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Any when they return to kill American soldiers, how many can die before it becomes not okay to grant constitutional rights to non-citizens? 5, 50, 100? How many US soldiers being killed is okay by you, cutecub?

Haliburton/Cheney sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/world/middleeast/25reconstruct.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040607-644111,00.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/26/politics/main575356.shtml

Bush sources:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0207/S00104.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jul/10/qanda.usa

Obviously, you can also just use Google to find other sources.

These are not conspiracy theories. These are fact-supported TRUTHS. You could likely find some of the press conferences referenced in those sources on youtube, if you need video as well.

First, to be "outed", Valerie Plame would have had to be a covert operative. She wasn't at that time.

Sorry, I was barely paying attention to this thread, but couldn't help noticing this bit of misinformation.

Plame was covert agent at time of name leak --MSNBC

Yes, Valerie Plame Was Covert --CBSNews

Leak Prosecutor says Plame was Covert --NYTimes

Video: Valerie Plame confirms her covert status --thinkprogress.org

etc.

You may be confused because of the following misinformation campaign:

Right-wing noise machine: Plame not covert --Salon

Not really. Number one, if the next president pulls out too fast, they will be the one blamed for failure. Number two, no matter how successful Iraq may become, he will be judged on how he messed this country up by starting a war that was pointless. I think in the future, people will realize that terrorism was used to control the population just like communism before it. Do you know that Iranians have been the enemy the whole time? The extremists in the middle east have always been WAY more interested in controlling their own population, which is why the kill more civilians. And Iran has been pissed at the US forever, so why does it surprise people that Iran is fighting us in Iraq (to a much greater extent than any terrorists). It's a lie to say that were fighting terrorism. Saddam was never in the axis of evil, even Bush admitted it.

Not really. Number one, if the next president pulls out too fast, they will be the one blamed for failure. Number two, no matter how successful Iraq may become, he will be judged on how he messed this country up by starting a war that was pointless. I think in the future, people will realize that terrorism was used to control the population just like communism before it. Do you know that Iranians have been the enemy the whole time? The extremists in the middle east have always been WAY more interested in controlling their own population, which is why the kill more civilians. And Iran has been pissed at the US forever, so why does it surprise people that Iran is fighting us in Iraq (to a much greater extent than any terrorists). It's a lie to say that were fighting terrorism. Saddam was never in the axis of evil, even Bush admitted it.

First, what is to be assessed. The states, due to a annoying thing called the constitution, are free to set what they consider to be reasonable standards. This in itself makes NCLB a joke. Combine this with no significant federal financing to encourage high standards, as it down say with the speed limit, makes any testing data unreliable.

Second, what passing standards are to be. It appears that these are often set on the same basis as the need to escape a bear. You don't need to outrun the bear, just your friends. In the same way, no state wants to look bad, so standards are set to insure a healthy number of students pass, not on any absolute level of demonstrated ability. This tradition of fungiable standards and data crunching are deeply rooting in the origin. Rod Paige, the man Bush broght with him from Houston to create NCLB, had a lot of experience laundering data.

Third is when should a topic be tested. Should topics be tested the grading period in which they are taught, at the end of the year, in the next year? Right now many topics are tested in the year after a student typically takes a class. This is benificial to advance students, as topics are often repeated every other year, but regular students are at a disavantage, as the NCLB tests not what they are currently learning, but work they did the previous year.

Fourth, when should the test be held. If the test is to be a measure of progress, ideally the test would be given as a final exam, and the grade used as such in the course. Technology and security does not allow this, so the test is given at various times during the year, over material the student may or may not have covered. One consequence of this is that for many students, learning ends when the test is over. That can mean that what is supposed to be at least 30 weeks of classes becomes as few as 20.

