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POPSDemocrat tied to Obama wins special election in Mississippi More: The special election was held to fill the seat of former Rep. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who was appointed to serve out the remainder of Sen. Trent Lott’s term last December. Wicker had never faced a competitive race since first elected in 1994, and the district gave President Bush 62 percent of the vote in 2004. The results amount to a rebuke of the Republican strategy of trying nationalize the race by tying Childers to Sen. Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Obama held low approval ratings in the district, but the nearly $2 million that GOP groups poured into northern Mississippi failed to make the race a referendum on the national political landscape. A GOP House leadership aide told Politico last week that “if we don’t win in Mississippi, I think you are going to see a lot of people running around here looking for windows to jump out of.”
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POPSOklahoma Republican admits, "Iraq Probably a Mistake" More: Coburn at one point in the campaign reportedly said the war in Iraq was "absolutely not" a mistake. Vice President Dick Cheney, a vocal defender of the war, came to Tulsa to cam paign and raise money for Coburn. During that visit, Cheney criticized Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry for flip-flopping on the war by voting in the Senate to go to war but voting against adequate funding for the troops. Still, his comments at the town hall meeting may be the first time he has ever suggested the war was a mistake. Coburn's comment came less than a week after he returned from his second trip to Iraq since entering the Senate.
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POPSFormer CIA: Evidence Abounds for Impeachment of Bush & Cheney
The recent report detailing Iran's stopping its nuclear weapons program four years ago, is an example of how the administration knows it can no longer hide such "incontrovertible evidence" from the American people in the fallout from the misinformation they received on the Iraq War, McGovern said. He added that he had almost given up believing their were people still working at the top with a conscious and enough people at the top willing to let analysts do their job and accept independent analysis. McGovern also addressed the reasoning he believes is behind the threat of war with Iran. He believes Israel thinks they have a pledge from the White House to deal with Iran before Bush leaves office and relayed the story of the U.S.S. Liberty, which was attacked by the Israelis in 1967 and covered up by the U.S. Thirty-four U.S soldiers were killed and about 170 were seriously injured. "On June 8, 1967 Israel realized it could literally get away with murder," McGovern said.
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POPSWhen will Bush invade Saudi Arabia and Libya? NOT! If you've got oil and you've been in bed with the Bush's for decades you can send all the fighters you want to Iraq to kill U.S. soldiers. Is this treason? There have been 700 Al Qaeda soldiers enter Iraq since August 2006 and Al Qaeda is to blame for all the violence in Iraq? It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that Al Qaeda and foreign fighters were always a minor player in the violence and chaos released by Bush and the neocons in Iraq.
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POPSWhat can the budget for the Iraq War buy? Doesn't clip as well as I hoped so visit the website: Remarkable, that it is admitted these days (by generals, former administration appointees, and neocon architects of the war) that the war in Iraq is about controlling oil resources, and look what you could do with the money that we've spent on that fiasco. With $611 billion, you could convert all cars in America to run on ethanol nine times over. TheBudgetGraph.com estimates that converting the 136,568,083 registered cars in the United States to ethanol (conversion kits at $500) would cost $68.2 billion. Many, many environment-friendly cars on the road With $611 billion, you could convert all cars in America to run on ethanol nine times over. TheBudgetGraph.com estimates that converting the 136,568,083 registered cars in the United States to ethanol (conversion kits at $500) would cost $68.2 billion.
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POPSFor Republicans, New Pessimism Spells Trouble More: Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani has wide appeal for his leadership as New York City mayor after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but his social liberalism and two divorces are a show-stopper for many. So is the Mormon faith of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney Their short descriptions of Giuliani were a mixed bag: along with "confident" and "leader," there was "cocky," "cold," and "arrogant." Asked which family member he most reminds them of, one woman answered, "the evil stepfather." The group was vaguely aware of his two divorces and estrangement from his two children One man guessed that Mr. Thompson has children in their 40s; none seemed to know that his second wife isn't even that old, and he has two small children. As for Vice President Dick Cheney, two voters said he should retire. Others called him "cold," "sick," "weak," "secretive," "calculating" and, at best, "very influential."
