Posts (page 2)
American arrogance knows no limits. It turns out Baker and Hamilton have been a few hours in Iraq and have not even asked the Iraqis, not even our allied government. Of course, the Iraqi president Jalal Talabani said Sunday "the bipartisan U.S. report calling for a new approach to the war offered dangerous recommendations that would undermine his country's sovereignty and were 'an insult to the people of Iraq.''' [more]
At a reception following the midterm election, President Bush approached Senator-elect James Webb.
“How’s your boy?” asked Mr. Bush.
“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” replied Mr. Webb, whose son, a Marine lance corporal, is risking his life in Mr. Bush’s war of choice.
“That’s not what I asked you,” the president snapped. “How’s your boy?”
“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” said Mr. Webb.
Good for him. We need people in Washington who are willing to stand up to the bully in chief. Unfortunately, and somewhat mysteriously, they’re still in short supply.
Paul Krugman has it right [more]
"The American people are entitled to answers about the behavior of the most reactionary and incompetent administration in modern American history" says new Vermont Senator, the Socialist Bernie Sanders. It is time the Bush administration answers for its deeds. [more]
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Spain, Italy and France will launch a new Middle East peace plan, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said on Thursday, the BBC reported. . "Peace between Israel and the Palestinians means to a large extent peace on the international scene," Zapatero said after talks with visiting French President Jacques Chirac. He said the plan would be presented at an EU summit in December. "We want to launch a joint initiative on the Middle East situation and push it through at European Union level, preferably with Germany and Britain,” the Spanish Prime Minister said. "We cannot remain impassive in the face of the horror that continues to unfold before our eyes… Violence has reached a level of deterioration that requires determined, urgent action by the international community.” The proposal would include an immediate ceasefire in the occupied Palestinian territories, an exchange of prisoners, an international peace conference on Middle East peace, and the resumption of peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. The three countries are also calling for the formation of a national unity Palestinian government, and the dispatch of a fact-finding mission to the region, Zapatero said.
For his part, Chirac said the European Union must act in the face of "the increasingly dramatic situation in the Middle East and in Palestine in particular." "We are going to act jointly with the Spanish and Italian governments, with the co-operation of the EU... to try to initiate the indispensable moral and political reforms in the Middle East," he added. There was no immediate comment from Israel, the Palestinians or the United States. The two European leaders spoke amid fresh violence in the region. Israel’s air force pounded Gaza overnight hours after the Israeli government vowed to expand its military operations in the coastal strip following a wave of Palestinian rocket attacks that killed an Israeli woman in the southern Israeli town of Sderot. Israel often claims that the threat from Palestinian rocket attacks is the main reason for its bloody attacks in Gaza, where more than 400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since an Israeli soldier was captured by Palestinian fighters in June. More than 60% of Palestinians killed in Gaza were civilians and at least 20% minors, according to a recent report by the Physicians for Human Rights group. The violence comes amid Palestinian political wrangling over the formation of a national unity government. President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction and the ruling Hamas party have been deadlocked for months over the creation of a unity administration. The U.S. and EU imposed crippling sanctions on the Palestinian government after Hamas took office in March in an effort to pressure the governing party to recognize Israel, give up anti-Israel attacks and accept past peace deals with the Jewish state. The Western aid embargo causes widespread hardship in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. | ||||
Here is a loud and clear voice: We demand the Democrats listen to us and get out of Iraq now.!!
The responsibility to end this war now falls upon the Democrats. Congress controls the purse strings and the Constitution says only Congress can declare war. Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi now hold the power to put an end to this madness. Failure to do so will bring the wrath of the voters. We aren't kidding around, Democrats, and if you don't believe us, just go ahead and continue this war another month. We will fight you harder than we did the Republicans. The opening page of my website has a photo of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, each made up by a collage of photos of the American soldiers who have died in Bush's War. But it is now about to become the Bush/Democratic Party War unless swift action is taken.
This is what we demand:
1. Bring the troops home now. Not six months from now. NOW. Quit looking for a way to win. We can't win. We've lost. Sometimes you lose. This is one of those times. Be brave and admit it. [more]
“Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.” Dr. Steven Weinberg
Finally, a convention of scientists to discuss the malefic influence of religion on the world: “I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to fly planes into our buildings before we realize that this is not merely a matter of lack of education or economic despair,” said Sam Harris. [more]
Watch the proceedings of this conference in a series of videos. They are big and slow to download. I recommend you download them to your computer rather than play them directly. Slow process but immensely worth the effort. Get them here.
