News from Around the World

I am sure Hillary Clinton would be glad to “suggest” how the “New Media” should “tread carefully.”

Hillary Clinton will contest the US presidential election in 2008. This will be assessed by New York Times reports appearing before January 1st 2008.

Did global warming contribute to the Gulf Coast disaster, and the thankfully smaller scale destruction of Hurricane Rita?

Oct. 3, 2005 issue - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is a bete noire of the Bush administration. He's a populist on the Castro model who wants to steer Latin America firmly to the left. He also rules a key oil-producing country, which gives him unusual leverage. In an interview with NEWSWEEK's Lally Weymouth in New York, he made clear his dislike for President George W. Bush, and noted that he was planning to fly straight to Havana after his U.S. trip. Excerpts:

For a life-long conservative Republican and Bush voter in 2000 and 2004 like yours truly, that last question is especially galling. It was bad enough early in Bush's first term when he signed an executive order keeping the truth about Bill Clinton's midnight pardon spree behind closed doors. I swallowed hard and accepted the White House's executive privilege claim on that one.

Looks like Bill Clinton has another bit of infamy to add to his legacy. While Katrina was blowing Bill back into the headlines his campaign contributors were naming a condom after him.

Bill Clinton is among many eminent Americans who wonder whether Katrina’s biggest impact might be psychological, political.

And of course, who could forget Bill Frist's break with the culture-of-lifers when he came out in favor of government funded Stem Cell Research?

I grew up in the 80s. When I was at school it was all West Ham, Spurs and Arsenal, Michael Jackson’s thriller and break-dancing. It was MacEnroe, Borg and Connors in tennis, Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram and Daly Thomson. And we had a cricket team. I still remember Botham’s ashes.

and in even more random news, michael jackson hired out a water park in dubai (he invited lots of parents and children to join in the fun) and roamed around in a white lycra body suit.

Polls have shown Mr. Bush's approval ratings near the lowest levels of his presidency. And Senate Republican strategists say that since his nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to the court, members of their conference have grown increasingly willing to disagree with the White House, notably on matters like stem cell research, Mr. Bush's choice for ambassador to the United Nations and the war in Iraq.

Get a real justice system. Stop acquitting people just because they’re celebrities. Everyone knows that OJ and Robert Blake killed people and even if Michael Jackson didn’t intentionally molest anybody, he DID admit to sleeping in the same bed as them, which is still pretty fucked up. Terrorists, why blow up New York when Hollywood is much more deserving target.

As I said in my previous post liberals appear to be continuously stuck on stupid, and this is especially true with regard to alleged global warming. I found an article Friday from a British paper that confirms exactly what I was saying. The gentleman who is the subject of this article is supposedly “one of Britain’s leading scientists.” This is a very scary thing for Britain. Notice how he interprets the “growing violence” of these hurricanes:

It occurs to me that there are only a few really genuine (meaning coming-up-from-the-real-world-instead-of-the-privileged-one) folks currently prominent in America Politics - really, only a few: Condoleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Rudy Guiliani and Donna Brazile. And of those four, only two of them, Thomas and Brazile, knew real poverty in their lives. Guiliani and Rice grew up middle class.

Political historian Dr Eamon Phoenix said Belfast was then a place of cultural renaissance and radical politics.

Before I come off as any more cruel and insensitive than I just have I do need to make a point to say that I understand not everyone knew of the mandatory evacuation. Then again, when did it become the duty of our government to go door to door and hold the hand of every individual who isn’t willing to keep up on important happenings in their own country or their own state? When did it become the duty of our government to babysit the people who live there? The answer: never. Sure, there are large groups of people who claim that the government didn’t do its job in warning people that a hurricane was coming. Had the tables been turned, however, and had the government simply failed to adequately remind people that, say, tax day was looming, none would have complained. Examples such as this lead me to believe that people love to blame their government for things that they are too uninformed, too lazy, too ignorant, too ashamed, or otherwise too ill-equipped to handle. And you know what? That isn’t right. In fact, the moment we start to complain that we are not living in a country that holds the hand of each of its citizens through every natural (and notice I said natural–as in Mother Nature–here, not a consequence of Dubya, of global warming, or of someone forgetting to pay the power bill) disaster that we experience is the moment that we can expect to lose so many of the rights we do have as citizens of this country. Simply put, we cannot have it both ways. We cannot have the government hand-holding along with the freedoms we feel so entitled to. It is either one or the other. And I, personally, am glad to take freedoms and their consequence of being made to take responsibility for my own actions (be it staying informed, evacuating once a mandatory evacuation has been issued for the city I live in, or something else) over the loss of these freedoms any day. In fact, I am willing to bet that most people would prefer their “freedom” over the kind of government we would have if all of the things we moan and complain about once tragedy has struck were realized.

