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POPSAhmadinejad's ally denounced for pro-Israel remarks "Not all the Israeli people are wearing (military) boots on the street." Ahmadinejad himself has earned international notoriety for his frequent verbal assaults against the Jewish state, which he has described as a "stinking corpse" and has predicted is doomed to disappear. Tehran vows never to recognise Israel, an ally of the pro-US shah who was ousted in the 1979 Islamic revolution, and Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said Iran is ready to talk to all nations except the "Zionist regime." "Mr Mashaie probably does not know that those he calls people (Israelis) are the same occupiers of houses of millions of Palestinians," the MPs said in the statement. "These people have created the illegitimate Zionist regime... we do not recognise a land called Israel let alone recognise its people."
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POPSWe Like Ike? Not At Denver's Brown Palace Hotel and Spa
Eisenhower Presidential Suite Dumped Renamed Barack Obama Suite Shannon Dexheimer, public relations manager for The Brown Palace Hotel and Spa, recently explained that the reason for renaming the suite, was that the hotel, “wanted to do it to symbolize honoring him as the candidate for the Democrats, and honoring the fact that we played such a huge role 100 years ago when this convention (Democrat) was here last." The hotel has four named suites, three presidential suites, the Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Teddy Roosevelt, and a suite named for the Beatles in honor of their one night stay in the hotel in August, 1966. There are also several unnamed suites on the eighth and ninth floors of the hotel. Why take a chance at angering half the voting public, by making the switch? Only the management at the Brown Palace can answer that, but the smart thing would have been to temporarily turn one of several other unnamed suites into the Obama Suite.
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POPSObama's VP Pick Friday? This might lend credence to the possibility that he'll pick Friday, and use the momentum to carry him into the Democratic convention next week.
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POPSRussia's Ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin Brands Saakashvili a "Nazi" The ministry cited new operations by Russia, including the re-occupation of a military base in Senaki in the west of the country where explosions were heard by AFP. US officials said Russia had moved short-range SS-21 missile launchers into South Ossetia since fighting there halted last week, and has yet to give any sign of a significant pullback of its troops from Georgia. Instead, there were indications that Russia was adding troops and equipment to its force in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, strengthening its hold over the breakaway Georgian regions, the officials said. Russia denies deploying the SS-21s. The withdrawal will not be implemented "very swiftly", a defence ministry official was quoted as saying Tuesday in the Russian daily Kommersant. "Nobody is planning to withdraw the Russian contingent very swiftly, as there is no such necessity," he said.
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POPSWhy I Will Not Vote for John McCain
"I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button." "It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush's war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country. And I believe John's views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas are much the same as those of the Bush administration." "I'm disappointed to see John represent himself politically in ways that are not accurate. He is not a moderate Republican. On some issues he is a maverick. But his voting record is far to the right. I fear for his nominations to our Supreme Court, and the consequent continuing loss o
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POPSPakistani President Musharraf Resigns Amid Impeachment Threats Many Pakistanis blame the rising militant violence in their country on Musharraf's alliance with the U.S. His reputation suffered blows in 2007 when he ousted dozens of judges and imposed emergency rule. His rivals won February parliamentary elections and have since sought his ouster, announcing impeachment plans earlier this month. Musharraf, who has been largely sidelined since his rivals came to power, had resisted the mounting calls to quit, even after the coalition finalized impeachment charges against him and threatened to send a motion to Parliament later this week. Who will ultimately succeed Musharraf is an open question. There has been speculation that both Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, the leaders of the two main parties are interested in the role.
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POPSChavez To Discuss Joint Banking Venture During Moscow Visit The socialist leader, an outspoken critic of Washington and opponent of neoliberalism, has focused his foreign policy on bolstering ties with countries outside the U.S. sphere of influence since coming to power nine years ago. Chavez said last week he expected to meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and discuss a number of industrial and technological projects as part of a visit aimed at boosting bilateral relations. PetroCaribe is a regional energy security alliance between Caribbean countries and Venezuela established in 2005. The alliance enables its 17 member countries to purchase Venezuelan oil under a flexible credit payment system.