By Ruben Navarrette Jr., Sunday, November 19, 2006 SAN DIEGO -- Warning: This column takes issue with a half-baked “solution” and thus will likely elicit angry letters accusing the author of ``supporting illegal immigration.'' And since the author is Mexican-American, some readers may charge that he is ``trying to bring over relatives.'' There are those who claim the in-vogue idea of municipalities banning landlords from renting to illegal immigrants is cruel, inhumane and heavy-handed. But, for me, the real problem with such bans is that they're dishonest, misdirected, and destined to fail. -- Dishonest because these measures -- approved by officials in Escondido, Calif., Hazleton, Pa., and, last week, Farmers Branch, Texas -- feed this notion of an invasion, as if the good people of City X or Town Y were minding their own business and, suddenly, off in the distance, comes an army of Mexican immigrants. It couldn't be that these ``good people'' are hiring illegal immigrants or excusing those who hire them. Get it right. This is a self-inflicted wound. Illegal immigrants aren't invading. They've been invited. I used to live near Farmers Branch, and now I live near Escondido. I've had it with folks in these places playing dumb as to how their cities got to this point, as if they haven't been riding this tiger for the last decade while enjoying a robust economy and the comforts provided by cheap immigrant labor. In fact, while the city councils in Escondido and Hazleton put in place fines for employers, officials in Farmers Branch tabled such a provision. What? The Farmers Branch City Council spoke so eloquently about fending off the scourge of illegal immigration, but then gave employers a free ride. Que paso? Employers aren't as easy to pick on as illegal immigrants -- not if you're a politician in North Texas who has to raise money to further your political aspirations. -- Misdirected because these measures try to enforce immigration law by targeting landlords who rent to folks who turn out to be illegal immigrants. I'll be darned if I can figure how squeezing landlords helps enhance border security. If people have a problem with illegal immigration, let them target it head-on -- not nibble around the edges with housing bans. I'm also at a loss to understand how another provision of these loco ordinances -- declaring English the official language of cities and towns -- helps curb illegal immigration. What it does is make plain that, for many Americans, this debate is about cultural displacement -- the fear that, with Spanish becoming more prevalent, those who speak English will become less relevant. Immigration restrictionists hate being called racists, and they resent those who confuse legal and illegal immigrants. So what do they do? They support efforts to make English the official language of City X or Town Y. And thus they promote racism and the blurring of the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Official English laws are anti-foreigner, plain and simple. And, it doesn't matter if the foreigner in question came legally or illegally. All that matters is that they speak a language other than English. Similar laws in the late 19th century were aimed at German immigrants. The fact that those immigrants came legally did little to quell the passions of the nativists of that era. -- Destined to fail because landlords, renters and employers are not likely to change their ways so easily. Renters who live in mixed families where some members are illegal and others have documents may simply start registering apartments under the name of those who are in the country legally. Those who do leave a town because of a ban may simply move to a neighboring town, which won't do much to curb illegal immigration. Meanwhile, landlords and employers determined not to lose money may just get sneakier and take their chances at not getting caught, since enforcement will be erratic at best. In the end, voters in City X or Town Y will be left with only a feel-good impression that they took a stand against illegal immigration. Nothing of substance will have been accomplished. These vengeful local communities got one thing right. They are the problem, and they can and should be part of the solution. But this approach creates more problems than it solves. Now let me have it. ``Supporting illegal immigration.'' Blah, blah. ``Trying to bring over relatives.'' Blah, blah.
A team of psychologists has discovered why money can't buy happiness.
Pictures of dollar bills, fantasies of wealth and even wads of Monopoly money arouse feelings of self-sufficiency that result in selfish and often anti-social behavior, according to a study published yesterday in the journal Science.
"The mere presence of money changes people," said Kathleen Vohs, a
professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota and lead author
of the study. [more]
By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Wednesday 15 November 2006
It never got down to actual book-burning, but the Republican choke-hold on government would clearly have taken us there. In August, under the guise of fiscal responsibility, the Bush Environmental Protection Agency began closing most of its research libraries, both to the public and to its own staff.
The EPA's professional staff objected strongly, insisting that closing the libraries would hamstring them in their jobs. In a letter to Congress protesting the closures, public employees said, "We believe that this budget cut is just one of many Bush administration initiatives to reduce the effectiveness of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and to continue to demoralize its employees."
The EPA's precipitous move to close the libraries was based on a $2 million cut in Bush's proposed $8 billion EPA budget for 2007. EPA bureaucrats did not wait to see if Congress might restore the funds or shift budget priorities in order to save the libraries; it acted immediately to box up documents for deep storage, and shut the doors. [more]
