They are the ones who have the sway in Iraq, not us or the Iraqi government. How long will we allow conservative pigheadedness to dictate our foreign policy?
Archive for March, 2008
You can almost see his brain saying EJECT EJECT EJECT!!!!
Every March I wonder this. I am admittedly not a basketball fan, and if I do watch I watch a pro game over a college one. But every March the hype machine goes to 11, people fill out brackets (something I’ve never done) and a school or two makes it further than they should as the “Cinderella” team. Has the Cinderella team ever won it? Considering all the #1 seeds made the Final Four, is there a point?
I mean, besides the cheerleaders.
According to the Right Honorable August J Pollak
There is not a single instance of political discourse in the history of this nation in which the participants did not want to simply kick their opponent in the balls.
Verily, he doth tell the truth.
… delivers again in his promotion of Sen. Clinton?
Clearly the solution to this is another tax cut for Paris Hilton.
Driven by a painful mix of layoffs and rising food and fuel prices, the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s.
The number of recipients, who must have near-poverty incomes to qualify for benefits averaging $100 a month per family member, has fluctuated over the years along with economic conditions, eligibility rules, enlistment drives and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, which led to a spike in the South.
But recent rises in many states appear to be resulting mainly from the economic slowdown, officials and experts say, as well as inflation in prices of basic goods that leave more families feeling pinched. Citing expected growth in unemployment, the Congressional Budget Office this month projected a continued increase in the monthly number of recipients in the next fiscal year, starting Oct. 1 — to 28 million, up from 27.8 million in 2008, and 26.5 million in 2007.
As Archie and Edith Bunker sang…
Mister we could use a man
Like Herbert Hoover again.
A peek inside the mind of the diehard Clinton crowd: Obama should run as her vice president and the convention date should be moved because the annointed one is annoyed that people find her campaign now Quixotic at best.
By that token the NFL should just give me the Lombardi now because its clear that I can coach a team to the Superbowl because I won a game in Madden, once.
Bush, like Cheney, was booed throwing out the opening pitch for the Nationals. Disliking the president is the new national pastime.
It’s not us, and its not the elected Iraqi government. It is the people who control when the fighting stops and starts.
Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr offered Sunday to pull his fighters off the streets of Basra and other cities if the government halts raids against his followers and releases prisoners held without charge.
The offer was contained in a nine-point statement issued by his headquarters in Najaf.
An Iraqi government spokesman welcomed al-Sadr’s order, saying it was “positive and responsive.”
The Republican mantra and the beliefs of the foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media has been: “the surge is working”. We need to amend that strongly.
The surge is working… when Muqtada al-Sadr allows it to — which means it ain’t working.
I see no need for catfighting of the sort embraced by James Carville to be published in the “A” section of one the country’s top 5 newspapers. We have a war on, a fiscal crisis, global hunger, disease and murder, and that merits James Carville writing what amounts to a personal phone call or an e-mail in the news section of the paper.
Cajun, please.
I watched the first three episodes of HBO’s excellent John Adams series today, and while looking forward to episode four tomorrow, I thought to myself about Senator Clinton’s anti-intellectual attack on Sen. Obama’s oratory as “just words”.
Much of the first and second Continental Congress and its work product - the Declaration of Independence - was flowery and forceful debate and oratory. It happened to be about fundamental issues that caused a global earthquake that reverberated in the formation of America, but under the Clinton formula it would boil down to “just words”.
If “just words” resembles the following:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Shouldn’t every American be on the side of “just words”?
Time Warner is no longer the sole proprietor of Superman.
A federal judge here on Thursday ruled that the heirs of Jerome Siegel — who 70 years ago sold the rights to the action hero he created with Joseph Shuster to Detective Comics for $130 — were entitled to reclaim their share of the U. S. copyright to the character. The ruling left intact Time Warner’s international rights to the character, which it has long owned through its DC Comics unit.
And it reserved for trial questions about how much the company may owe the Siegel heirs for use of the character since 1999, when their ownership is deemed to have been restored. Also to be resolved is whether the heirs are entitled to payments directly from Time Warner’s film unit, Warner Brothers, which took in $200 million at the domestic box office with its “Superman Returns” in 2006, or only from the DC unit’s Superman profits.
Still, the ruling threatened to complicate Warner’s plans to make more films featuring Superman, including another sequel and a planned movie based on the DC Comics’ “Justice League of America,” in which he joins Batman, Wonder Woman and other superheroes to battle evildoers.
Add another to the list.
An aide to President Bush has resigned because of his alleged misuse of grant money from the U.S. Agency for International Development when he worked for a Cuban democracy organization.