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POPSMcCain Showed Best How to React to Russian Force Obama’s initial reaction was to urge both the rapist and the victim to show restraint , while McCain spoke forcefully to denounce the invasion and to call for specific actions, including withdrawal from “sovereign Georgian territory,” an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, action by other official bodies and the creation of “a truly independent and neutral peacekeeping force.” Ten days later, McCain’s first response appears to have been the right one. Obama reflected uncertainty in part because of inexperience and in part, too, because he was responding as events unfolded. He is far more comfortable, as indeed the administration’s critics are, in letting President Bush act and then declaring that he or they would have been smarter, wiser and righter had they been making the decision. President Bush’s strongest response was to reach agreement with Poland last Thursday to base 10 interceptor missiles to protect Europe from those fired by Iran or Nort
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POPSInvading Georgia Was Easy, Mr. Putin Will Pay A Political Price The Russians said their General Prosecutor's Office would undertake a "genocide probe" in South Ossetia, and they called for putting President Saakashvili on trial at the Hague for "war crimes." As it happens, Chapter 1, Article II of the U.N. Charter, signed amid the smashed borders of World War II, forbids Members from the "use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state." The U.S. and France should force Mr. Putin's U.N. ambassador to veto a Security Council resolution describing his week-long mockery of those words. Additionally, a genuinely independent prosecutor investigating war crimes might examine the Russian bombing runs over Georgia and the looting of Georgian villages by Ossetian militias. An intriguing article by Pavel Felgengauer in Novaya Gazeta, the Russian newspaper, argues that an examination of the movement of the ground equipment and ships used in the strike against Georgia required planning that predated August
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POPSRussians Defy Cease-Fire: Troops In Georgia Digging In Elsewhere in Georgia, it appeared very clear that Russian troops were staying put, building ramparts around tanks and posting sentries on a hill near Igoeti, a central Georgia town only 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Tbilisi. Russian troops still effectively control the main artery running through the western half of Georgia because they surround the strategic central city of Gori and additionally the city and air base of Senaki in the west. Both cities are on the main east-west highway that slices through two Georgian mountain ranges. Russia also confirmed Sunday that it had taken over a major power plant in western Georgia. Rice noted that the text of the cease-fire, negotiated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the current leader of the European Union, outlined a very limited mandate for the soldiers that Russia calls peacekeepers who were in Georgia when hostilities escalated. She said these soldiers can go on limited patrols within the two separatist areas but in Georgia
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POPSBush and Blacks The message—both in words and action—is clear, consistent, and stirring . This year he joined forces with Washington D.C.’s black Democratic mayor, Anthony Williams, to win passage of the first federally funded voucher program, which will provide $7,500 each to poor minority children in the nation’s capital, giving them some of the same educational options that their wealthier neighbors enjoy. The Bush administration has also tried hard to help lift Africa out of its deepening misery. Last year, the president pledged $15 billion—a twenty-fold increase from Clinton-era funding levels—to help stem the AIDS pandemic sweeping the continent, and he has sent troops and diplomatic envoys to try to quell violence in Liberia and Sudan. African-relief activist Bob Geldof recently acknowledged, “The Bush administration is the most radical—in a positive sense—in its approach to Africa since Kennedy.”
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POPSPolish President Criticizes France, Germany For Being Too Soft On Moscow President Kaczynski accused them of being too soft on Moscow due to their commercial ties with Russia. The statement on the president's Web site also said Kaczynski assured Saakashvili that he would continue to "support Georgia's integration in Euro-Atlantic structures" — a reference to Georgia's NATO aspirations. Poland and the ex-Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia , all new EU members, have sharply condemned Russia for its military incursion into Georgia amid the conflict in South Ossetia. After the fighting broke out, the presidents of the four countries issued a joint statement calling Russia's policy "imperialist and revisionist" and urging NATO and the European Union to stand up to Moscow. Leaders from those four nations followed that up with a trip in recent days to Tbilisi, joined by Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko, to show their support to Georgia. Germany and France have been less critical of Russia. Sarkozy holds the EU's rotating preside
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POPSImpeachment Hearings: A Win Is a Win
I go for the second interpretation of events. It is clear, as was beautifully laid out in an article published by Glenn Greenwald in Salon magazine on July 15, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership both in Congress and in the party organization, have been blocking any action on impeachment for fear of having their own complicity in Bush’s and Cheney’s crimes revealed. As Greenwald notes, the Washington Post has reported that Pelosi, along with Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) were briefed on the administration’s use of torture and not only didn’t object, but actively encouraged it. Rockefeller and Harman, who at the time were minority leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees at the time, were also briefed about Bush’s order to the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless spying on Americans. They didn’t object or publicly expose this blatant violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance A
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POPSHypocrite in Charge I seriously suspect this man is insane. He lied about the Iraq mess, cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis plus our own service men and women, bankrupt his nation and stained American prestige at home and abroad. If anyone does not have the right to accuse anyone else of "bullying and intimidation" it's this man.
