened by bush's Gestapo?
Soldiers in Iraq view troop surge as a lost cause
By Tom Lasseter
McClatchy Newspapers
..."Once more raids start happening, they'll (insurgents) melt away," said Gill, who serves with the 1st Infantry Division in east Baghdad. "And then two or three months later, when we leave and say it was a success, they'll come back."
..."We can go get into a firefight and empty out ammo, but it doesn't accomplish much," said Pvt. 1st Class Zach Clouser, 19, of York, Pa. "This isn't our war - we're just in the middle."
...The problem, many soldiers say, is that as long as the majority of Iraqis oppose the presence of American troops, a trend that's only accelerated since the 2003 invasion, no amount of bullets or bodies will solve the problem.
That's a bitter truth for Sgt. Chance Oswalt and many others on the streets of Baghdad.
Oswalt somberly named two men in his company who fought in Fallujah in November 2004, in the most intense urban combat since Vietnam, only to be killed in Baghdad late last year. One bled to death after he was shot by a sniper; the other was killed by a roadside bomb.
"All of our friends who have been killed by (roadside bombs) and snipers, it's like there's no justice for it - it's just another body bag filled," he said. "The guys who died just trying to stay alive and get home, they'll be forgotten. No one will remember their stories."
Riding on a patrol last week, Spc. Elmer Beere looked out of his Humvee window for any hint of wires leading to a roadside bomb.
"It's kind of relentless and pointless," said Beere, 22, of State College, Pa. "It'll be the same thing going on here, no matter what we do."
//www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16616389.htm
The Vice President calls this an enormous success? His standards seem to be a lot lower than those of the men and women in the field.
Posted by Johnedwrd on February 4, 2007 at 09:30 PM
John,
It does make you wonder if she was given an offer she was afraid to refuse.
It seems like she's being very well paid and given lots interesting work to do when all she said she wanted to do is be with her sick husband.
I can understand that she might not be able to handle the emotional and physical demands (been there), but she would have known that even before she retired. Even so, you don't put that kind of distance between yourself and your ailing spouse unless there is something else going on.
And she keeps on talking to the press like she wants them to understand something...but she never comes right out and says what it is.
Something isn't right. But then there is a lot of other things going on in Washington that aren't right.
sorry dpd. tough one. and the damn rain really obscured the television image. shoulda played it in the windy city.
This was a great game to watch. Congrats to the Colts.. and Bears, there is always next year. You certainly have the talent and fan base...it was a treat to watch the game.
Great teams, great coaches and loyal fans, what more could one ask for.
And J, next time, don't even ask, just send the rain, we can handle it, gosh, the poor players ...sigh ;)
Pass HR 508. Bring the troops home. Stop the illegal war.
Disaster: Bush Says He’ll Continue Meddling in Middle East After His Presidency
Posted by Jon Ponder | Feb. 4, 2007, 2:33 pm
Geogre Bush has informed his inner circle that after he leaves office he plans to invite leaders from Middle East to his think tank, which will be part of his $500 million library, where he will give them guidance on the finer points of democratic governance:
If Bush really is allowed to continue meddling in the Middle East after he leaves office, there could soon be nuclear bomb craters dotting landscae from Tel Aviv to Teheran.
Indeed, senior officials close to Bush [say] that Bush’s plan after he leaves the White House is to continue to promote the spread of democracy in the Middle East by inviting world leaders to his own policy institute, to be built alongside his presidential library.
Too bad no one in his inner circle has the cajones to point out that continuing the sort of promotion he’s doing now would cause more harm than good. His approach — bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age and then installing a weak-as-treacle democracy among the ruins — is the biggest foreign policy disaster in our history...
//www.pensitoreview.com/2007/02/04/bush-plans-to-continue-promoting-democracy/
Sounds like Bush intends to continue his presidency even after he leaves office. They are building a fake White House in Austin just like they build a fake ranch in Crawford.
I told you that Cheney has no intentions of utilizing a transition team. He will continue his war on terror no matter who the next president is.
