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 only level where he can truly reach them, that is in God.”

Here are some intriguing weather predictions which come from a somewhat improbable source. The author is not, as you might expect, Greenpeace or David Suzuki, but rather Munich Re, one of the largest insurance companies in the world. If this analysis is anything to go by, it would appear that the insurance industry is not waiting for the rest of us to decide whether or not global warming is a serious issue.

Bush handwrote this note to Condoleeza Rice at the UN today.

This incredible picure was shot by Rick Wilking of Reuters. It appears to be over Bush’s shoulder as he scribbles a note. Bush’s note says “I think I may need a bathroom break? Is this possible…” It appears to be destined for Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Do I exagerate? I think not. Consider gun control. Liberals have just about given up on persuading legislatures, whether they be state or congress, from enacting serious gun control legislation. In fact, the trend across the country is in the other direction. State after state has been passing "right to carry" laws, which relieve the citizen of having to go before a temperamental judge who may or may not grant a license depending on personal whim. Congress let provisions of the Brady Bill die (which reminds me that I need to get a flash suppressor for my AR-15. They had been banned by that stupid law). Bill Clinton himself gave credit to the NRA for Democrat losses in the congress during his term in office.

Ohhhh, Lordy! The president pees! Giggle! Snort! What a moron! Bill Clinton never had to pee! Hillary never has to find a bathroom! Ted Kennedy never had to pee! He mighta gone around without pants, but he never had to pee! If Al Gore was president, Al Gore would never have to pee!

- Embryonic stem cell research is in full swing around the world, including the United States. Just because President Bush didn't fully fund it doesn't mean it isn't funded. California invested billions into the project already. Instead of being the first president to fund embryonic stem cell research he should have been the first president to ban it!

I resent the implication that because my personal beliefs and morals don’t position me against stem cell research, I am somehow blindly following the scientific community and their so-called “bio-apologists”. I know what stem cell research is. I know how it works. I know what is created and what is “destroyed.” Knowing all this, I still have no moral qualms against it. Why? Because I don’t believe there’s any inherent worth in small amounts of human tissue, no matter that tissue’s “potential.” There is worth in individuals, and if this research can help humans, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be given every opportunity to do so.

Addicts are often pitted against other addicts in legal cases. Criminal ones in particular almost always include at least one addict—the criminal, of whom 80-90% are alcohol or other-drug addicts. Often, the victim is also an addict—after all, much crime is committed against people known to the perpetrator, and addicts often associate with other addicts. The Robert Blake non-murder of Bonnie Blakely was a recent glaring public example of this phenomenon, as was Michael Jackson’s non-molesting of Janet Arvizo’s son.

When it comes to the economic conditions that are prevailing for so many Americans, it is almost a joke. Here is a cartoon from the Washington Post. This is the sybaritic power player who is pulling the strings behind the scene, calling the shots, dictating politics and policy; and he is saying, “It is not trickle down economics. We got the plumbing fixed.'’ Here is the poor little fella down here, little panhandler trying to wait to get some of the stuff that is trickling down, and it is not trickling down any more.

Hurricane Katrina has left waves of debate over global warming behind. The cold-shouldering of the global warming issue by the US has come to the fore once again. Environmentalists the world over are criticizing President Bush for USA’s refusal to come on board the main UN plank to combat climate change.

'The effect of global warming was at most second order,' he wrote, 'and probably not present at all.'"

Cross-country Wheelchair Trip in US by Paraplegic to Raise Funds for Stem Cell Research

First, let's address the storm itself. As much as I love to blame W. for everything, I do realize specific meteorological phenomena aren't actually anyone's fault. BUT -- I believe global warming contributes significantly to the intensity of storms in the Atlantic, and that global warming is caused at least in part by greenhouse gas emissions. I understand there are those who like to pretend that scientists are still debating global warming. But these people also like to pretend scientists are still debating such issues as natural selection, the benefits of stem cell research, the safety of emergency contraception, the efficacy of corrective therapy for gay men, and the historicity of Noah's Ark.

Now, at stake in a dictatorship is the dictator's virtual ownership or loss of not an old car, but of the country's entire property. In 1990 Gorbachev virtually owned Soviet Russia, and in 1992 he was a pauper, living outside it (not the worst outcome either!). It is officially forbidden in China to refer or allude in the media to the Tiananmen Square movement, inspired by the West (recall the replica of the Statue of Liberty on the Square). Obviously, the West will be subverting, by its very existence, the dictatorship of China unless and until the West has been annihilated by the dictatorship of China or turned into its docile colony. It may be relevant to recall that Marx, Lenin, and Mao taught that the future of mankind is a single global Communist society, and Chinese military superiority may well be its midwife.

