nice pot sir

hunters7 posted small blind ($0.50)
pere59 posted big blind ($1)
Game # 776,360,428 starting.
Dealing Hole Cards
willek raised for $4
roscorude called for $4
0384 folded
hunters7 called for $3.50
pere59 folded
Dealing the Flop(8¨8§10§)
hunters7 checked
willek checked
roscorude checked
Dealing the turn(7©)
hunters7 bet for $7
willek folded
roscorude raised for $14
hunters7 called for $7
Dealing the river(6¨)
hunters7 bet for $13
roscorude raised for $43
hunters7 called for $30
roscorude shows a Full House, Tens full of Eights
(10§10ª10©8¨8§)
hunters7 mucked
roscorude wins $125 with a Full House, Tens full of Eights
wowsers
cerberus- nice pot sir

What's in the 2005 Energy Bill?

On the gasoline front, the big ticket item is subsidies for ethanol—as usual. Archer Daniels Midlands (ADM) owns 7 ethanol plants with a production capacity of 1,103,000,000 gallons per year. The ethanol tax subsidy is 51¢/gallon, so that comes to $562,000,000/year. (Now there's a lobbying effort that paid off.) But we need energy independence, right? Unfortunately, using ethanol costs $7.87 to reduce fossil fuel use by the energy in a gallon of gasoline. And, no, most of that money does not turn into ADM profit, it's just used up making something that's too expensive. But they do turn a good profit while soaking up 1/3 of the ethanol subsidy. (There is hope for better ethanol.)
Now what about those hybrid-car tax breaks of $1700--$3000 per car?
Toyota figures it can get a $2400 subsidy on one of its great new hybrids that get about 50 mpg instead of about 25 mpg like most of us get. Driving 100,000 miles over the life of the car saves 2000 gallons so that's $1.20 per gallon saved. And that savings requires no nitrogen fertilizer. It also helps to jump start one of the best new technologies out there.

How much money will be spent on hybrid tax breaks? There's a limit of 60,000 cars per company; figure 6 companies and $2400 on average, that's $864,000,000. But that's for four years, 2006--2009, not per-year like the ADM subsidy. Why the limited budget on a much better deal? Because no American car companies can sell more than about 60,000 hybrids in that time. If they had expanded the program, Toyota, which will sell 100,000 hybrids in 2006, would not run out of tax breaks in August of the first year. These tax breaks encourage conservation, but like the ethanol subsidy, their purpose seems more to help corporations.

That would require more corn acreage for cars than for feed and food.

Wind, Cellusose Ethanol, and Solar
Just the Facts:
Renewable energy will remain a very limited part of our total energy supply for a long time to come. But it's still important. Everything important starts small. The two most promising renewable sources are probably wind and eco-ethanol, though in Brazil sugar-cane ethanol seems to be making a significant contribution.

Total U.S. energy use was 100 Quads* in 2004, of that, 0.2 Quads was from wind and solar. That value doubled in the last 10 years. (DOE Monthly Energy Review, Table 1.3) At that rate wind and solar will supply 1% of our energy by 2028.

Ethanol supplied 0.296 Quads in 2004, but its production consumes 3/4 that much in energy, so its net contribution was less than 1/10 of 1%, but its use tripled in the last ten years. So it should also supply 1% of our energy by about 2028.

But ethanol from corn is quite expensive and not very ecological, so we probably do not want it to increase to the 1% level. That would require more corn acreage for cars than for feed and food.

That’s where eco-ethanol comes in. That’s ethanol made from cellulose, which is all the unused parts of plants. This is far more energy efficient and ecological because that is now wasted—well not quite. The unused parts of crop plants are usually returned to the soil to enrich it, or more accurately, to avoid impoverishing it. There is still a cost to using plant cellulose, but much less than from growing corn just to make gas for our cars.

* A Quad is a quadrillion (15 zeros) Btu.
http://zfacts.com

they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will.

After Neoconservatism
By Francis Fukuyama, Feb. 19, 2006, The New York Times full PDF

As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq ... There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship... But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point.

The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles. The doctrine argued that, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, America would have to launch periodic preventive wars to defend itself against rogue states and terrorists with weapons of mass destruction; that it would do this alone, if necessary. ... It is not surprising that in its second term, the administration has been distancing itself from these policies. ...
The New York Times full PDF

Do Me Right

Asie Payton died of a heart attack on May 19, 1997, in Holly Ridge, Mississippi. It occurred in the early afternoon, while he was driving a tractor in the same fields he'd worked most of his sixty years. For all of 1995 and most 1996, Fat Possum tried unsuccessfully to convince Asie that the world outside Mississippi needed to hear him. But despite living below the poverty level and desperately needing the easy money of a gig, he could not be lured away from Washington County for more than a couple of hours.

