http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9SRZfJAKKM

Speaker Pelosi - Energy Independence and Security Act

http://www.electric-cars-are-for-girls.c...

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEOepSoeIKE

Electric Auto Association's 35th Annual electric car rally in Palo Alto, California

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i6lmf977hg

cool, Susan!

3990

Bombing Kills 43 in Shiite Holy City in Iraq

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and QAIS MIZHER
Published: March 18, 2008

....Privately, many American officials in Iraq are concerned that political progress has been limited, though. A bill intended to allow some former Baath Party members back into the government may end up causing as many problems as it fixes, for example. And another crucial bill that called for provincial elections by October was vetoed.


-----

This frustrating and humiliating conflict just drags on. Some thirty five years ago this month, we were withdrawing the last American combat forces from South Vietnam. Like extricaing ourselves from that nightmare, it would be good if we could remove ourselves from Iraq and use the 12 BILLION dollars a month we're throwing down the can there to invest in the American people here at home.

What a foreign policy disaster....

That's a terrifying number, Roger. We need to load our good people in trucks, busses and airplanes, and Bring Them Home Now.


Real Estate prices in hell will plummet when Cheney and Co. get there. Will our government try a bailout?

roger rankin
Tue, 03/18/08

Reply to this

3990

----

3990 for NOTHING.

Heather and Dave are wonderful volunteer Democratic environmental activists and conservationists. They live very close to Yosemite. Catheys Valley is heaven on earth.

3990  
That's a terrifying number, Roger.

That's the problem with America. They don't know their numbers.

Just look at the presdent economic situation.

In case anyone is keeping score: Howard and Jim Dean are still first.

I am tenth. 

OK, eleventh.

presdent = this just proves

present

was misspelled.

Susan, There is not a good reason why 80% of us should be driving electric vehicles.

Out on the Farm, I have a propane powered Ford 6 cylinder irrigation motor and a 55 Horsepower electric submersible irrigation pump. Each system irrigates 140 acres and produces fairly equal corn and soybean yields. The electric pump operates at one fifth the cost of the propane powered unit.

Our long-range goal is to install a 50 horsepower wind turbineout by the electric pump to backfeed the grid during peak demand times when our electric well usage is controlled by our Public Power system.

We live in a wonderous and dangerous world. The cruds occupying the halls of Power have done their best to bring real progress to a halt. They will not succeed while there is one breath left in this body.

Bob, you have been, so far, promoted to twelfth. This rickety funhouse really is just like throwing a note in a bucket.

Great vids on the electric cars. Thanks, Susan.  I love the tiny aqua one.  I wonder how much the elec. bill is for one of these that's used every day about town.

So, I said before, I will take a return to Clintonomics as a start.

That's the trouble. Clintonomics was the start -- of Bushonomics. 

I'm very confused.  Phil said that we're not paying for this...yet.  Phil, can you explain this again?  Please?

http://www.opednews.com
           
Outrageous - Taxpayers Bail Out Bear Stearns; JP Morgan Buys for $2 / Share

In the past 72 hours, the ultimate financial scam has been perpetrated on the American public. On Friday, the Federal Reserve back-doored a loan to an investment banking firm. And today, a bank bought the investment banking firm for pennies on the dollar - all largely subsidized by you, the taxpayer.

A couple of months back, I wrote the following:

The unprecedented wealth transfer from poor and middle income families to the uber rich is nearly complete. The folks at the bottom of the GOP-led financial pyramid scheme are nearly bled dry, and the pyramid is about to collapse. To sustain itself a little longer, the folks at the top of the pyramid will have to start an Amway-style ritual of financial cannibalism amongst themselves. I think that (to an extent) this is exactly what we’re seeing in the stock markets and big financial houses as the true meltdown begins…
 

Obama's Minister Committed "Treason" But When My Father Said the Same Thing He Was a Republican Hero

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.

Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.

Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies.

Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience: ... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-scha...

Mike Palecek: Reverend Wright is Right-On (2 comments)

16.

seashell :-)
Tue, 03/18/08


Click on the Plug Ins website link at the top. They might list the cost.

That's the trouble. Clintonomics was the start -- of Bushonomics. 

No, it was Reaganomcis that started it.
Bush and Clinton just continued it.

Continue the present course or change?

This is so sad and so true.

*************************** 

"The entire planet knows that if Al Gore had run for president in 2008 it would have been a slam dunk. So why didn't he do it considering the very life of western civilization is at stake as well as the ongoing Bush/Republican rape of Mother Nature, affecting polar bears, ozone holes, global warming, melting icebergs, fossil fuel poisoning, the trashing of what's left of environmental protection laws, and on and on to the certain death of our children's environmental future?

Yes, the man has his personal priorities and all that, but there may be literally no time in western history when it was so LIFE AND DEATH that an individual stand up and be counted as Al Gore and 2008 . . . and he's taken a pass.  Boy, has he ever taken a pass.