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POPSWhy does Bush want to attack Iran? It's not as dangerous as Pakistan. More: The safe haven provided by Pakistan has already had dire effects on U.S. and NATO efforts to fight the resurgent Taliban next door in Afghanistan Dozens of Taliban commanders have moved their wives and children to Pakistan, where they live in the suburbs of cities like Peshawar and Islamabad The militants dominate in areas beyond the tribal areas as well. Armed groups have effectively seized control in places like the picturesque Swat Valley, where a jihadi leader named Mullah Fazlullah rides a black horse and commands hundreds of men under the noses of a nearby Pakistani Army division that seldom leaves its barracks. Peshawar is perhaps the most important production and distribution center for Taliban and other Islamist material. Jihadi CD and DVD shops abound. One shop features large posters of the notorious Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah Akhund, who was killed in Helmand earlier this year, and pictures of Guantnamo inmates in their orange jumpsuits behind barbed wire
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POPSIRAQ: Reduction in Violence = Ethnically Cleansed Neighborhoods More: Christoff’s conclusions echo that of ret. Gen. James Jones last month, who observed “progress” in a Shi’a-led ethnic cleansing campaign. Also in attendance at the hearing was Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) Stuart Bowen. In his quarterly report to Congress released today, Bowen acknowledged the reduction in violence but stated that it has not been accompanied by tangible political reconciliation, a finding that was neglected by the traditional media in its reporting today. In Baghdad, for example, Provincial Reconstruction Team officials note: Despite reduced violence, officials are pessimistic that lasting reconciliation is occurring. … In Diyala, there is a desire to work toward reconciliation, but it will take years to overcome ill-will between tribes. Earlier this month, Gen. David Petraeus confidently declared, “There’s a local reconciliation” in Diyala province.
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POPSMerle Haggard has left the Republican Party - Sorry n2 More: The thing that gets under my skin most about George W. is his intention to install fear in people," he said, after walking me down a hallway lined with gold and platinum records "This is America. We're proud. We're not afraid of a bunch of terrorists. W is all about terror alerts and scaring us at airports. We're changing the Constitution out of fear. We spend all our time looking up each other's dresses. Haggard sensed reluctance among the Hillarians to embrace his endorsement—in part, I imagine, because he's not shy about saying that one of the biggest things Hillary has going for her is Bill, who ranks up with Reagan in the Haggard pantheon and not only because the former President used to have a pickup truck with Astroturf in the back. "He cared about this country, about our problems," Haggard said, with a twinkle. "And I figure that whatever she doesn't know, he does." When Al Gore wins the Nobel and Merle Haggard leaves the party, it's a bad day for Republicans.
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POPSU.S. Military and Iraqis Agree: Blackwater unprovoked, Fired on Fleeing Citizens and Cars More: U.S. soldiers did not find any bullets that came from AK-47 assault rifles or BKC machine guns used by Iraqi policemen and soldiers. They found evidence of ammunition used in American-made weapons, including M4 rifle 5.56mm brass casings, M240B machine gun 7.62mm casings, M203 40mm grenade launcher casings, and stun-grenade dunnage, or packing. At least two cars, a black four-door taxi and a blue Volkswagen sedan, had their back windshields shot out, but their front windshields were intact, indicating they were shot while driving away from the square, according to the photos and soldiers An Iraqi colonel walked up to Tarsa and described the Blackwater shooters as men in "tan uniforms, black helmets, and that flag," pointing at the U.S. flag on Tarsa's sleeve. Their actions underscore the long-standing tensions between the U.S. military and private security companies -- and the military's concerns that such shootings could undermine U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq.
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POPSBlackwater draws guns on U.S. Soldiers More: Testifying before Congress last week, 38-year-old Blackwater chief Erik Prince vigorously defended his company's "dedicated security professionals" In deflecting questions about a drunken Blackwater operative who allegedly shot and killed a bodyguard for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi in the Green Zone on Christmas Eve last year, Prince said that the employee, later identified as Andrew Moonen, had been fined and fired. But on Friday House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman released a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recounting evidence that Moonen was able to return to Iraq and worked there for another company.
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POPSThe People vs. The War Profiteers- "Soldier is that guts in your ice?" More (8 pages more, read the article): U.S.-military regulations state that once a trailer has been used to store corpses it can never again be loaded with food or drink intended for human consumption The diseases that may be communicated include aids,hepatitis, tuberculosis, septicemia, meningitis, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human variant of mad cow. Bud Conyers next caught sight of trailer R-89, about a month later, packed not with human casualties but with bags of ice—ice that was going into drinks served to American troops. You could still see a little bit of matter from the bodies, stuff that looked kind of pearly, and blood from the stomachs. It hadn't even been hosed down Conyers and Logsdon say that R-89 was not the only truck that was loaded with ice after being used as a mortuary. in 2006 alone, according to Forbes, Halliburton C.E.O. David Lesar collected nearly $30 million in compensation. Halliburton's stock price rose fourfold from $10 to $40.
