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POPSSome interestin moment at House Hearings on Abuse of Executive Branch Power Miller has introduced legislation calling for appointment of a special prosecutor to bring criminal contempt charges against several current and former Bush administration officials for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas. The Justice Department has refused to bring charges against administration officials for not complying with the subpoenas once Bush has asserted an executive privilege claim. The House Judiciary Committee has filed a civil lawsuit against the White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten
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POPSMultilateralism Comes With A Price We must work with our allies, but we also must recognize that multilateralism comes with a price. Coalitions can dilute effectiveness. The European concept of multilateralism is Washington's obeisance to European positions. Western Europe exists in a bubble of stability and affluence, unable to fathom how dangerous extremist ideology in Tehran and Pyongyang can be. Multilateral organizations are not the answer; at best, they are ineffective soap boxes, at worst cesspools of venality. Rose petals and well-digging have never stopped bombs, racism or genocide. A strong military has. Obama says, "Let us remember this history." Let us hope he first learns it. Leadership is about more than rhetoric.
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POPSCall Congress Back to Vote on Drilling August recess?? Forget it! They've stuffed the business of the people for months and are stonewalling even now. Put it up for a vote....or shut up. This has nothing to do with drilling for oil; it has to do with the continuation of the obstructing of this Bush Administration. If it were a Democrat in the Presidency, progress would have already be made.
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POPS"Good Faith" Torture Deemed OK Interesting that they set a subjective standard for torture: viz., if the interrogator thought in "good faith" that the method wouldn't cause long-term mental harm. Note that it didn't require that the method would probably cause long-term mental harm, only that the interrogator didn't believe it would. By defining torture subjectively, the Bush administration: 1. Consigned the definition of torture to belief, thereby making it impossible to adjudicate by objective measures. 2. Totally marginalized the detainee's likely reaction to the method and, thereby, nullified the detainee's humanness and recognition as a rights-bearing being. This kind of sophistry one would expect of a brutal dictatorship.
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POPSYou Say tomato, Big Business said TOMATO.
LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF! More Bush Administration's HANDIWORK, to make you Sick, REALLY SICK! Under pressure in 2003 and 2004, the White House agreed to dilute record-keeping proposals by FDA safety experts. "If the FDA had been given the resources and authority years ago that it asked for to solve these kinds of problems, I think we would have solved this already," said W. Hubbard, a former FDA associate commissioner. Tommy Thompson, who was health secretary during the industry's lobbying campaign, acknowledged that a more robust food-tracking system — opposed by business groups as too expensive — could have helped stem the current illnesses More Here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080725/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/salmonella_lobbying --- Hey Folks, we're sitting ducks to Big Business desires... SO YOU SAY TOMATO AND I SAY TOMATO... let's call the whole thing off! Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ3fjQa5Hls :mad: http://thinkingblue.blogspot.com
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POPSAP: Food industry bitten by its lobbying success I guess this is what is meant by less government is good government. This administration has been on the side of big business every step of the way, and this is only one of the paybacks that we the citizens have had to endure. I wonder how many more "slaps in the face" we have been unknowingly receiving through the fact that our President and the present administration, and now including the Supreme Court are on the side of BIG BUSINESS! I kinda think that the 28% interest rate on credit card loans, or the inability to declare bankruptcy, or the lack of adequate health care...etc. etc. etc., might just be a result of the successful lobbying of Big Business to help them with the only thing they are really concerned with.....and that my friends is their BOTTOM LINE! Deregulation has bitten us upon the ass on many fronts....this is just one of them!
