And I predict in three years the republicans will pull out their...sm

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the future with all the variables that can occur. Remember 20 years ago when they said the birds were going to go vicious and destroy the human race? Remember AIDs was going to spread like crazy and kill us all? Just live one day at time, I say.

Well I guess he saw how well it worked with the HC supporters (most giving their opinion that we need a woman in there, we are voting cos its time for a woman, etc, etc and some only voting for her only because she's a woman). Guess he's so concerned with losing he'll stoop to anything. Talk about calling the kettle black. He proclaims Obama doesn't have the experience and he's young and new, and then he picks her? She's not ready to step in as President, she doesn't have any experience whatsoever. He's going to have a hard time explaining that one.

Again it goes to show McCain is not in touch with the American people. He picks a woman thinking that what all the women want, but luckily the women who supported Hillary are coming out saying we supported Hillary because of her position and viewpoints, not just because she was a women. I just believe he has just lost any chance to win.

She has no international experience, been governer less than 2 years and has no experience at anything. Guess he's making it perfectly clear he wants a running mate who will never question him. His ego is taking over and its going to sink him. He'll need the Swift Boat Veterans to fish him out of the water. Never mind her radical christian viewpoints. Everything he's been attacking Obama for being, he has just picked a running mate who is all that. How could he have gotten it so wrong? Any chance I had of electing him flew out the window with that pick.

Brother...he would have been better to choose Hillary as a running mate. Hello President Obama.

It looks like they are getting very serious about doing this. They aren't alone in this kind of talk. I think Texas and North or South Carolina have been talking this way, too.

Sorry libs...I know that's a disappoinment to you, but if Hillary is elected, and I still think it's a big IF, sounds like she's going to "stay the course".

I know that's got to be a big disappointment to those who think she's going to undo all of Bush's decisions.

You better watch her very closely, because what you see may not be what you get.

British troops will start a major withdrawal from Iraq next May under detailed plans on military disengagement to be published next month, The Observer can reveal.

The document being drawn up by the British government and the US will be presented to the Iraqi parliament in October and will spark fresh controversy over how long British troops will stay in the country. Tony Blair hopes that, despite continuing and widespread violence in Iraq, the move will show that there is progress following the conflict of 2003.

Britain has already privately informed Japan - which also has troops in Iraq - of its plans to begin withdrawing from southern Iraq in May, a move that officials in Tokyo say would make it impossible for their own 550 soldiers to remain.

The increasingly rapid pace of planning for British military disengagement has been revealed on the eve of the Labour Party conference, which will see renewed demands for a deadline for withdrawal. It is hoped that a clearer strategy on Iraq will quieten critics who say that the government will not be able to 'move on' until Blair quits. Yesterday, about 10,000 people demonstrated against the army's continued presence in the country.

Speaking to The Observer this weekend, the Defence Secretary, John Reid, insisted that the agreement being drawn up with Iraqi officials was contingent on the continuing political process, although he said he was still optimistic British troops would begin returning home by early summer.

'The two things I want to insist about the timetable is that it is not an event but a process, and that it will be a process that takes place at different speeds in different parts of the country. I have said before that I believe that it could begin in some parts of the country as early as next July. It is not a deadline, but it is where we might be and I honestly still believe we could have the conditions to begin handover. I don't see any reason to change my view.

'But if circumstances change I have no shame in revising my estimates.'

The disclosures follow rising demands for the government to establish a clearer strategy for bringing troops home following the kidnapping of two British SAS troopers in Basra and the scenes of violence that surrounded their rescue. Last week Blair's own envoy to Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, warned that Britain could be forced out if Iraq descends so far into chaos that 'we don't have any reasonable prospect of holding it together'.

Continued tension between the Iraqi police force, the Iraqi administration and British troops was revealed again yesterday when an Iraqi magistrate called for the arrest of the two British special forces soldiers. who were on a surveillance mission when they were taken into custody by Iraqi police and allegedly handed on to a militia.

For Blair, the question of withdrawal is one of the most difficult he is facing. The Prime Minister has abandoned plans, announced last February, to publish his own exit strategy setting out the milestones which would have to be met before quitting: instead, the plans are now being negotiated between a commission representing the Shia-dominated Iraqi government, and senior US and UK diplomats and military commanders in Baghdad.

Senior military sources have told The Observer that the document will lay out a point-by-point 'road map' for military disengagement by multinational forces, the first steps of which could be put in place soon after December's nationwide elections.

Each stage of the withdrawal would be locally judged on regional improvements in stability, with units being withdrawn as Iraqi units are deemed capable of taking over. Officials familiar with the negotiations said that conditions for withdrawal would not demand a complete cessation of insurgent violence, or the end of al-Qaeda atrocities.

According to the agreement under negotiation, each phase would be triggered when key security, stability and political targets have been reached. The phased withdrawal strategy - the British side of which is expected to take at least 12 months to complete - would see UK troops hand over command responsibility for security to senior Iraqi officers, while remaining in support as a reserve force.

In the second phase British Warriors and other armoured vehicles would be removed from daily patrols, before a complete withdrawal of British forces to barracks.

The final phase - departure of units - would follow a period of months where Iraqi units had demonstrated their ability to deal with violence in their areas of operation.

Blair will tackle his critics over Iraq in his conference speech, aides said this weekend, but would decline to give a public deadline for withdrawing troops. He is expected to make several major interventions on the war in the coming weeks, before a vote on the new constitution in mid-October, explaining how Iraq could be steered towards a sufficiently stable situation to allow troops to come home.

'What we are not going to set out is a timetable: what we are going to set out is a process of developing that security capability,' said a Downing Street source. 'We don't want to be there any longer than we have to be, the Iraqis don't want us to be there any longer than we have to be, but the Iraqi Prime Minister has made it very clear that our presence there is one that is necessary.'