In vitro fertilization, stem cell research, selective breeding in the womb, abortion on demand, human creation in the lab... all these things are reality today. This isn't some future science fiction novel, this is happening right now in the United States!

It looks like an aftermath of the GTA: San Andreas drama, which became somewhat of a national issue with big names like Hillary Clinton joining the cause against violent games. The state of California in the United States has just signed on a bill that would ban the sale of violent video game to minors. However, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not yet taken a position on the legislation.

Third, the networks and newspapers have been quick to cry racism because so many of the victims were black. This is total nonsense. New Orleans is a mostly black city. Obviously, most of the victims of the storm would be black. No one has been able to point to a single instance in which black victims were mistreated because of their race by whites. In fact, just the opposite has happened. The whole story is of rescues and salvation by people of all races aimed at people of all races. In a gesture never seen before, the whole heart of the nation has taken in poor, bereft black families and sheltered them absolutely without regard to race. This is a mirror of the basic goodness of Americans and the disappearance of racism as an acceptable action basis of American life. It is also a measure of the total absence of racism in the heart of George W. Bush. The media may play this as a story of race versus race, but that is pure incendiary fantasy, and dangerous nonsense.

The next day, Saakashvili left for the United States where he will attend the 60th General Assembly of the United Nations. Saakashvili will also meet with the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and sign an agreement to receive $295 million in assistance from the Millennium Challenge Account, $102.2 million of which is earmarked for the rehabilitation of infrastructure and roads in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region partly inhabited by ethnic Armenians.

[I]t is true that the president gave slightly more [to New Orleans flood-control projects] than Bill Clinton. But what is also true is Bill Clinton was running the largest deficit created by the Reagan administration before him.

The sun sunk below the horizon leaving behind a burnt golden brown landscape enveloped in a burgundy sky interlaces with cirrus clouds radiating out like the spokes of a wheel from where the last glow of the earth's fiery sustainer had disappeared from view. 'Rather like the Statue of Liberty's tiara", dreamed Claire in awe of Nature's eternal beauty.

Baer is the former international president of B’nai B’rith and in that capacity has met with countless religious leaders and heads of state from around the world. Dignitaries include: the late Pope John Paul II, Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, England Prime Minister Tony Blair, the late King Hussein of Jordan, President Bill Clinton, and President George H. Bush. Baer is currently president of the Council for America’s First Freedom, a new Richmond-based project to preserve religious freedom.

The first was an interview with Hillary Clinton, huge fan of the nobility and effectiveness of the federal machine, where she claimed that the government failed miserably in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

Seriously though, we do need to manage our resources better. The link between emissions and global warming may not be well proven, but what about the toxins, heavy metals, tons of high longevity plastics. Yeast may outlive us all!

But I’ll also remember the August 6th, 2001, President’s daily briefing paper that warned of impending attacks by bin Laden. I’ll remember the ring of anti-aircraft guns around the Genoa G8 summit in the summer of 2001 while pondering Condoleeza Rice’s assertions that nobody ever thought of airliners being used in an attack (and her other probable perjuries before the 9/11 commission). And I will remember the little man who bravely ran away on 9/11 to bunkers in the West, who let bin Laden get away, and who is responsible for wasting the goodwill of the world on a war we shouldn’t be fighting.

There are 4 of us girlfriends total.� We really do not have any room for additional girls, we are full up at the moment, because after reading about us, you will want to get in� and I am just letting you down easy right now.� Due to privacy reasons, I will not be using their real names in this excerpt.� Let me explain the dynamic we have together.� We, 4 girls, are beautiful, intelligent, smart and physically fit and svelte.� We have led such incredible lives separately and bring such truly unique qualities to the Posse, that together we make up the perfect woman.� The most perfect woman, the most intelligent and sly, the most beautiful and desired, the most perfect athlete.� We are Condoleeza Rice, Jackie Joyner Kersee, and the human form of Barbie all rolled up into one person, The Posse.

This is something that Bill Clinton knew and Bush has never figured out.

The report by the National Academy of Sciences, perhaps the nation’s most eminent organization of scientists, is scheduled to be made public on Tuesday morning at a news conference in Washington. It does not address Mr. Bush’s policy directly, though it strongly supports federal financing for stem cell research.