Felipe Sixto was promoted on March 1 as a special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and stepped forward on March 20 to reveal his alleged wrongdoing and to resign, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said Friday. He said Sixto took that step after learning that his former employer, the Center for a Free Cuba, was prepared to bring legal action against him.
Stanzel said the alleged wrongdoing involved the misuse of money when Sixto was an official at the center.
Back in the dark ages we now refer to as the early 1990s, I was in high school. On Fridays my friends and I had a standing appointment to play basketball. It was nothing formal and certainly not at a high level of skill - my main contribution was being the big guy who stood in the paint and made funny voices so I sounded like Shaq. My friend Mark used to tote a bottle of Gatorade labeled “Michael’s (Jordan) Favorite!” That kind of thing. But we had this one guy who played with us occasionally who used to do the weirdest thing. We would be playing, joking around, flailing at each other and hurling the basketball in the air on the off-chance that it might go into the hoop sometime, and if this guy was on a team that was getting beaten he would… just walk off.
He wouldn’t say anything, he wouldn’t make a snide remark or chide his teammates, it was even worse. He just walked off, a sore ass loser.
I say this because President Clinton has once again dug into the feces and pulled out another pony for his wife to ride on.
While speaking by phone Thursday to his wife’s Texas supporters, former President Bill Clinton downplayed the importance of caucuses and argued that his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., would capture the Democratic presidential nomination by outperforming Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in primary states.
“Right now, among all the primary states, believe it or not, Hillary’s only 16 votes behind in pledged delegates,” said Bill Clinton, “and she’s gonna wind up with the lead in the popular vote in the primary states. She’s gonna wind up with the lead in the delegates [from primary states].”
“It’s the caucuses that have been killing us,” he added.
Got that? In addition to red states that go Obama not counting, southern states with large black populations worth nothing, blue states that have the nerve to go against the annointed one being excluded, now all the caucuses don’t count. None of them, so the criteria we must use from here on is primary states where Sen. Clinton won. Mister President, just put a crown on her and quit beating around the bush, because clearly Queen Elizabeth isn’t the only monarch as head of state of a major western power left!
Christ, what is wrong with these people?
You know who once didn’t have such a problem with caucuses? Hillary Clinton.
“So I ask you to caucus for me tomorrow. Put on your coats and call up a friend and help me change America,” she says. “If you stand with me for one night, I will stand up for you every day as your President.”
But that was back on the second of January before she began losing from coast to coast. Contrary to President Clinton’s twisted logic, all the delegates count - be they in primaries or caucuses, red states or blue states, black voters or none. That’s the contest the Democratic party set up, and while I know this is a shocker to the two of them: They don’t own the party.
Stay tuned for another edition of Cherry Pickin’! With The Clintons: If they can’t win steal the nomination, nobody can.
ALSO: Exclusive footage of the Clinton campaign as interpreted by a troupe of mid-20th century British comedians.
Big Wall Street investment companies are taking advantage of the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented offer to secure emergency loans, the central bank reported Thursday.
The lending is part of a major effort by the Fed to help a financial system in danger of freezing.
Those large firms averaged $13.4 billion in daily borrowing over the past week from the new lending facility. The report does not identify the borrowers.
The Fed, in a bold move Sunday, agreed for the first time to let big investment houses get emergency loans directly from the central bank. This mechanism, similar to one available for commercial banks for years, got under way Monday and will continue for at least six months. It was the broadest use of the Fed’s lending authority since the 1930s.
Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley said Wednesday they had begun to test the new lending mechanism.
On Wednesday alone, lending reached $28.8 billion, according to the Fed report.
A federal appellate court today ordered former Gov. Don Siegelman released from prison while he appeals his 2006 conviction, saying there are “substantial questions” about his case.
A federal jury in 2006 convicted Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy of federal funds bribery. Prosecutors alleged Scrushy bought a seat on a state board with a $500,000 donation to Siegelman’s lottery campaign.
The judges wrote that Siegelman met both requirements for an appeal bond: He is not a flight risk and his appeal raises a substantial question of law or fact likely to result in reversal or an order for a new trial.
Background: Did Ex-Alabama Governor Get A Raw Deal?
Original thought dies another day.
Update: Looks like Johnny Mac is the victim of the plagiarism here. To recap: he’s a warmonger, but one with original warmonger thoughts of his own.
Iraq’s prime minister vowed Thursday to fight “until the end” against Shiite militias in Basra despite protests by tens of thousands of followers of a radical cleric in Baghdad and deadly clashes across the capital and the oil-rich south.
