Republicans creating a torture country

Murat Kurnaz, 24, a German cititzen held for four years without being charged with so much as a traffic violation, described life at Gitmo to CNN after being sent back to Germany. Among the "many types of torture" he endured were "electric shocks to having one's head submerged in water, (subjection to) hunger and thirst, or being shackled and suspended [hung from the ceiling]."

"They tell you 'you are from al-Qaeda', and when you say 'no' they give the (electric) current to your feet ... As you keep saying 'no' this goes on for two or three hours."

In testimony consistent with that of other Gitmo survivors, Kurnaz said he was suspended from the ceiling for at least four days. "They take you down in the mornings when a doctor comes to see whether you can endure more. They let you sit when the interrogator comes ... They take you down about three times a day so you do not die." Such precautions weren't 100 percent effective. "I saw several people die," he said.

Now the United States is trying to burnish its nasty image as one of the world's leading torture states--not by eliminating torture, but by silencing its victims. In a remarkable bit of legal sang-froid, the Bush Administration has filed a brief in its case against Majid Khan asking a federal court to seal its torture of him as "top secret."

Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has introduced a bill to defang the neofascist Military Commissions Act, signed into law by Bush shortly before the elections. Under the MCA, the president or secretary of defense can declare anyone, including a U.S. citizen, an "enemy combatant" and toss them into a secret prison for the rest of their life, where they can legally be tortured.

The MCA also eliminates habeas corpus, a legal right enjoyed by Westerners since the 13th century that forces police to file charges against an arrestee or let him go.

update Iraq

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged)
In Bush's War 2885.

bush and hitler

"I BELIEVE that God wants me to be president." George W. Bush=
"I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany," Hitler - Berlin March, 1936=

God is not on the side of any nation, yet we know He is on the side of justice. Our finest moments [as a nation] have come when we faithfully served the cause of justice for our own citizens, and for the people of other lands.: George W. Bush=
If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us: Adolf Hitler, at the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on the Buckeburg held on 3 Oct. 1937.

"Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them." George W. Bush =
"Never in these long years have we offered any other prayer but this: Lord, grant to our people peace at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from the foreign foe!" : Hitler - Nuremberg Sept. 13, 1936.

Christian Coalition political agenda

For the second time in little more than a year, the Christian Coalition of America named a new leader and then removed him before he ever fully took the reins of the conservative political advocacy group.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of a nondenominational megachurch in Longwood, Fla., said he resigned as the coalition's incoming president because its board of directors disagreed with his plan to broaden the organization's agenda. In addition to opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, Hunter, 58, wanted to take on such issues as poverty, global warming and HIV/AID.

It tell us a lot about their political agenda.

why we vote

I think the American people got really tired and fatigued with the arrogance and style of this administration. There is an old saying ‘If you want to get elected, learn to speak. If you want to stay elected, learn to listen.’ "

Similarly, exit polls showed that about 37 percent of the voters who cast their votes against Republican candidates did so as a protest against Bush personally. Voters seemed to conclude that after six years of "staying the course" with unbendable will, while showering even the most benign critics with contempt and derision.

Bush and his Congressional allies had simply lost the capacity to fix their own mistakes. More interested in being right than in being reasonable, they seemed unable to respond to a range of emerging threats, from a hurricane on the gulf coast to an underground explosion on the Korean Peninsula.

To keep going around and saying that everything’s great and how it’s all going well in Iraq was ridiculous. There’s such a thing as being firm, and then there’s such a thing as ignoring reality."
If this election was about the cost of arrogance, though, then it should also be viewed as a vindication of the much-maligned American voter.

Thoughtful and dynamic leadership, after all, requires a willingness to negotiate and a tolerance for dissent — which is the main reason that Republicans now find themselves glumly packing boxes rather than gleefully continuing to pack the courts.

Iran/Contra scandal neo-cons at it again

It's the 20th anniversary of the Iran-contra scandal. Two decades ago, the public learned about the bizarre, Byzantine and (arguably) unconstitutional actions of high officials in the post-Watergate years. But many Americans did not absorb the key lesson: the Iran/contra vets were not to be trusted.
Consequently, most of those officials went on to prosperous careers, with some even becoming part of the squad that has landed the United States in the current hellish mess in Iraq.

Twenty years later, Abrams is deputy national security adviser for global democracy in the George W. Bush administration. A fellow who admitted that he had not told Congress the truth and who had abetted a secret war mounted by a rebel force with an atrocious human rights record now is supposed to promote democracy abroad. Other Iran/contra figures are leading players today. Here's a partial list from the National Security Archive:

* Richard Cheney - now the vice president, he played a prominent part as a member of the joint congressional Iran-Contra inquiry of 1986, taking the position that Congress deserved major blame for asserting itself unjustifiably onto presidential turf. He later pointed to the committees' Minority Report as an important statement on the proper roles of the Executive and Legislative branches of government.

* David Addington - now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, and by numerous press accounts a stanch advocate of expanded presidential power, Addington was a congressional staffer during the joint select committee hearings in 1986 who worked closely with Cheney.

* John Bolton - the controversial U.N. ambassador whose recess appointment by President Bush is now in jeopardy was a senior Justice Department official who participated in meetings with Attorney General Edwin Meese on how to handle the burgeoning Iran-Contra political and legal scandal in late November 1986. There is little indication of his precise role at the time.

* Robert M. Gates - President Bush's nominee to succeed Donald Rumsfeld, Gates nearly saw his career go up in flames over charges that he knew more about Iran-Contra while it was underway than he admitted once the scandal broke. He was forced to give up his bid to head the CIA in early 1987 because of suspicions about his role but managed to attain the position when he was re-nominated in 1991.

* Manuchehr Ghorbanifar - the quintessential middleman, who helped broker the arms deals involving the United States, Israel and Iran ostensibly to bring about the release of American hostages being held in Lebanon, Ghorbanifar was almost universally discredited for misrepresenting all sides' goals and interests. Even before the Iran deals got underway, the CIA had ruled Ghorbanifar off-limits for purveying bad information to U.S. intelligence. Yet, in 2006 his name has resurfaced as an important source for the Pentagon on current Iranian affairs, again over CIA objections.

* Michael Ledeen - a neo-conservative who is vocal on the subject of regime change in Iran, Ledeen helped bring together the main players in what developed into the Iran arms-for-hostages deals in 1985 before being relegated to a bit part. He reportedly reprised his role shortly after 9/11, introducing Ghorbanifar to Pentagon officials interested in exploring contacts inside Iran.

* Edwin Meese - currently a member of the blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, he was Ronald Reagan's controversial attorney general who spearheaded an internal administration probe into the Iran-Contra connection in November 1986 that was widely criticized as a political exercise in protecting the president rather than a genuine inquiry by the nation's top law enforcement officer.