Fifth, how should the data be used. Even though students take some subject every year, generally only a few of these tests are used for federal compliance. Furthermore, this compliance is based on the arbitrary standard set by the state, and not based on improvement by the student. Certainly it would be more important to expect the students scores to grow year to year, instead of just passing. To make matters worse, only the aggregate score is used. No attention is paid to the broad topics. This means that a student can consistently fail a topic, and as long as that student passes the test, everything looks ok. To put this in perspecitve, a student can theoretically graduate without ever knowing how to find the area of a square.

Finally, how do we insure that students are being taught. As mentioned above, one way might be to look at individual student growth. Is every student learning something every year. While this is gaining some traction, this is not what is done at the federal level. What is done is to break the students into demographics, say white,asian, hispanic, etc, and also socio-economic status designation. A school must meet minimum passing requirements for each group. The simplest way to meet these standards is simply to make sure that you only accept kids that pass the test. if this is not possible, then the second best thing is not to have too many of these groups, i.e. make the school as homogeneous as possible. In any case, the whole thing is a farce as it does not guarantee that no child is left behind. Many, many children are left behind, and students that traditionally have not been taught still are not.

That said, the general idea is good. It is generally accepted that fewer teachers are jus

You know, I get the feeling that she probably isn't the best person to be promoting Obama.

"He (McCain) has never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002."
- Hillary Clinton; taken from CBS

Talk about giving ammunition to the other side ...

Preventive care has nothing to do with an emergency.

And unless you can give me an example of the government taking your money and giving it directly to a CEO of a megacorp, you are lying.

And unless you can give me an example of the government taking your money and giving it directly to a CEO of a megacorp, you are lying.

Had it been a two way race between him and the Democratic candidate, Perry still would have won. So I don't think that that 39% really means that much. On the other hand, Perry is widely disliked. Although Christian conservatives have supported him in the past, it has become clear to them that Perry's political ambitions far outweigh any principles he might hold. After all, his initial support of requiring a cervical cancer vaccine showed to people like me that he can be bribed into doing the right thing even if it pisses off the Christian Right.

Personally, I voted Kinky.

it's not broken

guest@goosh.org:/web> web penis
    1) Human penis size - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Human penis size refers to the length and width of human male genitalia. Interest in larger penis sizes has led to an industry devoted to penis enlargement. ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_penis_size

    2) Penis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The penis (plural penises, penes) is an external sexual organ of certain biologically male organisms. The penis is a reproductive organ, technically an ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis

    3) Things You Didn't Know About Your Penis, Interesting Facts That ...
(WebMD) Here are some things you might have wondered about your penis, but were ... Here's how to avoid penile fracture: don't use your penis too roughly. ...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/19/health/webmd/main3949777.shtml?source=mostpop_story

    4) YouTube - Is it a penis
ok first of all this is not my video, please to not think it is, i had recently seen it at my friends house and decided to upload it from www.funnyjunk.com!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0sQA9ILZSU

There are better pictures now at the original source for that story: http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/current.html. Scroll down to "11:30 PM, 6/1/08, Update: Shuttle launch pad damaged during liftoff (UPDATED at 12 p.m. 6/2 with additional pictures)." "Photo 2" seems to show a large section of a wall in the pit that had the brick veneer blown off.

(ref) Thanks for the photo. Looks like someone's about to get frozen in carbonite.

> If the Democrats in Congress really wanted to end the war in Iraq, they could do
> it tomorrow by revoking its funding. But why would they end it, when it's their
> best polling issue?

Gas and food prices in addition to the current state of the struggling USA economy has superseded the country's current involvment in Iraq.

Seriously tho' - take a look at the photo of Bill & Steve answering questions - have you ever seen such defensive body language? I almost felt sorry for them - but then I remembered they were responsible for Windows 95.

So you're basically saying that of the 90% blacks who vote for Obama, 40% are idiots, or at least the 25% who admitted to voting for Obama based on race ?

If you vote for Obama as a black (or a white) based ENTIRELY on race then you're a racist, sure as hell.

Obviously. Are we seriously considering changing these definition because they don't fit the "politics du jour". If 25% of blacks readily admit to being racists, that doesn't change the definition of racist. At all. And let's get one thing straight : if Obama were white, he wouldn't be in the running. That, by itself, is racist.