Personally, I would bet on some microbe that is able to break up water. But anything that reduces the world's dependence on the few oil-producing nations, reduces pollution, slows global warming, and makes us safer would be very welcome indeed.

I’m sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this enough, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don’t. You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

Even more troubling, he proposed a scheme that would deny money to landowners whose property is taken, using the sort of rhetoric that reminds us of Bill Clinton's prevarications over the meaning of the word "is." Roberts wrote:

California's stem cell research agency awarded the first of a planned $3 billion in grants Friday, announcing that a little less than $39 million would go to UCLA, UC Irvine, Stanford and several other campuses to help set up programs to train scientists.

While surfing aimlessly as I do, trying to get a feel for any possible worthy candidates for High Overlord once time tells Dubya to start pounding the pavement, I found a wonderful website. Full of informative quotes displaying a candidate with true hearted ideals and a sound interest in the well being of America. The website was filled with quotes from the candidate expressing an interest in the issues that affect real everyday American citizens. Issues like the war in Iraq, campaign finance reform, and stem cell research are approached in a fundamentalist manner. The candidate is not afraid to place himself firmly on one side of an issue and let his feelings be known.

And this is where the politics comes into play: invoking the Insurrection Act meant Bush would be basically removing a female governor of the opposing party from effective control of her own National Guard. Big deal to any state. Bigger deal to a southern state. Bigger still if the governor is a Dem-and then add the female angle on top of that.

What a putz. (And what is with him using an AOL email address?) Someone on the left needs to tell him to use some of his massive amount of money to buy a clue. Moore continues to affirm that he actually has no idea whatsoever about how the country works. Bush is the left’s favorite scapegoat. Him and “global warming”. Let me quote Chrenkoff:

The loss of forests has a profound effect on the global carbon cycle. From 1850 to 1990, deforestation worldwide (including the United States) released 122 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere, with the current rate being approximately 1.6 billion metric tons per year. In comparison, fossil fuel burning (coal, oil, and gas) releases about 6 billion metric tons per year, so it is clear that deforestation makes a significant contribution to the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. Releasing CO2 into the atmosphere enhances the greenhouse effect, and could contribute to an increase in global temperatures (see Global Warming Fact Sheet, NF-222).

--Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, overheard this afternoon at Ferragamo on 5th Avenue.

That emphasised portion of the quote brings up the lack of seriousness of nearly all right-wing commentators and pundits during the Bush administration. While a great many left wing people were (and are) more than happy to criticize Bill Clinton for his own shortcomings, the sound of crickets chirping from the right during the past 5 years is deafening. The only area for which Bush is ever taken to task by most wingers is the froth of the office - presentation and image. No one ever holds Bush accountable for the many and varied failings of his managment and implementation.

Pros- we could find better ways to cure diseases like Alzheimer’s. Re: Stem Cell Research … Since I am not for in vitro fertilizatin I have no problem being agai

But while we are dragging Iraqis into the 21st century, we are forcing Americans back into the Dark Ages by allowing “other people’s choices” to become law. If the majority of Americans think birth control, including the morning-after pill, should be readily available, why isn’t it? If the majority wants to support stem cell research, why can’t they? If the majority understands the difference between scientific inquiry and faith-based wishful thinking, why are we allowing religious extremists to undermine our educational system?

Crowbar is a great place to play with a heckuva PA system, only bad thing is the drive … This time took a picture of The Statue of Liberty but you can hardly see it … Took a picture of the “Electric Avenue” sign … The Yagertown sign … and the tree in the middle of the pond … Sorry if there’s too many road pics, but what else am I gonna do 4 hours in a truck? Jeff and I did the show as Dave and Alex couldn’t make it … That night all of us stayed in one hotel room … In fact, I even slept in the same hotel as Penn State’s football team … Why they stayed in a hotel is beyond me … Anyway, the room was in two halves … one side was Brian, Jeff and I and the other side Bass, Bob, Greg and Jordan …

If Dave thinks that the “nature of the weapon” (i.e Nuke) proves that the bomb drops are unjustifiable, it (to borrow a phrase from his beloved Cardinal John Henry Newman) “proves too much.” It not only proves that the bomb drops are unjustifiable, but that Pope John Paul II, in recognizing the moral licitness of nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence, is endorsing situation ethics (i.e. the ends justify the means). The logical conclusion here is inescapapble: If the acquisition and/or build-up of nuclear weapons is morally licit, then so are their use, should the circumdstances require it. And as we will see a bit later, this isn’t the first place Mr. Armstrong runs into trouble with the late pontiff.

