Rory Gallagher
Too Much Alcohol

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It is always painful to watch George stumble his way through press conferences. He can-t get through a sentence without at least two-three “uhs,” his eye lids flutter up and down in what my daughter, Carly, calls the “liar’s blink” and just because it is painful that a human like that is ostensibly the leader of the free world. There is always a plethora of things that he says, does, or screws up on to write about but this time what caught my attention happened during the Q & A. George was asked if he thought the economic sanctions on Iran would work because so many European nations trade with that country.

He stopped to collect his thoughts with what he thought must-ve looked like a studied and careful demeanor, but more like someone with a sour tummy, and said: “well, let’s put it this way…money trumps peace, sometimes. In other words, commercial interests are very powerful interests throughout the world,” (I added the italics). It is always interesting with people who frequently play fast and loose with the truth, such as the liars in BushCo, once in awhile, if they talk long enough they tell a truth.

“Money trumps peace” is the fundamental reason for the invasions and subsequent gory and violent occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. In Richard Behan’s excellent article: From Iraq to Afghanistan: Connecting the Dots with Oil, he brilliantly follows the history of the oil-money trail in these countries that are one, rich in oil, and two, well placed for the transportation and delivery of oil. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan, or their leaders or governments had anything to do with 9-11, but they were in the way of oil and other industries that profit from oil, so they had to go. Money trumped peace in those countries and they are destroyed and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghanis and Americans have been slaughtered because they were blocking American imperialistic profiteering.

Read more at CommonDreams

H/T Patriot for sending this article in!

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Can these idiots get anything right? You’d think they would have checked before putting out a news release. But of course, they got so friggin excited when they thought they had her. I got some news for the Republican Study Committee …..you better go back to studying, because you’re idiots. Oh wait, that’s not news!

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans quickly retracted a news release that accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of violating copyrights of C-SPAN, the cable channel that televises House and Senate proceedings.

The GOP took Pelosi to task because her new blog used video of this week’s Iraq war debate, but then backtracked Thursday after learning C-SPAN had no copyright for the footage.

The Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative House members, contended in an afternoon news release that Pelosi’s Web log violated copyright and trademark law by pirating “for partisan purposes” clips of members speaking on the House floor.

The clips, hosted by the popular video’sharing Web site YouTube, have C-SPAN’s logo visible.

“As of noon today, the speaker had posted at least 16 videos that are copyrighted C-SPAN material from the House floor,” according to the release from RSC spokesman Brad Dayspring. He cited an unnamed C-SPAN employee responsible for answering copyright questions from congressional employees.

Not so, said C-SPAN spokeswoman Jennifer Moire. The videos on Pelosi’s blog, called The Gavel, came from the House chamber, where the footage is shot by cameras owned by Congress, not C-SPAN.

Read more at Yahoo News

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I guess you’ll see here what you don’t see in the newspapers or on the MSM. If Americans had to look at pictures such as these everyday, maybe the war would be over by now.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Images of medics treating horrific injuries in Iraq and the anguished faces of wounded U.S. soldiers are juxtaposed in a new exhibit with pictures of youthful veterans back home dealing with life as amputees.

“The Sacrifice,” by award-winning war photographer James Nachtwey, shows U.S. soldiers in Iraq receiving frantic medical treatment in a helicopter and medics working to repair the carnage of war at a field hospital.

That chaos is shown beside more tranquil views, such as a returned serviceman with a prosthetic leg holding his surfboard after riding a curl and a one-legged young man chatting with his fiancée during a break from his rehabilitation regimen.

“This is one of the costs of this war. The money is the easy part. This, the injuries and the people that are lost, is the real cost,” Nachtwey said while hanging the exhibit, which opens on Friday at 401 Projects.

“It’s important for the people of our country to understand the nature of the sacrifice being made.

“These are mainly young people, mainly in their 20s, athletic, active people who have sustained a great loss and want to move on with their lives.”

Since the Iraq war began with the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, there have been 3,125 U.S. personnel killed and 23,417 wounded, Pentagon data show. As the four-year mark approaches, U.S. public opinion has turned broadly against the war.

Read more at Reuters

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MOSCOW: The good news about President Vladimir Putin’s acerbic assault on American foreign policy in Munich last weekend is that the bad old days of global ideological confrontation - of blocs and proxy wars, dissidents and spies, arms races and mutually assured destruction - will probably remain in the dustbin of history.