It was revealed yesterday that an Iraqi judge issued the warrants for the arrest of the two rescued soldiers, accusing them of killing one policeman and wounding another, carrying unlicensed weapons and holding false identification.

The continuing preparations for a military withdrawal come, however, as officials are bracing themselves for a new political crisis in Iraq next month, with what many regard as the inevitable rejection of a new constitution by a two-thirds majority in three provinces, sufficient to kill the document and trigger new elections.

The same officials believe that a failure of the controversial constitution - which Sunnis say favours the Shia majority - would require at least another year of political negotiations, threatening any plans to disengage.

Stephen Crockett posted this twice (at least) on the Conservative Board, in response to an old quote of his being used out of context and distorted by the usual suspects there. Each time he posted it, it was deleted from the board. It's certainly easy to understand why they don't want anyone to see this.

Please read quickly. They think they should control our board, as well as their own, so it probably won't last very long here, either.

Published by Greg Palast June 16th, 2006 in Articles
Massacre of the Buffalo Soldiers
by Greg Palast
As reported for Democracy Now!

Palast, who first reported this story for BBC Television Newsnight (UK) and
Democracy Now! (USA), is author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed
Madhouse.

The Republican National Committee has a special offer for African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote.

A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority
precincts. Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally sent by
Republican operatives to a non-party website.

One group of voters wrongly identified by the Republicans as registering to vote from false addresses: servicemen and women sent overseas.

*******
For Greg Palast��s discussion with broadcaster Amy Goodman on the Black soldier purge of 2004, go to
http://gregpalast.com/armedmadhouse/palastDN6-14-06.mp3

Here��s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, Do not forward, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as undeliverable.

The lists of soldiers of undeliverable letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters�� registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted.

One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. Jacksonville is third largest naval installation in the US, best known as home of the Blue Angels fighting squandron.

[See this scrub sheet at http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=160156893&context=set-72157594155273706&size=o

Our team contacted the homes of several on the caging list, such as Randall Prausa, a serviceman, whose wife said he had been ordered overseas.

A soldier returning home in time to vote in November 2004 could also be challenged on the basis of the returned envelope. Soldiers challenged would be
required to vote by provisional ballot.

Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of the widespread
multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican Party. The operation, of which the purge of Black soldiers was a small part, was the first mass challenge to voting America had seen in two decades.

The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the Republican��s national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief, Tim Griffin to GOP
Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other party leaders. Attached were spreadsheets marked, Caging.xls. Each of these contained several hundred
to a few thousand voters and their addresses.

A check of the demographics of the addresses on the caging lists, as the GOP leaders called them indicated that most were in African-American majority zip codes.

Ion Sanco, the non-partisan elections supervisor of Leon County (Tallahassee) when shown the lists by this reporter said: The only thing I can think of - African American voters listed like this - these might be individuals that
will be challenged if they attempted to vote on Election Day.

These GOP caging lists were obtained by the same BBC team that first exposed the wrongful purge of African-American felon voters in 2000 by then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Eliminating the voting rights of those voters �� 94,000 were targeted �� likely caused Al Gore��s defeat in that race.

The Republican National Committee in Washington refused our several requests to respond to the BBC discovery. However, in Tallahassee, the Florida Bush
campaign��s spokespeople offered several explanations for the list.

Joseph Agostini, speaking for the GOP, suggested the lists were of potential donors to the Bush campaign. Oddly, the supposed donor list included residents of the Sulzbacher Center a shelter for homeless families.

Another spokesperson for the Bush campaign, Mindy Tucker Fletcher, ultimately changed the official response, acknowledging that these were voters, we mailed to, where the letter came back - bad addresses.

The party has refused to say why it would mark soldiers as having bad addresses subject to challenge when they had been assigned abroad.

The apparent challenge campaign was not inexpensive. The GOP mailed the letters first class, at a total cost likely exceeding millions of dollars, so that the addresses would be returned to cage workers.

This is not a challenge list, insisted the Republican spokesmistress. However, she modified that assertion by adding, That��s not what it��s set up to be.

Setting up such a challenge list would be a crime under federal law. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlaws mass challenges of voters where race is a factor in choosing the targeted group.

While the party insisted the lists were not created for the purpose to challenge Black voters, the GOP ultimately offered no other explanation for the mailings. However, Tucker Fletcher asserted Republicans could still employ the list to deny ballots to those they considered suspect voters. When asked if Republicans would use the list to block voters, Tucker Fletcher replied, Where it��s stated in the law, yeah.

It is not possible at this time to determine how many on the potential blacklist were ultimately challenged and lost their vote. Soldiers sending in their ballot from abroad would not know their vote was lost because of a
challenge.

For the full story of caging lists and voter purges of 2004, plus the documents, read Greg Palast��s New York Times bestseller, ARMED MADHOUSE: Who��s Afraid of Osama Wolf?, Armed Madhouse: Who��s Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal ��08, No Child��s Behind Left and other
Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War.

1. My research on the black liberation movement of which Obama's church is a part tells me all I need to know about whether or not I want to see him in office. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_liberation_theology

2. If McCain is elected I believe we will face a great depression which will make the depression of the 30s look like a Sunday School picnic. People already losing homes, jobs, exploding deficit (and the piper will be paid sooner or later), cost-of-living getting so people can hardly afford to live. McCain's judgement is questionable in his choice of a running mate. Totally reckless to name someone he has only met once but then there's oil in Alaska.

Not only did Joe Lieberman speak, there were signs "Democrats for McCain," and they didn't get beaten or threatened, like the Michelle Malkins out there.

For all the Bush-bashing (I give no one a free pass), when did he openly get credit for Colin Powell, Condi Rice, etc.?