Even though Senator Hillary Clinton has gone to great lengths to portray herself as a moderate Democrat, there are certain litmus tests one must pass to remain a front-runner for the party's nomination in 2008. Voting against John Roberts appears to be on of those items.

For the first 120 hours after Hurricane Katrina, TV journalists were let off their leashes by their mogul owners, the result of a rare conjoining of flawless timing (summer’s biggest vacation week) and foulest tragedy (America’s worst natural disaster). All of a sudden, broadcasters narrated disturbing images of the poor, the minority, the aged, the sick and the dead, and discussed complex issues like poverty, race, class, infirmity and ecology that never make it on the air in this swift-boat/anti-gay-marriage/Michael Jackson media-sideshow era. So began a perfect storm of controversy.

For two full days, George W. Bush was bashed. He was taken to task on his handling of stem cell research, population control, the Iraq war and, especially, Hurricane Katrina. The critics were no left-wing bloggers. They were rich, mainly Republican and presumably Bush voters in the last two presidential elections.

I invite the holy pope John Paul II to pray for us, and for the whole world.

A new Weezy and The Swish, up and ready to fly! This week the dynamic trio interview Ron Zonen, the prosecutor who laid out the charges against Michael Jackson and fought him in court. Everyone asks Zonen questions, he gleefully responds, and the entire thing is both informative and hilarious! If you were ever curious about how the trial actually went, this is what you need to hear. Enjoy!

"New York Sen. Hillary Clinton was unavailable to comment on her husband's latest achievement." Wanna bet?

Today there was a big rally in Washington that included Hillary Clinton and RFK Jr. There was also a strong Canadian contigent there. Canada has become more outspoken recently as the drilling will affect Gwichi’n people in northern Yukon that rely on the Porcupine caribou herd which migrates through the Refuge and through the Yukon. Canada and the US have an agreement to preserve the herd.

A United Coalition of Blogs for the Impeachment of George W. Bush

This country has only one president at a time. That president, right now President Bush, is tasked with naming judges. The Senate has the role of providing advice and consent on the president’s choices, which is a significant constitutional task. But if the presidential election means anything in this arena, it must mean that the president’s choice has a heavy presumption of confirmation. That is the way the system works. Why else would Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have received only a handful of no-votes among them? During the Clinton administration, we deplored the way that the Senate treated the president’s judicial nominees during six years of Republican control over the Senate. Yet during those six years, the Senate confirmed 245 of President Bill Clinton’s judges. If Republicans had been applying Mr. Reid’s standard, they would have been within their rights to reject them all.

Lori Lipman Brown plans to work for her new church by fighting policies rooted in Christian religious beliefs, such as limits on stem cell research and access to emergency contraception. She is going to oppose policies that breach the “non-existant” wall between church and state, such as government funding of “faith-based” service programs.

Liberals all over the country are up in arms over a new children’s book that portrays cartoon versions of left-wing icons Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy taxing and regulating a lemonade stand.

That dailykos browsing is a problem though. Upsetting things appear there all day long. I want to know true problems. I want to see what’s there, not pretend all is lovely when all isn’t. But yeesh, a person can only handle so much bad news. My government is corrupt and inept, the economy is ready for a bad fall due to record deficits, global warming is truly happening now what with all that ice and snow melting up north so that even reindeer are now in jeopardy, and then you have your avian flu.

Sky News - Bill Clinton may have been a smoothie as a politician but he’s now proving to be the ultimate contraceptive in China.

