First of all, a whole city didn't drown.....
Posted By: and yes, those folks .......sm on 2009-02-25
In Reply to: So a FREE society cuts billions from the army corp of engineers.... - sm
the ones who found themselves in a horrible situation ALSO live in a free society, unfortunately, it is a society to them that only knows how to let government do their thinking for them.........
If they had half a brain, they would be screaming at their wonderful crooked little mayor, demanding to know where all those billions went he was given many years ago to fix the levy to prevent just this type of catastrophe, but of course all they know to do is hold the government responsible for everything they don't like about their world. Well, get in line...I could certainly make a long list as well but I still do NOT want the government living my life and doing my thinking for me. If they had been proactive in the first place and had actually taken an interest in their government, they would have been demanding to know why the levy wasn't upgrade years and years ago!!
The war has nothing to do with their ignorance. If I choose to keep myself ignorant, then I will or I can teach my children to read, educate themselves, and think for themselves. That's not what's happening. When someone is completely dependent on the government generation after generation, it becomes obvious they do not want to think for themselves and certainly have NO ideas about a FREE society and what that entails.
I have family down there. They have always tried to get answers as to the use of that money that just disappeared down the tubes, thanks to their crooked mayor and to this day, no one has made him answer to that. The flooding was horrific and there is no question about that. My daughter has taught children in our state who lived through it and saw family members drown before their eyes. No diminishing the trauma on those folks. But you can't start using the war expense as an excuse not to hold their politicians responsible for where the billions of dollars already received went to.
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I never liked Circuit City. I didn't like how it's -
set up, how you sort of go into a 'lockdown' situation once you're in there, and that it's impossible to simply browse without being followed and harrassed by their too-many salespeople.
I bought a CD player there a number of years ago, and never went back. I prefer Fry's for electronics, and Walmart for just about everything.
let people drown in Katrina?
Are you serious. Those people were told to evacuate. They were given transportation to do so and places to go. If they chose to stay, what should Bush have personally done for them? Deliver SCUBA gear? Be realistic.
You know you'll drown in the deep end
/
geez. Teddy Kennedy left a woman to drown....
walked off from the scene of an accident where a death occurred....and we all know he has had his problems over the years while drunk. His son had substance abuse problems. If you Google senators and reps who have had DWIs no telling what you would find. The man is probably going to release everything up to and including the last time their dog burped to keep you vultures from digging it up and feasting on it. Sheesh. Why not heed your candidate's statement and stop already? lol
since McC was in my city
yesterday morning taking credit for rounding up his party to pass the bill that ultimately failed, I assume hw is now willing to take responsibility the bill failing for being an ineffective leader in his own PAR-tay. Lurching about again trying to make political hay. Bill Maher on the View today commenting, very funny. He said he always knew Bush had one more big catastrophe in him. Bill said W will not be satisfied until the white house is on fire and black plumes of smoke are rising behind him as walks away. He asked that ditz Elizabeth if she thought Obama was the anti-Christ and laughed at her wide-eyed "NO!!!"
Name the city and state this happens in? sm
I'm sorry this is foreign to me.
It's already happening in my city
People are getting fed up here with the lack of law enforcement and judicial enforcement that they are taking the law into their own hands. On average of three times a month owners are shooting intruders and attackers in their own home or own their property because they know that law enforcement will either #1 show up way to late to stop the crime or #2 not show up at all! Even if the subject is apprehended the likelihood that they'll only get a slap on the wrist (if even that) by the judicial system is very high.
People are plain fed up where I live---especially with crimes against children and families.
Here's the scenario in my city
I've been keeping up with what happens to people who actually shoot people in their house or on their property in my area. The majority of the shooters have been store clerks who are tired of being victims. However, there have been several home invasions in the last year where the owner has shot the intruder. Just a few weeks ago a man saw another man breaking into his backyard storage building, and he shot the guy from his house. The subject fled and then wrecked his car about a mile from the break in. When all was said and done the owner was not charged eventhough he shot the man eventhough the man never entered his living space.
As far as I know none of the store clerks or home owners have been charged in the last year (at least that is what the media reports).
