BB King and Shemekia Copeland
Everyday I Have the Blues

I lovvvvve the blues. My favOrite music.

As explanation to readers for why his conservative newspaper will endorse Democrats in the mid-term elections, on October 5 the chairman of The Johnson County Sun wrote an editorial titled Why Our Shift. In part it reads:

“The Republican Party has changed, and it has changed monumentally.

You almost cannot be a victorious traditional Republican candidate with mainstream values in Johnson County or in Kansas anymore, because these candidates never get on the ballot in the general election. They lose in low turnout primaries, where the far right shows up to vote in disproportionate numbers.

To win a Republican primary, the candidate must move to the right.

What does to-the-right mean?

It means anti-public education, though claiming to support it.

It means weak support of our universities, while praising them.

It means anti’stem cell research.

It means ridiculing global warming.

It means gay bashing. Not so much gay marriage, but just bashing gays.

It means immigrant bashing. I’m talking about the viciousness.

It means putting religion in public schools. Not just prayer.

It means mocking evolution and claiming it is not science.

It means denigrating even abstinence-based sex education.”

You can read the complete editorial here

There is no good news, so they’ll limit the amount of bad news to be reported. Good Lord when is this nightmare going to end?????

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The number of embedded journalists reporting alongside U.S. troops in Iraq has dropped to its lowest level of the war even as the conflict heats up on the streets of Baghdad and in the U.S. political campaign.

In the past few weeks, the number of journalists reporting assigned to U.S. military units in Iraq has settled to below two dozen. Late last month, it fell to 11, its lowest, and has rebounded only slightly since.

During the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, more than 600 reporters, TV crews and photographers linked up with U.S. and British units. A year ago, when Iraqis went to the polls to ratify a new constitution, there were 114 embedded journalists.

“This is more than pathetic,” said Sig Christenson, a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News and president of Military Reporters and Editors, a journalists’ group. “It strikes me as dangerous” for the American public to get so little news of their military, said Christenson, who recently returned from an embedded assignment in Iraq.

Some journalists blame the decline on Pentagon bureaucracy, the reporting restrictions journalists face, and pressure by some commanders to avoid “negative” coverage. Both journalists and U.S. military officers point to declining interest in the long-running story, and the high cost, both in money and danger, of coverage.

Biscayne National Park

Police recommended Sunday that Israeli President Moshe Katsav be charged with rape, sexual assault and fraud, the most serious charges ever to face an Israeli leader.
The recommendation came at a meeting between police investigators and Attorney General Meni Mazuz. The final decision on whether to put the president on trial is up to Mazuz.
He does not have a deadline for making his decision and is expected to take several weeks to study the evidence.
Katsav has denied all wrongdoing. In a statement released by his office, his lawyer, Zion Amir, said police are not authorized to bring charges, noting that in the past, when police have recommended putting senior officials on trial, the attorney general has dismissed most of the cases.

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Additional information from Haaretz

State Rep Mark Cohen (D-PA), writing at Daily Kos, gives insight into the possibilites of the Democrats run for the presidency in 2008.

His entry: Will The Race Come Down To Edwards, Feingold, and Clark? offers this poll: Will Hillary Clinton and Al Gore Seek The Democrat Nomination In 2008?

His entry: Warner Non-Candidacy Will Be The First Of Many offers this poll: As Of Now, Who Is Your First Choice For The Democrat Nomination?

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If this illegal war and failed policy aren’t reason enough not to vote for Republicans, I don’t know what is. They lied to get us in there, they fucked the whole thing up, refuse to listen to anyone who knows anything about war, refuse to admit failed policies, refuse to get a plan in order to get us out and continue to watch as our kids are killed and maimed.

51 U.S. DEATHS IN FIRST 15 DAYS OF OCTOBER

Non Mortal Casualties

How many of these wounded died out of country after transported to medical hospitals outside of Iraq or back to the U.S.???????? Traditionally, they don’t appear in death counts.

