[kml_flashembed movie="http://blueherald.com/BH_cbplayer.swf" height="274" width="320" fvars="sr_url=uploads/flash/Stevie_Nicks_Sara.flv" /]

Fleetwood Mac / Stevie Nicks: Sara

Isn’t it funny how our senses can sometimes remind us of past experiences? I caught a piece of this song today on the radio, and it took me back to the morning of Sept. 11th, 2001. I remember sitting in front of my computer that morning listening to this song, when a friend in a chat room told me to (quickly) turn on the news… that the first tower had just been hit.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.

More at The Center for Public Integrity

Meet Gracie Mae. A very lucky tiger’striped feline from Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

Gracie Mae decided to take a nap in a suitcase, and the accidental stowaway soon found herself 1,300-miles away, in Fort Worth, TX!

Read more about the cat who came close to being renamed ‘Suitcase’, here.

I’m having second thoughts about moving my Mom in with me after finding this while packing her things. One of her biggest regrets…..

This can’t be… the economy is ‘Doing Remarkably Well’!

Dow Sinks Another 200 in Opening Minutes

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks fell in another rocky opening Wednesday, with investors uneasy about the health of the economy and corporate earnings after disappointing reports from big names like Apple Inc. and Motorola Inc. In the first minutes of trading, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 261.10, or 2.18 percent, to 11,710.09.
[...]

Meanwhile, a disappointing forecast from Apple showed how fragile investor sentiment is.
[...]

Shares of Apple fell more than 10 percent in early trading.

Tear down those walls

Tens of Thousands Flee Gaza for Egypt:

Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured from the Gaza Strip into Egypt Wednesday after masked gunmen with explosives destroyed most of the seven-mile wall dividing the border town of Rafah.

Gazans crossed on foot, in cars or in donkey carts to buy cigarettes, fuel, and other items made scarce by an Israeli blockade of their impoverished territory. Across the coastal strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, people pushed into buses and piled into rickety pickup trucks heading to Egypt and a rare opportunity to escape months of isolation.

Police from the militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, directed the traffic. Egyptian border guards took no action.

“Freedom is good. We need no border after today,” said unemployed 29-year-old Mohammed Abu Ghazal.

Even before they get built

Richard F. Cortez, Mayor of McAllen, Texas,.. Rio Grande Valley:

Most of us who live in the Valley consider the fence a $200 million waste of taxpayer money. We know it won’t stop potential terrorists or illegal immigrants from hiking across the border. It won’t stop those with legal documents from coming to America and overstaying their welcome. And it won’t keep people from entering the country using professional smugglers or fraudulent forms of identification.

What a fence will do is divide communities on both sides of the border. It will provide a false sense of security, betray the Valley’s rich history and encroach on privately owned, agricultural, suburban and urban land.

The following is from a site called BraveNewFilms, and is roughly two months old. I thought it worthy of a re-hash.

John Gibson is the worst of all rightwing pundits, if you ask me. Not only does he lie with the best of them, he’s plain, flat out mean too! If Walter Cronkite were to walk into FOX studios with an AK-47 and wipe these assholes out, would anyone hold it against him?