He has his mercenaries and will kill whomever gets in the way of Halliburton's profits.
"It's kind of relentless and pointless," said Beere, 22, of State College, Pa. "It'll be the same thing going on here, no matter what we do."//www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16616389.htm
The Vice President calls this an enormous success? His standards seem to be a lot lower than those of the men and women in the field.
Posted by SandyH on February 4, 2007 at 09:41 PM
State College, PA? It was "only" 37 years ago that I was there near my Alma Dropout listening to stories from a guy named "Poe" and his townie friends who had just returned from Nam!
Time flies when your government is corrupt.
Bush and Cheney's dirty secrets
A former top CIA official blows the whistle on bogus intelligence, covert kidnappings and the alleged torture of terror suspects.
By Georg Mascolo and Holger Stark
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/02/05/drumheller/index.html
Canadian soldiers reflect after months of combat
PAUL WORKMAN, CTV News
Canada in Afghanistan
Here you go Frosty, read this and maybe, just maybe you'll learn something:
Climate scientists say White House pressured them
U.S. scientists have been pressured to make their writings on global warming fit with the Bush administration's skepticism on the topic, a U.S. Congressional committee has been told.
Read the Full Story:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070130/congress_climate_070130/20070130
Photo Gallery of another bloody day in Iraq.
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/world/0702/gallery.iraq.bombing/content.1.1.html
*****
18 killed in Sunday attacks across Iraq
Four people were killed and 20 wounded Sunday when a car bomb exploded near a bus station in the town of Khalis, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Baquba, an official with Baquba police told CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/04/iraq.main/index.html
Scientific American
February 05, 2007
SCIENCE NEWS
February 02, 2007
Final Report: Humans Caused Global Warming
The world gets a wake-up call from Paris that climate change is man-made and likely will worsen without emissions curbs
By David Biello
PARIS -- For the first time, a panel of climate experts has confirmed that global warming is occurring and that it is "very likely"--90 percent certain--man-made. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a working group of some 3,000 delegates from 113 countries, today issued its final report here on the state of climate change--and the findings were grim. "There can be no question that the increases in these greenhouse gases are dominated by human activity," says Susan Solomon, co-chair of the working group and an atmospheric scientist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "Warming of the climate system is now unequivocal. That is evident in observations of air and ocean temperature as well as rising global mean sea level."
"The 2nd of February in Paris will be remembered as the day that the question mark was removed from the idea that humans had anything to do with climate change," adds Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) "The focus of attention will now shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity and whether the science is sufficient to what on earth are we going to do about it."
A wealth of new data in the years between this report and the last one in 2001 provided improved accuracy and precision. For instance, thanks to a diversity of computer models--as well as several runs of each--the scientists can now provide a best estimate for the temperature change based on a doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere: three degrees Celsius. This doubling is based on preindustrial levels of the most prevalent greenhouse gas--roughly 280 parts per million (ppm). Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere had already reached 379 ppm in 2005.
"Some of the models show an ice-free Arctic. We see more severe extremes, heat waves. We see a lot of heavier precipitation, drought increases in a lot of regions. Tropical cyclones are projected to become more intense in a lot of areas with ongoing increases in sea surface temperatures," says Gerald Meehl, an atmospheric scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and a contributing author. "We see what we've already seen but everything becoming a lot more extreme."
This warming would vary from place to place, with some regions experiencing far more. "The last time our polar regions of the earth were significantly warmer than they are today over an extended period occurred 125,000 years ago," Solomon notes. "At that very different time we did see reductions in the polar ice sheets that led to four to six meters (13 to 20 feet) of sea level rise." Adds geoscientist and lead author Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona, some scientists "drilled through an Antarctic ice sheet and it wasn't there then. That's going to be a big focus for the future."