Remember, if you live in the US, your president doesn’t want you to have the option of walking again after a spinal injury. He demonstrates his desires by blocking the research that is likely to provide the option. Bush opposes stem cell research. His reasons? It kills babies. The facts? No it doesn’t.

I then head to get in line to go up to the top of the ESB. This involves waiting in line for like an hour, going through a security screening, watching the young couple in front of me kiss frequently and annoy everybody around them, become annoyed by the non-english speaking white tourists, and eventually take a series of elevators up to a view that’s so surreal that I can hardly appreciate it. I do realize that the Statue of Liberty is a lot smaller than I realize and I decided that this is enough view of it. In the end it’s an hour of waiting for 10 minutes of being crowded and feeling fat and in the way and I bolt pretty quickly. I’ve been told this would be more interesting at night, but I’m not sure. You’re really not seeing much you don’t see on any TV show set in NY anyway. Boo this building.

The new document– which was prepared by the Congregation for Catholic Education, in response to a request made by the late Pope John Paul II in 1994– will be published soon. It will take the form of an “Instruction,” signed by the prefect and secretary of the Congregation: Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski and Archbishop Michael Miller.

After suffering from Parkinson’s disease for many years, the last words of Pope John Paul II’s were “let me go to the house of the Father”, according to documents released by the Vatican. His words were spoken in his native Polish to aides hours before he died last April. They are preserved in a new 220-page volume which chronicles the last two months of the late pontiff’s life. It is the first time the Vatican has published such a detailed account of any pope’s final moments.

Impeach Bush - No, not really interested in politics right now. God knows I’d like to impeach the little texas cow-wrangler, but nevermind.

There were a few speeches that riled some countries. Condoleeza Rice (United States secretary of state) spent a bit of time in her 15 minutes directly chastising Iran for their thoughts and actions on nuclear weapons. Iran returned fire in their Foreign Minister’s speech. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela also has a few interesting words to say to the United States.

This White House doesn’t hate all pictures, of course. It loves those by Karl Rove’s Imagineers, from the spectacularly lighted Statue of Liberty backdrop of Mr. Bush’s first 9/11 anniversary speech to his “Top Gun” stunt to Thursday’s laughably stagy stride across the lawn to his lectern in Jackson Square. (Message: I am a leader, not that vacationing slacker who first surveyed the hurricane damage from my presidential jet.)

The prophecy came after a vision. In the vision, I saw the Statue of Liberty, New York, it’s shorelines, the US Capitol at Washington DC and a golden like bowl being poured out. This morning, while I was thinking about the vision and the word I had written down in my journal, I saw the Statue of Liberty in chains. This second vision only came in today while I was driving to work. The rest of the vision took place on Monday night. Here are the words I had scribbled down on my journal.

• As part of broad coalitions fighting policies rooted in religious beliefs, such as limits on stem cell research and access to emergency contraception.

I guess embryonic stem cell research is a global issue. Could it save lives? Well I hope so. There was a big issue involving the way research is used in finding cures that strongly affected the christian belief and politics in the United States. President Bush wants to stop the use of embryos for reseach because of his beliefs. But there shouldn’t be religion in politics right??? Well I believe so for one being Jewish and that who really determines when there is life and when there isn’t. Well good news. Thanks to research scientists have found the use of cord blood, has embryonic like cells that can be used instead of well the embryo. These cells can be used to make any tissue of the body and can be reproduced. Joyce Price said that “Scientists believe the ability to replicate tissue could lead to the development of ways to replace organs as well as treat life-threatening diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, which have been the focus of stem-cell research. “What a great finding!! But I still think that embryonic cells need the research and Bush and others should get over it and realize that many people could eventually be cured of Parkinsons and other horrible diseases all over the world. Why should 1 person determine the use or not. You really should read this article andfind our more on the topic to decide what you think.

There was a very public (at least, well known within Catholic circles) battle between Pope Benedict XVI when he was Pope John Paul II’s right-hand man.. and increasingly liberal North American Bishop Conferences, over ridiculous political correct changes to the official Roman Missal at the ‘insistence’ of the Bishops, some of which watered down, and a few that actually changed meaning, in Scriptural verses.

