Clipmarks | pokkets's 'bush' clips

Iran is no threat unless Bush makes it one

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:23:35 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Attack on Iran will quash democracy movement

Iran Is No Threat, Unless Bush Makes It One

Worst of all, military attacks on Iran will only consolidate the hardliners' grip on Iran, just when economic problems and political repression are shaking the foundations of their power. President Ahmadinejad is in deep trouble at home, even among his own base. The vast majority of Iran's urban population, and in particular its university students, despise him for his failed economic policies, political repression, and the danger that his hollow rhetoric has created for Iran's national security.

In April 2005, when the reformist Mohammad Khatami was still president, Iran made a comprehensive proposal to the U.S., offering to enter serious negotiations and putting all the important issues on the table. The offer was never taken seriously.

given the deep unpopularity of the hardliners, the absence of an external threat to Iran's national security would make it much easier for democratic groups to push for reforms

Tags: iran

Bush to Veto bill to bar waterboarding

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 11:26:56 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: He says that, sensory deprivation and other unnamed 'Techniques' are essential tools in the war on terror.
The talk of terror exists for the sake of the 'Patriot' Act 1-2 I can't find any other word but Evil.

Clip Source: www.mail.com

By JENNIFER LOVEN

President Bush is poised to veto legislation that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding -- a technique that simulates drowning -- and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.

The president planned to talk about the veto in his Saturday radio address.

Bush has said the bill would harm the government's ability to prevent future attacks. Supporters of the legislation argue that it preserves the United States' right to collect critical intelligence while boosting the country's moral standing abroad.

"The bill would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror, the CIA program to detain and question

key terrorist leaders and operatives," deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto said Friday.

The bill would restrict the CIA to using only the 19 interrogation techniques listed in the Army field manual.

The legislation would bar the CIA from using waterboarding, sensory deprivation or other coercive methods to break a prisoner

Cheney and Impeachment

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:38:09 GMT

clipped by: katsteevns

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

February 23, 2008 by The Huffington Post

Cheney Impeachment: Courageous, but Not Surprising

by Elizabeth Holtzman

For the first time since the Bush administration took office, three members of the House Judiciary Committee, Robert Wexler (D-FL), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), are calling for hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Richard Cheney.

No serious student of the Constitution would question that sufficient grounds exist to impeach both President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The Constitution provides that an Executive who puts himself above the law and abuses the powers of his office may be impeached, a point confirmed in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, for abuses such as illegal wiretapping.

Nader on Bush and the FDA

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:34:22 GMT

clipped by: katsteevns

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

February 23, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

‘My Number One Priority Is to Protect You’

by Ralph Nader

Like other families, the Bush family eats, uses medicines, and relies on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to assure the safety of vast amounts of both products.

Like other families, more and more of the food and medicine you consume is coming from other countries where the FDA has very little inspection authority. Nearly 80 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients are imported from foreign countries.

Hardly a day goes by without a news story recounting or disclosing casualties or serious perils from contaminated food and medicines. Many of these and other medicines have seriously harmful side-effects or lack of efficacy.

President Bush is the leading authority in the country when it comes to making FDA an adequately funded, staffed, and empowered agency to urgently fulfill what he says repeatedly is his top priority-to protect the safety of the American people.

Stingray beats burgers any day

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:46:25 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: I know what they mean. Remember home cook food? No? Anything made at home beats takeaway hands down. For a start you know exactly what goes into it. Second you can choose your own ingredients, and cook what you feel like. People forget how when the Australian Aboriginals lived off the land there was an almost limitless variety of foods, that could be gathered in different seasons, They managed to survive this way for around 80,000 years. of course many of their traditional sources have become limited or endangered, and the advent of 'civilization' has meant much of this traditional knowledge is being lost. There is a man named Major (retired Army)Les Hiddins, also known as the 'Bush Tucker Man' who has written several books about Australian Native foods still in the bush. They are big books, with hundreds of examples and have photographs and locations, but as Australia is becoming more and more mined, fished and cultivated more and more sources are disappearing.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Dani Cooper

Aboriginal teenagers are turning community perceptions on their head by saying traditional tucker such as stingray and bush plums are their favourite foods, an Australian study says.