The process of drafting this summary report proved contentious at times. For example, a sentence was ultimately removed that said man-made greenhouse gases outweigh the contribution of the sun by a factor of five. "The difference is really a factor of 10," says atmospheric scientist and lead author Piers Forster of the University of Leeds in England. In fact, this report, despite its gravity, represents a very conservative estimate of what may happen as a result of man-made climate change.
Future reports from the IPCC will focus on impacts and strategies for mitigation, culminating in November in a summation of their findings. Action is already being taken: many countries have committed to reducing greenhouse gases under terms of the Kyoto Treaty; but this IPCC document represents the international consensus on the state of climate science. "It's important that all governments have agreed to the conclusions of this science," notes Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). "The economic costs of waiting to act will be severe."
The U.S., which emits the most greenhouse gases, has so far not accepted any form of reduction in such emissions, either as part of international efforts or domestically. But it also acceded to this summary, saying it "summarizes the current state of climate change research and will serve as a valuable source of information for policymakers," according to a statement from Sharon Hays, leader of the U.S. delegation and deputy director for science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Efforts to combat climate change include proposals to mimic the natural cooling effect of volcanic eruptions or to place an enormous parasol in space to block sunlight. "We could probably offset the effects now by having a big volcano every 10 years or so," Forster says. "You would have to do it now, you'd have to do it for the rest of time or until you find some other alternative. It can only ever be temporary."
But there are other, less intrusive options. "The largest opportunity is energy efficiency," says Halldor Thorgiersson, deputy executive secretary for scientific and technological advice at the UNFCCC. "There are also new technologies such as carbon capture and storage." Already, potential impacts of climate change should be taken into account for long-term planning, such as hydroelectric projects or sewer systems that will last a century or more, says lead author David Wratt, principal scientist for New Zealand's National Climate Center. "Let's not do the minimum, let's put in some tolerances or at least make it so that putting [in] more pipes in 50 years isn't too difficult."
It is now clear that the world will undergo even more rapid changes this century if the levels of greenhouse gas emissions are not slowed. "If we were to have continued emissions at or above the current levels, the changes in the 21st century would very likely be larger than they were in the 20th century," Solomon says, just as the rate of sea level change in the 19th century is dwarfed by the rate of sea level change in the 20th century. "We now know we have warming and it is due to humans, there should be no real debate," Overpeck adds. "We know there have been a variety of associated changes: stronger hurricanes, reduction of snowpack. These are the kind of changes we have had that are detectable with just a fraction of a degree of warming."
"We're going to see these same patterns continue in the future and get more and more severe," he continues. "We have a really clear picture of what is going to happen if we don't do anything or if we make some reduction in emissions."
cool microphotographs for your viewing pleasure:
science is mankind's brother...or was that mother?
Here you go Frosty, some more education for you.
Exxon linked to climate change pay out
Think tank offers scientists $10,000 to criticize UN study confirming global warming and placing blame on humans.
Full Story:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/02/news/companies/exxon_science/index.htm?postversion=2007020306
Arctic ice 'disappearing quickly'
Experts express their fears for the Arctic
Watch the video:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news_web/video/9012da680027d90/nb/09012da680027eda_16x9_nb.asx
from:
Scientific American February 05, 2007
Skeptic
March 2005 issue
The Fossil Fallacy
Creationists' demand for fossils that represent "missing links" reveals a deep misunderstanding of science
By Michael Shermer
Nineteenth-century English social scientist Herbert Spencer made this prescient observation: "Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all." Well over a century later nothing has changed. When I debate creationists, they present not one fact in favor of creation and instead demand "just one transitional fossil" that proves evolution. When I do offer evidence (for example, Ambulocetus natans, a transitional fossil between ancient land mammals and modern whales), they respond that there are now two gaps in the fossil record.
This is a clever debate retort, but it reveals a profound error that I call the Fossil Fallacy: the belief that a "single fossil"--one bit of data--constitutes proof of a multifarious process or historical sequence. In fact, proof is derived through a convergence of evidence from numerous lines of inquiry--multiple, independent inductions, all of which point to an unmistakable conclusion.
