Clipmarks | Surge Clips

Scibe Juice - I Love It!

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:23:05 GMT

clipped by: mattyos
clipper's remarks: Great software for a copywriter

How ScribeJuice Works...

What does it actually do then?

First of all - it doesn't actually write the copy for you (but remember this is a piece of software - that is a good thing!) What is does do is help you improve your copy. And copy is truly how to make money online successfully.

Being a great copywriter is all about finding the little tweaks and changes needed to make a difference. A tiny change in the copy can result in a massive surge in sales after all.

McCain's Surge in Iraq Crippling Efforts in Afghanistan

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:01:28 GMT

clipped by: cptenaud
clipper's remarks: The death rate for American troops in Afghanistan last month was four times that of Iraq. The last two months have been the deadliest of the war for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan since 2001.

And today, Afghanistan sustained the deadliest single terrorist attack since 9/11 when suspected Taliban militants blew up the Indian embassy in Kabul.

This is directly attributable to negligent policies set forth by the Bush administration--an administration dangerously obsessed with Iraq at the expense of the Real Global War on Terror. When many were urging the U.S. to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan in early 2007, the Bush administration--with the support of Senator John McCain--launched the "surge" of troops into Baghdad.

Unfortunately, Iraq is not, as John McCain says, the "central front" in the War on Terror--and it never has been. If there is such a thing, it is in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Clip Source: www.vetvoice.com

by: Brandon Friedman

John McCain was a naval aviator who was shot down over Hanoi in North Vietnam in 1967 and taken prisoner--beginning an ordeal that would turn him into a genuine American hero. However, McCain has never commanded troops in the field, he has never fought on the ground during an insurgency, and he has never served in uniform in the Middle East. At the same time, he has no academic background in Middle Eastern affairs. In effect, John McCain is no more qualified to speak on guerrilla warfare in the Middle East than any other politician who has never led troops in ground combat against insurgents.

Yet recently, there's been a lot of talk by ignorant pundits and puddle-on-the-floor Democratic "strategists" about how Senator John McCain's military credentials are off limits for criticism

let's take a look at the current military situation created by George W. Bush and John McCain, when McCain demanded that we flood more troops into Iraq instead of Afghanistan.

World Bank says BIOFUELS behind world spike in food prices

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:18:40 GMT

clipped by: Spiritualmonkey
clipper's remarks: Burn food to feed the automobiles rather than people. Ain't that peachy.

Clip Source: www.salon.com

The Bush administration states that corn-based ethanol only accounts for 3 percent of global food price inflation. The USDA's chief economist disagrees -- he says biofuels add up to 10 percent of food price hikes. Other estimates have gone much higher -- but until today, the most How the World Works had seen anyone claim was 40 percent.

But now the U.K.'s the Guardian is reporting that it has laid its hot hands on a confidential World Bank report that makes the astonishing claim that 75 percent of the surge in global food prices can be attributed to biofuels.

If true, biofuel mandates are without a doubt a "crime against humanity." We can only hold our breath and wait for the inevitable leakage of the full report and the ensuing feeding frenzy as the world feasts upon the data. But in the meantime, here's one clue as to how the World Bank came up with such huge numbers.

75 percent is a big, big number.

Tags: food, biofuels, car-free, money, economics, politics, cars-suck, agriculture

McCain/Obama~amabO\niaCcM

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:02:03 GMT

clipped by: sahara

Clip Source: massdiscussion.blogspot.com

How Screwed Are You?

In 30 years, America could be in a state of foreclosure--unable to fund education, national defense, Medicaid, and homeland security.

America will be screwed due to Washington's fiscal immorality and lack of leadership.

Collection of Obama Flip-Flops

FISA

The Surge

Nuclear Power

Vouchers

DC Gun Ban and 2nd Amendment

Withdrawal from Iraq.

Welfare Reform.

Gay Marriage.

Mental Health Exceptions for Late-Term Abortions

PATRIOT Act:

Promised to repeal Patriot Act, then voted for it.

