I am a fan of the band R.E.M., from Athens, GA. They recently did a world exclusive documentary, and in the first part of it, they talk about the presidential race, GW Bush's failures, and their support for Barack Obama.
You can view the documentary at: http://www.xfm.co.uk/artists/interviews/2008/rem-documentary-part-1
Great stuff!
From: http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/76457.html
Former voting machine exec looking to become America's next Vice President?
Posted on Sunday, July 13, 2008 - 9:57 am:
We all need to contact Barack Obama to let him know we will not accept Chuck Hagel as his VP!!!!!
Today's news headlines are really testing my patience!
1. The Democratic-led Congress, with the support of key House leaders, is moving quickly to expand unconstitutional spying authority on Americans and reward telecoms for breaking the law.
A sham spying "compromise" similar to the one we warned you about last week could be rammed through both the Senate and House this week. It's moving that fast.
From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-levine/dems-in-congress-moving-n_b_107722.html
Senator Obama please take time off of your campaign to fight passing of this legislation!
Go here to send a message to congress opposing this legislation:
https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=975&page=UserAction&JServSessionIdr009=ycv8bmlrp4.app20a
2. With gasoline topping $4 a gallon, President Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to lift its long-standing ban on offshore oil and gas drilling, saying the United States needs to increase its energy production. ... So much for clean energy... and there's no way this will lower our cost for fuel!!
3. House leaders struck a bipartisan deal on Wednesday night on a major spending measure that would provide money for the war in Iraq through the end of the Bush administration, establish a significant new education benefit for veterans, and meet Democratic demands for added unemployment benefits.
The bill, which could be voted on as early as Thursday in the House, would effectively bring to a close the two-year battle between President Bush and Congressional Democrats over war financing by allocating about $163 billion for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through early next year without imposing conditions like a withdrawal deadline.
The measure would entitle veterans, those who enlisted after the Sept. 11 attacks and served three years or more, to what amounts to four years of college education at a state university. To win Republican support, House leaders dropped a plan to pay the $50 billion cost of the program through a tax on affluent Americans and also agreed that some of the benefits could be transferred to immediate family members. (So just how is this going to be paid for???)
From: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/washington/19spend.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
4. General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes
But congress won't take action on impeachment???
5. Re: Iraq Humanitarian crisis: from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hanna-ingber-win/running-on-iraq-the-ignor_b_107778.html
John McCain talks a lot about the MiddleEast and the threat of "radical Islamic terrorism." He challenged Barack Obama to take a tour with him of Iraq so McCain could educate him on the country, so Obama could get in touch with the the facts on the ground. In his celebrated tour of Iraq in March, McCain made a show of visiting an open-air market in Baghdad, saying that Americans weren't getting a full picture of the progress being made there and pointing out that he could walk freely through whole neighborhoods in the city. As it turned out McCain walked nowhere freely. He wore a bullet proof vest the entire time and in the open-air market enjoyed the company of one hundred American soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships.
Obama in his speech in Minnesota last week, when he effectively clinched the Democratic Party nomination, talked about Iraq, but mostly to scold Iraqi politicians for not stepping up and taking responsibility for running their country.
Thank goodness for : Barack Obama's website includes a six-page Iraq Fact Sheet , a section of which reports that he intends to "increase American investment in Iraq's refugees and internally displaced people and to the neighboring countries that house them to at least $2 billion."
6. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP -- the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company -- along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq's Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq's largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/18/big-western-oil-companies_n_107972.html
We all knew the Iraq war was about OIL!!!
There's lots more... I'm just so weary of how our nation's government and its large corporations are operating!!!
Read the article: http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/06/8690_natl_journal_ro.html
They keep digging themselves deeper and deeper.
Bring it on... Thank you... Just what John McCain needed... a well paid common criminal trying to help elect him.
Very bright move Senator McCain!
Here's a great pro-Obama video... 3 minutes worth watching.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=78po5ADXMsI
From Huffington Post:
Full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/05/majority-of-iraqi-legisla_n_105427.html
In a letter to Congress, dovetailing with yesterday's testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, thirty-one Iraqi legislators, representing a majority of the Iraq Parliament, have expressed "widespread disapproval of the proposed U.S.-Iraq security agreement if it does not include a specific timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. military troops."
We, the undersigned members of the council, wish to confirm your concerns that any international agreement that is not ratified by the Iraqi legislative power is considered unconstitutional and illegal, in accordance with the current rulings and laws of the Iraqi Republic. Furthermore, any treaty, agreement or "executive agreement" that is signed between Iraq and the United States will not be legal and will not enter the stage of implementation without first being ratified by the Council of Representatives, in accordance with Article 61 of Section Four of the Iraqi constitution, which gives the Iraqi government's legislative power, represented by the Council of Representatives, the exclusive right to ratify international treaties and agreements. Likewise, we wish to inform you that the majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any military-security, economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States that is not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq, in accordance with a declared timetable and without leaving behind any military bases, soldiers or hired fighters.