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POPSIraq: Another Dirty Secret - South African Mercenaries, former White Apartheid era Veterans More: The root of that distrust dates to the mid-1990s, when thousands of white officers left South Africa's security agencies during the transition from apartheid to majority black rule. Unemployed soldiers and police joined private security companies that got embroiled in African wars from Angola to Sierra Leone. A wheelchair-bound man who owns an SUV with vanity plates that proclaim "Baghdad," Brink lost a leg and fingers in 2005 to a mine that exploded under his armored vehicle in Baqouba, a hotbed of the Iraqi insurgency. Since returning to South Africa, he has been encouraging wounded colleagues to apply for U.S. worker's compensation under the U.S. Defense Base Act, which applies to all workers, American or foreign, who are subcontracted in war zones by Washington Brink was advising them on how to file for U.S. worker's compensation. I'll buy a farm if I can collect on my claim, said Gouws, 45, But I don't recommend this method of getting a farm to anyone else
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POPS729 Days in Iraq: Thanks, See Ya, Wouldn't Want To Be Ya More: "I would assume, and I would hope, that when I get back from a deployment of 22 months, my senior leadership in Washington, the leadership that extended us in the first place, would take care of us once we got home," Hobot said. Both Hobot and Anderson believe the Pentagon deliberately wrote orders for 729 days instead of 730.
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POPSSCOOP: Bush Promises Iraq Invasion Congress should never subjugate themselves to the ambitions of one individual ever again. The Founding Fathers foresaw this and wrote the Constitution with checks and balances giving Congress the responsibility of making declarations of war. Anybody, (1) who knew George Bush, (2) witnessed his pathetic address to the UN that showed it was a cursory walk-through before launching the invasion, knew he was lying all the time. I expect to hear the rightwing lunatic mythology that there was widespread support for this war but in fact the US was for the war only if Bush would secure a UN resolution and obtain a strong coalition mimicking the coalition in Kuwait in 1991. The Founding Fathers didn't want us to be ruled by Kings and Bush and Cheney are no exception. IMPEACH!
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POPSKucinich: Bush Cronies and privitization of Iraqi Oil More: The connections between Hunt Oil Company and the Bush Administration are numerous: * Mr. Ray Hunt, CEO of Hunt Oil, acted as the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee for President George W. Bush in 2002, led the Republican National Committee's Victory Fund for President George W. Bush and personally donated $20,000 to the Committee. * Mr. Hunt contributed $100,000 toward inaugural festivities for President George W. Bush in 2001, while Hunt Consolidated contributed $250,000 toward the 2005 Bush presidential inaugural gala. * Mr. Hunt has also given generously toward construction of the Bush library by securing $35 million in additional property for the endeavor. * President George W. Bush has twice appointed Mr. Hunt to a seat on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which is said to have access to intelligence that experts acknowledge is advantageous to the international energy interest of the Hunt Oil Company.
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POPSHispanic - Patriot - Illegal Immigrant More: Earlier this year President George Bush commuted the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff. In so doing, the President spared Libby two and a half years in prison for his conviction for lying to federal investigators. The President cited Libby's "exceptional public service" and prior lack of a criminal record as explanation for his action. He concluded that Libby's sentence was "excessive" and the punishment "harsh." In light of the sacrifice made by Armando Soriano, one wonders whether deporting his father is a far more "excessive" and "harsh" punishment?
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POPSBush knew Saddam had NO Weapons of Mass Destruction But the CIA officers working on the Sabri case kept collecting information. "We checked on everything he told us." French intelligence eavesdropped on his telephone conversations and shared them with the CIA. These taps "validated" Sabri's claims, according to one of the CIA officers. The officers brought this material to the attention of the newly formed Iraqi Operations Group within the CIA. But those in charge of the IOG were on a mission to prove that Saddam did have WMD and would not give credit to anything that came from the French. "They kept saying the French were trying to undermine the war," said one of the CIA officers.
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POPSCheney Aide, "We're One Attack Away From Our Goal" More revealing is Goldsmith's description of how the Bush administration systematically violated one law after the next employing tactics that are truly the hallmark of the most lawless third-world dictators. They literally decided they would break whatever laws they wanted based on patently baseless memos issued by obedient followers like John Yoo. Not only did they do this in complete secrecy from Congress, they refused even to allow Executive Branch officials who were told to follow orders to see the legal basis for what they were told to do. Goldsmith's first experienced this extraordinary concealment, or "strict compartmentalization," in late 2003 when, he recalls, Addington angrily denied a request by the N.S.A.'s inspector general to see a copy of the Office of Legal Counsel's legal analysis supporting the secret surveillance program. "Before I arrived in O.L.C., not even N.S.A. lawyers were allowed to see the Justice Department's legal analysis of what N.S.A. was doing,"
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POPSWho is the US fighting in Iraq? And when you hear Cheney say we have to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, you will know that most of the people the US is fighting there are no such thing. Bomb Saudi Arabia! Wait I mean, look over there......it's the Iranians! Bomb the Iranians. Frigging nutjob lying chickenhawks.
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POPSW's favorite Johnson “I want someone whose primary interest is me — George Bush — and who doesn’t hope to parlay this into something and isn’t trying to curry favor with this one or that one,” Bush told Johnson and his wife, Anne Sewell Johnson, over lunch.