Jerusalem

Meeting with Foreign Leaders

Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Donations from Lobbyists and Special Interest PACS

Decriminalization of Marijuana

Public financing

Clip Source: howinsaneisjohnmccain.blogspot.com

McCain's Flip Flops

Torture

Special Interests

Campaign Finance Laws

Jerry Falwell

Iraq

1/22/03:

We will win it easily

1/4/07:

I knew it was probably going to be long and hard and tough

Abortion

Bush's tax cuts

Ethanol [hat tip Carpetbagger]

Gay Marriage [hat tip anon]

Gun control

Housing Relief

The Estate Tax

Wiretaps

Immigration Reform

Offshore drilling

Tags: flip-flops, president, elections

BUSH FUNDING TERRORISTS IN IRAN

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:50:28 GMT

clipped by: A53GG4

Clip Source: www.afterdowningstreet.org

BUSH FUNDING TERRORISTS IN IRAN

Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2008-07-05 10:18.

Iran

By Sherwood Ross

The recent surge of terrorist violence in Iran likely is being funded in part by the Bush administration with the support of Congress.

According to a report in the July 7-14 issue of The New Yorker magazine, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh says the U.S. reportedly has been funding the Iranian dissident terrorist group Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or M.E.K.; the Kurdish separatist Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK; and, according to some sources, the Jundallah, or Iranian People’s Resistance Movement.

“Hardly a day goes by now we don’t see a clash somewhere,” retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner is quoted by Hersh as stating. “There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed.” Gardiner has taught strategy at the National War College and is monitoring the violence in Iran.

Tags: politics

Wind surge poses a risk to salmon and reveals flaws in BPA's power-regulating system

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:01:16 GMT

clipped by: CohoctonWindWatch

Clip Source: www.oregonlive.com

Another, Iberdrola Renewables (formerly PPM Energy), misinterpreted the request and kept the turbines turning. "It was a miscommunication," said Don Furman, a senior vice president with Iberdrola. "Basically, we had the wrong people talking to each other."

BPA's Silverstein said his agency "could have been more clear in what we asked them to do."

Tags: iberdrola, alternative energy, industrial wind, bpa

Jack Murtha Steps In It Again

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:21:31 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: And, Murtha still has not apologized to the 7 innocent Haditha Marines he accused of cold-blooded murder last time.

UPDATE: Murtha's opponent this year for Congress is Lt. Colonel William Russell a decorated combat veteran who has served in Desert Storm, the Iraq War, and the Pentagon on 9/11.

You can donate to his campaign HERE.

A WilleyBCoyote Video.

Murtha Makes An Outrageous Allegation

http://newsbusters.org/node/5410

Clip Source: gatewaypundit.blogspot.com

[Video]

Here is what Murtha says:

Murtha: I think they have 17 or so guidelines and they've solved 4 or 5 of them.
(Actually they've completed 15 of the 18 benchmarks.)

Murtha: I think the short term it (the Bush Surge) has reduced incidents. I'm not sure if it's because the Iraqis are just worn out but certainly the way they are doing it today it makes a big difference. It used to be we broke down doors. We went in and we killed people inadvertantly. Now they're much more careful about it.

And, just think...
This hateful boob is the national security "expert" in the Democratic Party!

Blackfive adds: "And they wonder why no one takes them seriously in those areas???"

Let's hope justice is served against this hateful man some day soon. Murtha put those Haditha Marines through hell these past few years and he isn't man enough to apologize to them.

He is a coward.

Tags: jack murtha, iraq, surge, u.s. troops, marines

Veterans Hit The Battlegrounds

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:09:00 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: We need to finish the job. . . . No matter who is president."

Hegseth says his group is not operating on behalf of McCain and notes that federal law prohibits the organization from coordinating the ad with his campaign. The states were chosen, he said, not because they are crucial swing states for McCain, but rather because the heightened interest in those states will give it a larger audience.

"We're going to tap into that heightened awareness," he said, noting that his organization has supported several Democratic candidates in the past year or so. "It's not an attack on anybody. We're not taking on any presidential candidates."

He said McCain has been the "strongest advocate" for the veterans of the two wars.