Mounting anger focused on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is personally overseeing operations against the militias dominated by Muqtada al-Sadr’s supporters amid a violent power struggle in Basra, Iraq’s southern oil hub.
“We have made up our minds to enter this battle and we will continue until the end. No retreat,” al-Maliki said in a speech broadcast on Iraqi state TV.
Behind the Pentagon’s closed doors, U.S. military leaders told President Bush Wednesday they are worried about the Iraq war’s mounting strain on troops and their families. But they indicated they would go along with a brief halt in pulling out troops this summer.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff did say senior commanders in Iraq should make more frequent assessments of security conditions, an idea that appeared aimed at increasing pressure for more rapid troop reductions.
The chiefs’ concern is that U.S. forces are being worn thin, compromising the Pentagon’s ability to handle crises elsewhere in the world.
John McCain: 100 years in Iraq “would be fine with me”
The more I read about the rich donors who told Nancy Pelosi to shut up, the more angry I get. I may not agree with her on quite a few issues, but Speaker Pelosi is second in line to the Presidency, the first woman to hold her position and a figure demanding of respect - especially from people who are supposed to be her fellow Democrats. These guys seriously think that because they went to a fancy fundraiser or maybe played a round of golf with the ex-president that they really are better than the rest of us. They have every right to add their voice to the chorus supporting Sen. Clinton, but they have no place, no standing, no right to order the Speaker around.
These people are symptomatic, quite frankly, of the negative that came along with all the good President Clinton did during his tenure. The moribund liberal wing of the party, defanged after the losses of Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis, gave way to the big check writers, the elite crowd whose cash did prop up the party for the short term and helped President Clinton gain his office. But for the Democratic party and the progressive movement they have been a waste. Just look at the congressional seats lost during Clinton’s tenure, look at how unprepared the party was to field a coast-to-coast slate of candidates under Terry McAuliffe’s leadership - a party chairmanship that was all about fundraising to the exclusion of getting majorities and a president elected.
But the Clintons and the moneybags crowd have not learned. That’s why they tried to throw their money around in Michigan and re-do the primary. That’s why the Clinton campaign is now faltering at fundraising, having maxed out these whales she doesn’t have the pool of Average Joe donors (like myself) that Sen. Obama will have in the general who have not come close to the $2,300 limit. That’s why, as their anointed candidate began to fail they just cut another of their fat checks to form a 527 committee whose work product is horrendous compared to the work of groups like MoveOn and the labor unions. Sure, wealthy donors help fund some of those efforts as well, but they are truly nothing without their regular Joe volunteers and members. And none of those groups is so in love with themselves that they believe that they can tell Speaker Pelosi what she can and cannot say.
We poor unwashed masses, lacking mansions and minks and chaueffers, elected Rep. Pelosi to the position of Speaker via our representatives in the House. We may not have tee times at the golf club, a yacht parked on the intra coastal, nor do we feed our pets prime rib — but we know that the Speaker is to be afforded a modicum of respect.
This is the stain that remains on the party even after the events of Crashing The Gate were documented by Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong. These are the hangers-on who look down their plastic surgery noses at Governor Dean’s 50-state strategy and his middle class demeanor even as the party begins to regain its role as a truly national party. These are the people who think nothing - nothing - of throwing a tantrum because us people, us regular Joes and Janes, had the gall to not vote and caucus for the candidate they bankrolled and sought to shove down our gullets the way they always do. Instead we chose to vote for a candidate whose donor base is almost 2 million strong. Just like a couple of weeks ago when they were demanding refunds of their donations to the party they thought they owned they are once again trying to tell us they bought the Democratic party the same way they bought a diamond necklace at Tiffany’s for their trophy wife.
Not any more. The Democratic party is once again becoming little-d democratic. A party where the rich guys have a say, but so do the regular guys. Speaker Pelosi speaks for us, from Park Avenue to Georgetown to Skid Row to Baltimore to The Lower 9th Ward and beyond.
And you respect her, or shut up.
Jason Reid has confirmed that the Redskins and New York Giants will play in the NFL season opener Thursday (Sept. 4) at Giants Stadium. An official announcement is expected to come Monday at the annual owners’ meetings in Florida.
Remember, they seriously think its their party — to the point where they think they can tell the Speaker of the House what she can and cannot say. The nerve. The entitlement.
Twenty top Hillary fundraisers and donors have sent a scathing private letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, chastising her for publicly saying that the super-delegates should support the winner of the pledged delegate count and demanding that she say that they should make an “independent” choice.