Fat Possum succeeded in recording Asie twice: once at Junior Kimbrough's club, and once at Jimmy's Auto Care, Fat Possum's old studio. Obviously, all the songs on Worried were recorded during these two sessions, and originally intended to be demo tapes. At the time, all we knew about Asie was that he lived in a shotgun shack--no phone, no a/c; and that whenever the fields were dry enough for tractor tires, he was working in them. When they were too wet, Asie was impossible to find. He lived in Holly Ridge almost all of his life and, like his father before him, spent Saturday nights playing in one of the two small grocery stores that qualify Holly Ridge for a name on the map-- a place, instead of just a county-road intersection.
click here to d/l and listen to asie payton Do Me Right - mp3

It's a "Daleadega" weekend

dales birthday celibration at taladega this weekend
Dale Earnhardt will be inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.

a bill not passed by the House and Senate is not a law,

Taking the President to Court

As some of you may be aware, according to the President and Congressional Republicans, a bill does not have to pass both the Senate and the House to become a law. Forget your sixth grade civics lesson, forget the book they give you when you visit Congress - "How Our Laws Are Made," and forget Schoolhouse Rock.

These are checks and balances, Republican-style.

As the Washington Post reported last month, as the Republican budget bill struggled to make its way through Congress at the end of last year and beginning of this year (the bill cuts critical programs such as student loans and Medicaid funding), the House and Senate passed different versions of it. House Republicans did not want to make Republicans in marginal districts vote on the bill again, so they simply certified that the Senate bill was the same as the House bill and sent it to the President. The President, despite warnings that the bill did not represent the consensus of the House and Senate, simply shrugged and signed the bill anyway. Now, the Administration is implementing it as though it was the law of the land. As many of you know, I have become increasingly alarmed at the erosion of our constitutional form of government.

Wilma Cline found another drug source for Limbaugh, she told the tabloid, getting him at one point 11,900 pills in a four month period in 2001.

 Name:  LIMBAUGH, RUSH HUNDSON
Race: 

White



DOB:  01/12/1951 






 Address: 

  340 ROYAL PALM WY S-304



  

PALM BEACH,
FL 33480


Facility:

 MDC INTAKE 




Booking Number:  2006021379







        OBTS Number:  N/A


Booking Date:  04/28/2006 


Time:  16:25







 Arresting Agency: 
01 - PBSO



Officer: J. HOFFMAN




 Original Bond: $3,000.00
Current Bond: $3,000.00



 Release Date: N/A
Holds For Other Agencies:No






 Warrant Number: N/A

Charges:
893.13-3730	FRAUD-CONCEAL INFO TO OBTAIN PRESCRIPTION

try there for better picture of booking page i suck a screen captures

limbaugh fraud

I was hoping he would finally turn himself in for his fraudulent persona or his fraudulent belief in the republican way of demeaning every one other than hiself and his ilk........... the "tough on crime" crowd strikes again

Virtually everything in your home is made from something that has been bartered, brokered or bet on by someone somewhere.

“Prices are being guided by institutional money managers who are holding between $100 billion and $120 billion in commodities investments.

The only counter-argument to this is that the Texans and Saudis aren’t really demanding any more for their product, since they rely upon the world futures markets to dictate the price. There is some merit to this argument. Speculators in the futures markets are indeed bidding up the price. “Prices are being guided by institutional money managers who are holding between $100 billion and $120 billion in commodities investments. That's at least double the amount three years ago and up from $6 billion in 1999, according to Barclays Capital.” (Source: the Wall Street Journal) Translation: Hedge Funds, who have no economic interest (as opposed to airlines and distillers) for the futures market beyond speculation, are driving the oil market higher. Like the stock speculators of the 1920’s that collaborated to drive individual stocks higher only to unload them at a later date, there isn’t any force on the short side either large enough or that has an interest, in lower prices.
The Phony Rationale for high Oil Price
by Joel Peskoff

french penguin hunters

i just watched "the march of the penguins"
no commercials, morgan freeman and nothing better to do,
how can you go wrong?

amazing creatures. all that "walking like a pengiun" they make sure they walk far enough away from any potential ice break up as to not lose thier offspring. hell they do all kindsa wild shit as to not lose thier offspring period.
must see movie? not particularily but if you like documentaries and morgan freeman narrations go ahead watch it. you won't be dissapointed.

as a side note i watched a little bit of the "bonus feature" and to my great surprise they show the film makers, a couple french guys. at thier french ice station staging area. one of the guys was smoking. indoors. at a scientific research station!
i didn't expect that, but i shoulda known better. there were also jerry lewis posters all over the walls inside the ice station......

Sweden’s Riksbank said it had slashed the proportion of dollars in its reserves from 37 to 20 per cent, pushing its euro holdings up to 50 per cent.