We know evolution happened not because of transitional fossils such as A. natans but because of the convergence of evidence from such diverse fields as geology, paleontology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, molecular biology, genetics, and many more. No single discovery from any of these fields denotes proof of evolution, but together they reveal that life evolved in a certain sequence by a particular process.
One of the finest compilations of evolutionary data and theory since Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species is Richard Dawkins's magnum opus, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (Houghton Mifflin, 2004)--688 pages of convergent science recounted with literary elegance. Dawkins traces numerous transitional fossils (what he calls "concestors," the last common ancestor shared by a set of species) from Homo sapiens back four billion years to the origin of heredity and the emergence of evolution. No single concestor proves that evolution happened, but together they reveal a majestic story of process over time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We know evolution happened because of a convergence of evidence.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Consider the tale of the dog. With so many breeds of dogs popular for so many thousands of years, one would think there would be an abundance of transitional fossils providing paleontologists with copious data from which to reconstruct their evolutionary ancestry. In fact, according to Jennifer A. Leonard, an evolutionary biologist then at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, "the fossil record from wolves to dogs is pretty sparse." Then how do we know whence dogs evolved? In the November 22, 2002, Science, Leonard and her colleagues report that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data from early dog remains "strongly support the hypothesis that ancient American and Eurasian domestic dogs share a common origin from Old World gray wolves."
In the same issue, molecular biologist Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and his colleagues note that even though the fossil record is problematic, their study of mtDNA sequence variation among 654 domestic dogs from around the world "points to an origin of the domestic dog in East Asia" about 15,000 years before the present from a single gene pool of wolves.
Finally, anthropologist Brian Hare of Harvard University and his colleagues describe in this same issue the results of a study showing that domestic dogs are more skillful than wolves at using human signals to indicate the location of hidden food. Yet "dogs and wolves do not perform differently in a nonsocial memory task, ruling out the possibility that dogs outperform wolves in all human-guided tasks," they write. Therefore, "dogs' social-communicative skills with humans were acquired during the process of domestication."
No single fossil proves that dogs came from wolves, but archaeological, morphological, genetic and behavioral "fossils" converge to reveal the concestor of all dogs to be the East Asian wolf. The tale of human evolution is divulged in a similar manner (although here we do have an abundance of fossils), as it is for all concestors in the history of life. We know evolution happened because innumerable bits of data from myriad fields of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgrimage.
Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com) and author of The Science of Good and Evil.
ok class thats the reading assignments for tonite. remember quiz tomorrow and no more padding your answers with quotes from Revelations, and no chewing gum!!
OMG!
It's -10 here in GB! With a windchill it's -25. I bet some idiot is gonna make a claim that Global Warming must not be true simply because it's cold in a state that's.........(USUALLY COLD) In any event, I thought I would share. I need some hot tea.
DPD, (Da Bears)
I'm sorry Dude. I'm so sorry.
:(
Interactive Map
Climate change
Snapshots of a warming world
In Depth
Climate change
An 'unequivocal' truth
Global warming is man-made — and getting worse, scientists conclude
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/climatechange/unreport-2007.html
Audios, Videos, and photos, from real people in the arctic who have lived there for so long tell about the climate changes they have seen with their own eyes:
Now do you get it Frosty? Climate change is a very real problem that all everyone around the world needs deal with and that means the United States, China, and India who are the worst offenders of greenhouse gases in the air must find a way to work together with others around the world before the planet is ruined. Also, too many trees are being removed and too much building/cement on the ground isn't helping matters either.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has held a briefing into its report on global warming.
Watch the video:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/video/76000/nb/76713_16x9_nb.asx
Iran strike 'would be disastrous'
A coalition of organisations has warned Tony Blair any military action against Iran would be disastrous. Full Story:
Elements of 'civil war' in Iraq
A US intelligence assessment on Iraq says "civil war" accurately describes certain aspects of the conflict, including intense sectarian violence.