Has his life been threatened?  Certainly, a possibility.  More egocentrically, he is elite, after all, Democratic Party notwithstanding.  Politics has NOTHING to do with the elites, and maybe he just doesn't want to let go of that high class international elite existence.

Bottom line, who knows, but I hope he realizes down to his quarks that he could have been the man of the century, perhaps even the millennia and he flipped it all off.

Al, we needed you like something to grab onto when you're drowning and going down for the 3rd time.  We needed you like we needed someone to dash into the street to rescue our child from a racing car.  We needed you like someone to give the country an antidote to anthrax.  We needed you like a veritable mythological hero of yore.  NEVER has an American been so needed.  Maybe only George Washington was similarly needed, except that George was needed at the beginning of America; whereas you were/are needed at the "end" of America.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_w__chris_080317_why_did_gore_abandon.htm 

thanks, Susan!

Krugman: The B Word Robert Rubin, former Treas Secy, and John Lipsky, top official at the Intnl Monetary Fund, suggested public funds might be needed to rescue the US financial system. Lipsky insisted he wasn’t talking about a bailout. But he was. Henry Paulson, the current Treas Secy, says any proposal to use taxpayers’ money to help resolve the crisis is a “non-starter." That’s as credible as all of his previous pronouncements.

Pelosi Takes Superdelegate Stand That Heavily Favors Obama, Without Mentioning His Name

There is not a good reason why 80% of us should be driving electric vehicles.

Well, my last 3 cents for tonight.

It's about movement. I and you want to go anywhere we want. Where do we get the power to do this? So far it has been oil.
Can we find enough of oil so that we can avoid change?

I’ve been thinking about implosions. Actually I’ve been thinking about warehousing, leverage, multipliers, magnified expansion/ contraction, fractional reserve banking, and the FED. When I learned last week that the FED had created yet another “accommodation” to swap newly minted US Treasury securities for $200 BILLION in par value Cleverly Rigged Accounting Ploy (CRAP) financial derivatives that were actually worth less, or even worthless, I was livid. I saw this as yet another lame attempt to bail out the banking industry for their wayward past actions. I asked myself: “Why, why, why?” Then it hit me I was looking at all this from the WRONG direction! Please read on.

Leave it to Paul Krugman to tell the hard truth about what needs to be done in this financial crisis.

[T]he important thing is to bail out the system, not the people who got us into this mess. That means cleaning out the shareholders in failed institutions, making bondholders take a haircut, and canceling the stock options of executives who got rich playing heads I win, tails you lose.

Not that the Fed shall listen, mind you; Ben Bernanke, like Alan Greenspan before him, cares about the laissez-faire swindlers who caused the latest financial meltdown. Factoring in the taxpayers only counts for bailing out the criminals, not bailing out the system the crooks abused in order to flush the economy down the toilet.

One of the clickies in this article is so busy with volumn, I couldn't get in.  Why does it take the truth so long to come out?

In 1971 at age 19, I had a life-changing experience when I met dozens of Vietnam veterans who'd descended on my hometown of Detroit to testify at the "Winter Soldier" hearings organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In anguished presentations, the Vets painstakingly described the horrors against Vietnamese they'd seen or taken part in. And the attitudes of racism and bloodlust that motored the war. Many vets blamed the lies in mainstream media for convincing them to go to Vietnam in the first place.

Virtually every soul in that Detroit hotel banquet hall wept openly at the heartfelt, bone-chilling revelations pouring out of the Vietnam vets struggling with bloody memories and post-traumatic stress. But no one outside that hall could see or hear the proceedings. No TV or radio networks covered the event.

It's about movement. I and you want to go anywhere we want. Where do we get the power to do this? So far it has been oil.
Can we find enough of oil so that we can avoid change?

But of course, oil is causing climate change.

As for "where do we get the power?" Just hold your finger to the wind and your eye to the sun. All the power we need slips through our fingers every day.

You know, I just had a thought that might have some merit with BO supporters.

While McC is over in the ME/England talking about 100 years of war, BO could steal most peoples' hearts and minds by following in his footsteps, talking about 100 years of peace.

That's the anti-McC spiel... 100 years of peace.

Maybe I could be s/o's campaign mgr.  :-) 

Goodnite bloggie.  Time to start another book.  But I'll quickie peek just in case...........

    
Last Updated: Tuesday, 18 March 2008, 04:58 GMT
E-mail this to a friend     Printable version
Dalai Lama blamed for Tibet riots
    
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao 18/3/08
Mr Wen says the protesters are trying to sabotage the Olympics

Mr Wen speech
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has accused the Dalai Lama of masterminding recent violence in Tibet's main city, Lhasa.

Speaking at the close of parliament, Mr Wen also said the exiled Tibetan leader's claim of "cultural genocide" in Tibet was nothing but lies.

China's response to the violence had been restrained, the premier said.

China says 13 people were killed by rioters in Lhasa. Tibetan exiles say at least 80 protesters were killed in a crackdown by Chinese security forces.