* John Negroponte - the career diplomat who worked quietly to boost the U.S. military and intelligence presence in Central America as ambassador to Honduras, he also participated in efforts to get the Honduran government to support the Contras after Congress banned direct U.S. aid to the rebels. Negroponte's profile has risen spectacularly with his appointments as ambassador to Iraq in 2004 and director of national intelligence in 2005.

a war criminal?

THE bombing of a Pakistani madrasah last month, in which 82 students were killed, was carried out by the United States, a Pakistani official has admitted. The madrasah in the tribal agency of Bajaur was bombed during a visit to Pakistan by the Prince of Wales amid allegations that it was being used to train suicide bombers.

"We thought it would be less damaging if we said we did it rather than the US," said a key aide to President Pervez Musharraf. "But there was a lot of collateral damage and we’ve requested the Americans not to do it again."

The Americans are believed to have attacked after thinking that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy leader of Al-Qaeda, was present. Local people claimed the victims included boys as young as 12 and that the tribal area had been negotiating with the Pakistan government for a peace deal.

This act would have had to have been approved by Bush. So much for winning the hearts and minds. A war criminal--you tell me???

report may just cover Bush's ass

The New York Times is reporting this morning that a draft report of the Baker Commission, aka the Iraq Study Group, makes exactly the recommendations that most analysts have expected for months: more diplomacy, particularly with Iran and Syria; and no timetables for withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The latter, according to reporter David Sanger, citing unnamed commission members and outsiders, is likely to prove divisive when the ISG meets today to begin debating the contents of the final report. So what else could be expected from a "bipartisan" commission full of ideologues.

The draft report, according to those who have seen it, seems to link American withdrawal to the performance of the Iraqi military, as President Bush has done.

But details of the performance benchmarks, which were described as not specific, could not be obtained, and it is this section of the report that, unless revised, will just be a cover for Bush's ass to continue not admitting his goof by "staying the course" while we ljust keep losing people and treasure down that rat hole.

update Iraq

U.S. price tag of $346 billion of our money and "at least 2,876 " members of the U.S. military have died, not counting (1)"contractors" (2) Iraqi civilian women and children (3) the tens of thousands that have been wounded, and (4) the one in five surviving soldiers that have lingering mental problems. Let's never forget it is the Republicans who got us in and are keeping us in this mess.

Republicans continue

Even Medicaid, the federal health program for the poor, appears to employ better negotiators than the private Medicare plans. On Jan. 1, 6 million elderly and disabled people were switched from Medicaid pharmacy plans to the new Medicare program.

Overnight, many drugmakers began selling the same drugs at higher prices. Pfizer, for example, reported saving $325 million in Medicaid discounts during the first six months of this year "due primarily to the impact of" the Medicare drug benefit, according to a company report to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"At some point, someone has to stand up to these industries that are doing so well in this program," said Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, a New York advocacy group. "It only makes sense that if the industries do less well, the taxpayers and the consumers will do better."

John C. Rother, policy director for AARP, the powerful lobby for elderly Americans, said he has no doubt that the next Congress (with the Democrats) will give government some role in negotiating Medicare drug prices. "This is an idea that's favored by 90 percent of the American public," Rother said. "It's not like you have to convince the American public that this is a good idea."

Already, the Republicans are gearing up to fight the idea of negotiating medicare drug prices.

republican party realignment

The Republican base, the true "red America" is now mostly limited to the deep South, which is made up of and controlled mostly by racists that have converted to the Republicans. The libertarian West is wary of Republicans in bed with the Southern Evangelicals. More states are now more blue than red. So is the populist MidWest, which distrusts the GOP alliance with big business and multinational corporations.
The bottom line is that the Republican Party has become the party of Rove and Bush, who appeal mostly to the Southern Bible Belt.

Democratic Agenda for the people

Democratic goals in the new Congress include:
_Restore civility, integrity, transparency and accountability to our government
_Increase the minimum wage.
_Enacting the Sept. 11 Commission's security recommendations.
_Allow the government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare patients.
_Cut energy industry tax breaks.
_Lower financial hurdles for access to higher education.
_Address the concerns and issues that affect the lives of working families,

republicans waste billions

HE DEPARTMENT of Homeland Security is an MBA's nightmare. When Congress cobbled DHS together in 2002, it took apart and reassembled elements from disparate federal agencies into an uneasy consolidation, too big and too varied, some say, for even the department's tireless head, Michael Chertoff, to adequately control. Instead of synergy, a fair measure of incompetence followed, including, The Post reported Wednesday, embarrassingly poor oversight of the billions of dollars the department has paid to private.

According to the review, which was drafted by outside specialists on government contracting, almost none of the contract files examined met standards of quality or even completeness. The documentation for 33 of 72 contracts the investigators sought to evaluate could not even be located, which makes you wonder how DHS ensures that contractors aren't wasting government money.

Poor contract management, the report concluded, has led to "the inability to obtain quality goods and services on time and at a fair price." These contracts date from fiscal 2005, during which DHS distributed nearly $17.5 billion to contractors and the federal government ran a deficit of $318 billion.
Another example of these republicans giving the most to those who have the most.

Cheney in the dark

Vice President Dick Cheney arrived Saturday in Saudi Arabia for talks with King Abdullah, apparently seeking the Sunni royal family’s influence and tribal connections to calm Iraq after an especially violent week.
Under the table, he may be seeking Saudi Arabia private agreement for the US to attack Iran.

McCain on the fence

The conservative movement is in a real meltdown since the election. Conservatives have been so wedded to this White House that they don’t know which way to turn for ’08. This will be the first election since 1922 where there is no sitting president or vice president on the ballot. President Bush has been derelict in positioning a successor, and thankfully so, since the policies he advocated have brought America worldwide condemnation and deserve to be retired with him.

There is no conservative darling to capture the hearts of the right, no candidate who can check off all their boxes. McCain was clearly squirming when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos pressed him on "This Week" last weekend about whether he supports civil unions, a loaded term among social conservatives who see it as a fig leaf for gay marriage.

McCain avoided the phrase but said he supported various partnerships to facilitate hospital visits and the like. His home state of Arizona just voted down an anti-gay marriage initiative that also would have banned domestic partnerships even among heterosexual couples.

The state’s large retired population took the lead in defeating the measure. Many older couples opt to live together rather than marry to keep their retirement incomes intact.

situation in Iraq

The media’s "spin" cannot alter the reality on the ground, and the fact is the US is getting beaten quite badly. They’ve locked-horns with a crafty enemy that has neutralized their advantages in terms of firepower and technology and limited their range of movement. It’s shocking to think that after 4 years of bloody conflict, occupation forces still control "no ground" beyond the looming parapets of the Green Zone. This is a stunning admission of defeat.