Dollar in rough water and needing support
By Steve Johnson
Published: April 21 2006 12:28 | Last updated: April 21 2006 18:02


The US dollar suffered a terrible week, hitting a seven-month low against the euro, as the market wondered what would support the currency when monetary tightening had run its course.The dollar was first hit by the release of the minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s March meeting, which said that “most members thought that the end of the tightening process was likely to be near”.

The minutes, alongside soft economic data, prompted a growing number of commentators to opine that the Fed would call it a day after one last quarter-point interest rate rise in May, which would take Fed funds to 5 per cent.

Slightly firmer than expected US consumer inflation data on Wednesday did threaten to throw the dollar a lifeline by suggesting that US rates may need to rise above 5 per cent after all.

However, strategists’ minds were already turning to what might drive the market once US yield support dissipates. According to most, the future looks ugly for the greenback with the huge US current account deficit seen casting its shadow once more.

The International Monetary Fund chipped in, helpfully pointing out that the dollar will need to depreciate “significantly” if global economic imbalances are to be resolved in an orderly fashion. Then on Friday it was the turn of politicians and central bankers to highlight another potential threat to the dollar – that of reserve diversification.

Sweden’s Riksbank said it had slashed the proportion of dollars in its reserves from 37 to 20 per cent, pushing its euro holdings up to 50 per cent.

Alexei Kudrin, the Russian finance minister, said at the G7 summit in Washington that the dollar was not the “absolute” reserve currency and that the US external deficit could affect the dollar’s reserve status in the future.

The dollar fell 1.8 per cent over the week to $1.2339 to the euro, 1.7 per cent to $1.7821 against sterling and 1.4 per cent to Y116.93 against the yen.

The yen hit an all-time low of Y145.49 to the euro on Thursday amid signs that Japanese investors were once again buying foreign bonds now that the fiscal year-end was behind them.
the dollar was not the “absolute” reserve currency

Since our "federal reserve notes" have no value unless all countries are forced to buy them at economic gunpoint,

The price of gold has climbed to over US$ 600 an ounce. Many are saying this is because of the pending war with Iran. However, this leap in gold prices has little to do with a real or imagined war with Iran, it has to do with greed.

Remember the Bruce Willis movie, DIE HARD 3, where 'terrorists' stole dump-trucks full of gold from the N.Y. Federal Reserve Bank that belonged to different foreign countries? Think what that gold was doing there in the first place: in 1973 all the OPEC member countries agreed with the USA to sell OPEC oil only for U.S. dollars. This forced every nation in the world to buy U.S. federal reserve 'dollars' in order to purchase OPEC oil for import. They have been exchanging their gold for our otherwise worthless 'dollars' for years, having no other choice in order to import critical oil.
Here it comes

Bush administration wants to confiscate Jack Anderson's papers.

April 19, 2006 -- Bush administration wants to confiscate Jack Anderson's papers. In one of the most dramatic examples of the fascism of the Bush regime, Scott Shane is reporting in today's New York Times that the FBI is seeking access to the papers of the late investigative journalist Jack Anderson. Over his long career Anderson amassed some 200 boxes of papers. The FBI believes that among Anderson' papers are classified documents leaked to the journalist by government sources over his long career. The Bush regime's draconian desire to confiscate Anderson's papers comes after it began reclassifying documents held by the National Archives and Records Administration. Some of the affected documents were from the administration of Bush's father and Ronald Reagan and involved Iran-Contra and CIA assassination plots (including those during the CIA directorship of George H. W. Bush). Anderson's papers also reportedly include documents on Iran-Contra and other Bush family scandals. Anderson's papers are being sorted for cataloging by George Washington University's Gellman Library in Washington, DC, which also houses the non-government National Security Archives. Chillingly, the FBI maintains that any classified documents in Anderson's papers collection are the property of the U.S. government. These include secret grand jury testimonies from the Watergate trials of top Nixon officials.

Anderson and Drew Pearson, his predecessor as editor of "Washington Merry-Go-Round," one of the most popular and insightful political columns in the history of American journalism, earned the wrath of successive administrations for uncovering a number of scandals, including Watergate-related abuses by the Nixon administration, that shook Washington's political elite.



FBI seeks access to Anderson's papers: reportedly the papers are a treasure trove of information that is potentially embarrassing to three generations of Bushes and the CIA.

Is the Bush Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust?

All the safeguards of the Cold War era, which categorized the nuclear bomb as "a weapon of last resort" have been scrapped. "Offensive" military actions using nuclear warheads are now described as acts of "self-defense".

The distinction between tactical nuclear weapons and the conventional battlefield arsenal has been blurred. America's new nuclear doctrine is based on "a mix of strike capabilities". The latter, which specifically applies to the Pentagon's planned aerial bombing of Iran, envisages the use of nukes in combination with conventional weapons.

As in the case of the first atomic bomb, which in the words of President Harry Truman "was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base", today's "mini-nukes" are heralded as "safe for the surrounding civilian population".