    
There is ample fact and plenty of evidence proving this incident was organised, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique
Wen Jiabao


The Dalai Lama, who in 1989 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his consistent opposition to the use of violence in the quest for Tibetan self-rule, has repeatedly called for dialogue with China.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7302021.stm

A group of UK-based human rights and development organisations have called for fundamental policy changes towards the Gaza Strip by Israel, the international community and the West Bank-based Palestinian leadership.

Their report details what are calling the worst humanitarian crisis in the strip since Israel occupied it in the 1967 war, and describe it as a man-made disaster resulting from the isolation and blockade of Gaza after its take-over by Hamas militants last June.

The following are the main points in the report, sponsored by Amnesty International, Care International UK, Cafod, Christian Aid, Medecins du Monde UK, Oxfam, Save the Children UK and Trocaire.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7191359.stm 

Good one, Susan!

*******
From the looks of things, Danny must have had a well-deserved day off yesterday.

*******
Since my maiden name is distinctly an Irish one, I get lots of mail on St. Pat's from family & friends. Since Jo's post yesterday am was one of the few St. Paddy's offerings, I thought that I would post a couple others that I hadn't heard before.

OK, so it's a day late, but they're still fun.

Here's the first:

=================
Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn't find a parking place. Looking up to heaven he said, 'Lord take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me Irish Whiskey!'

Miraculously, a parking place appeared.

Paddy looked up again and said, 'Never mind, I found one.'

Bloggie behaving badly yet again. My post should have fallen AFTER sea's.

Anyway, here's the second:

==================
Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, 'Do you want to go to heaven?'

The man said, 'I do, Father.'

The priest said, 'Then stand over there against the wall.'

Then the priest asked the second man, 'Do you want to go to heaven?'

'Certainly, Father,' was the man's reply.

'Then stand over there against the wall,' said the priest.

Then Father Murphy walked up to O'Toole and said, 'Do you want to go to heaven?'

O'Toole said, 'No, I don't Father.'

The priest said, 'I don't believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to heaven?'

O'Toole said, 'Oh, when I die, yes. I thought you were getting a group together to go right now.'

This is just another reason to get very serious about population control.  Pay women NOT to have kids and limit one per family.   This "go forth and populate the earth" is destroying us, not to mention what we do to our animal and plant brethren.  We cull/kill species that are likely more intelligent than we are.

Still in the caves we are........(god, I sound like Yoda)

Culling is back on South Africa's agenda after more than a decade The eminent conservationist Richard Leakey has given qualified backing for South Africa's plan to cull elephants.

In an article for the BBC News website, the former head of the Kenyan Wildlife Service says culling is "a necessary part of population management".

But Dr Leakey says there is also a responsibility to curb human activities that impinge on elephant habitat.

South Africa plans to allow culling after a gap of 14 years because of growing numbers of elephants.

The population is estimated to have expanded from 8,000 to 18,000 in little more than a decade.

Though I find elephant culling repugnant, I can see the sense in it
Richard Leakey http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7301195.stm  The plan has aroused the ire of some environment and animal welfare groups.

Some are so opposed to the plan that they have called for tourist boycotts.

Let's see if this one falls where it should.

**********
Yes, there are lots of factors and reasons for this, but many, if not most, have been caused or exacerbated by putzCo policies and rampant corruption.

So thanks again, putzCo.

============
A financial crisis unmatched since the Great Depression, say analysts
Larry Elliott, economics editor
The Guardian, Tuesday March 18

A century after John Pierpont Morgan rescued the New York stockmarket from a 50% sell off in share prices, his blue-blooded Wall Street bank was yesterday once again at the heart of attempts to contain the deepening global financial crisis.

In an echo of the "bankers' panic" of 1907, JP Morgan responded to what is being billed as a meltdown of historic proportions by agreeing to buy its stricken rival, Bear Stearns.

The length and severity of the crisis that broke over global markets last summer has had analysts delving into their history books. George Soros, who was largely responsible for Black Wednesday, the last bout of serious financial turmoil to afflict the UK, believes there has been nothing to match the events of the past nine months since the Great Depression.

[...]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/...

And on that sad note about our wonderfully intelligent elephants, who faithfully work for humans who keeps chains on them,

Goodnite. 

I wonder if animals would cull humans if they could.  I wouldn't blame them.  

keeps s/b keep, but you all know that.  :-)

Forever doomed to fall upthread instead of in sequence, I guess.

******
The situation in Tibet appears to be going from bad to worse.

We had actually planned to go there early next month, but after verifying that our schedules would not quite allow for the trip then, decided to leave it for another season.

Right now, it seems as if that was the right decision.

But I do hope that somehow the situation gets resolved. And soon. It's always the most vulnerable who suffer the most.

================
Arrests after governor's threat to deal harshly with resistance
Jonathan Watts in Linxia and Tania Branigan in Beijing
The Guardian, Tuesday March 18 2008

Thousands of paramilitary police were massing in Lhasa and other Tibetan areas of unrest last night ahead of an ultimatum to protesters to hand themselves in.