Just read Fineman's article this about Hillary Clinton (The Savior) to get the advance 'game plan' of what her campaign will be running on.

SAN DIEGO, Aug. 30 -- The Naval Medical Center in San Diego's Balboa Park was shut down to accommodate a visit by President George W. Bush Aug. 30, RAW STORY has learned, forcing patients to cancel chemotherapy treatments and hundreds of scheduled patient visits.

Reversals of truth are interesting—and frequent—phenomena. If you’ve been following the news on the damage caused by hurricane Katrina, surely you must have heard of hardcore leftists blaming it all on so-called “man-made global warming” [N.B: now it seems to have become simply “climate change” though—as if there were anything constant about climate but perpetual change!].

Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown’s already paper-thin resumé appears to have been padded. Time Magazine looked into the past of the man George W. Bush put in charge of the federal government’s response to disasters natural and man-made, and found less there than meets the eye.

Perhaps if Condoleeza Rice had not found it more important to go shoe shopping in New York than to go back to Washington where she could get involved with the rescue effort, you might not find so many fingers pointing your way.

What does surprise us: Just moments ago at the Ferragamo on 5th Avenue, Condoleeza Rice was seen spending several thousands of dollars on some nice, new shoes (we’ve confirmed this, so her new heels will surely get coverage from the WaPo’s Robin Givhan). A fellow shopper, unable to fathom the absurdity of Rice’s timing, went up to the Secretary and reportedly shouted, “How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!” Never one to have her fashion choices questioned, Rice had security PHYSICALLY REMOVE the woman. Link

Many blogs tell people not to be angry or to cast blame. Republicans have been casting blame since the day Bill Clinton was first elected president.

Remember, Bill Clinton was impeached, yet he lasted the full eight years of his two terms in office.

Brad Pitt of the ball persons shows. Always vogueing, he wears shades and sports a Bjorn Borg do. He holds up his balls like he’s the Statue of Liberty.

Questioning of prospective jurors in the wrongful death case against Robert Blake was marked Tuesday by a verbal attack on the lawyer who filed the lawsuit.

The death of Pope John Paul II earlier this year touched the world because the Pope had reached out to touch the world. He was an evangelist as he traveled around the globe to share the good news of Jesus Christ. He said something that is very important for us to hear as we prepare for Sunday morning. We will be talking about the joy that comes when we tell others about the good news of our faith.

The New York Post’s Page Six can’t seem to recognize any part of me, so I couldn’t get the link to this, but is it true that Michael Jackson is going for a more manly look?

Check out the last 30 odd seconds of this segment with Hillary Clinton... talk about the start of a platform.

There are many good articles at The Strata-Sphere on stem cell research, but I have had one position on this topic since day one, namely that if an embryo is a human being we don't have the right to kill him/her in order to use that person for healing or experimentation.

Mooney covers a lot of ground and much of it will be famililar to many readers; climate change obviously gets a lot of coverage, but so too does intelligent design, the Endangered Species Act, attemptes to link cancer to abortion, abstinence programs. The chapter on stem cell research is particularly useful in dispelling both right-wing claims about adult stem cells & supporters claims about the potential for cure, while outlining the true potential on SCs. The reader will come away with a good grounding in Republican buzz-words such as “junk science” and legislation such as the “Data Quality Act”. In short, highly recommended.

$40 million from the Li Ka Shing Foundation to support innovative research, including stem cell research, as part of the UC Berkeley Health Sciences Initiative. The donation, the largest international gift in the history of UC Berkeley, will go toward the Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences.

Senator Hillary Clinton has taken point in urging President George Bush to set up a “Katrina Commission” to look into the government’s response following the the killer hurricane that has destroyed New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

So the Democrats now want blood, requesting an official inquiry into why the government was so slow to respond. Hillary Clinton has suggested moving various levels of federal government under one cabinet. I’m sure the reports will be very thorough, but they will be absolutely useless once we have a new administration in a few years. In the end, the media refuses to just say, SHIT HAPPENS. They rant that the federal government should be able to do more - they have all the money and all the power in the world, but that’s just it, money and power will not overcome 200 years of red tape. Only a dictatorship has that ability.