Yes it's fashionable to vote Obama. However he's stupid : he does NOT know how many united states there are (57 last time he was asked) then again he wants to attack Pakistan, perhaps he intends to make it a state ?

His ideas about "raising taxes because it's more fair" are beyond stupid even if you're a lefty (after all doing it like that will destroy government, not grow it).

And sorry to say this, but the guy is a serious megalomaniac. He's lost it twice, and that was among people who adored him. He had to be physically restrained on one occasion. Will he even be able to not physically hit Ahmadinejad, never mind convince him to calm it on the nuke program ? Every rational human knows that it can't be done.

Just now he claimed his uncle was a soviet, for some cheap war credit :

"...Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz..."

(it was Russia, Stalin to be exact, who liberated Aushwitz, did he mean to say his uncle killed people for Stalin ?)

He intends to select supreme court judges on one criterium : that they do NOT follow the law.

I mean how stupid can you get ? Bush has a few low points, and isn't much of a public speaker, but this guy is in danger of getting carted off to the isolation ward of a psychic clinic before the campaign ends.

America, constantly sending off Condoleeza Rice, and before that Colin Powell, to represent it oversees, does not need to prove to non-idiots that blacks can make it in America if they work for it. And there are more "non-whites" in the highest level of government, Gonzales, Chao. The American government is neither monolithic in faith, nor in color or ethnicity, so let's stop claiming it's racist. People will stop respecting you.

No American alive today ever had even a single black slave (except perhaps one who is primarily a middle-eastern muslim). Americans are NOT responsible for something that happened before their great-grandfathers were born, in fact it's Americans that are responsible for ending the (muslim) black slave trade at the beginning of the 20th century. Nobody blames Angela Merkel for the holocaust, and her father DID actually "participate". It's stupid.

I work for a company that has ONE white guy in the entire senior management structure. One. (I don't like him, but that's another issue, not that I truly think the other direction members are there to help me, but this guy's an idiot. Not the biggest idiot of the bunch, but he's my closest chef).

As I said, a lack of rigorous thinking. Is it "proof by assertion day"? Do you have any evidence at all to back up the assertion Iraq oil contracts were given to US companies at below market rates? Ive never seen that documented anywhere.

Certainly. I said that I was able to provide references for everything I stated. Link. The Indpendent is a major British newspaper and you can be certain that this article would have been thoroughly jumped on by the UK government were anything not supported. Paragraphs three and four detail the proposed law that mandates oil revenues should be apportioned between Iraq and US companies. Ostensibly this is in return for investment in infrastructure, but the Iraq government has no choice in this and you can be certain the US companies are making a killing on it. A further story is here. These laws have now gone through and return on investment is forecast to be anywhere in the region of 42 to 162 percent. Standard market rate would be 12%. I recommend you read this article if you want a comprehensive overview of foreign countries expected gains from Iraqi oil reserves.

As far as Cheney getting deferred compensation from Haliburton... so what? That kind of thing is pretty normal for CEOs. I'm pretty sure they were obligated to pay him whether or not the company made money.

It indicates motive and bias on the part of the vice president. If someone gives you $1million US dollars a year, there is an obligation. He also retains a number of unexercised stock options giving him a strong personal, financial interest in the succcess of the company. As promised, I can provide references. Link. Note that this is based on a report by the US government's own Congressional Research Service. Cheney's defence has consisted of "I spent $15,000 on an insurance policy in case the company goes under so it doesn't matter to me". Where he found a company willing to take $15,000 in return for a potential $5,000,000+ outlay, I have no idea, but in any case, it looks to me like he has been paid well for services and is now fulfilling them. I don't know how can honestly look at the former head of a corporation, receiving massive annual sums, owning stock in that corporation who then awards huge no-bid contracts to that corporation on behalf of the government and think that it is all above board, but it certainly isn't me.