Witnesses reported that arrests had begun long before a midnight deadline passed in the capital, and authorities in other provinces were cracking down both on protests and those who report them.

Hong Kong journalists were ordered to leave Lhasa, and foreign reporters have been turned away or ordered to leave Tibetan areas in the Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu provinces in the past two days.

[...]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar...

So much for not talking to terrorists ... it was the dialogue and links to state authority that eventually got the situation in Northern Ireland resolved.

=============
Extent of secret links between government and IRA revealed
Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday March 18 2008

The full extent of a secret 20-year "back channel" between the British government and the IRA is revealed today by Tony Blair's former chief of staff, who declares that the peace process might never have been possible without the link.

In the first authoritative account of the link by a British official, Jonathan Powell tells the Guardian that a Derry businessmen, Brendan Duddy, and a series of MI5 and MI6 officers risked their lives to allow the British government and the IRA leadership to communicate in private between 1973 and 1993. In the latest extracts from his memoirs, serialised in the Guardian this week, Powell writes: "It is very hard for democratic governments to admit to talking to terrorist groups while those groups are still killing innocent people.

"Luckily for this process, the British government's back channel to the Provisional IRA had been in existence whenever required from 1973 onwards." The secret link was only used on three major occasions: to negotiate an IRA ceasefire in the mid-1970s; during the first IRA hunger strike in 1980; and in the early stages of the peace process in the 1990s. But Powell writes that the simple fact that a link existed from the IRA leadership to Downing Street - mainly via Duddy and his MI6 handler Michael Oatley - was of huge significance.

[...]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/...

This is from yesterday's paper, but still worth a read.

This line-up does not just include the US *players* ... how many of these do you know and recognize?

And this is the last ... on to the salt mines!

===============
Where are they now? The faces of the Iraq war five years on
By Rupert Cornwell, Ian Burrell, Kim Sengupta, Tim Walker, Anne Penketh, Michael Savage, Nigel Morris & Robert Verkaik
Monday, 17 March 2008

Some survived and thrived, others lost everything. Some made their names, others squandered their reputations. Five years since the most divisive war of modern times began, many of the prime movers have faded from the headlines. Where are they now?

KOFI ANNAN

[...]
MOHAMMED SAEED AL-SAHHAF

[...]
HANS BLIX

[...]
AYATOLLAH ALI AL-SISTANI

[...]
LORD HUTTON

[...]
ROBIN COOK

[...]
PAUL WOLFOWITZ

[...]
GENERAL SIR MIKE JACKSON

[...]
DONALD RUMSFELD

[...]
ANDREW GILLIGAN

[...]
COLIN POWELL

[...]
CONDOLEEZZA RICE

[...]
SCOTT RITTER

[...]
ALI ABBAS

[...]
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL

[...]
DICK CHENEY

[...]
TARIQ AZIZ

[...]
LYNNDIE ENGLAND and CHARLES GRANER

[...]
GEORGE W BUSH

[...]
MUQTADA AL-SADR

[...]
AHMED CHALABI

[...]
COL TIM COLLINS

[...]
DOMINIQUE DE VILLEPIN

[...]
JESSICA LYNCH

[...]
RAGEH OMAAR

[...]
JACQUES CHIRAC

[...]
SADDAM HUSSEIN

[...]
JONATHAN POWELL

[...]
GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS

[...]
IAIN DUNCAN SMITH

[...]
CLARE SHORT

[...]
ELIZABETH WILMSHURST

[...]
LORD GOLDSMITH

[...]
TONY BLAIR

[...]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...

The electric car parked in solar powerplant...I watched a show on the history channel recently that showed much of what this gentleman is saying...

BRATTLEBORO -- The secret to saving the world could be hidden in the miles and miles of parking lot in the United States, Dr. Arjun Makhijani said Saturday.

Makhijani addressed roughly 65 people at the annual membership meeting for the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution.

http://www.reformer.com/ci_8599836?sourc...

Good morning, everybody

Color me skeptical.

The people pushing the electric car are also into nuclear.

need to change browser 

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1028545

This is an essay by John mcKay, one of the fired United States attorneys. 

5:23 am - thanks for the chuckles, Judy!  it's never 'too late' for a laugh!

sea - re: Who's more likely to take us into more war, a man or a  woman?  It's a good question, not answerable simply by saying "Obama."  Women, in gen'l, do not like sending children off to die. How many times have many here said that we need more women in power to help end wars and suffering?

For me it's coming down to, Who will not commit troops easily and who can beat McC? And who has the experience and knowlege to keep this country from going completely under?  Glub glub.

the questions you ask are good ones - but you know we've been answering those here all along.  you answered them too, long before this, but I guess you feel the need to ask us these questions over and over, as if our support for Obama is a tenusous thing or perhaps one day our (same) answers will have a meaning for you that had escaped you until 'now'...  I'm not sure what answer we could give that would be acceptable to you.  we're Obamastars, or some other slight insult you apply daily to anyone who supports him - excuse me, but if you feel we've all drunk some some sort of koolaid, as this name calling would imply, why bother to answer your questions, over and over again? yet I will try.