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POPSBlackwater Is Here to Stay
Anyone who thinks Blackwater is in serious trouble is dead wrong. Even if - and this is a big if - the company pulled out of Iraq tomorrow, here is the cold, hard fact: business has never been better for Blackwater, and its future looks bright. More on this in a moment. Back to the matter at hand. Complaining that negative media attention and congressional and criminal investigations are hurting business and that the Blackwater name had become a catch-all target for anti-war protesters, the company’s brass told the AP that Blackwater was shifting its focus to its other areas of government contracting, like law enforcement and military training, as well as logistics. ”The experience we’ve had would certainly be a disincentive to any other companies that want to step in and put their entire business at risk,” said Erik Prince, Blackwater’s reclusive, 39 year-old founder and owner. Company president Gary Jackson said Blackwater has become like the “Coca-Cola” of war contractors, a b
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POPSinteractive guide: Who in the Bush administration broke the law, and who could be prosecuted Each scandal is represented by a colored circle that encompasses the people who are implicated. As it's easy to see, many of the players here are mixed up in two, three, or more of the alleged crimes. Hence all the overlapping circles (Venn-diagram heaven!). The best way to make sense of this legal tangle is to mouse over the title of an individual scandal, which will highlight everyone implicated. For example, the wiretapping bubble ensnares George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Ashcroft, John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales. At the same time, Ashcroft and Gonzales fall into the overlapping circle for monkey business related to DoJ hiring. Mouse over a person's name for information on how each person is involved. Mouse over the title of each circle for specifics about the particular scandal. And if all else fails, fall back on this golden rule of wrongdoing in the White House: All roads lead to Gonzales.
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POPSBeating a Dead Horse I've commented on this topic many times over the past months, so why not give it one more go. There are two groups responsible for the mortgage mess - the individuals who took out exotic mortgages on houses they couldn't afford, and the financial institutions who sold them those mortgages. I understand we can't let the system fail, but I see no reason why my tax dollars have to go towards helping bail these two groups out. They made terrible decisions. All a bill like this does is reinforce stupid behavior, because if we fail, the government will bail us out. If you had your home re-possessed, it's because you couldn't afford it in the first place. If a financial institution is going down because of all the write-downs they've had to take on bad mortgages, it's because their leadership authorized bad decisions. Are there some exceptions to the above - sure there are. But those aren't the situations that this bill is addressing.
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POPSBush HHS Tries End Run on Abstinence-Only Funds In days of old, when knights were bold, And condoms weren't invenyed, They wrapped their socks, around................................................! The same will apply in America if this joke gets more votes than laughs.
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POPSObama's Foreign Policy Goes Neocon--Unjust Wars Will Continue
The real Obama policy. Must see video interview (at link) where Obama 1) legitimizes the "war on terrorism" (as necessary and true war); 2) escalate war in Afghanistan (regime change, like Iraq continues); 3) willing to attack targets inside Pakistan--i.e. invade any sovereign country to kill and destroy alleged 'terrorists' (think collateral damage on civilians or wrongly accused from missiles and UAV drones). Watch the interview, Obama does not answer one "why?" question of Lara Logan about the "necessity" of the "war on terrorism", he simply dodges and assumes its legitimacy without reason or debate. UNJUST WAR is the problem here. Where is the protest? The "war on terrorism" is not a true or legal constitutional war, and enabling Obama to do the same as Bush without criticism is hypocritical and partisan blindness. It has always been the goal to finish Iraq and legitimize and spread the war on terrorism. Note the media: War = Patriotism
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POPSSupport Of Obama Shaped By Ahmad Chalabi Advice
security decisions of Iraq's army to forward a Shiite confessional agenda. The role of Mr. Chalabi, whose party failed to gain any seats in the 2005 federal parliamentary elections, should be of interest to close watchers of the Bush administration. While Mr. Chalabi has clashed with both the American embassy and at times with Mr. Maliki, he nonetheless is still regarded among the Shiite political class as knowledgeable of American politics from his days lobbying for the Iraq Liberation Act in Washington. At the time, in the late 1990s, Senator McCain was one of Mr. Chalabi's biggest supporters. Mr. Brooke yesterday pointed out that Mr. Chalabi was appointed in 2007 by Mr. Maliki to chair a special committee aimed at restoring basic services to the citizens of Baghdad. "Maliki was number two in the Debaathification commission from the beginning when it was started in 2003. He has been in constant contact with Dr. Chalabi since that time," Mr. Brooke said.