Eventhough I believe in gun ownership and defending your property and home I think the recent law passed in Florida where you can shoot anyone who is threatening you (anywhere) is a little broad and I think will be used to get criminals off, because all they have to say is I felt threatened so I shot the dude. I think though when somebody comes on your property then you should be able to take any action to defend yourself within reason. Now, this shouldn't be an excuse for shooting your neighbor because they are piling leaves on your property etc. Common sense should rule, and every case should be judged individually on the circumstances surrounding the incident.
I agree with you completely about the child criminal sentencing aspects. Personally, I don't think these monsters should live but at the very least they should be castrated....seems harsh but its the only way to *neuter* the animal that lives inside these monsters.
Chicago is no different that any other big city...sm
New York, Miami, LA and many others.
I live in PA and not in a city.
It used to be called rural agricultural, but now it's suburban housing.
Did ya hear the news that the city
mayors are now looking for handouts? Where will it all end? They don't think the governors should get it because it will be used to pump up their balance sheet, but the city mayors think they should get it because they will use it to get jobs for the people. Are they now going to wave a magic wand and have jobs appear?
Like DH says, "We have nothing anymore. No production jobs at all. They're all overseas. When they left the steel industry go down the tubes, that was the beginning of the end."
well that's fine if you live in the city
but like I said, people who live in the country like myself and our neighbors also have livestock to protect. What are they supposed to do when their guns are taken?
We have a single shotgun in the home. It is unloaded. We have no children. Now if we do have children we will have a locked gun cabinet and they will be taught from an early age that guns are not toys. It's called teaching responsibility. You can't just "do away" with all things dangerous in this society. Rules do not apply to crooks and criminals.
Yes, there needs to be legislation on guns. There is no reason for people to own semi automatics and stuff like that. But I believe we have a right to own shotguns, handguns, and rifles (rifles are used for deer hunting and other big game hunting).
Why would you say I need counseling? Just because I believe we have a right to bear arms? (I think some other folks believed that too...)
Don't know what you are talking about, I am a city girl.
But enjoy!
She also served in city council and mayor...
and on term as a governor gives her one year more governing experience obama has. And she DOES mean change from Washington politics...she is fAR removed from that. She has a reputation for reform, took on the good ol'boys in her own party and won. Those wanting change should be happy to see her.
She has an 80% approval rating in her state. That is unheard of. SHe must be doing something right, because not only Republicans live in alaska.
She is pro life. That is true. But you on this board have told me repeatedly I should not be a one-issue voter. So, lead by example.
Where should president be while major US city drowns?
nm
For a city of 4 million plus and then having to bus in people from Cobb
even if they had 20,000 which I heard crowd estimates about 15,000, that is not a lot of people. With radio personality Sean Hannity here, think probably most went to see his spouting off. That man is going to have a stroke if he keeps on with his rantings.
How does this relate to the mayor of Salt Lake City??
nm
Oh, that is just decay of modern society; found in any city.
Issue is the maintenance and you can bet your sweet probably big butt that if there were mansions (campaign donators) rather than shabby homes but generation after generation of welfare recipients in the way of a levy failure, the Corp of engineers would have reinforced the barriers long long ago.
Losing millions of low income, noncontributing citizens just isn't seen as a big problem, is it?
What can we expect should H5N1 take ahold and go into epidemic proportions may be a magnified version of NO only we will be the unlucky irrelevant citizens. Sure would solve a lot of problems by whipping out 1/4 of the world's population, the bottom 1/4 though, not the top; they are special.
The only problem I can see with what you are describing is 20 years of suboptimal Family Planning strategies. Thanks to republicans right wing religious zealots who have a magical view of life thanks to very effective brainwashing techniques. I see it worked on you.
Pretty hard to fight city hall........
There isn't a whole lot he can do with the pubs obstructing everything he is trying to accomplish. My theory is, they put up McPalin because they KNEW they wouldn't win because they have NO IDEA how to clean this freakin' mess up either. That way, just possibly, the RNC can gain some ground since they have all but buried themselves. Kinda like Carter inheriting Nixon's upstanding accomplishments. Gotta love the RNC, they are such an honest, upstanding, homophobic and value-oriented tribe. How's that for a wide stance?