The New Orleans refugees would have water, food and at least a place out of the contaminated floodwater to rest by now if Bush had not DISMEMBERED our emergency services institutions. This George W. Bush has destroyed lives this week. His actions are the cause for the deaths of innocent Americans. He has killed them with his weak-minded decisions. He should have to pay with the forfeiture of his usurped job.

The EU and China have signed an important agreement on global warming which recognises the huge economic, social and environmental importance of climate change – and the influence China will have on it in the future. Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair and the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, agreed on a “China-EU Partnership on Climate Change and the Security of Energy Supply”, a wide-ranging cooperation in energy and climate change matters.

After a couple nights kipping free at the aires we arrived in Haute Savoie, the French alps. I was let out on the 'lastic leash and we wandered up to a viewpoint and I looked up. . .and up . . .CRICK! . . and up. Mont Blanc! 4800 metres! That's like 3 miles UP, what a monster mountain. My hugely sensitive cat eyes just stared and stared unblinkingly at the high heavens, at those perfect peaks of perpetual powder. The only hill I've ever seen is that rise on Norbury common which is lucky to hold a slush drift in the depths of winter, what with global warming.

I don’t even know where to start with the federal level. The amount of incompetence, grandstanding and spin on this level is nauseating. The President cut his vacation short by a day. Wow, a whole day! Condoleeza Rice goes shoe shopping and takes in a show. Dick Cheney… where the hell was he? The broken levees were in various states of disrepair, funding cut to provide more for our lovely Iraqi occupation. Where were many of the officers of the Engineering Corps, the entity in charge of repairing those levees? Oh yeah, Iraq. FEMA’s actions, yes the whole organization, could have been a comedy skit if it weren’t real and so very tragic. Failure.

I am tired of politicians lying. I am tired of food distribution centers set up for George W. Bush's photo op and then taken down once he leaves. I am tired of George W. Bush saying "We could never have known" when I have been watching documentries this week from the 1980s and 90s that said this was going to happen. I am tired of Bill Clinton saying "We could never have known" when I have been watching documentries this week from the 1980s and 90s that said this was going to happen. I am tired of George H. Bush saying "We could never have known" when I have been watching documentries this week from the 1980s and 90s that said this was going to happen. I am tired of reading how much of a challenge this will be to Republican congressional races and what this will do to the White House congressional agenda. I am tired of reading how Democratic leaders can use Katrina. I am tired of reading how Republican leaders can use Katrina. I am tired of German politicians bashing the United States with Katrina to help them win elections. I am tired of decisions being made solely on winning the next election.

Gerald Ford was about to become ex-President Ford when that rain came. Since then we’ve gone through Jimmy Carter, Ronald Regan, George Bush I, Bill Clinton and finally W the first.

And don’t give me that canard about “this isn’t a time for politics” — the Bush team is in full spin mode. It’s sad to see Bill Clinton allowing himself to be used this way.

For the last few decades, with increasing Republican dominance of the executive and legislature in Washington, DC, the court has been moving steadily rightwards. The new appointments expected over the coming months to replace Judges Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired earlier this year, will most likely continue this trend. The implications for American politics could be profound.

I mean, the guy is a fantastic musician but has a messed up personal life. Working with Quincy Jones is nothing to snuff at, and on the Bad reissue Jones talks about how MJ really developed in the studio from then on. I can tell you this - the Essential Michael Jackson is one alblum that will not be leaving my IPOD any time soon.

Billie Jean by Michael Jackson was the first video to air on MTV by a black artist.

Recently Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and John Kyl (R-AZ) have individually called for probes into the Hurricane Katrina disaster. In a recent New York Daily News article, Senator Clinton said, “The slow pace of relief efforts in the face of a mounting death toll … seems to confirm that our ability to respond to cataclysmic disasters has not been adequately addressed.” Clinton, Kyl and many in the media have been quick to point fingers and lay blame. The question must be asked: Is now the right time for these concerns?

A new poll shows that Hillary Clinton still has a huge lead over Jeanine Pirro or any other Republican challenger for her New York senate seat. The poll was conducted by the Sienna Research Institute. 56% of those polled said they felt Clinton deserved another term in the senate. Clinton holds a 21 point lead over Pirro who has already announced she is running and a 23 point lead over Edward Cox who has not yet announced his candidacy.

In an earlier response to calls by former US president Bill Clinton for an inquiry into how the federal government responded to Hurricane Katrina, Linda Saccia of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it was too early to criticise the relief effort.