Surely you must be joking about the donations thing. Large companies in the US donate to both sides. That's the way the game is played. Yes, it's corrupt, but good luck changing it since both parties are swilling at the same trough

All I wish to say here is that my point was that it was corrupt. You are again thinking in partisan terms that I do not. That corporations hedge their bets and bribe both Republican and Democrats does not reduce the importance of the fact that bribery has taken place. I again remind you that I am not a US citizen and have not been subject to the divide and conquer brainwashing that affects the population there, in which pointing out the faults of one side excuses the faults of another. I belong to neither side, but care only about the american people themselves.

Denying oil to the Chinese? Okay, now youve crossed into never-never land. Oil is fungible. The Chinese don't need to buy oil from Iraq because they can buy it from the Russians. O

You figured me out. Only a cat hater would waste his time trying to point out the obvious biological facts about cats and dogs to a bunch of raving psychotics.

I guess it started when I was born. A cat clawed me while I was still in a hospital incubator. Ever since, I have been sacrificing them to Satan on an hourly basis, and chucking them off of cliffs just for my sheer amusement, a trick I picked up from U.S. Marines:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2008/03/04/the-marines-puppy-throwing-video.htm

Just remember that all of my posts stem from my deep hatred for cats. I am a liar and dogs are clearly dumber than cats:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/04/eveningnews/main647343.shtml

...will some of them turn out really dumb?

But seriously, I think some people with more money than brains are going to extremely disappointed with the results. A cat cloned at Texas A&M didn't look any more like the mother than a normally bred kitten would. It also had a totally different personality--which most people wanting a clone of a particular pet would be to get the identical personality. Clones at this stage are not carbon copies--I suspect there's a lot more to the breakdown of the genome than we know. Or perhaps...there's the soul factor....

And for goodness sake, don't try to build said wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, MA. Apparently wind farms suffer from NIMBY too...

False evidence examples:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/05/politics/05labs.html Texas.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/17/national/main544209.shtml FBI technician Kathleen Lundy

Flap Jacket? What, one of these?

How about a flak jacket?

I have the facts to back it up.

1) The Duelfer Report, clearly stating that there was no connection between the Baathist movement and al Qaeda, and just the dysfunctional remainings of a weapons program.
2) An interview with the Number Two of al Qaeda, al Zawahiri.
3) The history of the Baath Party as a secular, socialist and nationalist Arab movement.
4) The biography of the Number Two of Iraq, Tariq Aziz, who is no muslim at all, but a Chaldean Catholic. So whatever Iraq was, it was surely not ruled by islamistic jihadists.
5) All the alleged evidence brought before the war being debunked, from the Yellow Cake Story to the British dossier on Iraq's WMD program being just a rip of of Ibrahim al-Marashi's doctoral thesis.
6) The fact that Donald Rumsfeld even created his own intelligence unit because the CIA was still unable to uncover anything supporting, what the administration was believing to be true.
7) The fact that Colin Powell's address at the U.N. didn't convince neither Hans Blix, head of the U.N.'s inspectors of Iraq's WMD program nor the "old Europeans", with Germany's Minister for Foreign Affairs, J.Fischer, publicly stating his doubts.

If a popular president has an extramarital affair, the press shows no fear and shouts it from the rooftops night and day.

But if the least popular president on record (backed by his administration) maintains that he has the inherent authority to kidnap US citizens at will and make them watch while his goons crush their children's testicles, the "free press" covers his butt so well that if you blink you'll miss the story.

I think you're trying to attribute to politics something that has a rather simple alternative explanation. In the eyes of the public (and therefore the press):

Salacious scandal >>> any other type of scandal

Ok, let's pick a salacious scandal then. Surely you remember these stories:

1. The White House was caught sneaking a fake reporter in to ask softball questions at White House press breifings
2. Although he was a fake journalist it turned out he was a real bona fide male prostitute
3. It then came to light that, according to White House visitor logs, he had visited the White House on dozens of days when there were no press functions, and sometimes did not check out till the next day
4. After a protracted period of wrangling during which the administration claimed White House visitor logs were protected by executive privilege a court finally ordered the White House to turn over its visitor logs almost a year ago
5. The White House is still refusing to let anyone see their visitor logs, even though previous presidents considered them open public records.