Known in official Washington, as "Joint Publication 3-12"

, the new nuclear doctrine (Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations , (DJNO) (March 2005)) calls for "integrating conventional and nuclear attacks" under a unified and "integrated" Command and Control (C2).

It largely describes war planning as a management decision-making process, where military and strategic objectives are to be achieved, through a mix of instruments, with little concern for the resulting loss of human life.

Military planning focuses on "the most efficient use of force" , -i.e. an optimal arrangement of different weapons systems to achieve stated military goals. In this context, nuclear and conventional weapons are considered to be "part of the tool box", from which military commanders can pick and choose the instruments that they require in accordance with "evolving circumstances" in the war theater. (None of these weapons in the Pentagon's "tool box", including conventional bunker buster bombs, cluster bombs, mini-nukes, chemical and biological weapons are described as "weapons of mass destruction" when used by the United States of America and its coalition partners).

The stated objective is to:
Mini-Nukes are "Safe for the Surrounding Civilian Population"

Abstract: the proposed Iranian Oil Bourse will accelerate the fall of the American Empire.

Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D.
January 15, 2006

Abstract: the proposed Iranian Oil Bourse will accelerate the fall of the American Empire.

I. Economics of Empires

A nation-state taxes its own citizens, while an empire taxes other nation-states. The history of empires, from Greek and Roman, to Ottoman and British, teaches that the economic foundation of every single empire is the taxation of other nations. The imperial ability to tax has always rested on a better and stronger economy, and as a consequence, a better and stronger military. One part of the subject taxes went to improve the living standards of the empire; the other part went to strengthen the military dominance necessary to enforce the collection of those taxes.

Historically, taxing the subject state has been in various forms-usually gold and silver, where those were considered money, but also slaves, soldiers, crops, cattle, or other agricultural and natural resources, whatever economic goods the empire demanded and the subject-state could deliver. Historically, imperial taxation has always been direct: the subject state handed over the economic goods directly to the empire.

For the first time in history, in the twentieth century, America was able to tax the world indirectly, through inflation. It did not enforce the direct payment of taxes like all of its predecessor empires did, but distributed instead its own fiat currency, the U.S. Dollar, to other nations in exchange for goods with the intended consequence of inflating and devaluing those dollars and paying back later each dollar with less economic goods-the difference capturing the U.S. imperial tax. Here is how this happened.The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse

Negroponte complained that Chavez is "spending considerable sums involving himself in the political and economic life of other countries

No wonder Chavez makes Bush uneasy

By TED RALL

NEW YORK -- When the hated despots of nations like Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan loot their countries' treasuries, transfer their oil wealth to personal Swiss bank accounts and use the rest to finance (in the House of Saud's case) terrorist extremists, American politicians praise them as trusted friends and allies. But when a democratically elected populist president uses Venezuela's oil profits to lift poor people out of poverty, they accuse him of pandering.

As the United States and Europe continue their shift toward a "Darwinomic" model where rapacious corporations accrue bigger and bigger profits while workers become poorer and poorer, the socialist economic model espoused by President Hugo Chavez has become wildly popular among Latin Americans tired of watching corrupt rightwing leaders enrich themselves at their expense. Left-of-center governments have recently won power in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. Chavez's uncompromising rhetoric matches his politics, but what's really driving the American government and its corporate masters crazy is that he has the cash to back it up.

In their desperate frenzy to destroy Chavez, state-controlled media is resorting to some of the most transparently and hilariously hypocritical talking points ever. In the April 4 New York Times Juan Forero repeated the trope that Chavez's use of oil revenues is unfair--even cheating somehow: "With Venezuela's oil revenues rising 32 percent last year," the paper exclaimed, "Mr. Chavez has been subsidizing samba parades in Brazil, eye surgery for poor Mexicans and even heating fuel for poor families from Maine to the Bronx to Philadelphia. By some estimates, the spending now surpasses the nearly $ 2 billion Washington allocates to pay for development programs and the drug war in western South America."
STFU John Negroponte

Economic sanctions are acts of aggression.

Sanctions against Iran

April 17, 2006

As the drumbeat for military action against Iran grows louder, some members of Congress are calling to expand the longstanding U.S. trade ban that bars American companies from investing in that nation. In fact, many war hawks in Washington are pushing for a comprehensive international embargo against Iran. The international response has been lukewarm, however, because the world needs Iranian oil. But we cannot underestimate the irrational, almost manic desire of some neoconservatives to attack Iran one way or another, even if it means crippling a major source of oil and destabilizing the worldwide economy.

Make no mistake about it: Economic sanctions are acts of aggression. Sanctions increase poverty and misery among the very poorest inhabitants of targeted nations, and they breed tremendous resentment against those imposing them. But they rarely hurt the political and economic elites responsible for angering American leaders in the first place.