I understand that this decision is not easy for you.  please understand that it wasn't easy for me, either, but for a long time now I have felt certain that Obama would be the best leader and most likely to beat McCain for many reasons.  and I would say that this particular woman, HRC, would have no problem sending Americans off to war - she did that already, w/o even reading the NIE to learn the details of WHY she was signing off on Bush's war.  and, sadly, she simply doesn't display the female traits I feel would be most helpful in a leader, in working towards peace.  in working so hard to appear tough, she's sharpened any soft edges that might have made a difference in how she governs, imo.  that's my opinion - take it for whatever it's worth to you.  I could give you a long, detailed explanation but I doubt that anything I could say would pass muster with you.  whatever you're waiting for hasn't happened yet - I hope it does, sea.  I hope you can vote for your choice with the same conviction that I did.

Warning, it's a pdf.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1028545 

good morning, Monica!   I do believe the attorney firing will eventually take it's toll - it's just taking such a loooong time for it all to come out!  I'm trying to have patience...  :)

and I'm hopeful - spring is almost here and the temps will be in the 40's today and some day very soon my bottom step might just melt out of that 9" slab of ice that I call a driveway.  I've had a nice 'ramp' at the end of the drive but it's now a becoming a ledge and I may have to resort to using a bit of salt - it is just too thick and solid for a little thing like me to chip away at and get very far...!  I've been avoiding it, but I suppose I do prefer a bit of salt to a new muffler!

Really, you know, there's not much of a choice.  Clinton or McCain will be more of the same.  Mr. Clinton started the assault on Iraq and his Missus has done nothing to stop it.  These are undeniable facts.  After the first Gulf War, the Pentagon was prepared to shift its attention to north Africa, specifically Somalia, under the guise of humanitarian intervention.  Mr. Clinton turned tail and pulled out at the first sign of unpleasantness and determined to make Saddam Hussein see things our way.  Well, it didn't work to use half measures.  So, when Bush Two came in he said "let's stop futzing around and just do it."  And Mrs. Clinton said, "right on. You've got more balls than my man.  Let's do it."

You think this is a fiction?  Fine, let them disprove it.  It's the only scenario that fits the facts. 

Howard Dean Meets With Hillary's Fat Cats: Will He Cave?

In 2004, the Democratic leadership could not wait to see Howard Dean flail. The Dean Scream was the dream of John Kerry and the establishment Democrats, because it meant the insurgent candidate stumbled, fell, and never recovered.

Four years later, Howard Dean is running the Democratic National Committee -- he's on the inside, but he's really still an outsider. He is trying to make the Democratic Party brand popular in places other than New York and Boca Raton. This has earned him the animosity of Democratic Party insiders, who think they know better despite the fact that Democrats have had their butts handed to them more often than not in the last seven Congressional races.

clip... Howard Dean wants to prove Them wrong. He wants Florida to know it can't count, that the vote in January was not fair, was against the rules, should not count. Hillary Clinton sided with Howard Dean until she won Florida and realized she could not come close to winning the nomination without it.

And so, her top fundraisers are attempting to bribe the Democratic Party. They are going to dine with Howard Dean this week and threaten him. They are offering to pull their money from the Democratic Party if Florida, which didn't count, continues to not count. The fundraisers don't believe in morality. They believe it's all about the money.

Barack Obama's fundraisers are not having the same meeting with Howard Dean because he raised money from a million people, and his bundlers don't wield the same power that Hillary's financiers wield. What's Howard Dean going to do, meet with the nurse who sent a $100 to the DNC because she loves Obama? Meet with the veteran who sent $300 because they like Barack's stance on Iraq? No, he's meeting with the Fat Cats, who really care less about Hillary and more about becoming Ambassadors under a President Hillary.

http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/24251#comment-1180486

DFA headquarters - PLEASE - fix the dam blog and put up a bat for Howard and the DNC!

Governor Paterson's wife is also named michelle

Tile :The Beatles - Michelle
This is lyrics from www.lyrics007.com
Michelle, ma belle
These are words that go together well
My Michelle

Michelle, ma belle
Sont des mots qui vont tres bien ensemble
tres bien ensemble

I love you, I love you, I love you
that's all I want to say
Until I find a way
I will say the only words I know you'll understand

Michelle, ma belle
Sont des mots qui vont tres bien ensemble
tres bien ensemble

I need to, I need to, I need to
I need to make you see
Oh, what you mean to me
Until I do I'm hoping you will know what I mean
I love you

I want you, I want you, I want you
I think you know by now
I'll get to you some how
Until I do I'm telling you so you'll understand

Michelle, ma belle
Sont des mots qui vont tres bien ensemble
tres bien ensemble
And I will say the only words I know that you'll understand
My Michelle

Well, jo, we're still benefitting from our farmer.  In the summer he hays our fields for free and in the winter he plows our/his drives with his loader for a modest fee.  He arrives unbidden whenever the major snow is over.  This has been a fairly good winter.

most of the money the Clintons have spent has been wasted.  It's no wonder the fat cats want to fund via the DNC.  Besides, most of them are already tapped out--reached their limits.  i'm not upping my monthlies to the DNC until I see who the nominee is.  Giving McCain bad publicity is not a worthwhile endeavor in my book.  If the GOP doesn't pick another candidate, they're really making a mistake.