So where's the media circus? Why haven't we heard about this to the blue dress and blood on the glove level that other similar stories get? Why do they just report it tiny bits and pieces and then let each one fade quietly into the night?

--MarkusQ

This does work; I removed two plantar warts from my feet using duct tape (in Iraq, no less- my boots were agravating the condition.

Use about a dime-sized patch on the wart. You can cover over that with surgical tape if you need to keep it from rubbing off. Change the tape each day, but leave it on 24/7 other than that. It took me about 2 1/2 weeks to completely remove the wart.

This was about a year ago, and it has not come back. There is also some actual medical research that supports this.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/14/health/main525523.shtml

-b

Most Americans don't learn much about these skirmishes in school . . . . That's a pity, because the fight against the Barbary pirates was a big part of shaping the U.S. military into what it is today.

There's just not enough time in most school history classes to teach the kids something meaningful about all of the very major wars (Revolution, Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam) that even some of the medium-sized wars (French and Indian, 1812, Korea) get short shrift. It's not a coincidence that Korea is called the "forgotten war." It'd be great if every high school kid had as much curiosity and interest about history as you clearly do, but it's just not the case. One survey, admittedly not very scientific, found that 57% of high school students didn't know that the Civil War was in the last half of the 19th century.

That's pretty bad. I'd much rather fix that than worry about teaching them about Barbary pirates. Maybe the right solution is more edu-tainment programming; it seems that your lesson to be taken from the Barbaray pirates is not dates and places, but more of a zeitgeist about the forces that were acting on the US in the early days. Some of that can be captured in a good period piece--think Pirates of the Caribbean, except not entirely fictionalized.

Similarly, it looks some somebody has already made silly videos about " protecting web booty" to riff on the pirate/cybersecurity theme.

"Please don't kill me." said in a mock begging tone by George Bush, Jr. when pretending to be Karla Faye Tucker, a death row inmate in Texas when he was government.

"This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores," quipped the GOP standard-bearer. "Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." George Bush, Jr. at an $800 a plate dinner.

Perhaps the huge amounts of coffee I drink is offsetting the effects of the statin drug I take which is apparently working hard to make me stupid.

(1) put Saddam in power

Care to show some proof? I haven't found anything that said we put him in power.

(2) invaded in the first Gulf war

Last I checked, Kuwait was not part of Iraq, as much as Saddam may have wanted it to be. If we had actually invaded, Saddam wouldn't have been in power after that.

3) imposed strict sanctions, a no-fly zone, and bombed the country from time to time (and *why* did any of you stupid fuckers for a minute think there was the slightest chance he would have WMD? are you just stupid, or what?)

As did the UN and several other countries. Also, supposedly Saddam wanted others to think he had WMDs.Link

invaded again without any thought of the consequences

you mean, without thinking that foriegn fighters would be coming into the country with outside support?

What a fool you (and the 25% of people who agree with you) are. OK, Bush's approval might be a few points above 25%, like 29% now and 27% in February, bouncing around that range for nearly a year. But what's the difference? What kind of contrived nonsense that I'm "dividing the country" by refusing to make a distinction without a difference?

The kind of nonsense that someone who ignores that people kill people with guns (and their environment with trucks) will happily ignore in your faithy paradise. You will change your life, whether the government, the economy or nature makes you. BUt since I care about my life more than yours that you're wasting dragging the rest of us down, I'm happy to see you divided from the weapons you're fatuously insisting on playing with.