Dr Julie Brimblecombe, at the Darwin-based Menzies School of Health Research, says the finding is part of a larger study into food choices in remote communities.

The attachment of young Yolngu to traditional foods surprised even senior members of the remote community in northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

"A lot of senior people in the community were saying young people had lost the taste for traditional foods and just wanted to buy takeaway food," she says.

But the nutritionist and public health expert says the teenage school children in northeast Arnhem Land not only liked traditional food, but preferred it to western-style food.

"It's not only that they like the taste of the food," she says, "it was also about who they are; they have a totemic relationship to the food."

The US is its Own Terrorist

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:32:26 GMT

clipped by: digits
clipper's remarks: I wrote this August 01, 2006. How appropriate now after Bush's State of the Union.

Please see ....

http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/FA485DF5-5A4D-4186-BB58-BA93A0C85386/

Clip Source: digits.newsvine.com

The War on Terror is failing. The U.S. citizens are losing. From the Patriot Act to mother's having to drink their own breast milk in order to board planes, the so-called "War" has been a miserable defeat to the citizens of the United States.

We are living in a reactionary period and the U.S. government has invoked and provoked more fear into the hearts of their citizens more so than any act of terror from foreign hostiles have. Humans have this wonderful capacity to forgive and forget but since that seems to be apathetic to the plight of those who have lost loved ones due to foreign enemies let's try a rephrase: Time is a magic pill.

Running from looks exactly the same as running toward but in the difference, there is a world. "I don't know where I'm going but I need to get away." versus "I am running toward something I want." Fear versus Freedom. The government is counting on your fear-based beliefs to not know the difference.

Tags: politics, bush, america, usa, privacy, liberties, newsvine

Bush Budget Would bring Record Deficit

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 04:31:35 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Just look where the money is going. It makes me sick. It would be nice if it was his money. If the Democrats win next year, they will be stuck with the bad debt. Everyone will pay - But the Republicans. Where is the money going? Through the laundry, into the pockets of those at the top. We know who Many are, But there are many more Rich Cowards who stay hidden behind iron gates, with Bunkers ready to scurry into where things get out of control. And they will. History will judge them, but the people will suffer. Very little of it seems to be going towards the general public. It's being shipped overseas through the likes of Haliburton. Dick Cheney's Pet Company. Bush has declared WAR on the American People. And his cronies are laughing all the way to the Federal Reserve.

Clip Source: www.mail.com

ANDREW TAYLOR

The record $3.1 trillion budget proposed by President Bush on Monday would produce eyepopping federal deficits, despite his attempts to impose politically wrenching curbs on Medicare and eliminate scores of popular domestic programs.

The Pentagon would receive a $36 billion, 8 percent boost for the 2009 budget year beginning Oct. 1, even as programs aimed at the poor would be cut back or eliminated. Half of domestic Cabinet departments would see their budgets cut outright.

Bush's overall request for defense spending in 2009 is $588.3 billion, compared with $670 billion this year. But it includes only $70 billion for initial war

costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, $119 billion less than has been projected for this year. That $70 billion is almost certain to increase

Slumping revenues and the cost of an economic rescue package will combine to produce a huge jump in the deficit to $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009

just shy of the record $413 billion set four years ago.

REALITY CHECK!

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:03:39 GMT

clipped by: ouyangwulong
clipper's remarks: There is a frightening new global trend of denial...

Europeans think that they don't need to limit fishing...

Car companies don't think they need to improve fuel economy standards...

Bush thinks he can increase spending and cut taxes at the same time...

Jingoists think we are winning the war in Iraq...

Democrats think Hillary Clinton has enough experience to win an election...

Polluters think that Global Warming won't really happen...

Evangelicals think Jesus is coming back soon...

Fundamentalists think they can win the war against modernity...