The benchmarks for winning a guerilla-type war are fairly well known. The occupying army must quickly establish security in order to elicit the support of the general population. That’s why winning "hearts and minds" is such a critical task. If the occupation is widely unpopular, then reconstruction and security become impossible, and the armed-struggle flourishes.

Now that 80% of the Iraqi people say that they want to see a rapid draw-down of American troops, we can be certain that victory, in any conventional sense of the word, is out of the question.

Without knowing the answers to these questions, the United States, with all its high-tech surveillance gadgetry, is just a lumbering giant stumbling around aimlessly. The dependence on rounding up and torturing "military aged men" (MAMs) to gather intelligence about resistance activities and networks has backfired entirely; galvanizing the public against the occupation and eroding America’s claim of moral superiority.

update Iraq

U.S. price tag of $345 billion of our money and "at least 2,871 " members of the U.S. military have died, not counting (1)"contractors" (2) Iraqi civilian women and children (3) the tens of thousands that have been wounded, and (4) the one in five surviving soldiers that have lingering mental problems.

Friedman-republican hero

Milton Friedman's folly:--His "free market" faith has produced instead the very thing he regularly denounced: a bastardized system of interest-group politics that serves favored sectors of citizens at the expense of many others.

Enterprise and markets were indeed set "free" of government regulation, but big government did not go away (it grew bigger). Only now government acts mainly as patron and protector for the largest, most powerful interests--the same ones that demanded their liberation.

Instead of serving the broad general welfare, government enables capital and corporations to feed off the taxpayers' money and convert public assets into private profit centers, shielded from the wrath of any citizens trying to object. If that is what Friedman really had in mind, he should have said so.

republican hypocrisy

Advocating war is easier when you and your family are not endangered by it. I've reached a Rangel-like breaking point with those TV pundits who championed the Iraq war and now say we can't leave even if we went there for the wrong reasons.

For every one of them, I have a simple question: Why aren't you in Iraq? Or why did you avoid combat in your generation's war?

The one unifying characteristic that all of those on TV shows share is fear of combat. Every one of them has done everything we can to avoid combat or even being fitted for a military uniform. Just check out the website www.nhgazette.com/news/chickenhawks/ and you will find Bush, Cheney, and all the neocons who avoided or evaded combat.

It takes a very special kind of combat coward to advocate combat for others. It's the kind of thing that can get you as angry as Charlie Rangel, a wounded and decorated combat veteran.

immorality

Hashim Ibrahim Awad was in his house last April, and the soldiers were American. Seven Marines and a Navy corpsman dragged Awad from his home in Hamdaniyah, west of Baghdad. They bound his hands and feet, though Awad is lame, and forced him outside. Four of them then shot him in the face.

Afterwards, the soldiers placed a shovel and an AK-47 by Awad's body to make it look like he was an insurgent digging a hole for a roadside bomb. The real motive for the killing remains unknown.

Lance Cpl. Jerry E. Shumate Jr. was one of the shooters. He was sentenced yesterday to 21 months in jail. That's significantly less than the five-year federal minimum sentence for growing a single marijuana plant. None of Shumate's co-conspirators has received a longer sentence (though some have yet to be tried).

An Iraqi life is worth less than a victimless crime. How much is saving these young soldiers' asses really worth to the military?

how corporations scam us

How have multinational drug companies been able to gouge us for years selling expensive drugs and then avoid paying tax on their astronomical profits?

The answer is simple. For companies in certain businesses, such as pharmaceuticals, it is very easy to simply "invent" the price a company charges their U.S. business for buying the company’s product which they manufacture in another country. And if they charge enough, poof; all the profit vanishes from the US, or Canada, or any other regular jurisdiction and end up in a corporate tax-haven. And that means American and Canadian tax payers don’t get their fair share.

Many multinational corporations essentially have two sets of bookkeeping. One set, with artificially inflated transfer prices is what they use to prepare local tax returns, and show auditors in high-tax jurisdictions, and another set of books, in which management can see the true profit and lost statement, based on real cost of goods, are used for the executives to determine the actual performance of their various operations.

The drug industry, where real cost of goods to manufacture drugs is usually around 5% of selling price, has a lot of room to artificially increase that cost of goods to 50% or 75% of selling price. This money is then accumulated in corporate tax-havens where the drugs are manufactured, such as Puerto Rico and Ireland. Puerto Rico has for many years attracted lots of pharmaceutical plants and Ireland is the new destination for such facilities, not because of the skilled labor or the beautiful scenery or the great beer—but because of the low taxes.

Ireland has, in fact, one of the world’s lowest corporate tax rates with a maximum rate of 12.5 percent. In Puerto Rico, over a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product already comes from pharmaceutical manufacturing. That shouldn’t be surprising. According to the U.S. Federal Tax Reform Act of 1976, manufacturers are permitted to repatriate profits from Puerto Rico to the U.S. free of U.S. federal taxes. And by the way, the Puerto Rico withholding tax is only 10%.

The problem starts when they use fraudulent transfer pricing and other tricks to artificially shift their income from the U.S. to a tax-haven. According to current OECD guidelines transfer prices should be based upon the arm’s length principle – that means the transfer price should be the same as if the two companies involved were indeed two independents, not part of the same corporate structure. Reality is that standard operating procedure for multinationals is to consistently violate this rule. Republicans are bought and paid for by these corporations and their fundamentalist Christian allies.

republcan war

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said US forces are trapped in Iraq, adding that Washington must find the right time to leave without. "On the question of the military presence it is a difficult issue. The US is in a way trapped in Iraq, trapped in the sense that it cannot stay and it cannot leave," Annan told a press conference Tuesday.

update Iraq

U.S. price tag of $344 billion of our money and "at least 2,867 " members of the U.S. military have died, not counting (1)"contractors" (2) Iraqi civilian women and children (3) the tens of thousands that have been wounded, and (4) the one in five surviving soldiers that have lingering mental problems.

Republicans want another war

A classified draft CIA assessment has found no firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as alleged by the White House, a top US investigative reporter said on Saturday. Seymour Hersh, writing in an article for the November 27 issue of the magazine The New Yorker released in advance, reported on whether the administration of Republican President George W. Bush was more, or less, inclined to attack Iran after Democrats won control of Congress last week.

A month before the November 7 legislative elections, Hersh wrote, Vice President Dick Cheney attended a national-security discussion that touched on the impact of Democratic victory in both chambers on Iran policy. "If the Democrats won on November 7th, the vice president said, that victory would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran," Hersh wrote, citing a source familiar with the discussion.