Oh, my mortgage... I didn't go for one of those fake Bush mortgages that you people faked economic "expansion" with while the economy actually died, creating over $30 TRILLION in government and personal debt. Instead, I saved the money I made without your subsidies, and sold my family's house for a nice profit to someone with a reasonable mortgage they can easily afford, because they've actually got a job and assets. Now I'm just watching all the house prices collapse in time for my excellent credit, income and savings let me buy a home at record low mortgage rates. So while I'm happy to benefit from the catastrophe you Republicans have wrought on our country, I've got the ethical integrity to try to stop it, because I'm actually patriotic. Not one of these America haters like you, who have turned a decent country upside down according to your fascists wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.

Governing America isn't a word game like cherrypicking the bible to demand killing for your corporate masters is. You people have demonstrated conclusively that you'll drive America to hell whenever you get the chance. So what if you deluded faithy zombies still number somewhere in the 25-30% range. You're getting the power slapped out of your hands, hopefully in time for those qualified to run a country to shovel us out of your mess.

What a fool you (and the 25% of people who agree with you) are. OK, Bush's approval might be a few points above 25%, like 29% now and 27% in February, bouncing around that range for nearly a year. But what's the difference? What kind of contrived nonsense that I'm "dividing the country" by refusing to make a distinction without a difference?

The kind of nonsense that someone who ignores that people kill people with guns (and their environment with trucks) will happily ignore in your faithy paradise. You will change your life, whether the government, the economy or nature makes you. BUt since I care about my life more than yours that you're wasting dragging the rest of us down, I'm happy to see you divided from the weapons you're fatuously insisting on playing with.

Oh, my mortgage... I didn't go for one of those fake Bush mortgages that you people faked economic "expansion" with while the economy actually died, creating over $30 TRILLION in government and personal debt. Instead, I saved the money I made without your subsidies, and sold my family's house for a nice profit to someone with a reasonable mortgage they can easily afford, because they've actually got a job and assets. Now I'm just watching all the house prices collapse in time for my excellent credit, income and savings let me buy a home at record low mortgage rates. So while I'm happy to benefit from the catastrophe you Republicans have wrought on our country, I've got the ethical integrity to try to stop it, because I'm actually patriotic. Not one of these America haters like you, who have turned a decent country upside down according to your fascists wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.

Governing America isn't a word game like cherrypicking the bible to demand killing for your corporate masters is. You people have demonstrated conclusively that you'll drive America to hell whenever you get the chance. So what if you deluded faithy zombies still number somewhere in the 25-30% range. You're getting the power slapped out of your hands, hopefully in time for those qualified to run a country to shovel us out of your mess.

Sorry, the URL for the CBSnews videos "Science of Sleep" is http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/14/60minutes/main3939721.shtml?source=mostpop_story

The US supported Iraq because Iraq threatened us? That exactly why the US shouldn't support Iraq. Perhaps you meant Iran threatened us. There's a problem with this though, the US did support a dictator before his overthrow.

Ok, here's more: bush taliban $43. Your CATO article is #5. I don't see the link I provided on the first page of results, instead my TFA I had saved years ago. Ah, adding "opium" to the search then my link is #5 and the CATO link is 7.

Ignoring Blowback isn't exactly smart either, it makes us look reckless as well.

Even the CATO article does not say anything about the Taliban getting any more money. Googling bush taliban $43 opium "down payment" returns no results saying the payment was a down payment to the Taliban.

I thought the summary did a pretty good job of trying not to sway anyone. You know -- when summary said the article didn't cite a relevent poll, and then the summary itself didn't cite a relevent poll.

Except the Salon article did cite relevant polls such as the Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University poll, CNN/USA Today Gallup poll, and a CBS poll[pdf]. Time on the other hand does not list one poll.

That reminds me. Did I mess that story on Slashdot about how Spitzer was caught by the feds while data mining financial records? It seems like a perfect story for Slashdot. A computer founds some funny financial transactions and a human then decided to investigate Spitzer. He had a lot of enemies. It's very important to note here that if Spitzer's name hadn't been a on "high profile government official" (aka targets) list, these transactions would have been ignored. Even more amazing, Spitzer himself argued in favor of this type of constant government surveillance. When computers are used to spy on and destroy people like this, you'd think Slashdot would have a story on it.