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POPSW's Protest Manual: Conservative Treason. The manual demonstrates "that the White House has a policy of excluding and/or attempting to squelch dissenting viewpoints from presidential events," said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Miller. "Individuals should have the right to express their opinion to the president, even if it's not a favorable one." "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
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POPSRepublican Leader: War on Terror "Phony" Although no fan of Newt Gingrich he hits the spot on this topic. Tired of Bush=Cheney aiding and abetting the terrorists by keeping us dependent on Mid-East oil and Mid-East chaos that keeps its price high and highly profitable for his buddies.
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POPSGeneration Chickenhawk: College Republicans Really need to check out the video at the Huffingtonpost.com website that this clip comes from. Typical chickenhawks. Asthma. Bad knees from playing catcher in high school. "Medical reasons." "It's not for me." These were some of the excuses College Republicans offered for why they could not fight them "over there." Like the current Republican leaders who skipped out on Vietnam, the GOP's next generation would rather cheerlead from the sidelines for the war in Iraq while other, less privileged young men and women fight and die.
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POPSMoral Majoritists Love Hookers For over three decades, Privette has been one of the best known and most outrageous spokesmen for “family values” and Christian extreme right politics in North Carolina. In the 1970s, he was serving as minister at the North Kannapolis Baptist Church when he joined the tide of evangelicals entering politics that included the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition. He served in the N.C. Legislature from 1984 to 1992, and has been a member of the board of commissioners in Cabarrus County since 1998
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POPSBiofuel from Car Fumes developed by Fishing Buddies The crucial aspect of the technology is that the carbon dioxide is captured and held in a secure state, said Houston. Other carbon capture technologies are much more cumbersome or energy-intensive, for example using miles of pipeline to transport the gas. "The carbon dioxide, held in its safe, inert state, can be handled, transported and released into a controlled environment with ease and a minimal amount of energy required," Houston said at a demonstration using a diesel-powered generator at a certified UK Ministry of Transportation emissions test centre.
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POPSUS divided on Death Penalty There is another clip floating around that only shows part of the equation. When given a question that only allows a binary (yes-no) answer most US citizens support the death penalty. When their world is expanded and more options are given in the wording of the question, e.g. "Which is the Better Penalty for Murder-- the Death Penalty or Life imprisonment", the US is divided almost 50-50 on which is the better penalty. There has been a significant change in what percentage of the population still believes the death penalty actually works as a deterrent. A large majority believe the death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent.
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POPS"W violates constitutional authority": Libbey's judge, Judge Walton In his order, Walton cited several legal precedents supporting his sentencing ruling, including a decision in June by the U.S. Supreme Court in a case known as Rita vs. United States. The high court ruled in that case that a sentence that did not depart from the sentencing guidelines was inherently reasonable.
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POPSPowell spills it about Bush / Iraq Al-Qaeda, Powell asserted, was only 10% of the problem in Iraq and Nouri al-Maliki, its prime minister, lacked the political will to establish an effective government. After a promising start to the surge at the beginning of the year, 453 unidentified corpses were found on the streets of Baghdad last month, 41% more than the 321 bodies found in January, according to unofficial Iraqi health ministry statistics.
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POPSMess with the Bushes & NeoCons: Your life is ruined. Barlow wrote an analysis for then-Secretary Dick Cheney that concluded the planned F-16 sale violated this law. Drawing on detailed, classified studies, Barlow wrote about Pakistan's ability, intentions and activities to deliver nuclear bombs using F-16s it had acquired before the law was passed. Barlow discovered later that someone rewrote his analysis so that it endorsed the sale of the F-16s. Arthur Hughes, the deputy assistant secretary of defense, testified to Congress that using the F-16s to deliver nuclear weapons "far exceeded the state of art in Pakistan" -- something Barlow knew to be untrue In the summer of 1989, Barlow told Brubaker, Rostow and Michael MacMurray, the Pakistan desk officer in charge of military sales to Pakistan who prepared Hughes's testimony, that Congress had been misled. Within days, Barlow was fired
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POPSCheated of Future, Iraqi Graduates Want to Flee The class of 2007 came of age during a transformation that according to students has harvested tragedy from seeds of hope. They are the last remnants of a middle class that has already fled by the tens of thousands. As such they embody the country’s progression from innocence to bitter wisdom amid dashed expectations and growing animosity toward the Americans.
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POPSIt's June 1st. Iraq said we can leave now. Meanwhile Secretary of Defense Gates was on TV discussing being able to draw down troops in 2008, 2009, and then a troop increase in 2010, draw down 2011, 2012, troop increase 2013, 2014, draw down 2015, troop increase 2016, 2017, 2018, draw down 2019, 2010, troop increase 2020, 2021, 2022, draw down 2023, 2024, troop increase 2025, draw down 2026, 2027, troop increase 2028, 2029, 2030.............
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