I can take or leave Bruce Springstein…….but LOVE Jerry Lee Lewis and Clarence Clemons.

You can shake it one time for me!!

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 18, 2006
The Pentagon’s top special operations policy-maker is quitting in a move that several Bush administration sources say is the first negative fallout from a major reorganization of advisers in the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Thomas W. O’Connell, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict (SOLIC), has told Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, that he will leave in several months. Administration officials said the generous lead time is partly political. The Pentagon does not want to be without its top special operations adviser during the November elections at a time when covert warriors are playing a leading role in hunting and capturing al Qaeda terrorists.

More here

80 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF FLORIDA’S BIG BLOW

PATRICIA KENNEDY CRAWFORD DIES

BUSH HEADS FOR THE UN

NFL SUNDAY RECAP

TREASURE TROVE OF NEW MARINE SPECIES FOUND

WARNER OPENS VIDEO LIBRARY TO YOUTUBE

NORTH KOREA’S #2 BLAMES U.S. FOR LACK OF WORLD PEACE

BRITISH TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN TOO TIRED TO FIGHT

DON’T EAT YOUR SPINACH!

TWO JOURNALISTS SHOT AND KILLED IN IRAQ

TIMESonline
Jenny Booth and agencies

An Iraqi militant group led by al-Qaeda has threatened to massacre Christians in response to remarks about Islam by Pope Benedict XVI that have caused offence across the Muslim world.

The Pope quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor who criticised the teachings of Mohammad for endorsing the use of violence, in a speech to an academic audience at a German university last Tuesday.

Yesterday, after a wave of protests across the Islamic world, Benedict said he was deeply sorry. He said that he had had no intention of causing offence, and stressing that the text he had quoted in no way represented his personal views on the Muslim faith and the doctrine of jihad.

“I hope that this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect,” the pontiff added.

Today an internet statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group led by Iraq’s branch of al Qaeda, threatened reprisals against “worshippers of the cross” for the Pope’s remarks.

“We shall break the cross and spill the wine. … (you will have no choice but) Islam or death,” said the statement, citing a hadith (saying of the Prophet Mohammed) promising Muslims that they would “conquer Rome… as they conquered Constantinople”.

“We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya. God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the Mujahideen.”

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Just great! Would someone please ask the Pope to shut his yap-trap?!

Bush to UN: An agenda for freedom
He speaks Tuesday, but will world leaders listen?

Howard LaFranchi
The Christian Science Monitor

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. - When President Bush speaks to the United Nations General Assembly here this week, he will studiously avoid Iran’s President Mahmoud Amadinejad.

And Mr. Bush probably won’t take up the controversial leader’s challenge to the American president to face him in a “civilizational debate.”

Article link

We all know, if not for daddy’s money and influence, our draft-dodging bushy would have a Canadian address today. And to this day, he’s still running. Running AWAY, that is!
Oh, when will the NASCAR crowd wake up?

Allen on Meet the Press. Two words to describe Allen……lying liar.

By Michael D. Shear and Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 18, 2006; Page A01

Virginia’s U.S. Senate candidates clashed on national television yesterday over the war in Iraq and President Bush’s leadership, offering the sharpest contrast yet in a campaign that has become central to the partisan struggle for control of Congress this fall.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Republican Sen. George Allen and Democratic challenger James Webb also confronted issues of race and gender and debated the use of torture in the war on terror. But the exchange largely centered on a controversial war that has become the defining issue of the Nov. 7 midterm elections.

Read more here
Go here to watch the debate

There’s a reason Bush is ranting and raving about changing the Geneva Conventions, making the changes retroactive…….and demanding it be done NOW. Reasons beyond what we know. The scope of torture and illegal detentions is far beyond what we know. The damage is done. And that asshole should have to pay for it.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries.

“It was hard to believe I-d get out,” Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release - without charge - last month. “I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell.”

Read more here

A new documentary is coming out, entitled The U.S. Versus John Lennon, made by David Leaf and John Scheinfeld. Much of the film draws on the research of historian Jon Wiener and his book, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files. Essentially, the FBI tried to shut Lennon’s political activism down, and they succeeded - even though one of their own reports, establishing that Lennon was a peace activist opposed to violence, contradicted their stated reason for going after him.

While J. Edgar Hoover is no longer around to abuse his nearly unchallenged power at the FBI, with news reports earlier this year that the Pentagon and other federal agencies illegally kept records on various peace groups because they considered them national security threats, the documentary is quite timely. It’s always struck me as sad and troubling that while dissent is a core America principle, fiercely fought for by our founding fathers, it seems there’s always a sizable faction in America that views peaceful dissent as unpatriotic. When peace activists demonstrate, legally and peacefully, the Secret Service, FBI, police or other agencies will not only survey them but often attempt to identify and monitor them as well. While it’s understandable to monitor a demonstration near, say, the White House, there’s a undeniable, long track record of deeper paranoia from the authorities regarding peace activists. (Although it must be said, some older sheriffs and police chiefs, former demonstrators themselves, exercise more common sense.) When people demonstrate peacefully, they are in fact showing the ultimate respect for the United States Government - it says they believe in the process of law, of dialogue, and are, for instance, not interested in the violent overthrow of the government. Despite this, some factions - most often, in the Defense Department or law enforcement - view them as threats. Thus may a middle-aged lesbian vegetarian be classified as a potential terrorist.

Jon Wiener discusses John Lennon and the FBI with Terry Gross on Fresh Air here.

He has a website dealing with the FBI files here.

The site for the documentary is here.

And the official John Lennon website is here.

The trailer is below.

John Lennon - “Watching the Wheels”

This is probably my favorite song from Double Fantasy, the last John Lennon album released before his untimely death.