Methinks I smell the next presidential election in the air...one that has Hillary Clinton 2008 written all over it. Too bad a nice big can of Lysol can't take care of it.

Hurricane Katrina should serve as a warning that the world must not ignore the consequences of global warming, the former US Vice President Al Gore told a gathering of international leaders on Saturday. If these concerns stay limited to the podium, scientific papers or seminar panels, is yet to be seen.

Lest any of ye scurvy-ridden bilge rats forget, only you can prevent global warming… Arrr!

The other day, my roomate was playing a videogame involving a certain spy by the name of Sam Fisher. I’ll assume that everyone knows what I’m talking about and move on. Well, we had a guest in the room, a girl who claims to take a moderate politcal view point. While playing, my roomate got himself into a sticky situation and was forced to shoot one of the terrorists in the head. I didn’t think anything of this, but the girl who was watching said, “That’s terrible.” My roomate turned around and said, “He’s a terrorist!” and then turned around and proceeded to stealthily take out one guy after another. The girl continued to mumble under her breath every time another terrorist was killed. What I fail to understand is this… Why are there people in this country that simpithize with terrorists? I can understand why people don’t like the war in Iraq. I can understand why people don’t like George W. Bush. And, although I don’t agree with either of these two view points, I do repect them. I can not, however, respect the view point that says that ridding this world of terrorists is “terrible".

Looking at Feingold’s record, it’s hard to deny that he’s anything but principled. Shakes highlights a vote that will trouble liberals: his vote to confirm Condoleeza Rice. More troubling to most Democrats will be his earlier vote to confirm John Ashcroft. But even those votes were ones I could always understand. Feingold believes that the President should be able to choose his own Administration. But on matters of policy, he clearly believes in standing up.

Here are some words that you would expect to hear in the wake of a huge natural disaster: disaster, storm, flood, destruction, relief, water, aid, emergency, mobilization, National Guard, Coast Guard, search and rescue, etc. Instead, these are the words we heard: President George W. Bush plays guitar, Condoleeza Rice shops for shoes, Vice President Dick Cheney vacations, Halliburton gets contracts, etc. In the wake of a disaster, the only reports we typically hear of any President are two things: 1) “The President has declared “”“disaster location”” a state of emergency,” and 2) “The President flew out to survey the damage today.” Most of us have witnessed a few disasters (of course, none comparable to this) and we are aware of the role the President normally plays in the aftermath. A President that had exhibited panic in the face of this disaster would have transferred that panic to the public. I have to feel that regardless of the President's, or any one on his his Cabinet members', actions after this catastrophe, the media had a predetermined scapegoat. The President did everything in his power correctly in this situation, yet the media and the left wing elite began this attack on President Bush before this storm's dead were even cold. Any blame, if you can find blame after a natural disaster, remains firmly planted on people and circumstances wholly out of our President's control.

This White House doesn’t hate all pictures, of course. It loves those by Karl Rove’s Imagineers, from the spectacularly lighted Statue of Liberty backdrop of Mr. Bush’s first 9/11 anniversary speech to his “Top Gun” stunt to Thursday’s laughably stagy stride across the lawn to his lectern in Jackson Square. (Message: I am a leader, not that vacationing slacker who first surveyed the hurricane damage from my presidential jet.)

4. “Does Robert Blake dating again count as an emergency?”

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Struggling to breathe, Pope John Paul II mumbled his final words weakly in Polish: “Let me go to the house of the Father.” Six hours later, the comatose pontiff died, the Vatican says.

Global warming; a subject that's been in the news a lot recently due to Hurricane Katrina. No, I'm not convinced; we're always seeing reports of extreme weather events on TV...the hottest for 500 years, the wettest, the driest, the worst season for hurricanes, the ice caps are melting, the Gulf Stream might dissipate etc. etc. etc.

What happened to balanced budgets? Why happened to personal responsibility? What happened to reduced spending? What happened to smaller government? The list goes on, but you get the idea. The Party has moved away from the very ideals that helped get them elected in the early 1990s, and they certainly have moved away from the ideals that got George W. Bush elected in 2000.