Cheney said the White House would circumvent any legislative restrictions "and thus stop Congress from getting in its way," he said. The Democratic victory unleashed a surge of calls for the Bush administration to begin direct talks with Iran.

But the administration’s planning of a military option was made "far more complicated" in recent months by a highly classified draft assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency "challenging the White House’s assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb," he wrote.

"The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency," Hersh wrote, adding the CIA had declined to comment on that story.

the difference

the first liberal

The First Liberal:

If Jesus of Nazareth was anything, he was an extraordinary friend of the down- trodden, definitely a Liberal, whose advocacy on their behalf so infuriated the ultra-Conservative religious and political leaders of his day that they had him killed to prevent the public from hearing the very liberal teaching that you will see quoted abundantly in Jesus' own words.

Those who actually know what the Bible says about the life and teaching of Jesus recognize that far from being like Jesus of Nazareth, today's "Religious Right" are much more like the kind of clerics who battled this revolutionary prophet from the day he opened his mouth until the day they had him nailed to a cross.

Although these people claim to represent Jesus Christ, they rarely quote him or follow his example. What they do instead is use his name ("in vain") to promote their ideas, ideas which Jesus himself did not teach, and might well have opposed.

Gandhi said it best, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

recommendations for Democratic Party

Drawing on bluster and hubris, Republican bullied Democrats into going along with the transfer of the federal tax burden from the rich to the middle class. Next they skillfully exploited Americans' fear and anger following the September 11th attacks to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. By 2004, Republicans had eliminated civil liberties that citizens of Western countries had enjoyed for hundreds of years, emasculating Congress and the Courts to create a "unified executive" form of government.

Most of the changes carried out by Bush's neoconservatives during his first term--new tax rates, USA-Patriot Act, two wars, pulling out of the Geneva Conventions, torture, domestic eavesdropping--will probably remain in force for decades. Their strategy of running roughshod over the Democrats worked. Democrats should cancel the tax cuts, close the torture camps, restore habeas corpus, get the NSA out of our email, yank our troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

bipartisanship?

The Bush administration has appointed, Eric Keroack, as a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization and opposes contraception and is against distributing information promoting birth control.

Bush last week pushed the Senate to confirm John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations and this week renominated six candidates for appellate court judgeships who have previously been blocked by lawmakers. AND, he also wants more troops in Iraq. SO MUCH FOR REPUBLICAN PROMISES OF BIPARTISANSHIP..

get out of Iraq NOW!

President George Bush has told senior advisers that the US and its allies must make "a last big push" to win the war in Iraq and that instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, according to sources familiar with the administration's internal deliberations.

Mr Bush's refusal to give ground, coming in the teeth of growing calls in the US and Britain for a radical rethink or a swift exit, is having a decisive impact on the policy review being conducted by the Iraq Study Group chaired by Bush family loyalist James Baker.

MY QUESTIONS ARE , " HOW MANY HAVE TO DIE FOR THIS FIASCO IN IRAQ AND WHICH ONE OF THE NEO-CONS / CHICKENHAWKS IS GOING TO BE THE LAST MAN OR WOMAN TO VOLUNTEER TO DIE THERE???" "GET OUT NOW"

update Iraq

U.S. price tag of $342 billion of our money and "at least 2,863 "(5 more yesterday) members of the U.S. military have died, not counting (1)"contractors" (2) Iraqi civilian women and children (3) the tens of thousands that have been wounded, and (4) the one in five surviving soldiers that have lingering mental problems.

no more hunger under these republicans

The USDA said that 12 percent of Americans -- 35 million people -- were hungry because they could not put food on the table at least part of last year.. Beginning this year, the Republican controlled USDA has determined "very low food security" to be a more palatable description for that group.
Now that is just like these Republicans, call it something else and cover up the problem. It is a crime that people in this country have to go to bed humgry, period. Changing the terminology doesn't get rid of the problem.

update Iraq

U.S. price tag of $340 billion of our money and "at least 2,858 "(6 more yesterday) members of the U.S. military have died, not counting (1)"contractors" (2) Iraqi civilian women and children (3) the tens of thousands that have been wounded, and (4) the one in five surviving soldiers that have lingering mental problems.

church of the unwanted

Catholics and certain religious denominations are widening their denial of membership to certain people. It seems so contrary, at least to me, to the picture and posture of Jesus in the gospels," "Jesus's life and ministry were marked by radical hospitality, openness, vulnerability, and humility.

By contrast, Catholics and the Baptist State Convention is requiring their congreatations to magnify the message that certain types of people, as well as their friends and perhaps their fellow believers and family members are neither welcome nor worthy of a place at the table in their communities.

I think we need a new organization of faith that excepts you and asks you only to come as you are, to join an open communions. So, I am contemplating creating a new congregation of the faithful to be named, "International Church of the Unwanted".

republican caucus vs. a cactus

For a Republican party that has just been through a big loss, and whose commitment to minority voters is a question mark, elevating Lott seems like a dubious move. The voters of Virginia punished Republican Sen. George Allen for a racially insensitive comment, yet the GOP promotes Lott, whose utterance was equally offensive.

Lott said that if Thurmond had been elected president in 1948, "we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years …" Thurmond ran as a segregationist Dixiecrat, and Lott’s words were interpreted as racist.

This proves that the difference between the republican caucus and a cactus is that with a cactus "the pricks are on the outside.

republicans say we are making progress

Iraq's Health Ministry is a case study in how al-Sadr used his government role to consolidate his political and military support. Ministry-run hospitals have been used as a weapon against rival Sunnis, according to critics, such as Sunni lawmaker Mithal al-Alusi. "It's a jungle," al-Alusi says. "What (al-Sadr) has done with that ministry is criminal."
Last month, a Sunni man was taken to Kindi Hospital in central Baghdad for a gunshot wound, says Omar al-Jubouri, human rights director at the Iraqi Islamic Party. He was shot and killed in his hospital bed, al-Jubouri says. His brother went to retrieve the body. He brought 17 male relatives along for protection, but they were quickly outgunned by an even larger group of armed men, believed to be the Mahdi Army, al-Jubouri says. The group was kidnapped and killed, he adds.

Two days later, the family picked up the 19 bodies, escorted by an Iraqi army convoy, from the Baghdad morgue. Al-Jubouri says some of the bodies showed signs of torture, including drill holes to the skull and electrocution burns. So many Sunnis have been followed and killed after picking up relatives at the ministry-controlled Baghdad morgue that al-Jubouri's party regularly coordinates Iraqi army convoys to escort the families, he says. "We'll wait until we have 17 or 18 bodies waiting," he says. "Then we'll send for the convoy."