DKA,
He's a "Monkey". He doesn't get it. He doesn't understand. There are at least 15 refrences of actual proof around all of his posts and he's still postig the same dumb ass thing. He's a Monkey.
A Monkey.
27 below here now (TEMP NOT WIND CHILL). Imagine how cold it would be if we didn't have "Global Warming".
Posted by *Frosty** on February 5, 2007 at 02:58 AM
Yeah, you must be "Aiken" from that icy cold blast!
BTW:
Global Warming is real. What you are experiencing right now is a little something called,
(((( LIVING RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO FRICKEN CANADA IN THE DEAD OF WINTER YA STUPID MORON! ))))
CANADA IS WHERE THE FRICKEN POLAR BEARS ARE SUPPOSEDLY DYING FROM HEAT EXHAUSTION YA FRICKEN DUMBASS! Oh, no wait. I'm the dumbass because they aren't dehydrating, they are DROWNING because the ice caps are melting. Oh, FOS, forgive me. I'm a supid ass fool. I'm so sorry.
Posted by *Frosty** on February 5, 2007 at 04:02 AM
;p
Barack Hussein Obama ( What Does It Mean? )
Brave,
Adorable,
Righteous,
Approachable,
Competent,
Kind,
Heroic,
Understanding,
Sensable,
Structured,
Educated,
Independent,
Nice,
Overseer,
Brilliant,
Amazing,
Masculine,
Achiever,
That's what it means to me. (I think it really means "Blessed" though which, I can go for that as well. Is'nt that what Jesus Christ called the Black man who picked up his cross and carried it for him ? Why yes, it was. Jesus looked at that Black man and said "Barack" I mean "Blessed" which means "Barack".)
ROFLMAO!
Eat That Haters!
FOS,
The escaped mental patient must be asleep or global warming fried his computer,
FOS,
The escaped mental patient must be asleep or global warming fried his computer,
Posted by Johnedwrd on February 5, 2007 at 07:26 AM
Yes. I had to up his meds.
;p
The Heat is On, It's on the Street, It's in the Air, It's Everywhere!!!
*Fry the Repigs**!!!
Good morning FOS and johnedwrd
See Frosty was all over the place.
Well the Bears didn't pull it out, but who could have in the Rain Bowl.
Now I know this is off subject but something just doesn't quite ring right here?
Girls pledging their virginity to their fathers?
Did I miss something here?
http://www.glamour.com/news/articles/2007/01/purityballs07feb
Posted by J on February 5, 2007 at 07:41 AM
Oh, I KNOW! WTF?
That didn't sound right to me either. Whew! I thought it was just me and I just didn't get it something, but yeah. That's just too weird for me.
:O
On Thursday, January 4th, Democrats will take control with the swearing in of the 110th Congress. The midterm elections and resulting leadership changes give the ACLU hope for increased oversight and better protections for our civil liberties.
We hope that the new Congress will be aggressive and investigate the abuses of the Bush administration. There are plenty of issues to examine: NSA Spying, rendition and torture, the Military Commissions Act, and illegal surveillance of peace groups. Many of the ACLU’s concerns were covered in a recent op-ed in the Washington Post.
With its new leadership, we urge the 110th Congress to protect the freedoms and values enshrined in our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Lawmakers have not always stood up against this administration’s dismantling of civil liberties, so we’ll need to hold their feet to the fire.
Indeed, a recent New York Times editorial talked about the abysmal failures of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Created by Congress, this “oversight” board lacks independence, has no subpoena power, and has little, if any, actual oversight authority. At its lone public hearing late last year, I was joined by my colleagues on the left and right and called for that board to "conduct aggressive investigation and oversight over the administration’s dismantling of the civil liberties of all Americans."
This new Congress must show real leadership and restore fundamental due process. The only thing scarier than a government that would take away our basic freedom is a Congress that would let it happen.
Caroline Fredrickson, Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office in Civil Liberties News at 10:07 AM
J,
Take the quiz. We're not alone.