Perhaps it's not a random Microsoft bash, but a reference to Bill Gates' claims in 2004 that the spam problem would be solved by 2006.

Yeah, and you'd think a country like Iran would have other ways to get this kind of information. Like, I dunno, stealing it from Pakistan.

The nuclear cat is out of the bag, and as long as the US has a single nuke, they have no place to lecture others about non-proliferation.

The real interesting thing is that CBS's 60 minutes did an interview with George Piro who was Saddam's interrogating officer when he was held captive before his trial. In this interview, Piro claims that Saddam admitted that the Kuwait war was over some Kuwaiti official calling Iraqi women 10 dollar whores. He also claims that Saddam said he kept the appearance of having WMDs up because he was fearful of being invaded by neighboring countries.

So it is interesting that we now have confirmation that Saddam at least wanted us to think he had WMDs. This is something that makes the Bush Lied argument a little less believable but for some reason it isn't being talked about that much in the press.

If you get a chance, watch or read the interview. It offers some insight into Saddam's thinking of the time, how he mistook the US's political system and so on. It also speaks to how some non physical interrogation techniques worked on Saddam.

Not being from New York I didn't know much about the man, so I checked, and it turns out he's a Democrat. So ever since yesterday I've been wondering if this was an attempt to bring down the Democratic Governor of a key state, like they did in Alabama. I'll be curious to see how much media complacency there is in the New York case.

The best answer should be that the President should never made decisions for political reasons. But, that's a standard that has been violated by every president since General Washington.

Yes, and since "historians are still debating the first president" it's supposedly premature to judge this president's activities until all of us are dead. But I somehow doubt George Washington ever ordered his Attorney General to concentrate on investigating members of the Democratic-Republican Party as opposed to Federalists. Of course you can say "all politicians do this", since it really can't be avoided, but usually it means pet projects in one's district, meaningless crowd-pleasing hearings about baseball and steroids, naming post offices after people, etc. We've never had a thug for president who actually used the justice system and the prisons to target members of the opposition party.

If Obama wins the popular vote and [..] watch for those few "party heavyweight" try to convince the credentials and rules committees to reinstate the Florida and Michigan delegates

Title: Officials: Ecstasy is back, and it's laced with meth
Date: February 20, 2008
URL: http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/02/20/meth.ecstasy/

Law enforcement officials say European countries cracked down on ecstasy production in the early 2000s and manufacturing moved to Canada. And now, Asian gangs in Canada have been smuggling the chemicals needed to make ecstasy from China and India, officials with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police tell CNN.

Finished pills are then pushed in vast quantities into the United States, a flow that's difficult to stop because of the vast, largely unpoliced border, officials say.

Those on the front lines in Canada and the United States say they are working closely and sharing intelligence to try to stem the flow. Canadian officials also say they have a good relationship with Chinese law enforcement.

The Mounties have created teams across Canada focused on identifying the criminal organizations producing ecstasy and meth and say they have shut down 17 labs in the past year.

"The labs that we're finding now are what you refer to in the United States as super labs. We call them economic-based labs," says Raf Souccar, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Each lab produces more than 10 pounds of ecstasy in one batch, he says. "It's not your mom and pop operation. It tells me that it is criminal organizations that are, yes, more sophisticated and producing it for profit as opposed to producing it to fuel their habit."

It's then finding its way into schools, like Nick's in Albany, New York.

"I have been seeing an increase in pill use among the teens in general," says Greg Reid, a counselor at Equinox Community Services Agency, which sponsors drug counseling and other activities for youth in Albany.

"They do something called 'pharming' where they throw a bunch of pills into a bowl and kind of choose or take out the pills they want."