Convoys are not always safe. On June 12, Ali al-Mahdawi, a physician and head of the Diyala Province health department, arrived at the Health Ministry headquarters with six bodyguards for an 8:30 a.m. meeting with Health Minister Ali al-Shemari, al-Samarrai says.Al-Mahdawi had been nominated by Sunni political leaders to be deputy minister. After arriving at the ministry, three of the bodyguards waited in the parking lot, while three escorted the doctor to the meeting, al-Samarrai says. When the meeting ran late, a bodyguard in the parking lot called al-Mahdawi on his mobile phone.

"Don't worry, he's with friends," a voice on the other end said before switching off the phone. Al-Mahdawi and the three guards haven't been seen since, al-Samarrai says. "Most probably, he's dead now," he says. "It happens so often. Everybody knows about it. And they're not doing anything about it."

nobody cares

The day the shells fell, Athamneh's daughters Tamam and Najat had been sleeping in the house with their children, because their houses had been badly damaged during the last IDF invasion. No one is investigating whether they were hit by tanks or bulldozers, shells or missiles, or from an explosion when the soldiers blasted holes in the walls to pass between houses.

Four hundred homes were damaged in Beit Hanun in one week, including 25 that were completely destroyed.

The soldiers' invasion of the Athamneh family home has also been almost forgotten. At 10 A.M., on November 1, a tank entered the garden, destroying hothouses, trees, pipes and a generator, until it hit a wall. The soldiers made a hole in the wall and entered the house, gathered all the family members and sent the women to a room on the first floor. The men were put in the kitchen and bathroom.

The soldiers collected all the cell phones, and with leashed dogs, searched all the rooms on all four floors. They called out the names of all the family members. Majdi, Zahar's husband, has a pacemaker. He said he felt ill and asked the soldiers to call an ambulance. He overheard one say someone was sick. Another soldier responded, "Let him die."

Majdi showed the soldiers his medical papers. One of the soldiers hit him in the chest and his nose started bleeding. After two hours, the soldiers left. They returned three days later through the hole in the wall. They again gathered all the family members, counted them, searched and left after three hours.

"They knew very well who was in the house, how many children, how many women. They knew very well there were no terrorists and no arms in this house," said Majdi.

Majdi showed visitors the walls and ceilings hit by the shells, the clothes strewn by the blast, the broken furniture and concrete. "I believe the soldiers are happy they killed us," he said. "They had an order from [Defense Minister Amir] Peretz and [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert to kill us. They wouldn't do it without orders.

What kind of a mistake is it, if 10 shells hit one after the other, killing people in their beds? Not one shell was a mistake. I collected the martyrs. One by one. Avigdor Lieberman said Israel must act like the Russians in Chechnya. He just joined the government, and they immediately started doing what he said." War, War, War. AND NOBODY CARES.

good advice

Outgoing RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman's advice to Republicans:
We have to recommit ourselves to being the party of reform (party of change). Sounds like the Democratic Party.
Next is to say that people who are in public service ought to be about serving the public not aggrandizement for themselves, and certainly not for personal enrichmen. A big problem with the these current Republicans.
And three, try as hard as you can to work in a bipartisan way, consistent with principles, and make sure your tone is always a respectful tone. Just because someone disagrees with you is no reason to call them names.
This is a big fault of current Republicans. I have been pointing this out to Republicans for the last year and a half. All together, good advice.

stop hypocrisy

During the Vietnam war, American forces sprayed about 12 million gallons of Agent Orange over the jungle canopies and jade-green highlands of Vietnam. The most toxic of the herbicides used for military purposes, it defoliated countless trees in areas where the communist North Vietnamese troops hid supply lines and conducted guerrilla warfare.

Because Vietnam lacked the resources to conduct its own environmental cleanup, dioxin-related birth defects have been diagnosed in thousands of children whose parents were not exposed during the war.

The USA sprayed chemicals that still create birth defects in Vietnam.
I find it ironic that on one hand we put Saddam Hussein on trial for using biological warfare, but in another country where we sprayed chemicals for warfare, 30 years after, we still have not cleaned it up. Hypocrisy is alive and well and will be our downfall if we don't stop it.

a liberal and Christian

If by a liberal and a Christian, they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties.. if that is what they mean, then I am proud to be a liberal and a Christian

ways of republicans

People are finally seeing the ways in which Republican hypocrisy and cruelty support one another. Their whole ideological system--promotion of international and domestic state violence, homophobic moralism and religious zealotry, corruption and piety, prostitution of government to big business--is on the verge of collapse.

Politicians and lobbyists on their way to jail, right-wing preachers paying for the kind of sex they denounce, rampant profiteering, a disgraceful and chaotic war--they all add up to an obsolescent governing model.

reject republican ways

Democrats should avoid the overreaching, arrogance and rancorous partisanship that Democrats them virtually powerless on Capitol Hill and spawned an era of political corruption and influence-peddling. Democratic leaders vowed last week to pass major ethics reforms early in the new 110th Congress, and to offer Republicans seats at the negotiating table and ample opportunities to amend bills on the floor -- opportunities that were denied their party.

"What republicans did was very effective in pulling up all the ladders for any other party to gain the majority," incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said last week of the Gingrich revolutionaries. "They just shut the doors to debate on the floor, to amendments coming, to even how special orders [speeches] were conducted. Everything they were effective in using to gain the majority they shut down."

"We're going to do the opposite," she pledged.

don't be like those republicans

Democrats should avoid the overreaching, arrogance and rancorous partisanship that left Democrats virtually powerless on Capitol Hill and spawned an era of political corruption and influence-peddling.

Democratic leaders vowed last week to pass major ethics reforms early in the new 110th Congress, and to offer Republicans seats at the negotiating table and ample opportunities to amend bills on the floor -- opportunities that were denied their party.

"What they did was very effective in pulling up all the ladders for any other party to gain the majority," incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said last week of the Gingrich revolutionaries. "They just shut the doors to debate on the floor, to amendments coming, to even how special orders [speeches] were conducted. Everything they were effective in using to gain the majority they shut down."

"We're going to do the opposite," she pledged.

Demos to be different

Democrats should avoid the overreaching, arrogance and rancorous partisanship of Republicans that left them virtually powerless on Capitol Hill and spawned an era of political corruption and influence-peddling.

Democratic leaders vowed last week to pass major ethics reforms early in the new 110th Congress, and to offer Republicans seats at the negotiating table and ample opportunities to amend bills on the floor -- opportunities that were denied their party.

"What Republicans did was very effective in pulling up all the ladders for any other party to gain the majority," incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said last week of the Gingrich revolutionaries. "They just shut the doors to debate on the floor, to amendments coming, to even how special orders [speeches] were conducted. Everything they were effective in using to gain the majority, they shut down."