LOL
Posted by GOTV on February 5, 2007 at 07:47 AM
Yeah and hows that working out for us ? It's thoses friggen REDemocrats is what it is.
;[
Colorado Springs is getting weird. Colorado Springs is where the Air Force Academy pushes religion. Their religion which has no place in a public school.
I'll be back later. I have to go to the Auto Place this morning to replace a tire. It "popped".
:/
Tancrado is from there as well. They are all nuts!
Okay, I'm gone for reals.
;p
The Treaty of Tripoli, initiated by George Washington during his presidency and later signed into law by John Adams on May 26, 1797, during his presidency, was/is "a treaty of perpetual peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary":
ARTICLE 11.
As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of entity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Good Morning Good Dem's....I hope all of you have a great day!!....John Boy....
Good morning, everyone.
Why is it that Republicans are the only people in the entire world that don't believe in global warming, or don't think there is a civil war in Iraq, or do think wealth trickles downs?
* * *
I think the MSM needs to look closer at the planned annex to the new George W. Bush Presidential Library. Since when do Vice Presidents get a library, too?
Disaster: Bush Says He’ll Continue Meddling in Middle East After His Presidency
Posted by Jon Ponder | Feb. 4, 2007
Geogre Bush has informed his inner circle that after he leaves office he plans to invite leaders from Middle East to his think tank, which will be part of his $500 million library, where he will give them guidance on the finer points of democratic governance:
If Bush really is allowed to continue meddling in the Middle East after he leaves office, there could soon be nuclear bomb craters dotting landscae from Tel Aviv to Teheran.
Indeed, senior officials close to Bush [say] that Bush’s plan after he leaves the White House is to continue to promote the spread of democracy in the Middle East by inviting world leaders to his own policy institute, to be built alongside his presidential library.
Too bad no one in his inner circle has the cajones to point out that continuing the sort of promotion he’s doing now would cause more harm than good. His approach — bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age and then installing a weak-as-treacle democracy among the ruins — is the biggest foreign policy disaster in our history...
//www.pensitoreview.com/2007/02/04/bush-plans-to-continue-promoting-democracy/
The Cheney Vice Presidential Institute of Death and Disaster plans to keep meddling into the affairs in the Middle East no matter what the next president says.
I wonder if Cheney forgot that "any" president now has the power to throw "any" meddling vice presidential terrorist into Gitmo? Or maybe he plans on staying on as President Emeritus for life?
We wouldn't want any elections getting in the way of Halliburton's continued profits.
Good morning everyone. Our local news is reporting on Bush's request for another $100b for Iraq. The story is lead off with this headline 'George Bush could have sent a $3,000 check to every man, woman and child in America with the money already spent in Iraq...'
Sandy, our local paper touches a bit on Cheney's disconnection from Reality.
Iraq War: Advice and dissent
If the Senate wants to give advice about the president's reckless escalation in Iraq, it should do so as clearly as possible. No resolution, however, can absolve Congress of its responsibility to cut off spending trying to end civil war.
Congress has a duty to insist on limits. Someone has to bring a dose of reality to an administration so disconnected the vice president mutters about the country lacking the stomach for a fight in a war that has already gone on longer than U.S. involvement in World War II.
If you don't want to be called the Democrats Party or the Democrats, it seems that you should delete this website and just use the www.dnc.org website.
Or call it democratics.org?
Come on it's just two little letters.
If the Democrats worried about the Republi-lites within the organization and their waffling on the message the American people delivered last November, maybe we'd have had the minimm wage bill passed weeks ago, and we'd be doing something about free trade, and dealing with the illegal War of Lies.
Beltway Republi-lites are wimps.
Real Democrats are tougher than that!
Who cares what they call you as long as it's not late for supper?
Someone mentioned a Gulliani/Gingrich ticket.
I'd like to see them run against a Clark/Obama or Clark/Webb dem. ticket. Military experience and leadership skills are more important than ever!
Bush, I can't wait until you are out of office!
Phoenix-Facts, you spent too much time in the sun!
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