The truth is: we're stuck with this world. The rules DO apply. No free passes. You have to face the music sometime.

We must choose realism over comfortable delusion. Unfortunately, for now, wistful thinking will rule the day until we let it all collapse around us.

Then we'll stand there scratching our heads saying: How could this happen?

Clip Source: www.iht.com

Fishing until all the fish are gone

Sharon LaFraniere showed how mechanized fishing fleets from the European Union and nations like China and Russia - usually with the complicity of local governments - have nearly picked clean the oceans off Senegal and other northwest African countries.

Clip Source: www.iht.com

U.S. agency says 17 states can't set car emission rules

WASHINGTON: The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday denied California and 16 other states the right to set their own standards for carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles.

Clip Source: www.iht.com

US deficit expected to grow even before economic stimulus package is unwrapped

The latest deficit projections from the Congressional Budget Office forecast a sea of red ink that will only deepen under plans to jump-start the economy with tax cuts and government spending.

Clip Source: www.iht.com

Published: January 21, 2008

BAGHDAD: A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a funeral tent Monday in a predominantly Sunni village, killing at least 14 people and wounding 17.

Tags: reality check, bush, democrats, big buisness, oil, iraq, environment, global warming, tax cuts

Web Site Assembles U.S. Prewar Claims

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:03:24 GMT

clipped by: spherepet

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Web Site Assembles U.S. Prewar Claims

By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.

Published: January 23, 2008

Students of how the Bush administration led the nation into the Iraq war can now go online to browse a comprehensive database of top officials’ statements before the invasion, connecting the dots between hundreds of claims, mostly discredited since then

The Center for Public Integrity, a research group that focuses on ethics in government and public policy, designed the new Web site to allow simple searches for specific phrases, such as “mushroom cloud” or “yellowcake uranium,” in transcripts and documents totaling some 380,000 words, including remarks by President Bush and most of his top advisers in the two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks

Warnings about the need to confront Iraq

can be combed line by line, and reviewed alongside detailed critiques published after the fact by official panels, historians, journalists and independent experts.

no startling new information in the archive

Tags: iraq war, the center for public integrity, ethics

Study:False statements led to Iraq War

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:57:52 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.mail.com

DOUGLASS K. DANIEL

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews

at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction

and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida

second

to Powell's 244 false statements

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:29:21 GMT

clipped by: citizenbfk
clipper's remarks: I launched a new project today: Political Action News and this clip, above, is the lead item in the one-page web.

Other stories (all just one paragraph or two, with link to major news source) are:

-- Hybrid Progress at Auto Show
-- White House erases email evidence
-- This week's top (USA) election events
-- US Marine on the Run: Rape & Murder?
-- Federal Reserve & Corporate Bank Robbery
-- Israeli-Palestinian Violence Grows Worse
and
a regular feature/link, changing weekly (like the news) is: 'This Weeks' Comic Surprise'
and the first ''comic surprise is: The New Halliburton/Bush Coins (a hilariously YouTube type video, shown on MSNBC Countdown last night)

Lots of pictures, each worth a thousand words.

A prime emphasis is not to bull*shit. Mainstream media doesn't cut to the core; it's vague and uncommitted; it doesn't call a spade a spade.

But I do. 4sure.

Tell your Ma. Tell your Pa. Tell your clippers and friends. It's worth a bookmark, IMHO.

Clipmarks

Clip Source: www.americancitizenstogether.org

Bad Reviews for Bush in the Mideast

President begs Saudi’s for lower oil prices; sells them weapons, supports Egyptian dictator, pretends to work for Israeli -Palestinian peace...

Bush Exempts Navy from Environmental Law.

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:36:24 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: A federal Judge in Los Angeles issued a preliminary injunction requiring a 12 mile no-sonar-zone. Bush does not have the power to overturn a court injunction, but that doesn't bother him, he's going to appeal in San Francisco. ( He knows more people there)

Clip Source: www.mail.com

PAULINE JELINEK

President Bush exempted the Navy from an environmental law so it can continue using sonar in its anti-submarine warfare training off the California coast, which critics say is harmful to whales and other marine mammals.