"We're going to do the opposite," she pledged.

are we dumb

Wes Anderson, a Republican strategist who consulted in some of the closest Senate races, said that before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, voters identified the GOP as the party of fiscal conservatism, middle-class economics, national security and ethical reform. "Our problem is our brand is broken," Anderson said. "Voters didn't walk away from the core principles of the brand. They just didn't think we represented them effectively." Rubbish.

Fiscal conservatism--they gave the biggest tax breaks to those who are richest and have the most,
Middle-class economics--the middle class is worse off with these republicans,
National security--turned Iraq into a killing field and a recruiting field for Al Quaeda,
and ethical reform--crookedness and immorality abound among republicans.

AND HE SAID "voters didn't think we represented them effectively" more B---S--t spin and hypocrisy from these republicans--they never learn because they think you are dumb.
Are you?

"me-to-ers"

The Democratic Party has been all but dead for years as a meaningful national alternative. The party has no recognized national leader. It has no cause, no fire in the belly. It has been largely silent for six years while Bush rampaged through the world and literally peed on American liberties like a grotesquely-smirking, small-town sheriff.

No President in history has shown so little respect for human rights, and with so little excuse, yet all the would-be defenders of the Republic, whether Congressmen or the Don't-Tread-on-Me crowd, have been no where to be seen. And Democrats like Lieberman or Kerry can hardly be distinguished from Republicans.

The Democrats have been elected because Americans are now sick of Iraq. Their enthusiasms die quickly. American expectations for the wars they start are perfectly captured by the image of Bush landing on an aircraft carrier with a big banner behind him saying Mission Accomplished.

Democrats better get on the stick and quit trying to be "me-to-ers" and get aggressive, go on the offense; or they will be just a blip on the radar screen, waiting for the "Republicrats" to return in two years.

cheney a "deadender"

This is all about Cheney now; Dick Cheney, political survivor and skilled bureaucratic infighter. If anyone thinks that he’s going to sit around waiting for the Democrats to start sniffing around the Republican corruption-cesspool; they’re crazy. He knows what’s going on. He knows that Bush Senior, and Brzezinski, and Baker, and the rest of the “old order” Republicans have muscled in and are taking over. He knows he won’t be able to bomb Iran, kill another 650,000 Iraqis, or declare martial law at home. And, he also knows that Conyers and the rest of them will be nosing-around the Halliburton “no bid” contracts; going through every sordid detail with a fine-tooth comb, and dredging up new scandals on a daily basis.

He grasps all of that. He understands the political climate and he knows that he only has two choices left; offense or defense? Either he steps down or he collects his wits, gets his team together; Addington, Abrams, Chertoff, Gonzales etc; all the guys who are “one step ahead of the hangman”; and slaps together one “last-ditch” effort to establish absolute-dictatorial power that will put him forever beyond the reach of the law or of any future accountability for his war crimes.

It’s a tough task. Bush is teetering and he’s probably left the Cheney-Rumsfeld orbit already. Robert Gates’ job is to influence Bush, to win him over with reason and, thus, move the country away from the brink of disaster. Cheney has been removed from the policy-making apparatus and he knows it. So, what’ll he do next? What will Cheney do now that he’s been backed into a corner and his power is oozing away like the blood from a sucking chest-wound?

Will he quietly retire and disappear into the political vapor or “lock-n-load” and go down with both guns blazing? Here’s a clue: Cheney is a “dead-ender”. He won’t go peacefully.

long but the best read

Well, someone's head had to roll -- not for our bloody defeat in Iraq, but for the GOP's defeat in the mid-terms. Well, I'm not celebrating. I know that most of my readers will be tickled pink that Donald Rumsfeld has been given the kiss-off. But let's get this straight:

It wasn't Rumsfeld who stood up in front of the UN and identified two mobile latrines as biological weapons labs, was it, General Powell? It wasn't Rumsfeld who told us our next warning from Saddam could be a mushroom cloud, was it Ms. Rice? It wasn't Rumsfeld who declared that al-Qaida and Saddam were going steady, was it, Mr Cheney?

Rummy's the puppet -- but the problem is the puppeteer. And the timing of this smells. Rather than gossip about the dunking of The Don, I'd rather focus on suspicious electoral arithmetic. In Virginia, only 7,000 votes separates the Democratic Senatorial candidate Jim Webb from incumbent Republican George Allen. Leading up to the election, the State of Virginia rejected more than 91,000 names submitted from voter drives, blocking their registrations.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School says that Virginia's methods of rejecting voters had a notably racial bias. Golly. Put the two numbers together -- the 91,000 citizens questionably barred from voting and the teeny-weeny Senate vote margin, and Virginia begins to look a lot like Florida on the Potomac.

The blockade of voters at the Virginia polling station doors followed on last year's promise of Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman to mount a, "challenge to voter eligibility" in Virginia. Mehlman vowed, through an attack on the voter rolls, to "do whatever we can" to keep control of Virginia. And he did. Voters blocked (and other purged from voter rolls) received "provisional ballots." The state only counts about 15% of these.

Americans didn't end up in a Vietnam on the Tigris because of Rumsfeld's failure of command. The problem was, and is, the failure of Rumsfeld's Commander-in-Chief.

beware

Last week, Democrats were weak on defense and wrong on taxes. By Thursday, Mr. Bush had this to say about them: "We won’t agree on every issue, but we do agree that we love America equally, that we’re concerned about the future of this country and that we will do our very best to address big problems."

Don't be fooled by the words. There is little evidence that the White House will depart from its "arrogance and extraordinary single-mindedness."

Bush's mind works differently from the normal political mind. He seems to be motivated by faith and ideals and willing to take risks politically. Maybe these Baker guys can talk him off the ledge, but nobody's done it yet." Beware!

oh the thrill

hurrah

The Post's Michael Grunwald recently reported, an ugly low was established this year, partly because candidates could pretend they had nothing to do with the more disgraceful practices financed through independent expenditures by national parties and other groups. The worst offenders this year were Republicans. Republican racist ads did not work. Hurrah

dirty politics, hypocrisy

"None of these folks have really spent enough time around the all volunteer military to understand we've got the best educated, the best trained, and also the most professional military we've ever had," Snow, Bush's Press Secretary, said of the Democrats.

Col. Murtha, Secretary Webb, Maj. Duckworth, Capt. Murphy, Lt. Cmdr. Carney, and Vice Adm. Sestak, I believe he was talking about you.