The liberal Democratic activist organization, Democracy for America, is taking Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to task over the negative tenor of their campaign.

"The Democratic race for president has lost its focus," DFA president Jim Dean said in a letter to members. "We have John McCain to beat in November; instead, we fight each other. Geraldine Ferraro, Reverend Wright, Rezko ties, secret tax returns. If you're like me, you're sick of it."

Dean is urging Democrats to sign an on-line petition calling on Clinton and Obama to make nice.

http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/2008/03/liberals_scold_clinton_obama.html

>>>>>>>>>>>> is this satire?...  'cause it sounds like a lot of truth, to me.

Longtime advocates of failure panic as polls indicate possible success.

Dateline, Washington.

With the increasing likelihood that, whether Senator Barak Obama or Senator Hillary Clinton secure the Democratic nomination for the Presidency, the Democrats have an excellent chance of winning in a head-to-head match up with presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) is faced with a pair of daunting tasks: how to both quell the electorates enthusiasm for the Democratic nominee, and convince the Democratic Party membership to re- commit itself to the DLC’s bankrupt conservative agenda and succeed once again in snatching electoral defeat from the jaws of victory.

“It’s not going to be easy,” sighed Rep. Rahm Emanuel, longtime DLC ally. “People are pretty excited by this election, and that’s alot of positive energy to have to destroy. The DLC spent years divorcing the Party from it’s liberal roots, throwing water on any actual progressive passion before it could burst into flame and sweep the country. And then along comes all this possibility and hope for change and, well... oh, ” sighed the Congressional corporatist zombie “ What’s the point of even trying if we’re just going to win?”

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/4881

Did i mention that the news is reporting that four million credit card accounts have been compromised via the hannaford grocery chain?  That's what my call last night was about.  That's what happens when you have monopoly situations; damage is ever so much greater.

yes, Monica, it's lovely to have a farmer around!  I have a retired math professor neighbor, who loves to cut trees that need cutting and to swap berry plants and perennials and he snowblows the drive whenever we get the big snows.  but once that fresh foot of snow got those big layers of rain and ice and more snow over the last couple of weeks, his snowblowing days were numbered!

Monica - thanks for the Hannaford's heads up - I use my debit card there all the time - ouch!  guess I'll be calling the bank for a new card.

A video entitled 'michelle's song' from the movie "friends" from 1971

The location looks like the Carolina low country where michelle obama's folks are from 

Well, at least my bank in Georgia called me.

The Hannaford Bros. supermarket chain said a breach of its computer system potentially exposed about 4.2 million credit and debit card numbers from its Hannaford and Sweetbay stores and other locations.

Hannaford, based in Maine, said about 1,800 cases of fraud have been tied to the breach, but no personal information -- such as names or addresses -- was accessed, and it has contained the breach. The security lapse is the latest to affect a large retailer, and comes amid tougher scrutiny on the payments industry following a breach that emerged last year that compromised as many as 100 million card numbers of customers of Framingham retailer TJX Cos.

Hannaford operates 165 stores in the Northeast. There are 106 Sweetbay supermarkets in Florida. The company said in a statement posted to its website that the stolen data was "illegally accessed from our computer systems during transmission of card authorization.''

Separately, the Massachusetts Bankers Association said today that Visa and MasterCard had warned as many as 70 banks in Massachusetts about a large data breach at a major retailer, and association urged consumers to monitor their accounts.

The banking trade group said neither Visa nor MasterCard would identify the source of the breach.
(By Ross Kerber, Globe staff)

Hannaford Bros. supermarket chain yesterday said a breach of its computer system potentially exposed 4.2 million credit and debit card numbers and has led to about 1,800 fraud cases to date.

The data breach affected customer cards used at more than 270 stores in states including Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, Hannaford said, and lasted from December until early March. The Secret Service is investigating, said spokesmen for Hannaford and the federal agency.

History Lesson for Robert Torricelli...and Hillary Clinton

clip... Let's start with the fact that you walked away from your U.S. Senate seat with your tail between your legs in 2002, after being implicated in bribery and campaign finance scandals. How much tainted money did you raise for Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign, as one of her biggest supporters and chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee? Your many years in Washington, including fourteen years in the U.S. House of Representatives and your term in the Senate, sure don't bode well for that experience argument in the Clinton establishment arsenal.