Lord Winston, who pioneered fertility research in the UK, bemoans the hype and spin from some supporters of embryonic stem cell research.

4. Denying the millions the benefits of stem cell research, refusing to fund it and terrorizing any sane minded

The potential benefits of embryonic stem cell research have probably been oversold to the public, fertility expert Lord Winston says.

Portland was a very clean and welcoming city which I could defiently live it, its not that big (about half a million) but has everything you could want from a city. The hostel I stayed at was a big old house with grass growing on the roof to be more enviromentally friendly. In Portland I did a nice walk along the river, I went to the Oregon Historical Society which had a special day offer where you could get in for 25 cents the same price the World Fair was in Portland 100 years ago. I also went and saw the Portlandia which is the second largest copper statue in the world after the Statue of Liberty. One evening I went to a local cinema called Bagdad, it was decorated in a middle eastern style, the cinema sold beer and pizza and only cost $3 as they showed second run films (before they reach DVD). When I left Portland to go to Seattle I booked the train and not the bus even though the bus is cheaper. The train ride was really nice and a lot more comfortable, its just a shame the train never seemed to go above 50 miles an hour. Compared to this, English trains are really fast.

On the human side of Hurricane Katrina there is ample blame to go around, beginning and ending with the ultra-corrupt nature of Louisiana politics and its corrosive impact on the greater New Orleans community. Nevertheless, this is a natural disaster unprecedented in the history of our nation. Certainly others have endured worse; Pompey, Krakatoa, Lisbon and even Galveston (6000 dead) to name a few. There have been numerous natural disasters that have claimed far more lives and that have destroyed whole cities. Still, for Americans and particularly those directly impacted, the catastrophe in New Orleans seems apocalyptic.

The French wire AFP reports that politics have changed in France since President Jacques Chirac’s hospitalization for bursting eye veins.

Dubai (CBS)–Pop star Michael Jackson has been visiting Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in the Middle East. According to the Middle East news service Al Bawaba, Jackson was thrilled by his first visit to the UAE.

(And yes, that might actually be the first admission that anything has gone less than optimally in the past 5 or so years of the administration.) Mr. Brown, George "I couldn't admit that I made a mistake or admit a minor judgmental error if I was caught masturbating to a picture of Michael Jackson" W. Bush, has admitted that you fucked up. That's professional homocide if I've ever heard it.

The Washington Post said yesterday that the US diplomats consider that the international interest in the file of Syria and Lebanon entered a new phase under unprecedented international Pressures on al-Assad. According to the paper, officials in the US administration consider that the American president George W. Bush seeks relentlessly to recruit the UN to pressure Syria, and for supporting Lebanon to re-construct its political institutions.

#4. His base is falling apart. The one group that would never go to Kerry, even an inch, was the Religious Right. And what has he done for them lately? Absolutely nothing. All he’s done for them is endorse Intelligent Design, during the one week it was in the news. I only heard about him endorsing ID three times myself, so I can’t imagine a whole lot of his base heard about it. Even if they did, that is secondary to a whole lot of other things-stem cell research and abortion primarily.

The most exciting time in politics is about to commence: the post-Labor Day sprint to Election Day. There are a couple of good articles today reflecting this.

We did two rounds of lecture/show-and-tell on Friday with the laptops jacked up to the projector and my colleague’s DJ equipment at the side. The indie part went first, with the likes of Travis, Feeder, Our Lady Peace, Jebediah, etc, played, followed by some explanation. Then the usual crowd-pleasers, such as “YMCA” and “Staying Alive", followed by some new inserts like “Take a Chance on Me” (ABBA and the campy Erasure version) and the vomit-inducing “Funkytown", and the hilarious spoof on Michael Jackson’s “Bad", Weird Al Yankovich’s “Fat". After the ’80’s vids, my colleague did a short demonstration on his CD players and his mixer, followed by one or two inputs from my Ninjatune Zen TV DVD (Kid Koala’s “Fender Bender", Beck’s “E-Pro” from another sampler).