In fact, few government policies are as destructive to our economy as the embargo.

While embargoes sound like strong, punitive action, in reality they represent a failed policy that four decades of experience prove doesn't work. Conversely, economic engagement is perhaps the single most effective tool in tearing down dictatorships and spreading the message of liberty.

It is important to note that economic engagement is not the same thing as foreign aid. Foreign aid, which should be abolished immediately, involves the US government spending American tax dollars to prop up other nations.

Embargoes only hurt the innocent of a targeted country. While it may be difficult for the leader of an embargoed nation to get a box of American-grown rice, he will get it one way or another. For the poor peasant in the remote section of his country, however, the food will be unavailable.

It is difficult to understand how denying access to food, medicine, and other products benefits anyone. Embargo advocates claim that denying people access to our products somehow creates opposition to the despised leader. The reality, though, is that hostilities are more firmly directed at America.

Father Robert Sirico, a Paulist priest, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that trade relations "strengthen people's loyalties to each other and weaken government power." To imagine that we somehow can spread the message of liberty to an oppressed nation by denying them access to our people and the bounty of our prosperity is contorted at best.

For more than thirty years we have embargoed Cuba in an attempt to drive Fidel Castro from power. Yet he remains in power. By contrast look at the Soviet Union, a nation we allowed our producers to engage economically. Of course the Soviet Union has collapsed.

Embargoes greatly harm our citizens. As the American agricultural industry continues to develop new technology to reduce costs and increase yields, it becomes more important for farmers and ranchers to find markets outside the United States to sell their goods so they can make ends meet. By preventing our farmers and ranchers from competing in the world market, we deny them very profitable opportunities.

Government meddling is always destructive to the free market; people inevitably will make wiser decisions about how to spend their money, with whom, and when, than politicians in Washington. Embargoes simply do not accomplish the ends advocates claim to desire, and are extremely harmful to the well-being of Americans.Ron Paul

All the past failures and unintended consequences will be forgotten.

HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS
Before the U.S. House of Representatives

April 5, 2006

Iran: The Next Neocon Target

It’s been three years since the U.S. launched its war against Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. Of course now almost everybody knows there were no WMDs, and Saddam Hussein posed no threat to the United States. Though some of our soldiers serving in Iraq still believe they are there because Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, even the administration now acknowledges there was no connection. Indeed, no one can be absolutely certain why we invaded Iraq. The current excuse, also given for staying in Iraq, is to make it a democratic state, friendly to the United States. There are now fewer denials that securing oil supplies played a significant role in our decision to go into Iraq and stay there. That certainly would explain why U.S. taxpayers are paying such a price to build and maintain numerous huge, permanent military bases in Iraq. They’re also funding a new billion dollar embassy- the largest in the world.

The significant question we must ask ourselves is: What have we learned from three years in Iraq? With plans now being laid for regime change in Iran, it appears we have learned absolutely nothing. There still are plenty of administration officials who daily paint a rosy picture of the Iraq we have created. But I wonder: If the past three years were nothing more than a bad dream, and our nation suddenly awakened, how many would, for national security reasons, urge the same invasion? Would we instead give a gigantic sigh of relief that it was only a bad dream, that we need not relive the three-year nightmare of death, destruction, chaos and stupendous consumption of tax dollars. Conceivably we would still see oil prices under $30 a barrel, and most importantly, 20,000 severe U.S. causalities would not have occurred. My guess is that 99% of all Americans would be thankful it was only a bad dream, and would never support the invasion knowing what we know today.world war three?

"Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response,"

xenophobia response

Abu Musab Al Zarqawi has been presented both by the Bush administration and the Western media as the mastermind behind the "insurgency" in Iraq, allegedly responsible for the massacres of Iraqi civilians.

Zarqawi is the outside enemy of America. The Bush administration in official statements, including presidential speeches, national security documents, etc. has repeatedly pointed to the need to "go after" Abu Musab Al Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden.

"You know, I hate to predict violence, but I just understand the nature of the killers. This guy, Zarqawi, an al Qaeda associate -- who was in Baghdad, by the way, prior to the removal of Saddam Hussein -- is still at large in Iraq. And as you might remember, part of his operational plan was to sow violence and discord amongst the various groups in Iraq by cold- blooded killing. And we need to help find Zarqawi so that the people of Iraq can have a more bright -- bright future." (George W. Bush, Press Conference, 1 June 2004)

The official mandate of US and British occupation forces is to fight and win the "war on terrorism" on behalf of the Iraqi people. Zarqawi constitutes Washington's justification for the continued military occupation of Iraq, not to mention the brutal siege of densely populated urban areas directed against "Al Qaeda in Iraq" which is said to be led by Zarqawi.