The exemption by itself won't allow the Navy to go forward with the training, but it could strengthen the military's argument in court, Navy officials said. They have asked a court to decide by Frida

A federal judge in Los Angeles had issued a preliminary injunction earlier this month requiring the Navy to create a 12-nautical-mile, no-sonar zone along the Southern California coast and to post trained lookouts to watch for marine mammals before and during exercises.

Bush has no authority to overturn a court injunction, officials said. With the exemption in hand, they are hoping a three-judge panel in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco will vacate the injunction.

"The president's action is an attack on the rule of law,"

"What We Are Seeing Is the Fall of America"

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:40:20 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Harold Bloom speaks...

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Harold Bloom, Yale literature professor and cultural critic, is one of America's most prominent and provocative intellectuals.

Speaking at his home in New Haven where he is recovering from a recent health scare, a pale and weak Bloom seems to have symbolically embodied what he calls the "poor state of the nation."

"I am 77 years old and I have never seen this country in such a bad state. It is madness. What we are seeing is the fall of the Roman Empire, only now it is the fall of America, the glory of our Empire. This war is what Parthia was to Rome.

"We have caused a monstrous mess. We don't even count killed Iraqis. God knows how many Iraqi women, children and men have been killed by our accidental shootings, which we are such experts at, or by other Iraqis. No, 'Benito Bush' (Bloom's pet name for President George Bush) deserves, if we had a functioning civil law in the world, to be condemned for crimes against humanity. Bush is ultimately responsible for this war," Bloom says

Tags: iraq war, united states, middle east, chaos, war

How's the Economy Now, Mr. Bush

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:02:52 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: Amid all the administrations touting of how strong the economy is the observable reality is somewhat different.

Clip Source: www.ajc.com

10,000 hopefuls keep eyes open for Wal-Mart job

For the fourth consecutive day, people waited in long lines Thursday for a shot at a job at a new Wal-Mart in DeKalb County, pushing the total number of applicants beyond 10,000.

Beginning Monday, after virtually no advertising or any signs, the throngs of hopeful applicants continued to pour into a church converted into a job processing center — all vying for only 350 to 400 available jobs, according to Wal-Mart officials.

The job-seeking frenzy may be a peek into a larger economic picture. A report from the U.S. Labor Department last week indicated a surprising plunge in job creation by private employers in November, with new jobs far below the level needed to keep pace with population growth.

Shantica Riley (right) of College Park and Cleo Moore of Decatur are among the more than 10,000 people who have applied so far for 350 to 400 jobs at the Wal-Mart near Avondale Estates.

Tags: economy, bush

Impeachment? Why not? I'll tell you why!

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:08:48 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: AHHH, HELL! *SLAPS OWN HEAD* I can’t be the first to think this–The reason the Dem Leadership doesn’t want to Impeach is that they really WANT TO KEEP THE EXECUTIVE POWERS FOR THE NEXT PRESIDENT, most likely a Democrat! With a powerful corporate puppet in the WH, the corporate bosses can keep the stranglehold on the people in perpetuity, for Beevis and Butthead sake!!!

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

Over the past 18 months, a core group of Democrats and others from the left has steadfastly maintained that President Bush and Vice President Cheney should be impeached. Mainstream Democrats in Congress are sympathetic to their arguments, but most have bowed to the political reality that impeachment proceedings would gridlock the federal government in the last year of the Bush administration, distract lawmakers from resolving problems that affect the daily lives of Americans, and possibly trigger an endless cycle of reprisal impeachment attempts for future administrations.

Mr. Bush’s interpretation of executive powers has led critics to dub his tenure the “imperial presidency.” Rep. Michaud correctly notes in his call for hearings on impeachment of Mr. Cheney that: “Expansions and potential abuses of power by this administration become precedents for future ones, which lead to further erosions of our constitutional rights.”