"We would hope that success in Iraq could benefit everybody," he said.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Sen. John McCain is getting battleground-state help this week from Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who will appear in a television commercial aimed at convincing the public that the United States is winning the Iraq war and should stay to finish the job.

Produced by Vets for Freedom, an organization of veterans of the two wars, the ad will run in Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and on cable nationwide. The group, with about 20,000 members, will spend $1.5 million on what it says is the first of many spots during the next month.

"As an organization, we have four months here," said the group's chairman, Pete Hegseth, an Iraq veteran. "A window of opportunity of heightened awareness. We think it's crucial that the success our troops have made on the battlefield is relayed to the American public."

"We changed strategy in Iraq," one of the soldiers says in the ad. "And the surge worked. Now that's change we can believe in. We need to finish the job. . . .

Tags: mccain, iraq/afghanistan veterans, vet for freedom, michigan, new mexico, ohio, pennsylvania, virginia, nationwide cable

Low wages for essentail jobs is unacceptable

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:19:11 GMT

clipped by: montypaul
clipper's remarks: Keeping essential job wages low (cleaners, carers, classroom assistants) is unfair and stifles social mobility

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Society can't do without cleaners, carers, caterers and classroom assistants. These are not "starter jobs", nor can they be filled for ever by migrants. Is it OK to pay below what Rowntree shows is minimum decency, so long as they are all proven to lack potential? Those jobs are fair only if people who do them have a respectfully decent salary that puts them at the heart and not the margins of society - and if the social ladder is short enough for children to move with ease. Consider this as low-paid public-sector workers strike against below-inflation rises, while prices surge.

Tags: uk, brown, labour, greed, minimum wage, meanness, education

A Backlog Of Cases Alleging Fraud

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:23:42 GMT

clipped by: tabsey

Clip Source: www.michaelmoore.com

More than 900 cases alleging that government contractors and drugmakers have defrauded taxpayers out of billions of dollars are languishing in a backlog that has built up over the past decade because the Justice Department cannot keep pace with the surge in charges brought by whistle-blowers, according to lawyers involved in the disputes.

The issue is drawing renewed interest among lawmakers and nonprofit groups because many of the cases involve the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rising health-care payouts, and privatization of government functions -- all of which offer rich new opportunities to swindle taxpayers.

Tags: a, stressed, society, enriches, drug, companies

How the Surge has left us wounded

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:29:28 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: "If we accept the mainstream narrative on its face, the surge worked. It transformed the U.S. troop presence from being counterproductive to being indispensable for maintaining stability. But can we continue with anything close to the current level of troops deployed over there?"

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

The Simple Arithmetic of a Fraudulent Surge

From its inception, the Iraq war strategy was like a plan to fly across the Pacific without enough fuel to get to the other side. The surge made the plane fly faster.

can we continue with anything close to the current level of troops deployed over there?

clearly, "No."

1. "Mullen's Choice: Troops For Afghanistan Or Troops For Iraq,"

2. "Iraq Troop Boost Erodes Readiness, General Says,"

3. "U.S. deploys more than 43,000 unfit for combat,"

4. "US Sent Medically Unfit Soldiers to Iraq, Pentagon Acknowledges,"

5. "Pentagon Ends Time Limit On Guard, Reserve

6. "Col.: DOD delayed brain injury scans,"

feared veterans would blame

ailments on

bomb blasts

7. "Scientists: Brain injuries from war worse than thought,"

9. "Invisible Wounds of War,"

300,000 individuals currently suffer from PTSD or major depression and that 320,000 individuals experienced a probable TBI [traumatic brain injury]

Tags: surge, iraq

Oil soars to new high above $146

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:11:18 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.ft.com

Crude oil prices jumped above $146 a barrel on Thursday boosted by a drop in US stockpiles and concerns about the medium-term supply and demand balance. The rise brings the oil price surge since January to 55 per cent.

Henry Paulson, the US Treasury secretary, said on Thursday that the “predominant factor” behind the rise in oil prices was supply and demand.

“[It] is the fact that global production and capacity has not increased appreciably over the last 10 years and the demand has continued to grow and inventories are at low levels,” Mr Paulson said in London.