Coalition forces are upheld as playing a "peace keeping role" in consultation with the United Nations. The Western media in chorus has consistently upheld the legitimacy of the "war on terrorism". It has not only presented Zarqawi as a brutal terrorist, it has also failed to report on the Pentagon's disinformation campaign, which has been known and documented since 2002.

Pentagon PSYOP Zarqawi Program

In an unusual twist, the Washington Post in a recent article, has acknowledged that the role of Zarqawi had been deliberately "magnified" by the Pentagon with a view to galvanizing public support for the US-UK led "war on terrorism":



"The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents. "Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: "Media operations," "Special Ops (626)" (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein's government) and "PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work..." (WP. 10 April 2006)

The military's propaganda program, according to the Washington Post, has "largely been aimed at Iraqis, but seems to have spilled over into the U.S. media. One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war." (WP, op cit.)

An internal document produced by U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, states that "the Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date." (WP, op cit).

xenophobia response

An investigative report into a scandal that haunts the reputations of three presidents - Reagan, Bush, and Clinton

This is the story that couldn't be suppressed.

Barry Seal - gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert C.I.A. operative extraordinaire - is hardly a familiar name in American politics. But nine years after he was murdered in a hail of bullets by Medellin cartel hit men outside a Salvation Army shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he has come back to haunt the reputations of three American presidents.

Seal's legacy includes more than 2,000 newly discovered documents that now verify and quantify much of what previously had been only suspicion, conjecture, and legend. The documents confirm that from 1981 to his brutal death in 1986, Barry Seal carried on one of the most lucrative, extensive, and brazen operations in the history of the international drug trade, and that he did it with the evident complicity, if not collusion, of elements of the United States government, apparently with the acquiescence of Ronald Reagan's administration, impunity from any subsequent exposure by George Bush's administration, and under the usually acute political nose of then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton.

The newly unearthed papers show the real Seal as far more impressive and well-connected than the character played by Dennis Hopper in a made-for-TV movie some years ago, loosely based on the smuggler's life. The film portrayed the pudgy pilot as a hapless victim, caught in a cross fire between bungling but benign government agencies and Latin drug lords. The truth sprinkled through the documents is a richer - and altogether more sinister - matter of national and individual corruption. It is a tale of massive, socially devastating crime, of what seems to have been an official cover-up to match, and, not least, of the strange reluctance of so-called mainstream American journalism to come to grips with the phenomenon and its ominous implications - even when the documentary evidence had appeared.

The trail winds back to another slightly bruited but obscure name - a small place in western Arkansas called Mena.

Of the many stories emerging from the Arkansas of the 1980s that was crucible to the Clinton presidency, none has been more elusive than the charges surrounding Mena. Nestled in the dense pine and hardwood forests of the Oachita Mountains, some 160 miles west of Little Rock, once thought a refuge for nineteenth-century border outlaws and even a hotbed of Depression-era anarchists, the tiny town has been the locale for persistent reports of drug smuggling, gunrunning, and money laundering tracing to the early eighties, when Seal based his aircraft at Mena's Intermountain Regional Airport.

From first accounts circulating locally in Arkansas, the story surfaced nationally as early as 1989 in a *Penthouse* article called "Snowbound," written by the investigative reporter John Cummings, and in a Jack Anderson column, but was never advanced at the time by other media. Few reporters covering Clinton in the 1992 campaign missed hearing at least something about Mena. But it was obviously a serious and demanding subject - the specter of vast drug smuggling with C.l.A. involvement - and none of the major media pursued it seriously During 1992, the story was kept alive by Sarah McClendon, *The Nation*, and *The Village Voice*.

Then, after Clinton became president, Mena began to reappear. Over the past year, CBS News and *The Wall Street Journal* have reported the original, unquieted charges surrounding Mena, including the shadow of some C.l.A. (or "national security") involvement in the gun and drug traffic, and the apparent failure of then governor Clinton to pursue evidence of such international crime so close to home.crimes of mena

Twins can't beat Yankees Wang

that headline writer was fired

the twins still lost,unable to put back to back sweeps together. not a bad second week. now lets go on and win two outta three every week.
minnesota.twins.mlb.com

Retired colonel claims U.S. military operations are already 'underway' in Iran

During an interview on CNN Friday night, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner claimed that U.S. military operations are already 'underway' inside Iran, RAW STORY has found.

"I would say -- and this may shock some -- I think the decision has been made and military operations are under way," Col. Gardiner told CNN International anchor Jim Clancy (as noted by Digby at the blog Hullabaloo).

(Crooks and Liars has a video clip of the interview)

Gardiner, who designed a war game in November of 2004 for Atlantic Magazine ("Will Iran be next?") which simulated "preparations for a U.S. assault on Iran," also claimed that Aliasghar Soltaniyeh, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told him a few weeks ago that units who had attacked the Revolutionary Guard had been captured and confessed to working with Americans.

