Daily Archives: September 26, 2007
“Childrens do learn,” Bush tells school kids
via: Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Offering a grammar lesson guaranteed to make any English teacher cringe, President George W. Bush told a group of New York school kids on Wednesday: “Childrens do learn.”
Bush made his latest grammatical slip-up at a made-for-TV event where he urged Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, the centerpiece of his education policy, as he touted a new national report card on improved test scores.
Bush is doing Jon Stewart’s job for him by providing Jon with so much comedic material every time GW opens his mouth!
Gates asks Congress for $190 Billion
via: CNN
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush and Congress are headed toward another showdown on war spending, this time sparring over nearly $190 billion the Pentagon says is needed to keep combat in Iraq afloat for another year.
Sen. Robert Byrd, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, vowed Wednesday not to “rubber stamp” the request and said it was time to put Bush’s policies in check.
“We cannot create a democracy at the point of a gun,” said Byrd, D-West Virginia, whose speech during a Senate hearing on the spending request was interrupted several times by cheers of anti-war protesters.
Judge Strikes Down Part of Patriot Act
via: CBS News
(AP) Two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without a showing of probable cause, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended by the Patriot Act, “now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment.”
Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield sought the ruling in a lawsuit against the federal government after he was mistakenly linked by the FBI to the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.
Democratic Presidential Debate
The Democratic candidates go at it again tonight, this time at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, under the gentle direction of TV’s Tim Russert.
The debate will be on from 9:00pm to 11:00 pm EDT on MSNBC, with a post-mortem by Chris Matthews immediately following.
“We must take him right now”
It’s not like we needed any more proof that BushCo lied us into Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL), but isn’t it comforting when even more evidence arises?
How’s This for a Wide Stance….?
All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Snoop Dogs
via McClatchy Washington Bureau
Galloway commentary: The evil that men do
by. Joseph L. Galloway
Once again, the Bush administration is flimflamming the hapless Democratic majority in Congress into rushing an important piece of legislation into law without serious thought or debate about the implications.
Although Congress passed a temporary extension of the FISA law in August that carries it through to February, the administration is already back demanding the immediate passage of a permanent law that permits the government to snoop on all private communications.
They’ve also requested a few “improvements” to the law, including a retroactive waiver of liability for the big telecommunications companies that gave the government unfettered warrantless access to phone calls and e-mail communications in violation of existing law.
Read the rest of the article here.
[Photo courtesy of ehoyer. Used by permission.]
GOP: Pay No Attention to Us Back-Stabbing the Troops — Look at This Ad!!
All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World
Deja Vu: Gen Pace’s Comments about Gays Elicit Loud Protests
Via Think Progress:
In March, Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace declared, “I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral.” Today, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) called them “very hurtful comments, very demoralizing comments.” Harkin then offered Pace, who was attending his final hearing before resigning his post, an opportunity to clarify his remarks. But Pace only caused more anger with his explanation
So I would repeat. My upbringing is one that says, sex, other than between man and a woman inside the bonds of marriage, is a sin. … We should respect those that want to serve the nation, but not through the law of the land condone activity that in my upbringing, is counter to God’s law.
The outrage from the audience was such that Senator Byrd (D-WV) was forced to temporarily adjourn the hearing.
Caption, please…
GOP Courts NRA
Oh, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy… (9/11, 9/11, 9/11…)
Hillary Clinton Laugh Machine
Inside joke..? Too much caffeine?
BREAKING: Lieberman/Kyl Amendment Passes
via: The Daily Kos
ThinkProgress is reporting that:By a vote 76-22, the Senate passed the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, which threatens to “combat, contain and [stop]” Iran via “military instruments.” Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) called the amendment “Cheney’s fondest pipe dream” and said it could “read as a backdoor method of gaining Congressional validation for military action.”
(Continue reading…)
Joe Lieberman has made it clear he wants the US to bomb Iran. So, what happens next?
All sail and no anchor
What World War III May Look Like
This is a chilling glimpse of what entering into World War III might very well look like. It is worth the reading. Who would choose to set something like this in motion..? This would be leaping blindly into the abyss while dragging the rest of the world with you; the tossing open of Pandora’s box.
by Philip Giraldi
via Antiwar.comNeoconservatives are great observers of war and warriors, though they are sometimes not in complete agreement about the numbering of the conflicts that they send other people’s sons and daughters to fight. Norman Podhoretz, the patriarch of the neocons, believes that the Cold War was World War III and that the U.S. is now fighting World War IV against “Islamofascism.” He intends to expand World War IV by slating Iran as the next domino to fall to America’s military might. Podhoretz undoubtedly sees the current global conflict as something that is good and necessary, both containable and winnable, but as his judgment on Iraq was fallible, his prediction of Iran’s rapid destruction is also unreliable. It might be useful to imagine just how war with Iran could play out if the Iranians don’t roll over and surrender at the first whiff of grapeshot.
