Robert Cray, Eric Clapton
Before You Accuse Me

Eubie Blake and Gregory Hines, singing Eubie’s “Low Down Blues” in a rare performance in 1979. Gregory’s singing is incredible and Eubie doesn’t hide the fact that he loves it! This was an awesome performance, and why it is not easily available to the general public is beyond me. Both men are legends in American entertainment, and sadly both are now no longer with us.

H/T nattatattat for this Youtube video!

I guess the BBC News article got to Keith, too. The sacrifice line was the one that made me want to puke. Olbermann gave a great commentary tonight on it. Transcript below:

If in your presence an individual tried to sacrifice an American serviceman or woman, would you intervene?

Would you at least protest?

What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them?

What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them - and was then to announce his intention to sacrifice hundreds, maybe thousands, more?

This is where we stand tonight with the BBC report of President Bush’s “new Iraq strategy,” and his impending speech to the nation, which, according to a quoted senior American official, will be about troop increases and “sacrifice.”

The president has delayed, dawdled and deferred for the month since the release of the Iraq Study Group.

He has seemingly heard out everybody, and listened to none of them.

If the BBC is right - and we can only pray it is not - he has settled on the only solution all the true experts agree cannot possibly work: more American personnel in Iraq, not as trainers for Iraqi troops, but as part of some flabby plan for “sacrifice.”

Sacrifice!

Continue reading here

Hey Congress…… Here’s a solution……QUIT FUNDING IT!!!!

The war in Iraq is not cheap: weekly spending of about $2 billion; monthly spending of about $8 billion, and going up, according to estimates. Overall, the war will easily end up costing $1 trillion, and maybe substantially more if President Bush decides to “surge” the forces this year.

The Pentagon received an “emergency” $70 billion for Iraq and anti-terrorist operations in October. Come February, the Bush administration is going to say it needs another $100 billion for this year alone.
In truth, we can’t be sure of any of these numbers, since the Pentagon says it cannot tell us what the war has already cost, will not tell us what it might cost in the future and has ignored congressional requests and legislation asking for honest budgets, transparent reports on spending and projections of future costs.

Senators and representatives have had to rely on their own estimates to get some sense of the costs for the war. The Congressional Research Service estimates that Iraq has already cost about $380 billion, before the next “emergency” request, but confesses that in the absence of data from the Pentagon, it cannot be sure this is correct.

Read more at the Chicago Tribune

Dear God, Please stop talking to Pat Robertson. Talk to Jimmy Carter instead. Thank you!

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. –In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in “mass killing” late in 2007.

“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”

Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

Robertson said God also told him that the U.S. only feigns friendship with Israel and that U.S. policies are pushing Israel toward “national suicide.”

Robertson suggested in January 2006 that God punished then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a stroke for ceding Israeli-controlled land to the Palestinians.

Read more here

Beijing - China and Iran have signed a memorandum of understanding worth more than $16bn to develop a giant natural gas field, an Iranian diplomat in Beijing confirmed on Friday, reported the China Daily.
According to Iranian media reports, China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) and the National Iranian Oil Company signed the agreement over the development of the North Pars gas field on Wednesday.
[tag]
North Pars gas field[/tag], which is located 85km north of the giant South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf, has an estimated 80 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

According to the Iran Daily, the project, which is one of the largest of its kind in Iran, would involve the development of the gas field in four phases. It is expected to take eight years to become operational.

Read more here and here.

Appropriations
ROBERT BYRD, D-W.Va.
Byrd, the longest’serving member of the U.S. Senate, has held more Senate party leadership positions- including two terms as majority leader - than anyone. Now 88, he has grown increasingly liberal since his first statewide race in 1946. Byrd joined the Appropriations committee in 1959 and chaired it from 1989 to 1994 and again in 2001. His control of the panel and its role in federal spending prompted critics to label him “the king of pork-barrel politics.”

MSNBC has a great guide to the new house and senate committee chairs. You can find the House guide here and the Senate guide here. Let’s hope they can bring about some very productive investigations and brighten the future path our country will take.

I sincerely hope ol’ Mitt invests every nickel he has in this bid. To, one day, see this bastard living under a bridge would be so delicious… and fitting.

Romney to submit paperwork for 2008 bid

BOSTON - Gov. Mitt Romney this week will submit the necessary paperwork to form a presidential exploratory committee, but not until funeral services for former President Gerald R. Ford have concluded, according to a top aide familiar with his plans.

Romney will file by Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission, the aide said, a registration that will allow the Massachusetts governor to raise and spend money in pursuit of the 2008 GOP nomination.
…

If successful, Romney would become the first Mormon elected president.

Source: Glen Johnson, AP Writer - Yahoo! News

The theme of his speech will be “sacrifice.” What sacrifices has he made? What sacrifices haveC 99% of congress members made? How about we “sacrifice” the President, Vice President, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the idiots who planned this war. Please…..call your congress members today and tell them NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!
Contact your Representatives hereand your Senators here

US President George W Bush intends to reveal a new Iraq strategy within days, the BBC has learnt.

The speech will reveal a plan to send more US troops to Iraq to focus on ways of bringing greater security, rather than training Iraqi forces.

The move comes with figures from Iraqi ministries suggesting that deaths among civilians are at record highs.

The US president arrived back in Washington on Monday after a week-long holiday at his ranch in Texas.

The BBC was told by a senior administration source that the speech setting out changes in Mr Bush’s Iraq policy is likely to come in the middle of next week.

Its central theme will be sacrifice.

The speech, the BBC has been told, involves increasing troop numbers.

The exact mission of the extra troops in Iraq is still under discussion, according to officials, but it is likely to focus on providing security rather than training Iraqi forces.

The proposal, if it comes, will be highly controversial.

Already one senior Republican senator has called it Alice in Wonderland.

Read more at BBCNews

BURLINGTON, United States (AFP) - Socialism will get its first-ever face in the US Senate on Thursday when veteran Vermont politician Bernard “Bernie” Sanders takes a seat in the powerful upper house of the legislature.

In a country where most people think more of North Korea when they hear the word “socialism” — rather than, for instance, democratic socialist Scandinavian countries — Sanders, 65, will be a new phenomenon in the staid two-party system of Washington.

The son of Jewish immigrants from Poland is hardly an extreme leftist. But those in his home state used to his gruff, straight’spoken ways say he could stir up the debate over the policies of President George W. Bush as he assumes his role as a key ally of the new but slim Democratic majority.

Sanders swept to victory with a decisive 65 percent of the vote in the Vermont senatorial race last November.

Running officially as an independent but never hiding his socialist ideas, he trounced a businessman who spent seven million dollars of his own fortune in the race.

But it was hardly surprising after a three decade career in Vermont politics, where people have learned that his disheveled air of a college professor and his strong accent from his native Brooklyn, New York, don’t pose a threat to US democracy.

“I’m a democratic socialist,” he says, explaining his beliefs.

Read more at YahooNews