CBS News also did a report on Canadian criminals preying on elderly people:

Title:Tracking Down Scammers North Of The Border
Date: September 11, 2007
Url: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/11/cbsnews_investigates/main3251611.shtml?source=search_story

Smooth talking con artists operating from so-called "boiler rooms" in Canada are convincing elderly Americans over the phone to send them their life savings in a host of telemarketing scams.

CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian tells how those con artists find you in the first place and how millions of seniors end up on so-called "sucker lists."

What about some leads? I need some more leads. I'm looking for specialized leads." That request is in a phone call between a telemarketing con man and the supplier of so-called " -- information like home phone numbers, bank accounts and credit history that are craved by con artists.

Why is a credit card number so important? Sgt. Yves LeBlanc of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police says it shows they have access to money.

Sgt. LeBlanc is in the business of tracking down those who traffic in leads often pulled from phony prize or sweepstakes entries and used to gather the names of the gullible.

"What they don't realize is, as soon as they're putting their signature on that form and sending it back, they now go on a sucker list" says Leblanc. "Telemarketers refer to those lists as sucker lists."

The lists have revealing names like "Oldies But Goodies," for compulsive gamblers over 55 and "Suffering Seniors" for those with debilitating diseases.

The lists are pure gold in the hands of this Montreal con man, who asked we call him Zack.

"They're guaranteed hits" he says.

Keteyian: I'm look

you are criticizing Rush Limbaugh because you think he insults people, and you chose to do that by... insulting him?

Hey jackhole, get a clue. When a bloated gasbag spews lies about an advocate for people with a debilitating disease, you're goddamned right he gets insulted. And when Rush mocks the disease's effects , shaking his body spastically around on camera to mimic Fox's illness, oh holy crap does he deserve to be insulted. Shakespeare didn't write enough insults for sick bastard whores like Rush Limbaugh.

But guess what? Rush was right. Fox later admitted that he purposely skips his medication before public events like this so people will see his worst case symptoms. Here is a video clip of him admitting this.

Guess what, you brain-dead moron? In that video clip Fox denies what he supposedly admitted, saying explicitly -- listen to your own video clip --

"It isn't as if I didn't take it deliberately, as some kind of theatrical thing."

Which of course pustulent corpse-raper Rush Limbaugh quotes as:

FOX: I didn't take it deliberately as some kind of theatrical thing...

Here, as usual, Rush listeners learn their facts about the world exactly backwards. It's the price you pay for giving a fat, impotent, parasitic slug-worm an invitation into your living room. Lend credence to the sneering ringmaster of a national freakshow and what happens is that you become stupid. Let me give you another example. If you'd bothered to learn something instead of lazily gulping down Limbaugh's diarrhea, you might have known that the visible tremors Rush was mocking come from the medication:

In fact, at the time he was over-medicated for his Parkinson's disease, Fox said Thursday in an exclusive interview with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric.

"The irony is that I was too medicated. I was dyskinesic," Fox told Couric. "Because the thing about ... being symptomatic is that it's not comfortable. No one wants to be symptomatic; it's like being hit with a hammer."

His body visibly wracked by tremors, Fox appears in a political ad touting Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill's stance in favor of embryonic stem cell research. That prompted Limbaugh to speculate that Fox was "either off his medication or acting."

Fox told Couric, "At this point now, if I didn't take medication I wouldn't be able to speak."

I'm not the president of the Michael J. Fox fan club or anything. But the guy has to take his meds in order to be able to talk and move and interact with the world with some kind of normalcy. Without the medication, Parkinson's patients' muscles become rigid, their movements slow, and they even become unable to move at all. At the start of the filming day, Fox doesn't know if he's going to nail the ad in one take or is going to be there all day, so you can only imagine how carefully he plans out how much medication he's going to take and when, to ride the tightrope between his disease's wracking paralysis and the cure's tremors. Did he guess exactly right? I don't know, maybe not. Is Rush Limbaugh the biggest hate-smeared asshole the world has ever seen for second-guessing a prescription for someone he's never met, someone who is just trying to help a cause he believe