(Continue reading article)
Acrophobia…
All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Matt Davies, NY Journal News
“It may be worse than Abu Ghraib.”
via TPMmuckraker
According to The Washington Post:
In high-level meetings over the past several days, U.S. military officials have pressed State Department officials to assert more control over Blackwater, which operates under the department’s authority, said a U.S. government official with knowledge of the discussions. “The military is very sensitive to its relationship that they’ve built with the Iraqis being altered or even severely degraded by actions such as this event,” the official said.
“This is a nightmare,” said a senior U.S. military official. “We had guys who saw the aftermath, and it was very bad. This is going to hurt us badly. It may be worse than Abu Ghraib, and it comes at a time when we’re trying to have an impact for the long term.” The official was referring to the prison scandal that emerged in 2004 in which U.S. soldiers tortured and abused Iraqis.
In last week’s incident, Blackwater guards shot into a crush of cars, killing at least 11 Iraqis and wounding 12. Blackwater officials insist their guards were ambushed, but witnesses have described the shooting as unprovoked. Iraq’s Interior Ministry has concluded that Blackwater was at fault.
(Source)
She leaves nothing to chance!
Hillary Clinton shows, that she is up on a par with Republicans, when it comes to media-handling. While this may serve to protect her chances in the presidential bid, for some the similarities might be too close for comfort.
Anti-Bush Protesters Arrested Near the UN
By Karen Matthews, AP, via Truthout:
New York – About a dozen war protesters were arrested Tuesday morning during a peaceful demonstration against President Bush’s speech before the U.N. General Assembly.
They were among about 400 protesters opposing the Bush administration’s war in Iraq and its incarceration in Guantanamo Bay of more than 300 men on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Many in the crowd wore orange jumpsuits in solidarity with the Guantanamo detainees.
“I’m sick to my stomach about the war in Iraq,” said Anastasia Gomes, 22, of Queens. “We as the youth are standing up and saying this president does not represent us.”
Police took the arrested demonstrators into custody by police after they knelt on the sidewalk in an act of civil disobedience at the rally near the United Nations. One of them, 58-year-old Bill Ofenloch, said they were trying to serve an “arrest warrant” on Bush for “high crimes against humanity.”
Read the rest of the story here.
Let’s see more of this Americans!
One More For The Gallows
Ramón Calderón Ramos, President of the Real Madrid Fútbol Club (yes, the previous team of David Beckham, hubby of Posh Spice Victoria), has been detained at the New York’s airport because his first last name (Spanish and a number of other countries names have two last names, the father’s first last name and the mother’s first last name), is the same of a drug cartel leader:
http://www.tribalfootball.com/article.php?id=58293
http://www.realmadrid.com/portada_eng.htm
Questions are: Calderón is a very popular one. You know how many Spanish descendant people shares the same last name? Millions.
Second, in Spanish papers articles, he declares that he was with 30 other persons in the detention facilities of the airport, and that he was quickly released because he’s personal friends with the Spaniard Interior Minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, who was phoned called by Calderón’s wife. My questions here are, how many people is misidentified and treated like a criminal, simply due to an inept computer programmer or an overzealous customs official? It’s better for security to add more and more hay to the haystack without checking what is in? Is the USA citizen free of this type of curfews and possible unjust imprisonment? Remember, we’re not speaking here of monitoring international calls of foreigners, but of regular people traveling around, and not only foreigners (Cat Stevens, any one, or the children stopped at airports?), due to the no-fly list, theoretically works at every airport of the USA .
How can it be compatible with the “freedom” so often touted, and so envied around the world? Really “they” hate you for your freedoms?
Sen Craig Will Try to Withdraw Guilty Plea Today
MINNEAPOLIS – Sen. Larry Craig’s attorneys will try to convince Judge Charles Porter at a hearing today that the Idaho senator’s guilty plea was a mistake.
Craig has said his foot-tapping, hand gestures, and looks into a bathroom stall were misconstrued by the police officer conducting a sting for bathroom sex at the airport. Craig’s attorneys wrote that he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct because he feared his June 11 arrest would trigger a story by an Idaho newspaper that had been investigating his sexual orientation. Craig has denied that he is gay.
Read the rest of the story here.