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT

WHY WE ARE UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT:
Iraq-------incompetence
Lying----- lying, lying
Terri Shiavo/ Katrina-------Republicans act in Shiavo fcase for extreme right ,
but not for ordinary victims of Katrina
The economy-- -------------wealthy doing good, the deteriorating fortunes
of the working and middle classes,
Republicans -------------push privatizing social security,
Republicans--------------won't increase minimum wage.
Sleasy Campaigning----------
Voter Suppression----------

now he wants to cooperate

Bush admits he lied about keeping Rumsfeld on . Well. now he is the"flipflopper in chief" as well as the "liar in chief"

is it too late to change

Extremity on Display
So, just past the midterm election mark of 2006, what's left of the New Rome? You could say that George W. Bush's dark success story has involved bringing his version of the United States into line with the look of the "rogue" enemies and terrorist groups he set out to destroy. By the time Americans went to the polls on November 7th, 2006 to repudiate his policies, he had given our country the ultimate in makeovers, creating the look of an Outlaw Empire.

We now have our own killing fields in Iraq where, the latest casualty study tells us, somewhere between 400,000 and 900,000-plus "excess Iraqi deaths" have occurred since the 2003 invasion

. And do you remember Saddam's "torture chambers" (which the President used to cite all the time)? Now, we are the possessors of our own global prison system, our own (rented, borrowed, or jerry-rigged) torture chambers, our own leased airline to transport kidnapped prisoners around the planet, and a Vice President who has openly lobbied Congress for a torture exemption for the CIA and spoke glibly on the radio about "dunking" people in water.
And, thanks to a supine Congress, we now have the laws to go with it.

Is it too late to change??

they lie again

During today's press conference, President Bush announced that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld was resigning. Bush's remarks came less than a week after he pledged that he would keep Rumsfeld on as defense secretary until the end of his presidency. It takes more than a week to arrange for such a high level replacement.

This is not the first time Bush has been caught in an apparent lie about whether a member of his Cabinet would continue to serve in his administration.

He repeatedly said that they were going to win, when he knew better. That makes two lies.

pray it doesn't happen

This election is indeed about George W. Bush — and the Congressional majority’s insistence on protecting him from the consequences of his mistakes and misdeeds. Mr. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and proceeded to govern as if he had an enormous mandate.

After he actually beat his opponent in 2004, he announced he now had real political capital and intended to spend it. We have seen the results.

It is frightening to contemplate the new excesses he could concoct if he woke up next Wednesday and found that his party had maintained its hold on the House and Senate.

don't be fooled by republican dirty tricks

Voters should not be intimidated or deceived by phone messages purporting to be from election officials.
Any communication from federal, state or local election officials will always be in a written form clearly identifying the official source."

voter harrassment?? call this number

National Voter Assistance Hotline: 1-866-Our-Vote

robo calls

At the center of many of these "robo" calls seems to be the work of Conquest Communications Group. Its list of lovable clients includes: Tom DeLay; the Louisiana Gambling Alert, run by Jack Abramoff; the right wing Family Research Council; Gun Owners of America; and Sen. George Allen.

Alert, double check your votes

ALERT, ALERT--Some machines are registering your Democratic vote for the Republican. Double check your votes before completing your vote.

ALERT and beware

ALERT, ALERT, ALERT, REPUBLICANS RUNNING A RACIST AD IN TENNESSEE IN THE LAST 9 HOURS UNTIL THE POLLS OPEN UP IN THE MORNING. That's so it's too late to file a complaint or respond. We are not surprised.

Also watch for robo calls. They are making repeating calls to irritate potential Democratic voters. Beware.

update Iraq

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged)In Bush's War 2836.

White House incompetence

As Iraq slips further into chaos, some of the war's neoconservative boosters now have turned sharply on the Bush administration trying to save their reputations, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence.
In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.

Yet, Bush, Cheney, and Republican leaders in the Congress still, as of yesterday, say they are gong to stay the course in Iraq.

religion and politics

With the Mark Foley scandal still troubling Republicans, one of the nation's top evangelical leaders is now accused of paying for gay sex. Heading into Tuesday's election, when voters in eight states will decide on gay marriage bans, liberals and some conservatives are saying the party that prides itself on family values has a hypocrisy problem.

Rep. Don Sherwood, R-Pa., a married father of three, has been burdened by revelations about his five-year affair with a mistress who says he physically abused her. Now Haggard.

David Kuo, a born-again Christian and former White House aide who thinks politics is corrupting Christianity said "It's religious hypocrisy with a political rocket booster," "It's tragedy enough if a pastor falls, but this is not about a pastor falling. This is about a politician falling, and the politician is bringing down Jesus with him."

who are these guys???

more republican hypocrisy

read today:
It's only been a few short days since "Rev" Ted Haggard was dragged out of planning sessions for the hate-filled agenda of the Republican Party-- electing virulent homophobes like Marilyn Musgrave and Doug Lamborn and passing some cockamamie anti-gay amendment to the Colorado Constitution-- by the news that his longtime paid male lover had outed him.

Of course it started out as pure Republican taking-responsibilty: I never met that guy; no idea who he is; never had sex with a man, etc. Then he admitted buying-- albeit not using-- meth from the guy. Oh and he gave me a little massage. It's gone rapidly downhill since then.

This morning he apologized to his fellow cult members and admits he's "a deceiver and a liar". Holy Moley! (Although, he does say the devil made him do it... redemption cometh.)

"It's a political ploy by Satan himself and his minions to try and take the focus off the real issues of the election," explains one zombie-like cult employee. Another was babbling that "I saw the Holy Spirit on the platform. I will miss and will always love Pastor Ted." He'll be baaaaackkkkkkkkk; don't fret."

please vote for change

We the people once owned our democracy. We elected "representatives" to run it for US. Have you noticed? Somewhere along the way we lost our democracy.

It was foreclosed by wealthy and power elites that corrupted our "representatives" who literally sold us out. Our homeland was foreclosed right in plain sight. Sure, we citizens still reside in the USA, but we no longer own our democracy. We pay rent through our taxes. But we no longer have any equity.

Our democracy is owned by the rich, and their partner foreign elites and governments, which is why in a strict sense it no longer is a democracy, but rather a plutocracy.
Modern day aristocrats – an apt terms considering the many political dynasties in our ruling class - maintain the charade that America is still a democracy by letting us vote. They also give us many freedoms to distract us from our dire political conditions. They’re smart, so they limit our choices to the main parties that constitute the two-party duopoly.

Even smarter, they convert consumer spending (that they spur) into economic inequality, making them, the rich, even richer and everyone else, all of us, poorer.

Donald Trump says we hardly have any middle class left. He ought to know. Lou Dobbs says there is a war on the middle class. He does not say what would only depress his audience, even more. We the people have already lost the war. We have a large Upper Class, for whom prosperity is real, and an expanding Lower Class, for whom economic slavery based on compulsive borrowing, debt and spending is all too real.
We need a change! Please vote

Republicans won't admit lies and mistakes

The number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed ( now Officially acknowledged) in this Republican War is 2831, and 44,779 wounded and counting, in this Iraq civil war.