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POPS"President Bush, Will You Please Shut Up Your Oily Mouth?" The neoconned Bush Regime and the Israeli-occupied American media are heading the innocent world toward nuclear war. Back in the Reagan years the National Endowment for Democracy was created as a cold war tool. Today the NED is a neocon-controlled agent for US world hegemony. Its main function is to pour US money and election-rigging into former constituent parts of the Soviet Union in order to ring Russia with American puppet states. The neoconservative Bush Regime used the NED to intervene in Ukrainian and Georgian internal affairs in keeping with the neoconservative plan to establish US-friendly and Russia-hostile political regimes in these two former constituent parts of Russia and the Soviet Union. The NED was also used to dismember the former Yugoslavia with its interventions in Slovakia, Serbia, and Montenegro. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, told the Washington Post in 1991 that much of what the NED does “today was done covertly 2
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POPSDems Parroting Russian Propaganda Robert Scheer... Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?
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POPS Newly Released Federal Documents Reveals Julia Child Among Spies They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops. Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in "The Godfather"; and Thomas Braden, an author whose "Eight Is Enough" book inspired the 1970s television series. Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police. The release of the OSS personnel files uncloaks one of the last secrets from the short-lived wartime intelligence agency.
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POPSRice Arrives in Georgia With Cease-Fire Concessions Meanwhile, a flurry of international diplomacy was set in motion, even as regional tensions escalated dramatically over a missile defense deal between the U.S. and Poland — with a top Russian general saying the pact exposes Poland to attack. Gori, about 45 miles west of the capital Tbilisi, is key to when — or if — Russia will honor the terms of a cease-fire that calls for both sides to pull their forces back to the positions they held before fighting broke out last week in the separatist region of South Ossetia. By holding Gori, Russian forces effectively cut the country in half because the city sits along Georgia's only significant east-west highway. Russian military vehicles were blocking the eastern road into the city on Friday, although they allowed in one Georgia bus filled with loaves of bread. President Bush video statement
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POPSAfter Russia's Invasion Of Georgia, What's Next? – and in precarious regions such as the Middle East – will remain. Obviously, not all former Soviet states are as critical to Nato as Ukraine, because of its size and strategic location, or Georgia, because of its importance to our access to the Caspian Basin’s oil and natural gas reserves. By its actions in Georgia, Russia has made clear that its long-range objective is to fill that “gap” if we do not. Accordingly, we should have a foreign-minister-level meeting of Nato to reverse the spring capitulation at Bucharest, and to decide that Georgia and Ukraine will be Nato’s next members. Second, the United States needs some straight talk with our friends in Europe, which ideally should have taken place long before the assault on Georgia. To be sure, American inaction gave French President Sarkozy and the EU the chance to seize the diplomatic initiative. However, Russia did not invade Georgia with diplomats or roubles, but with tanks.
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POPSHow Women Got To Vote & Maxine 4 Pres 08
A friend of mine, emailed me this story on how women got the right to vote. It's hard to believe that it really wasn't that long ago when women were denied their civil rights and could not vote. :mad: The short story is based on the HBO documentary entitled "Iron Jawed Angels." A chilling tale about the suffragists who braved all odds to see that all Americans have the right to vote. I put together a funny youtube video starring the Hallmark darling Maxine... Even found a video on the Hallmark site called Maxine for President to add a bit of an uplift to the sad story written by an unknown writer . Maxine for President? Why not? If only she were real, she'd make a better president than some of the one's who have held this high office in modern times. Here is the website http://www.thethinkingblue.com/MAXINE08.html And here it is on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf_o1WnjLFM Remember to vote, a lot of people suffered and died to give us this precious right. :cry:
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POPSChutzpah, With a Capital "CH" Can you believe the audacity of McCain? First he manipulates Obama into taking his trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, which also resulted in a successful European tour. When that worked out too well for Obama, McCain declared that his opponent was being presumptuous, and acting as if was already president of the United States. Now that Russia has stormed into Georgia, McCain decides to send Lieberman and Graham to Tblisi to try to work something out. On what authority will the traitor Lieberman, and Howdy Doody Graham discuss anything of substance, with any officials in Georgia? On top of which, Condie Rice, Madam Secretary herself, is on her way to Georgia to assess the situation. She, at the very least, speaks for the president. For whom do these two McCain puppets speak?
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POPSGeorgians Rally in the Face of Russian Horror Related Story: Obama V.P. Hopeful claims Obama stopped the war! Need more proof that Obama and his supporters are a bit too full of themselves? Here’s the statement of Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, a hopeful in the Obama veepstakes: “It was a bad crisis for the world. It required tough words but also a smart approach to call on the international community to step in. And I’m very, very happy that the Senator’s request for a ceasefire has been complied with by President Medvedev.” — Tim Kaine, August 12, 2008 Hot Air has video and more. Kaine: Putin bent to Obama’s will e already has imbibed fully of The One’s Kool-Aid with his analysis of the purported Russian cease-fire this morning. Kaine told Fox News that he was glad that Russia listened to Obama’s demand for a cessation of its attack on Georgia http://hotair.com/archives/2008/08/12/kaine-putin-bent-to-obamas-will/
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