"The secretary point is, the Iranians have been saying American military troops are in there, have been saying it for almost a year," Gardiner said. "I was in Berlin two weeks ago, sat next to the ambassador, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA. And I said, 'Hey, I hear you're accusing Americans of being in there operating with some of the units that have shot up revolution guard units.'"
rawstory.com

the generals mirror the views of 75 percent of the officers in the field, and probably more.

The Generals' Revolt

By Patrick J. Buchanan

04/14/06 "Post Chronicle" -- -- In just two weeks, six retired U.S. Marine and Army generals have denounced the Pentagon planning for the war in Iraq and called for the resignation or firing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who travels often to Iraq and supports the war, says that the generals mirror the views of 75 percent of the officers in the field, and probably more.

This is not a Cindy Sheehan moment.

This is a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the U.S. armed forces by senior officers once responsible for carrying out the orders of that leadership. It is hard to recall a situation in history where retired U.S. Army and Marine Corps generals, almost all of whom had major commands in a war yet underway, denounced the civilian leadership and called on the president to fire his secretary for war.

As those generals must be aware, their revolt cannot but send a message to friend and enemy alike that the U.S. high command is deeply divided, that U.S. policy is floundering, that the loss of Iraq impends if the civilian leadership at the Pentagon is not changed.

The generals have sent an unmistakable message to Commander in Chief George W. Bush: Get rid of Rumsfeld, or you will lose the war.

Columnist Ignatius makes that precise point:

"Rumsfeld should resign because the administration is losing the war on the home front. As bad as things are in Baghdad, America won't be defeated there militarily. But it may be forced into a hasty and chaotic retreat by mounting domestic opposition to its policy. Much of the American public has simply stopped believing the administration's arguments about Iraq, and Rumsfeld is a symbol of that credibility gap. He is a spent force ..."
Rumsfeld has mismanaged the war.

"if only in your own hearts"

Chris Floyd and Rich Kastelein have put a macabre terrifying Montague of war crimes together here for all who have eyes to see.
when is it enough for men and woman to stand up and make it stop? "we the people" should be able to see that killing more innocence can't make our planet better. How can bullets in babies heads make us safer......................?
Children of Abraham:
Death in the Desert

"there's a hole exactly where my buttcrack is on these pants i'm wearing and i don't have underwear on."

raymiesque fasion statement

SECRETARY RICE: Good morning. Welcome. I'm very pleased to welcome the President of Equatorial Guinea, President Obiang.

"...You are a good friend and we welcome you."


PARADE’s Annual List Of...The World’s 10 Worst Dictators

10) Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Equatorial Guinea. Age 63. In power since 1979. Last year’s rank: 10

Obiang took power in this tiny West African nation by overthrowing his uncle more than 25 years ago. According to a United Nations inspector, torture “is the normal means of investigation” in Equatorial Guinea. There is no freedom of speech, and there are no bookstores or newsstands. The one private radio station is owned by Obiang’s son. Since major oil reserves were discovered in Equatorial Guinea in 1995, Obiang has deposited more than $700 million into special accounts in U.S. banks. Meanwhile, most of his people live on less than $1 a day.

Contributing Editor David Wallechinsky has reported on world figures for PARADE, including an interview with Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. For more on the worst dictators, visit parade.com on the Web.
thanks liberaloasis

white castle is bringing good things to war

the u.s. and haliburton have teamed up with white castle to build the outposts so necessary for an active army in "the long war". As every soldier knows an army travels on its stomach and white castle is there to do its part. As an added benefit the gaseous odors produced after feeding time will act as an effective repellent to any insurgent activities in and around feeding time......
white castle goes to "the long war"

He knew that in Washington a confrontation with the Jewish lobby would make his life difficult.

Beware of the Fox

Once Foxman told one of his deputies that Powell was the weak link. When the Secretary of State heard this he began to worry. He knew that in Washington a confrontation with the Jewish lobby would make his life difficult. Once he arranged a meeting with Foxman, but the busy Foxman postponed the meeting three times. When they eventually met, the head of the Anti-Defamation League apologized to the Secretary of State [for the postponements]. ‘You call, we come,’ replied Powell, paraphrasing a well known advertisement for a freight company. That statement had much more meaning than just a humorous polite reply.
xymphora

Russia’s disregard for rule of law, human rights violations and other ‘anti-democratic’ tendencies ‘colour the position of the United States’.

US threatening Russia with economic retaliation: report

Posted online: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 at 0006 hours IST

MOSCOW, APRIL 11: Fearful of Russia helping Iran build a nuclear bomb and the Kremlin reverting to authoritarianism, the US is threatening Mosow with economic retaliation, a media report said on Tuesday.