The bad news is that Cold War II could be just as messy.

For all the talk of strategic partnership and even personal friendship between Putin and President George W. Bush, the relationship between Russia and the United States has reached its lowest point since the Soviet Union collapsed a decade and a half ago. And with presidential elections in both countries coming in 2008, it is unlikely to get better, since candidates rarely score points at home by being conciliatory abroad.

The two countries are now openly competing for influence in Europe, in the Caucasus and in Central Asia, where access to natural resources and military bases has become paramount for both.

The Bush administration’s plan to build ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic is viewed with outright hostility here. So is NATO’s flirtation with Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics that Russia considers, rightly or wrongly, part of its historic sphere of influence.

Read more at the International Herald Tribune

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A Sunni group has claimed responsibility for the first bombing. Is this the crap in Iraq spilling into Iran? Is it American sponsored in hopes of starting a war? Ya gotta wonder….

TEHRAN, Iran - A bomb exploded in southeastern Iran late Friday, near the site where an earlier explosion this week killed 11 members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, the state-run news agency IRNA reported.

“Minutes ago, the sound of a bomb explosion was heard in one of Zahedan’s streets,” the agency said. The report offered no further details, including whether there were casualties.

On Wednesday, a car blew up a bus owned by the elite troops in Zahedan, capital of the Sistan-Baluchestan province on the border with Pakistan.

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The house vote on the non-binding resolution against the troop surge is over. Yeas have it. Yeas 246. Nays 182 17 Republicans voted for it. 2 Democrats (Marshall (Ga) and Taylor(Ms)) voted against it. Roll call here.

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This isn’t news, but it’s an interesting article. I also heard this week that non-citizen U.S. soldiers are not reported in the death count of U.S. troops. I wonder how many foreigners we’ve recruited with the promise of citizenship who have lost their lives. I guess we’ll never know…..

On both sides of the Atlantic, a process of spinning science is preventing a serious discussion about the state of affairs in Iraq.

The government in Iraq claimed last month that since the 2003 invasion between 40,000 and 50,000 violent deaths have occurred. Few have pointed out the absurdity of this statement.

There are three ways we know it is a gross underestimate. First, if it were true, including suicides, South Africa, Colombia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia have experienced higher violent death rates than Iraq over the past four years. If true, many North and South American cities and Sub-Saharan Africa have had a similar murder rate to that claimed in Iraq. For those of us who have been in Iraq, the suggestion that New Orleans is more violent seems simply ridiculous.

Secondly, there have to be at least 120,000 and probably 140,000 deaths per year from natural causes in a country with the population of Iraq. The numerous stories we hear about overflowing morgues, the need for new cemeteries and new body collection brigades are not consistent with a 10 per cent rise in death rate above the baseline.

And finally, there was a study, peer-reviewed and published in The Lancet, Europe’s most prestigious medical journal, which put the death toll at 650,000 as of last July. The study, which I co-authored, was done by the standard cluster approach used by the UN to estimate mortality in dozens of countries each year. While the findings are imprecise, the lower range of possibilities suggested that the Iraq government was at least downplaying the number of dead by a factor of 10.

Read more here

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I’m not making this up! Alaska Representative Don Young (of Bridge to Nowhere and Don Young’s Way fame) just effectively called for the execution of any representative who votes for the Iraq War Resolution tomorrow in a speech on the floor of the house today during the marathon debate on the resolution.

Here’s what he said:

Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.

He attributed this quote to Abraham Lincoln, without providing any reference to where he got this quote or when and where Lincoln supposedly said it.

There’s a problem with this quote, though (among several): Lincoln never said it, or anything remotely close to it!!! Think about it! A Republican representative just lied on the floor of the house and called for his opponents’ execution!

More at the DailyKos

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This guy is bound and determined to screw the poor. And he won’t be happy until he screws them in every single way possible. What’s he thinking? Remove their health services and maybe they’ll die?

Members of the Illinois delegation are gearing up to fight proposed cuts to Cook County Hospital and others that provide care to the poor, which public health officials say could result in hospital and clinic closures and other cuts to services in critical areas.

The Bush administration is moving to impose cost limits for public health care providers around the country, partly by limiting payments to so-called “safety net” providers that care for a high percentage of uninsured and Medicaid patients. State officials estimate that Illinois public officials could lose $623 million under the plan each year.