Likewise, we wish to inform you that the majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any military-security, economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States that is not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq, in accordance with a declared timetable and without leaving behind any military bases, soldiers or hired fighters.
The chorus of disapproval is of substantial consequence, as it will require a two-thirds majority of the Iraqi Council of Representatives to ratify the security agreement that is currently being hashed out by Iraq and the United States. Congressman Bill Delahunt, who impaneled yesterday's hearings, has co-sponsored a bill with Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro that "bars funding for any agreement that has not been approved by Congress."
Let's get the truth out and take on the power-monger hate spreaders before they even begin.
Everyone's out there whispering about a tape of Michelle Obama saying "whitey." Let's spread truth
to power beginning right now and nip it in the bud. What Michelle said was "Why'd he", not "whitey."
Spread this everywhere you can, get the truth out asap and as much as possible.!
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly, et al, your time is done. We're not going to take it anymore! The truth shall be told!!
You need to read this! Why doesn't the media publicize this stuff?
John McCain info on campaign contributions, at the bottom of this page: http://www.opencongress.org/people/show/300071_john_mccain
Info on John McCain's TOP contributor Blank Rome LLP: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=10750
Blank Rome has paid tons in lobbyist money for The Department of Homeland Security
These lobbyists and their clients -- through both individual donations and those of their political action committees -- have poured still more hundreds of thousands into the campaigns and PACs of powerful Republican members of Congress who control DHS appropriations and oversight.
While Blank Rome includes Democrats in its lobbying phalanx, Republicans dominate in terms of stature and fund-raising clout. Last year Girard-diCarlo moved up from Pioneer to Ranger status (meaning he had doubled the amount he raised for the Bush-Cheney campaign to $200,000), while both Holman and Buchholtz became Pioneers. Blank Rome employees were the seventh most generous contributors to the RNC in 2004, pouring in $345,000, which included contributions by Girard-diCarlo ($50,000), Buchholtz ($12,500), and partner David Norcross ($37,500), who was named to chair the arrangements committee at 2004's Republican National Convention in New York City.
Info showing Geraldine Ferraro is part of Blank Rome:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/business/01firm.html?ex=1327986000&en=ac04f0e05964cb18&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
I'm sure this is only the tip of the iceberg.
McCain vs. McCain
On March 26, McCain gave a speech on foreign policy in Los Angeles that was billed as his most comprehensive statement on the subject. It contained within it the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years. Yet almost no one noticed.
In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.
We have spent months debating Barack Obama's suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain's proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war.
McCain has turned into a foreign-policy schizophrenic, alternating between neoconservative posturing and realist common sense. His speech reads like it was written by two very different people, each one given an allotment of a few paragraphs on every topic.
For the full article see: http://www.newsweek.com/id/134317
John McCain info on campaign contributions, at the bottom of this page:
http://www.opencongress.org/people/show/300071_john_mccain
Info on John McCain's TOP contributor Blank Rome LLP:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=10750
Can't wait to get more info on his other high $ contributors.
Time for some presidential PUNCH! I'll drink Obama's kool-aid all day long...
The GOP has been renamed: Gimpy Old Party
Gimpy is a cripple who sold lead-pencils in Market Street. His legs have been cut off almost to the hips, and he gets around on two little platforms. (War and greed?)
A quote from an e-mail I received from a Concerned Citizens Group in a Washington, DC neighborhood, working with the Metropolitan Police Dept. for change:
It is so impressive and touching to witness first hand the dialogue and passion of the participants of this forum. It is clear that everyone has a shared passion, commitment and dedication to seeing not only our homes, but our neighborhoods, our communities truly prosper. Rome wasn't built in a day but if this forum is any indicator - "change IS a comin'" Kudos to the many concerned residents,Diane Groomes, Lendia Johnson, Joel Maupin, Robert Nixon and the wonderful officers who patrol our streets daily in what is sometimes a thankless and difficult job. We are new to this group so forgive us if we leave out any other wonderful people who take part in the development of our communities. Together we CAN make a change! End quote.
Yes, we are already making a big difference in how we treat each other and work together!
I am proud to see the change a comin and happening now! My son happens to be a police officer in Washington, DC, and it's awesome to see that there is cooperation happening between the citizens and the police dept. This is also testament to Obama support there!
Let it rain in buckets for change!
The rich who can drive as many miles as they want in their big ass gas guzzling SUV's and limos, and who also own stock in the oil industry and will reap the benefits when the prices go up! Sounds like a great low to middle class tax break huh? No wonder John and Hillary like it. Get the rich to be richer while the poor grapple for a mere $30 or so.
Just great.