There have been rumors going around that the pic of the Bush Bathroom break note to Condoleeza Rice was photoshopped.

The person who runs THIS blog — Hillary Now: Republican Lies and Hillary Clinton — left me a comment below explaining that I’d sooner “hate on the UN and bill clinton than to even consider stopping nuclear proliferation and poverty and disease.”

Do you believe in God? Do you really believe in God? Yes, I am challenging your faith right now. Get mad at me, throw something and proclaim "how dare he challenge my faith!". Yes, I am challenging your faith. If you really believe in God you know he doesn't believe in abortion. You know he doesn't want us to rip apart his children in the womb. If you really believe in God you know he isn't happy with embryonic stem cell research. We are God's children, not man's guinea pigs.

I’m at the California Republican Party convention in Anaheim with a press credential. A group of us has just heard a series of speeches directed at bloggers, mostly by second-tier candidates or first-tier candidates for second-tier offices. Of the speakers, all but one were long on personal background in politics, and short on the issues. The one exception, Insurance Commissioner candidate Phil Kurzner, told us a great deal on where he stands on the issue of health insurance, the one kind of insurance over which the Insurance Commissioner has almost no jurisdiction. Great.

However, the standard bearers of the liberals — Sens. Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton and the media, including Ben Sargent locally — offered up the usual criticism and blame and, per the norm, no solutions.

For those of you who missed it - George W. Bush writes a note to Condi Rice:

Onstage with former president Bill Clinton at a midtown Manhattan hotel ballroom, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was going to speak with "brutal honesty" about Kyoto and global warming, and he did....

Meanwhile in New York, as the UN celebrates its 60th anniversary with its largest international summit of thugs, thieves, tyrants and dictators, another meeting is taking place across town headed by former President Bill Clinton and John Kerry financier George Soros. The purpose of this meeting is to advance Clinton’s global initiative of a One World Order with a One World Governing body, the UN. As you know, Clinton publicly aspires to be the next Secretary General. This activity is also at odds with American sovereignty and all American principles as a free, autonomous self-governed nation.

4. “Does Robert Blake dating again count as an emergency?”

Pope John Paul II was a very fine man, but he never had time to talk to me.

I like Notre Dame to show us they are the real deal in this game. Charlie Weis will be sainted before Pope John Paul II afterwards.

I have seen some pundits wondering if this latest development will make it more likely Edgar wil jump into the race. I think it would not be good for him. He is not immune from currution himself. If the Republicans want to win back the State, they need to elect someone who is not part of the establishment. We need someone who will speak up and end the politics/corruption as usual in this State. Please join me in telling Gov. Edgar, No.

Former BBDO Chairman Phil Dusenberry, the guy that worked on the Reagan campaign and the famous Michael Jackson Pepsi spot, has written a book called, "Then We Set His Hair on Fire," a title nodding to the media circus which surrounded Michael Jackson's hair catching on fire while shooting the Pepsi spot. The book is great. The subtitle on the book "Insights and Accidents from a Hall-of-Fame Career in Advertising" sums up the tone of the book: humble and helpful commentary on a very successful career. It's the most enjoyable book we've read in a long time. Dusenberry takes readers through his very long and very successful career at BBDO as well as several years he spent on his own running his on shop. The book is all about the power of the Insight and how insights are related to but very different than Ideas. Many times the two terms are co mingled but after reading this book, the differences and similarities between the two are clearly understood. Ideas are great but it's insights you really want. It's the "Ah ha" moment.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, Dick Durbin, Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters, Harry Reid. Those are a small fraction of "leaders" on the Left who have bought in to these conspiracies.

This candy bar was nougat, caramel and almonds. See peanuts are OK, but they are trashy. Almonds are the bomb. So after trying to market that bad boy for a million years, M&M/Mars got tired. They probably lost all their talent to RJ Reynolds "smoking is good for you" division, or TexaChevronPhillipsOilWad's division of "global warming isn't real but if it is it's good for you now look over there, is that Julia Roberts and the twins?" division. Anyway, they just laid down in the road and died.