The concerns about supply and demand imbalances were exacerbated earlier this week when the International Energy Agency, the western countries’ oil watchdog, said that non-Opec supply will barely growth to 2013.

The weakness of the US dollar, at its lowest level in two months against the euro, also contributed to the price rise

Tags: energy, oil, i-price, i-increase, i-record

Japan's Booming Sex Niche: Elder Porn

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:54:43 GMT

clipped by: zasel
clipper's remarks: Any entrepreneurs here in the west, might take a lesson from the Japanese business world. Instead of paying our elderly their measly social security payments, perhaps we could offer them jobs in the porn industry. The money is great, and they can work mostly on their backs.

Clip Source: www.time.com

Shigeo Tokuda looks like any other 74-year-old man in Japan. Despite suffering a heart attack three years ago, the lifelong salaryman now feels healthier, and lives happily with his wife and a daughter in downtown Tokyo. He is, of course, more physically active than most retirees, but that's because he's kept his part-time job — as a porn star.

A WHO report released in March found that 1 in 4 married couples in Japan had not made love in the previous year, while 38% of couples in their 50s no longer have sex at all.

the country has seen a surge in demand for pornography that has turned adult videos into a billion-dollar industry, with "elder porn" one of its fastest-growing genres.

Director Gaichi Kono says the eroticism of elders is captivating to younger viewers.

A popular young actress can earn up to $100,000 per film, while a mature actress is paid only $2,000.

The market for elder porn has doubled over the past decade, according to Kadowaki.

Taxes and revenues - a history lesson

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:40:52 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Paul Krugman takes on the myth that tax cuts result in increases in tax revenues.

Clip Source: krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

So the chart below shows real federal revenue per capita — specifically, revenue in thousands of 2000 dollars per person — since 1993. All data from BEA.

What you see is that there was a huge revenue increase during the Clinton years. There was also the much-touted revenue surge of the later Bush years, but this followed a spectacular revenue plunge earlier. At this point real revenue per capita is only slightly higher than it was at the end of the 1990s. That’s actually abnormal: given the long-term growth of the US economy, we should have expected a continuing upward trend in revenues per capita.

Overall, the graph suggests that yes, Virginia, cutting taxes reduces revenue. But it also tells us that stuff happens: the stock bubble inflated revenues in the late 90s, the collapse of that bubble hit revenues thereafter, then the housing bubble did its thing, and so on.

Tags: krugman, paul krugman, taxes, taxation, revenue

McCain vs. Obama On National Security

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:31:41 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: that espouses the destruction of the State of Israel as its fondest wish and pledges undying enmity to the United States to possess the weapons to advance their malevolent ambitions." He also rejects "unconditional dialogues" with Iran.

Obama has delivered messages on Iran that were more mixed. But that only makes diplomacy more important. If we must use military force, we are more likely to succeed, and will have far greater support at home and abroad, if we have exhausted our diplomatic efforts." In the same speech, however, Obama promised: "aggressive, principled diplomacy without self-defeating preconditions....Obama missed a vote on a controversial amendment offered by Sen. Jon Kyl and Lieberman that proposed labeling Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Obama called the amendment a repeat of the mistakes that led to war in Iraq; however, he had cosponsored an earlier bill declaring the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization

Clip Source: newsblaze.com

IRAQ WAR

John McCain cosponsored the 2002 vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq, arguing at the time that Saddam Hussein was "a threat of the first order." Although he was a vehement critic of the administration's "mismanagement and failure" during the early war years, he advocated the surge of additional troops to Iraq and the need to stay as long as necessary to win the war.

In 2002, when he was an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama opposed the war. However, after he was elected to the U.S. Senate, he voted against early proposals by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and others to set a timetable for withdrawal; now Obama votes consistently in favor of establishing a timetable. Obama's plan for exiting Iraq would send home one or two combat brigades a month, with most combat troops out by the end of 2009.

IRAN POLICY

McCain has been clear about his position on Iran. In February 2008, he told an audience: "I intend to make unmistakably clear to Iran we will not permit a government

Tags: mccain, obama, iraq, iran, missile defense, nuclear weapons, north korea, guantanamo bay