In bed, looking at random websites on my laptop, trying to stop what is threatening to be a migraine acheiving its potential, because Sundays are bad enough without the feeling of my brain simulating six large steel-toecapped men dancing around on my skull while my stomach impersonates a washing machine, only with vomit instead of detergent… that metaphor ended up badly, but anyway. On Friday night we sat for hours in a Wetherspoons in Shepherds Bush, drinking Frisky Bisons (Zubrovka vodka plus apple juice: yes please) and shouting nonsense, before queueing for half an hour at Islington Academy before we realised the place was full and we weren’t going to get in and stuffing ourselves with McDonalds non-food on the nightbus in lieu of indie-based dancing activities. I think it was a fair swap. Yesterday, not wanting to drink more alcohol in case our livers exploded and yet not wanting to stay in and shout abuse at The X-Factor, we ended up in a cinema watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There’s a fine line between genius and being A COMPLETE FUCKING NUTCASE, and Tim Burton is sat on it, possibly giggling to himself about nothing. And I’m glad to see Johnny Depp is continuing his theme of playing his characters as famous people playing someone else: first Keith Richards the pirate, and now Michael Jackson the chocolate-obsessed nutter. But I liked it, even if the kids there hadn’t read the book. Imagine! Kids not reading Roald Dahl! No wonder they’re all happy-slapping each other to death: it’s lack of exposure to The Witches at an impressionable age. A complete lack of fear of being turned into a mouse by a load of bald old ladies, leading to having no respect for them. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Piaget.

13.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care. [You mean we might have health care and might have avoided losing a war in Mesopotamia? Can't work Clinton got a blow job into this, so the fallback is attacking someone who tried to provide health care for everyone? Maybe she should have signed up for those guitar lessons herself.]

For the first time in history a U.S. President and Senator are being charged with coercion and conspiracy based on the facts that were used in the trial of David Rosen, the National Finance Director of Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign.

Populism is often internally inconsistent: it’s perfectly possible to mount a populist critique of multinationals without, say, supporting multiculturalism. Moreover, the line between left-wing populism and right-wing populism is very blurry. Think of the Hansonites: recruiting around racism and bigotry but fervently opposed to privatisation. Or the examples Thomas Franks gives of the populist support for George W. Bush — the blue-collar Americans who support Bush because he stands up for the values of the little guy against know-it-all academics and East Coast intellectuals.

The barrage of Hurricanes hitting USA’s Southern Coast, including Katrina, may have occurred anyway, but their likelihood was aggravated by Global Warming is apparant. With New Orleans increasingly becoming a cesspool pervaded by violence, rape, starvation and looting, maybe every country, including USA, will now utilise hindsight and sign the Kyoto Treaty!

Chances to radically shift the national debate, alter the nation's perspective, and rearrange our priorities don't come along very often. President Bush squandered the teachable moment provided by 9/11, calling us not to national service but to shopping. Bill Clinton is now making it harder to use the current disaster as a wake-up call about the pent-up anger bubbling just beneath the surface of our country, about the Other America largely hidden from view, and about the urgent need to redefine national security.

"I hope people don't play politics during this period of time," Mr. Bush told Diane Sawyer of ABC's "Good Morning America" in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. "This is a natural disaster, the likes of which our country may have never seen before."

This is not about Republican or Democrat - poor leadership is not only the domain of one party - but it most definitely is about politics. It is about who we elect as our leaders, the choices they make on our behalf, and whether we are paying attention to the job they are doing before it is too late.

What a load of hate-filled crap. These are the people who are controlling the politics of this administration!

The ESRB never failed in their responsibility to parents. But they really let down one of their clients. Hillary Clinton says that she wants to “give the ESRB some teeth”. Well pardon me, but what they really need is some fucking balls.

We truly don’t understand shit with regards to poverty and the plight of the working class if we’re going to keep allowing corporate interests and special interests to control the country with their interests at heart, not the interests of the citizens fo the United States. I don’t believe Bush can grasp what the common person suffers. I could never believe John Kerry (or Hillary Clinton) would be able to comprehend it either, or Al Gore… It’s the same-old aristocrat class that is so out of touch with America that we suffer at their ineptitude.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

How can we do that? In another post back in January, I laid out the case for running Condoleeza Rice for President against Hillary. It would be a sure thing, and would take away almost every position that the Democrats and Hillary would be running on.

America also wondered not only where the hell the President of the United States was at, but also the Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. She was out buying shoes. Several thousand dollars worth of, shoes.

While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are "scientifically savvy and alert," he said in an interview. Most of the rest "don't have a clue." At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people's inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process.