Earlier this week, the centre-left coalition in Norway had dominated the elections. Labour Party head and soon-to-be-PM (also a former PM), Jens Stoltenberg, told U.S. President George W. Bush that Norway would pull its soldiers out of Iraq - all 20 of them…

This article in The Washington Post describes the ongoing – and newly intensified – debate about global warming. And this paragraph, in particular, implies (but does not answer) a fascinating question:

So what should the U.S. really be doing? We should be completely removing our dependence on oil. We should be cleaning up our water and environment, taking steps to end global warming, species extinction, human hunger, disease and famine. We should be investing heavily into solar, wind and geothermal power. We should be making sure that every resident and citizen has healthcare. We should be educating our children (and by that I also mean telling them the truth about the world). We should end poverty in this country if not in the world. And we should be getting rid of television commercials and making sure that if you have 500 channels then there damn well better be something to watch on TV. OK, maybe I'm asking for too much.

We also know now that Bush could have saved countless lives if he would have responded more quickly to the country’s largest natural disaster ever. Instead, he remained on vacation, taking time out only to promote his war to a sympathetic audience of military people in San Diego. His immediate presence on the scene would have sent a clear signal to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the military about the magnitude of the human crisis. He did not make a major speech about the incident until thirty-six hours after the hurricane hit. Vice President Dick Cheney remained on vacation. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was spotted buying shoes in New York.

The gondola ride up the mountain was loads of fun and in fact, the gondola we took had stickers on it that said British Prime Minister John Major took this gondola up the mountain in 1991. Whopeefucking doooo! I wanted to be in the one Bill Clinton took, dammit! Oh well, I guess we’ll settle for the gondola of a PM I know basically nothing about.

Defying anyone to continue calling him a conservative after tonight, Bush promised a thoroughly federal response to the Katrina crisis, complete with some $200 billion in big government spending. In an interesting twist, he essentially proposed to turn over that cash to state and local officials to spend as they wish, beneath the moonlight glow of some sort of accountability commission... (feel free to laugh, it really is pretty funny.) He lifted Bill Clinton's enterprise zones and renamed them opportunity zones. He promised homesteading opportunities and special mortgages and rebuilding projects and more. And while he threw his base a few bones about entrepreneurship and tax credits, even the analysts at Fox said he sounded more like LBJ than Ronald Reagan.

“The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.’ She’s got a baseball bat and she’s yelling, ‘you want a piece of me?’ ”

The Republican Right has, for far too long, utlizied distorted “science” to make points and pass legislation. Issues like stem cell research, climate change, and abstinence education are marketed to the public with spun “facts” that specifically fit the conservative agenda. There is legitimate science out there, people who study data and anaylize it with no political aspirations in mind. How is it possible that the Republican Right has succeeded in twisting data and spoonfeeding it to the public as truth? Why aren’t they held by the constraints of fact like the rest of us.

Durzy said the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the death of Pope John Paul II created a noticeable uptick in related items.

Democratiya aims to contribute to a renewal of the politics of democratic radicalism by providing a forum for serious analysis and debate. We will strive to be non-sectarian and ecumenical, and our pages are open to a wide range of political views, a commitment to pluralism reflected in our advisory editorial board.

In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II stated:

KF: Chalila - this book is full of holy words. This is the L-rd Himself in a costume of letters. If I will throw it to this pool, all holiness in it is like, banished. It will be kadosh (holy), and when I throw it to this pool, it will be tamei (impure). It’s the same thing about getting into politics. I think that getting myself into politics, into taking sides, is getting myself dirty. I’m not taking any sides, I’m not dealing with it. I’m doing my music. And that’s it.

Eckhart was condemned for many of his propositions and is considered by orthodox catholics to be heretic until today, although the late pope John Paul II was in favour of the rehabilitation and confirmation of Eckhart’s orthodoxy. In 1985 John Paul II, said: “Did not Eckhart teach his disciples: ‘All that God asks you most pressingly is to go out of yourself - and let God be God in you‘? One could think that, in separating himself from creatures, the mystic leaves his brothers, humanity, behind. The same Eckhart affirms that, on the contrary, the mystic is marvelously present to them on the on