“At a time when states are working toward increasing health care coverage for the uninsured, (this) proposal would thwart their progress by weakening an already fragile safety net,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) wrote in a letter to colleagues on Thursday. “The Medicaid program is a shared responsibility between the states and federal government, and attempts to shift the cost burden onto states will leave them with no choice but to cut benefits or eliminate coverage.”

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is also a co’signer of the letter, and other members of the Illinois delegation talked Thursday about fighting the proposed cuts in the U.S. House. Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) is leading the charge for the delegation in the House.

Read more here

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If only…..

MONTPELIER - A group of Vermont lawmakers, following the lead of many of their constituents, are pushing a resolution calling for President Bush’s impeachment because he has “acted in a manner contrary to his trust as president and subversive of constitutional government.”

The group may have a tough time enacting their proposal because the House speaker said she intended to send the resolution to a committee whose chairman expressed doubt he’d have time to get to it this year.

Nonetheless, advocates still intend to pressure legislative leaders to adopt the resolution and 23 towns around the state are due to consider similar measures on their Town Meeting Day ballots next month.

Organizers want legislatures around the country to adopt resolutions asking for impeachment proceedings to begin against the president. They argue that if resolutions are adopted, Congress would be forced to consider them under a little-known provision of a parliamentary manual drafted by Thomas Jefferson for the conduct of the House and Senate.

Read more at the TimesArgus

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The FBI is investigating whether Nevada’s governor failed to report gifts from a military contractor that he received while serving in Congress, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

Investigators are also examining whether Jim Gibbons, a Republican, performed any official acts on behalf of the contractor in exchange for gifts or payments, according to the officials.

The governor released a lengthy statement Thursday in which he defended his efforts to show the contractor’s software to fellow members of the House Intelligence and Armed Services committees, and said he has “never been notified of any investigation by the FBI.”

“I am confident that my actions were ethical,” his statement said. “However, if there is ever found to be an inaccuracy or mistake, I will rectify it.”

Continue reading at SFGate.com

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Someone at Ameriblog posted a link to this article. I found it very interesting……..

Calling Canada’s claim of sovereignty over the Northwest Passage “excessive” and “tenuous,” a top Pentagon adviser says Canada should work through the United Nations to protect its security and environmental concerns in the Arctic.

“The Law of the Sea does not support some of these excessive claims to the passage,” says James Kraska, the oceans policy adviser to the United States joint chiefs of staff, in an article that has the full backing of the Bush administration and was to be released today in Ottawa.

“Canada could achieve all its most important policy goals for the passage, and particularly widespread acceptance of and compliance of Canadian regulations for enhanced safety, security and environmental protection of the passage, by crafting those regulations through the International Maritime Organization.”

The IMO is the UN agency charged with preventing pollution and ensuring the safety of the world’s waterways.

Mr. Kraska’s 22-page article, an advance copy of which was obtained by the Citizen, appears in a compendium of essays to be released today by the Conference of Defence Associations Institute, titled Defence Requirements for Canada’s Arctic.

For decades, the U.S. has not recognized Canada’s claim to the Northwest Passage, a difference that flared again a year ago when Prime Minister Stephen Harper publicly upbraided U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins after he restated his government’s position in a speech.

Arctic sovereignty was a key plank in the Conservative election platform, though the Tories’ promised purchase of icebreakers and the establishment of a deepwater port in Canada’s Far North have yet to be fulfilled.

Continue reading here

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SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The Taliban have deployed 10,000 fighters for a spring offensive of “bloody attacks” against foreign troops in Afghanistan, a rebel commander said on Friday.

More than 4,000 people, a quarter of them civilians, were killed in fighting last year, the most violent year since the Taliban were ousted in 2001. NATO commanders and analysts warn this year could be just as bad or worse.

As the harsh winter snows melt, the insurgents have resumed their attacks, mostly in the south, where they have captured a major town and have threatened a key hydroelectric dam.

Mullah Abdul Rahim, the Taliban’s operational commander for southern Helmand province — the opium center of the world’s major producer — said militants would step up attacks in spring.

“As the weather becomes warm and leaves turn green, we will unleash bloody attacks on the U.S.-led foreign troops,” Rahim told Reuters by satellite phone from a secret location.

“Our war preparations, especially in southern Afghanistan and in Helmand province, are complete and for this our 10,000 fighters are ready to take up arms the moment they are ordered.”

Read more at Reuters

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You’re right, it isn’t. Neither is ‘dickhead’.

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