10/15/06 AP: Policeman and civilian killed in Kut, two bodies found near Suweira
South of the capital, a policeman and a civilian were killed in separate incidents near the city of Kut. Two bodies partially eaten by fish were pulled out of the Tigris river downstream of the capital near the town of Suweira.
10/15/06 Reuters; Roadside bombs kill one, wound 4 in Baghdad
A roadside bomb wounded two civilians in eastern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said…A roadside bomb killed a man and wounded two others in Amil district in southwestern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.
10/15/06 Reuters: Clashes between gunmen and police wound 3 policemen
Clashes between gunmen and Iraqi police on Saturday night left three policemen wounded in an area between Baghdad and Kut…police said. Nine gunmen were also arrested. The body of a civilian was later found in the same area, police said.
10/15/06 Reuters: Roadside bomb kills four civilians, wound six in Baghdad
A roadside bomb targeting the convoy of a Finance Ministry official killed four civilians and wounded six, including her bodyguard, in eastern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. Shaker was not hurt.
10/15/06 Reuters: Gunmen killed three women and two men in Mosul
Gunmen stormed a house and killed three women and two men in the northern city of Mosul, police said.
10/15/06 Reuters: Four bodies found in Falluja
Police found the bodies of four people, with gunshot wounds and signs of torture, near the Sunni stronghold of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, police said
10/15/06 AP: Death toll climbs to 63 in tit-for-tat killings north of Baghdad
Suspected Shiite militiamen killed at least 46 Sunni Arabs in a weekend rampage of revenge killing in a city north of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said Sunday, raising the toll in the latest sectarian bloodletting there to 63.
10/15/06 AP: Iraq’s Interior Ministry fires 3,000 in police force
Iraq’s Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry, whose police forces have been accused of complicity in sectarian attacks, has fired 3,000 employees accused of corruption or rights abuses and will change top commanders, a spokesman said Saturday.
10/15/06 MNF: 3 MND-B Soldiers killed by roadside bomb
Three Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldiers were killed at approximately 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 14, when the vehicle they were riding in was struck by an improvised-explosive device south of Baghdad.
10/15/06 KUNA: Four killed, 40 wounded ion four explosions in Kirkuk
a series of four blasts, two of them suicide bombs, killed at least four Iraqis and wounded 35 others. An improvised explosive device blew up at Domez crossroad killing two people and wounding four others.
10/15/06 MNF: MND-B Soldier dies of wounds following IED attack
A Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldier died at approximately 7:50 p.m. Friday from wounds he received when the vehicle he was riding in was struck by an improvised-explosive device southwest of Baghdad.

When 14 men were recently transferred to Gitmo, did you think they were the last held in secret CIA prisons? Think again.

MADRID (Reuters)

A suspected al Qaeda leader, accused of being involved in September 11 and planning the 2004 Madrid train bombings, has been imprisoned in a secret U.S. jail for the past year, Spain’s El Pais newspaper reported on Sunday.

Mustafa Setmarian, 48, a Syrian with Spanish citizenship, was captured in Pakistan in October 2005 and is held in a prison operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistani and European security service officials told El Pais.

A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Spain declined to comment on the report.

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From July, 2005

MADRID, Spain

Spanish officials have downplayed British press reports that a Syrian-born Spaniard — Mustafa Setmarian Nasar — who is linked to al Qaeda activities and the Madrid train bombings, was also behind the London bombings last week.

“That is not a fact that has been even minimally confirmed,” Spain’s secretary of state for security, Antonio Camacho, said at a public appearance in the town of El Escorial, near Madrid, on Monday.

article here

Amid all his other troubles, Vice President Richard Cheney is now stalked by a ghost from his past–the Richard Cheney who for five years was CEO of the Halliburton Company. When he left Halliburton in 2000 to become George W. Bush’s running mate, the Republican ticket was touted as two tough-minded business executives running against wimpish politicians. “The American people should be pleased they have a vice presidential nominee who has been successful in business,” Karen Hughes, Bush’s then-communications director, enthused.

A rather different story is told by a class-action investor lawsuit against Halliburton, recently revived after languishing for four years. It describes Cheney as not much different from other corporate titans ensnared by accusations of fraud. Brushing aside facts and subordinates’ warnings, CEO Cheney made a series of daring but wrong decisions that were disastrous for the company. The managerial incompetence was compounded by fraudulent accounting gimmicks that concealed the company’s true condition. Cheney, however, relentlessly issued bullish assurances, hiding the losses and pumping up the stock price.

Eventually, the truth caught up with the company–its stock tanked–but Cheney was already off to Washington, $40 million richer and running the country. He sold his shares at the top…

…Halliburton, meanwhile, is back on top. HAL soared on booming oil prices to $82 (before dropping back a bit), helped by the notorious no-bid contracts to rebuild war-ravaged Iraq. Cheney, one might say, did his part. War and rumors of war in the Middle East produce rising oil prices. Noncompetitive contracts eliminate the problem of cost overruns, since US taxpayers will pick up the tab. It seems the era of corporate corruption did not end with Enron, WorldCom and the other scandals. It relocated to Washington.

The Nation article (7/10/06) continues here

Not too long ago, the image of a Democratic governor was that of California’s Gray Davis, the listless, ideologically compromised bureaucrat who was so uninspiring that he couldn’t even maintain his grip on a very blue state. Then, two years ago, rabble-rousing rancher Brian Schweitzer snatched the top job in the formerly red state of Montana from the Republicans and quickly elbowed his way onto the national stage with so many ideas and so much energy that he was profiled on CBS’s 60 Minutes and then promoted for the presidency by a grassroots Internet campaign. This year Schweitzer will get company, perhaps a lot of it, as a team of smart, energetic progressives grab for governorships in what may well be the best year for Democrats in the states since 1990…

…The fight for control of statehouses is not merely about particular policies, however. With the federal government dominated by the forces of reaction, state government is far more likely than Washington to point the way out of the morass of the moment–and to produce the next generation of progressive leaders.

The Nation continues analysis of state races here