“The United States is the last major country to put up obstacles to Russian entry to the WTO.
“On the surface, the outstanding WTO issues are purely economic - intellectual property rights, for instance, or keeping Russian markets open to American poultry exports, an issue that has recently arisen.But just beneath the surface, the politics surrounding Russia’s quest to join the global trade organisation is clearly visible,” the ‘Moscow Times’ daily said.

Russia has resolved trade disputes with many countries, but has yet to iron out its differences with Washington, a prerequisite for admission to the 149-member WTO.

US senator Bill Frist, the majority leader and one of a handful of Republicans likely to run for President in 2008, said here on Monday that the political chasm separating the US and Russia figured into the resolution of trade disputes.

Speaking at a news conference after meeting foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, frist said Russia’s disregard for rule of law, human rights violations and other ‘anti-democratic’ tendencies ‘colour the position of the United States’.
link to the story

(ISOG) — a group headed by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Liz Cheney, the purpose of which is to encourage regime change in Iran.

Although a spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) declines to comment on its existence, and the press has yet to carry a single mention of it, last month the administration formed something called the Iran-Syria Operations Group (ISOG) — a group headed by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Liz Cheney, the purpose of which is to encourage regime change in Iran. It's no secret that Cheney has over $80 million at her disposal to promote democracy in Iran. But ISOG isn't simply about promoting democracy. It's about helping to craft official policy, doing so not with one but two countries in its sights, and creating a policymaking apparatus that parallels — and skirts — Foggy Bottom's suspect Iran desk.
kevin drum

All the more ironic then, that Rumsfeld began his career with a vicious smear of Nitze...

The Slander That Launched Don Rumsfeld's Career

Tuesday, 11 April 2006

An anecdote from James Carroll's magnificent new book, House of War (which I'll be reviewing here soon) provides a brief but penetrating glimpse at the gutter politics and moral nullity that have marked the entire career of the Pentagon warlord -- and the rest of his cohorts in the Bush gang.

chris floyd is marvelous

Mark Twain once said "Suppose you are an idiot. Now suppose you are a President. But I repeat myself."

Mark Twain once said "Suppose you are an idiot. Now suppose you are a Congressman. But I repeat myself."

happy birthday raymi

Gen. Zinni Calls on Rumsfeld and Others to Resign for ‘Disastrous Mistakes’ in Iraq

This morning on Meet the Press, Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush officials to resign for making a “series of disastrous mistakes” in Iraq.
Transcript:

ZINNI: There’s a series of disastrous mistakes. We just heard the Secretary of State say these were tactical mistakes. These were not tactical mistakes. These were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policies made back here. Don’t blame the troops. They’ve been magnificent. If anything saves us, it will be them.

RUSSERT: Should someone resign?

ZINNI: Absolutely.

RUSSERT: Who?

ZINNI: Secretary of Defense to begin with.

RUSSERT: Anyone else?

ZINNI: Well, I think that we — those that have been responsible for the planning, for overriding all the efforts that were made in planning before that, that those that stood by and allowed this to happen that didn’t speak out – and there were appropriate ways within the system you can speak out, at congressional hearings and otherwise — I think they have to be held accountable.

thinkprogress.org

The connections between the Bushes and Hinckleys

"Houston, AP, March 31, 1981: The family of the man charged with trying to assassinate President Reagan is acquainted with the family of Vice President George Bush and had made large contributions to his political campaign, the Houston Post reported today.

The newspaper said in a copyright story, Scott Hinckley, brother of John W. Hinckley Jr., who allegedly shot Reagan, was to have dined tonight in Denver at the home of Neil Bush, one of the vice president's sons.

The newspaper said it was unable to reach Scott Hinckley, vice president of his father's Denver-based firm, Vanderbilt Energy Corp., for comment. Neil Bush lives in Denver, where he works for Standard Oil Co. of Indiana.

In 1978, Neil served as campaign manager for his brother, George W. Bush, the vice president's oldest son, who made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. Neil lived in Lubbock throughout much of 1978, where John Hinckley lived from 1974 through 1980.

On Monday, Neil Bush said he did not know if he had ever met 25-year-old John Hinckley.

"I have no idea," he said. "I don't recognize any pictures of him. I just wish I could see a better picture of him.

Sharon Bush, Neil's wife, said Scott Hinckley was coming to their house as a date of a girl friend of hers. "I don't even know the brother. From what I know and I've heard, they [the Hinckleys] are a very nice family and have given a lot of money to the Bush campaign. The dinner was canceled, she added.

George W. Bush said he was unsure whether he had met John W. Hinckley."

waynemadsenreport.com

To hold the current regime in Iran accountable for its threatening behavior

109TH CONGRESS
H. R. 282
1ST SESSION


To hold the current regime in Iran accountable for its threatening behavior
and to support a transition to democracy in Iran.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
JANUARY 6, 2005
Congress declares that it should be the policy of the
5 United States to support independent human rights and
6 pro-democracy forces in Iran.