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POPSOlivier Roy: Absage an den "Kampf der Kulturen" Der französische Politikwissenschaftler und Islamismusexperte Olivier Roy will mit seinem neuen Buch die Idee einer "Geostrategie des Islam" widerlegen - und damit auch die These vom Zusammenprall der Kulturen. English translation: here .
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POPSAnother Terrorist Kangaroo Trial With alot at Stake So the government caught bin Laden's driver, we are told to believe, but yet they lost bin Laden? Right! It's all a lie and another show trial for a fictitious account to justify a fake war for regime changes. It is not only Mr Hamdan's future that will be determined by the trial. There is great concern among members of the Bush administration that they too could find themselves before foreign or international courts for the role they played in facilitating and encouraging the torture of detainees. The infamous "torture memos" circulated by Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Charles Addington, and two former administration figures, Douglas Feith and Alberto Gonzales, covertly approved the abuse of prisoners by the CIA. These men were publicly warned recently by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell when Mr Powell was Secretary of State, to "never travel outside the US
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POPSPolitical Theater al-Maliki Style As the security situation has improved, Iraqis increasingly are calling for the drawdown of American troops, and it probably will be a top issue in the provincial elections. Maliki has tried to balance voters’ preference for the departure of foreign forces with the Bush administration’s opposition to a timeline. In an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine this week, Maliki seemed to endorse Obama’s troop-withdrawal proposal, drawing the ire of the White House. The prime minister's office later backed away from the interview. But Monday’s statement by Maliki’s spokesman suggested that he's speaking with an audience different from the White House in mind: Iraqi voters.
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POPSMcCain Alone on Withdrawal What Team McCain had thought would be their candidate's greatest strength is turning into a weakness. McCain's "steadfastness" on Iraq is looking more and more like the mulish obstinacy it actually is. At a time when even the White House is moving toward the obvious reality, McCain stands in opposition to the inevitable.
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POPSSend Karl Rove to Jail Not a joke, this is a real option available to our House committee members! Contact them now to hold him in contempt! Pass it on!
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POPSA price Tag The interesting point is to see how one change of context influences satellites issues.
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POPSPelosi blocks vote on Bush request to lift ban... This is so typical of Pelosi and her fellow Democrats in Congress. She won't even allow it to be voted on!! She will do whatever it takes to continue to stonewall this Administration...no, the democratic system...with her refusal to allow the process to move and bring this to a vote. Why? Because she would lose! FTA: "In the House, the power rests in the speaker, the power of recognition, of setting the agenda. ... Very different rules,"
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POPSFaulty Wiring at Iraq Bases ""An Army report noted "a safety threat theatrewide created by the poor-quality electrical fixtures procured and installed, sometimes incorrectly" and that a study by KBR had found a "systemic problem" with electrical work, the Times said.""
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POPSBush Impeachment Article to get Hearing "Committee chairman John Conyers of Michigan put it this way. Over the last seven plus years, there have been numerous credible allegations of serious misconduct by officials in the Bush administration. At the same time, the administration has adopted what many would describe as a radical view of its own powers and authorities. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I believe it is imperative that we pursue a comprehensive review commensurate to this constitutionally dangerous combination of circumstances. Next Friday's hearings will be an important part of that ongoing effort"
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POPSIraqi Prime Minister Backs Obama's Withdraw Plan For such a neophyte according to McCain, Obama certainly seems to be making the right foreign policy calls. Emphasize Afghanistan instead of Iraq. Set up a diplomatic relationship and negotiation with Iran. Use a specific timetable to withdraw from Iraq. The Bush administration is signing onto to each of these but in different terms. John McCain is beginning to look like a stuck-in-the-mud in contrast.
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