We continue because these Republicans cannot admit they made big mistakes on a war based on lies and deceit.

Haggard, Republicans, Hypocrisy

The Rev. Ted Haggard, who is an advisor to the White House, and who stepped down as head of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals on Thursday after allegations that include having gay sex, has confessed to some of the allegations, a fellow pastor said in an e-mail to church members.

"It is important for you to know that he confessed to the overseers that some of the accusations against him are true,” Ross Parsley, the acting senior pastor at New Life Church stated. Haggard on Thursday also stepped aside as leader of the 14,000-member New Life Church, based in Colorado Springs.

Haggard a staunch supporter of President George W. Bush and is credited with rallying evangelical voters behind the Republicans during the 2004 election.He reportedly takes part in regular conference calls with White House staff and was named by Time Magazine as one of the 25 most influential evangelical Christians in America.

accused

The president of the U.S. National Association of Evangelicals, who has had regular talks with the White House and vocally opposes gay marriage, resigned Thursday after being accused of having a sexual relationship with a male escort.

Republican scandals

With just five days left before Election Day, Four GOP House seats have been tarred by lobbyist Jack Abramoff's influence-peddling scandal. Five have been adversely affected by then-Rep. Mark Foley's unseemly contacts with teenage male House pages. The remaining half a dozen or so could turn on controversies including offshore tax dodging, sexual misconduct and shady land deals.

More Hypocrisy

More hypocrisy:
While representing the good people of the 10th District, the married congressman Don Sherwood, shacked up in Washington with a Peruvian immigrant more than three decades his junior. During one assignation in 2004, the woman, who says Sherwood was striking her and trying to strangle her, locked herself in a bathroom and called 911; Sherwood told police he was giving her a back rub.

At a time when Republicans are struggling to motivate religious conservatives to go to the polls next month, it is not clear what benefit the White House found in sending Bush to stump for Sherwood -- smack dab in the middle of what Bush, in an official proclamation, dubbed "National Character Counts Week."

Hypocrisy

.The president of America's National Association of Evangelicals, who has been a vocal opponent of gay marriage, resigned Thursday after an accusation he had a sexual relationship with a male escort for three years. Now that is hypocrisy.

The Rev. Ted Haggard said he is also temporarily stepping aside from the pulpit of his church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, pending an internal investigation by the church. The National Association of Evangelicals is an umbrella group for more than 45,000 churches and some 30 million members across the country.

deaths in Iraq

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged)
In Bush's War equals 2819.

we abandon our own

American commanders believe Shiite gunmen may be holding a kidnapped US soldier in the east Baghdad slum and, since last week, and have been maintaining a cordon of checkpoints and roadblocks around the area .

The Americans abandon the search for one of their own when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered US and Iraqi units to lift a blockade around the flashpoint suburb of Sadr City.

Never Leave a Soldier Behind apparently is just a political slogan to these Republicans like their "No Child Left Behind".

Bush should apologize for lies about Iraq

The document, which summarizes a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his top security advisers, reports on a visit to Washington by the head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service.

The visit took place while the Bush administration was still declaring to the American public that no decision had been made to go to war."There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable," the MI-6 chief said at the meeting, according to the memo.

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," weapons of mass destruction.

The memo said "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

Corporations boycott Air America

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has documented that Traffic Directors at ABC affiliates have received memos from several companies including HP and MS that specifically request that their ads not air on Air America with the result, of course, that Air America gets no ad revenue. 90 companies are included in what appears to be an apparent boycott of all Air America Radio affiliates of ABC.

The McCarthyite era, we are told, ended in the 1950s. Clearly, McCarthyism has now been privatized as a tacit CONSPIRACY to exclude all but right-wing views...allowing in fact a wide spectrum of hateful views, allowing in fact monkeyshines and worse that make radio listeners
and phoners into buffoons beneath pity and contempt, but NOT allowing reasonable discussion to a permanent war economy.

Some propose that insofar as possible, Microsoft be boycotted. I will NOT upgrade from the Visual Basic and C# Express products which are free for my own work. I will NOT upgrade to Windows Vista. I will continue to use Open Office despite its slowness and limitations and develop my own SQL parser, or use mySQL, for data base products. I will convert IE to the Mozilla browser named FireFox, ASAP.

These are the companies on the list as of Nov 1, 2006:
Allstate, American Heart Association, Avents, Avon, Bank of America, Baye, BMVV Motor cycles, Chattam…. Phisoderm, Gold Bond, Selsun Salon, Ultimate Healing Lotion,.Cigna, Cingular Clorox, Coke, Coty, Dean’s Morningstar, Denny’s, Discovery Channel, Eharmony.com, Epson, Expedia.com,Exxon Mobil, Farmer’s Insurance, FedEx, Foot Action, Frito Lay, GE, Gillette Venus, Goodyear, Heinekin Amstel, Hershey’s, Hewlett Packard, Home Depot, Hormel, Hyatt, Interstate BakersJC Penney, Johnson & Johnson, Kohl’s, Levi’s, Masterfoods (all brands}, McDonalds, Merial Frontline,MGM, Michelin, Microsoft, Morningstar, National Cattleman Beef, Nestle, Nissan, NYSE, Office Depot, Outdoor Life Network, P & G – Bounty, Charmin, Febreeze, Iams Dog/Cat food, Pepto Bismol,Paramount, Pepsi, Philip Morris, Pier 1 Imports, Red Lobster, ReMax, REI Sporting, Rent-way, Rebert HerrSchering Plough, Sherwin Williams, Sony, State Farm, Toys R US, Travelocity.com, True Value,United Healthcare, US Navy, USPS, Visa, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, Welch’s, Wrigley,Wyeth

Iraqi army trained by US

Iraqi soldiers being trained by American military advisers go on rampages, flee from dangerous situations and waste ammunition in undisciplined bursts of fire at any provocation, according to an account in a U.S. Army journal.

Iraqi soldiers frequently use excessive force, going on retaliatory rampages after colleagues are killed by insurgents.

Bush's progress in Iraq

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki demanded the removal of American checkpoints from the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday, in what appeared to be his latest and boldest gambit in an increasingly tense struggle for more independence from his American protectors.

For their part, Mr. Malaki and other leading Shiites have begun to chafe at American control of the military and what they view as American favoritism toward Sunnis. On Wednesday, Mr. Maliki challenged an American assertion that the two governments had agreed on a timetable for stabilizing Iraq. The toll of American deaths in October was at least 103.