Watching Live & Direct this week, it’s been hard to get a sense of what Rita was hired to bring to MSNBC. The aftermath of a devastating hurricane is not really a Rita Cosby kind of story; for one thing, there’s no one to blame for it. (I suppose you could rant bitterly against God, as if He were Robert Blake or Joran van der Sloot, but that might lose you a few viewers, especially from the Fox camp.) Cosby seems much more at home with stories like the disappearance of Olivia Newton-John’s boyfriend, Patrick McDermott (I loved her attempt last week to pump some juice about this case out of a visibly nonchalant private investigator, who suggested, “I would say two words: Las Vegas, OK? Look in Las Vegas. He’s probably hanging out there”), and of course, the Natalee Holloway story. This week, Cosby was supposed to be reporting live from Aruba, and she actually did broadcast the show from there, but God had thrown a wrench in MSNBC’s plans to steal some of the Natalee Holloway fire away from Fox: Hurricane Katrina. There was something bitterly amusing in watching Cosby try to justify her presence in Aruba (”As you know, I just arrived here in Aruba, which was not hit by the storm, but is dealing with the fury of the Natalee Holloway investigation”) before devoting the rest of the hour to long-distance coverage of the mega-disaster happening back in her own country.

Robert Blake, the courtroom sequel, is ready to roll. Opening arguments in the wrongful-death civil trial pitting the Emmy winner against the family of his slain wife were set for Thursday morning in Burbank, California. This, after 11 men and five women were selected late Wednesday to serve as jurors.

It’s only natural to look forward to Friday, if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing for a living. Now, don’t get me wrong. I actually loved what I was doing as a corporate trainer. When I was in front of the classroom teaching, I couldn’t have been happier. I had fun. It was a great time. Problem is, eventually I had to go back to my desk and deal with the corporate BS or Politics… if you want to be politically correct.

Well, I am here, safe and sound. In NY with R and her nanimals… Considering taking classes here at Syracuse U. Have no idea how long I will be here… R is fine. We’re indefinitely postponing the wedding, and moving home… I dunno, watching the news at the airport(s) was unreal. People talking about it because it’s news (similar to the way we all talked about the Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson trials… you know, almost everyone has something to say about it) I just tryed to remain calm and quiet, not telling anyone I was from there… until…

I think it’s so wrong that Michael Jackson is such a freak. Why is it wrong? Because I like some of his songs (ok, many actually, they’re fucking brilliant) and it is really frustrating to always say “I like Michael Jackson’s music, but for the bloke himself, I’d rather see him neck-deep in a swamp".

Found that anti-abortion liberal yet? No? And you won't, because they are to the Left as Trotsky was to Stalin, and have been effectively exiled from the liberal community. The Left has come to the point where the suggestion that abortion might be anything less than a criteria for cannonization is met with gasps and hushed whispers in the back room. When aspiring Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that we should try to reduce the number of abortions, the nation acted as though she had come out for overturning Roe v. Wade, because it is so inconceivable that a Democrat could say something poor about abortion that our minds reel when it happens.

There sure are a lot of people talking about how hurricanes are stronger now than they used to be, and that it is _obviously_ the direct result of global warming. Let’s see what sort of information we’re able to find to support these claims.

What does surprise us: Just moments ago at the Ferragamo on 5th Avenue, Condoleeza Rice was seen spending several thousands of dollars on some nice, new shoes (we’ve confirmed this, so her new heels will surely get coverage from the WaPo’s Robin Givhan). A fellow shopper, unable to fathom the absurdity of Rice’s timing, went up to the Secretary and reportedly shouted, “How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!” Never one to have her fashion choices questioned, Rice had security PHYSICALLY REMOVE the woman.

Among other things N.O residents got themselves wild snipers shooting around in gangs, sound like their own insurgents rose, almost as the rebels in Bush’s war-zones! And now President Bush is so confused he's getting help from his dad -- how pathetic but nevertheless astute… he's not totally clueless after all, since he's also getting a good ol'Democrat on board as well. None other than Bill Clinton. Most probably Bush daddy told him, call Bill Clinton, because we're drowning in our own sewage since we haven't listened to the Global warming alerts for years...

Interesting piece from John Naughton this morning, commenting on a finding that a fifth of our US cousins think the sun goes around the earth. The original article talks about other gaps in US science knowledge and worries that Americans can’t follow debates about cloning or evolution. Well if they want to believe the world came into being 6000 years ago as apposed to the 4500 million, let them. I’m not too worried about a 100 million Americans with the wrong ideas about how the world came into existence. What I am worried about is that the strongest country in the world is not signing up to the Kyoto agreement because its inhabitants mostly couldn’t tell you the difference between a warm front and global warming. And global warming affects all 6500 million of us on this planet.