You certainly didn't leave office with any kind of remorse about the wrong-doing we know about--the money and gifts you took from Korean-American businessman David Chang. You left because the polls predicted you'd be blown out by your virtually unknown Republican opponent--in New Jersey--a state that hadn't elected a Republican in more than 30 years. But with your fund-raising prowess, the Clintons made sure you stayed in the fold, didn't they?

The very next year, in 2003, you were raising money for John Kerry, an establishment pick for presidential nominee in 2004. Kerry (I hope unknowingly) eventually became the party's nominee in no small part because of your efforts to knee-cap insurgent candidate Howard Dean, most pointedly with your $50,000 donation to the 527 PAC, Americans for Jobs and Health Care. That money helped to pay for those precious ads that juxtaposed Dean with Osama bin Laden in an opprobrious and successful attempt to raise doubts about Dean's foreign policy ideas. It was your version of the red phone tactic--although you tried to keep your participation on the down-low, because back then it was considered bad form for surrogates of Democratic candidates to openly attack fellow Democratic candidates.

Tell us, Torch. I know you're a proud HillRaiser, but are you also behind the misleading ads aired in Ohio and Texas (and soon Pennsylvania), by the new pro-Hillary 527, the American Leadership Project? Since FEC filings from ALP appear not to disclose all of the group's funders, I'm left to wonder whether you're a silent donor, still funneling your old Senate campaign "trust fund" and other cash into coffers supporting your establishment buddies' shadier activities. This new 527 sure looks like something you'd have a hand in.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-nix/history-lesson-for-robert_b_92033.html

HQ, the link to the Open Letter on your homepage is broken.

8:34 AM EST

IMO, it's not just Barack Obama's burden to talk about race today  ( http://weblogs.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/blog/2008/03/obamas_challenge_forging_an_am_1.html  Obama's challenge: Forging an American race ); it's not just black men's burden to talk about race now; it's not even white, hispanic and/or asian men's burden to share the burden about talking about race in America --

it's every single American's burden to talk about race today, every man woman and child.

We are ALL in this together and IMO it's time to start scaling this seemingly insurmontable wall of racism.  We've been pussyfooting long enough in this country.

THE IRAQ WAR IS KILLING OUR ECONOMY

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/79988/

There is no longer any doubt that the Iraq War is a moral and strategic disaster for the United States. But what has not yet been fully recognized is that it has also been an economic disaster. To date, the government has spent more than $522 billion on the war, with another $70 billion already allocated for 2008.

With just the amount of the Iraq budget of 2007, $138 billion, the government could instead have provided Medicaid-level health insurance for all 45 million Americans who are uninsured. What's more, we could have added 30,000 elementary and secondary schoolteachers and built 400 schools in which they could teach. And we could have provided basic home weatherization for about 1.6 million existing homes, reducing energy consumption in these homes by 30 percent

oK *rdorgan 

There's a diary on KOS by teacherken which suggests that African Americans are being left out.  The following is my response.  I realize that it is presumptuous for me to have an opinion, but........

they are being excluded.  There's a difference.  It's the same difference as exists between "separated" and "segregated."

True, not all are being excluded; only those that don't submit and subordinate themselves to the power structure.

While most white Americans and most recent immigrants don't have a problem with the requirement to be subordinate, to recognize their place in the social hierarchy and manage to reap rewards commensurate with their subordination (haven't thought about it like that have you?), a significant proportion of the African American population, because of their history of being brought here as slaves and of striving for human rights ever since, don't see any reason why they should subordinate themselves.

The question is why white America is different.  Why do they consider subordination an appropriate way to organize society?  The answer I think lies in their history of having been ejected, very likely as insubordinates, by the societies they originally came from.  That is, while most voluntary immigrants claim to have left home in search of adventure or greater opportunities, the reality is that they weren't very welcome to stay where they were born or, at least, not willing to conform themselves.

This, I would argue, accounts for both the lip service to equality and independence and the practice of holding some other population down.  We like to think that people won't do to others what was done to them, but that's not how human nature plays itself out.  Those who are deprived of power seek to extract it by making someone else powerless.

In a sense, Barack Obama is not a typical African American because his father's arrival here was, like that of most other recent immigrants, a matter of choice.  Michelle Obama, on the other hand, is rooted in a population that sees no reason to be subservient.  That accounts for why she's perceived as arrogant.  Barack Obama has no need to assert power because he's not felt powerless.  Michelle Obama may well conclude that the white power structure just ain't worth all the fuss and bother.

Most African Americans have never asked to be integrated.  They just don't want to be shut out.  There's a difference.

I talked to some friends at the Winter Soldier meeting at DC. This article sums it up better then I can.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031608...

Talking to these folks and articles like this brought back a lot of bad memories.
In VN, I also got my compass heading screwed up by a machine gun mount and accidently called artillery on a nearby village. It was totally wiped out. We went in the village a few hours later and there was nothing but small body parts. My CO said don't worry about it as we would have probably destroyed it anyway.
Just another day in the looney bin.

The same dollars that are being spent on the war and the armaments and the planes and the salaries of troops are being spent at home to pay mortgages, taxes and vacations.  How many dollars are spent where isn't significant.  What's significant is what our people are doing.  Are they fighting others?  Are they surveilling their neighbors?  Are they building replacement guns and tanks and howitzers and sewing military uniforms?  Are they training on the weekend and in the summer to practice killing Arabs in Iraq or Afghanistan?  What could they be doing different?

The money just lets us keep track of this depraved behavior.  It's the difference between a piece of sheet music and a song sung in the shower.  Who, by the way, has time to sing in the shower anymore? 

9:16 AM EST

Monica -

Thanks for the thoughful analysis regarding white and black America.

All I know is that I tire of the Fourth Estate (the unelected quasi-government entity called the CM) proclaiming in 1960 that it was John Kennedy's burden to talk about his religion, his Catholicism.  IMO, no it was every Protestant, Jewish, Catholic, atheist, etc. American's responsibility, burden to talk about it.

Ditto, today for Barack Obama for race (and, frankly, for religion too).

Even if Obama doesn't win the general election, even if he doesn't even win the dem nomination, he will have done more to shed light on racism and religion here in America.  IMO, we are more segregated (in our thoughts, etc.) now in this first decade of the 21st century than we were in the immediate years following the Civil Rights movement, early 1970's.  We are going backwards.

NEWSMEDIA MINISTRY OF PROPAGANDA BLACKOUT OF WINTER SOLDIER CONTINUES

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alone_080317_winter_soldier_black.htm

As there are reports across the globe of a USA-wide blackout of major media news from the WINTER SOLDIERS presentations or soldiers’ testimonies on the  Iraq and Afghanistan War at the Labor College outside of Washington D.C. this week, it is time to recall that only one week earlier, George W. Bush told American soldiers in Afghanistan that if he was 20 or 30 years younger he’d love to join them. HOGWASH!

What a ludicrous claim, eh?  The man did everything he could to stay out of Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s—i.e. when the original WINTER SOLDIER hearings took place.

Nothing from our Democratic presidential candidates either.

9:26am

9:31 AM EST

Yahoo sorts news by:

Notice how the one piece about Iraq is not listed under Most Viewed ? 

That might explain: 

why the U.S. soldiers largely feel abandoned by the American public (only crediting their immediate families and friends with maintaining an interest);

why the Iraqi populace credit the some sense of stability with their own Iraqi police, army rather than with the U.S. soldier surge;

why there's no real connection in American voters minds with the war in Iraq and the rapidly declining U.S. economic prospects.

Even if Obama doesn't win the general election, even if he doesn't even win the dem nomination, he will have done more to shed light on racism and religion here in America

Excuse me--only a short time ago, Obama was loudly proclaiming that racism was not a factor in this election, and that blacks were "90% of the way" toward equality with whites--that there was no "Black America or White America"--just one America

Talk about flip flops!

9:32 am

9:33 AM EST

typo -

9:31 AM EST

Yahoo sorts news by:

Most Viewed - World

 ++++

 s/b - http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080318/wl_nm/iraq_reconciliation_dc_1

...

Most Viewed - World

World News

why there's no real connection in American voters minds with the war in Iraq and the rapidly declining U.S. economic prospects.

The fact that Democrats are running away from the issue might also help to explain the lack of connection.

Even if Obama doesn't win the general election, even if he doesn't even win the dem nomination, he will have done more to shed light on racism and religion here in America

Excuse me--only a short time ago, Obama was loudly proclaiming that racism was not a factor in this election, and that blacks were "90% of the way" toward equality with whites--that there was no "Black America or White America"--just one America

Talk about flip flops!

+++

Huron John -

In all due respects, yes Obama has woken up to the fact that racism is alive and well in America, just like my African-born wife has found that out.  Just like my white male self has too.  Sometimes it takes a situation like this, where one puts the pedal to the metal (ie. the first real chance for a AA to become our President), that true feelings of voters come out -- usually manifested behind the privacy of a primary voting booth.

He's adjusting to the situation, just like I am and a lot of other BO supporters are.

Of course, since you have no involvement (no horse in this race), through the barbs if you feel you must. 

Others of us will be doing what we can to help progress America along.

9:40 AM EST

typo - Of course, since you have no involvement (no horse in this race), through the barbs if you feel you must. 

s/b - Of course, since you have no involvement (no horse in this race), throw the barbs if you feel you must. 

62.

Monica Smith
Tue, 03/18/08

I love that movie. There was another war going on when it was in the movie theaters. Young people were dying by the hundreds every week in place none of us had ever heard about in our civics' books. Somehow that movie gave young people a voice of hope in all the madness. Wonderment should always have prominent place in any mind.

71.

Huron John
Tue, 03/18/08

Interesting picture. Money does have a tendency to pollute everything. A piece of paper or a spread sheet just doesn't feed people.

10:02 AM EST

fyi - new Front thread

History Lesson for Robert Torricelli...and Hillary Clinton

...uh excuse me, Torricelli was JOHN KERRY's GUY.