Could Tony Blairs Tight Fist be Coming to a City Near You...sm
I ran across this article today and it explains from British citizens point of view what happens when you allow leadership to dismantle the principles (Constitution) of a nation. I understand the *concept* behind the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and detainee laws (where the president is the decider), but if the public lets the powers that be slip in laws like this with no protest we could find ourselves under arrest and DNA swabbed for not returning a child's ball that landed in your yard.
(Long read but interesting.)
The Way Police Treat Us Verges on Criminal
Guilty until proven innocent now seems to be the watchword of a government that increasingly treats its law-abiding citizens with absolute contempt
Henry Porter
Sunday October 29, 2006
The Observer
A father and his eight-year-old son got off a train at Blackpool on a Friday evening two weeks ago to be confronted by a number of police officers moving passengers towards a scanner. There was a mildly threatening manner about them and it was clear that they expected everyone to pass through the scanner, which they said was being used to search for knives.
The man, whose name is Danny, quietly told the police that unless they had a very good reason, he would not be searched. One or two passengers hesitated, then joined him in refusing to go through the scanner. The police were clearly disgruntled, but couldn't do anything because Danny was right: they had to have reasonable grounds for suspecting he was carrying a knife in order to search him. 'I am not some rabid left winger or civil libertarian,' he wrote in an email to me. 'It just seems we are allowing a police state to be developed without an argument.' On the phone, he seemed to modify this by saying that the police behaviour had been oppressive.
Thank God there are still people like Danny who know the law and understand that part of its fragile essence is the respect for the rights of the innocent citizen when confronted with authority. The British Transport Police may insist that its Operation Shield, as this random trawl is known, is for the common good in that it fights knife crime, but think twice about the attitude it betrays and you realise that it is another small erosion in the esteem for the individual. Such behaviour makes everyone a suspect.
Tony Blair talks incessantly about respect, yet there are few who have done more to degrade authority's respect for the public. Nowhere is that better seen than in the behaviour of the police, which gradually becomes more coercive and imbued with the idea that we are all bad hats until we prove otherwise. We now live in a country where the idea of wrongful arrest has become a historic curiosity and where anyone can be arrested for the slightest offence and compelled to become part of the government's DNA database.
We live in a country where young boys - one was just seven - are taken aside and questioned for trying to knock conkers out of chestnut trees on public ground. Where a grandmother whose neighbour accused her of not returning a ball kicked into her garden was arrested, fingerprinted and required to give her DNA. The police went through every room in her house, even her daughter's drawers, before letting her go without charge or caution.
Where two sisters can be arrested after a peaceful protest about climate change, held in solitary confinement for 36 hours without being allowed to make a phone call, then told not to talk to each other as a condition of their bail. As this paper reported, their money, keys, computers, discs and phones were confiscated, their homes searched.
There is much more, all of it enabled by Blair's laws and encouraged by a vindictive and erroneous contention that defendants' rights must be reduced in the pursuit of more and quicker prosecutions. Our prisons are full, problem teenagers are, by default, exiled to a kind of outlawry and every citizen becomes the subject of an almost hysterical need by the authorities to check up on and chivvy them.
The government regards us not just as wedded to too many regrettable vices - smoking, speeding, drinking too much, eating unhealthy food and taking no exercise - but also as innately prone to law-breaking. Perhaps with good reason, since, according to the Liberal Democrat homes affairs spokesman, Nick Clegg, some 3,000 criminal offences have been created by Labour. The more crimes there are, the more criminals there will be.
Mass surveillance has begun on our motorways and in our town centres. Metropolitan drivers increasingly find themselves pressed into numberplate-recognition camera traps on the same principle that inspires Operation Shield. Everyone has something to hide unless they can prove otherwise, which is why the police also enthusiastically pursue samples for the DNA database. (Incidentally, by next year, the total number of profiles will rise to three million, one in five of which will belong to black people.)
The police are in their very own heaven and demand more and more powers of instant justice, a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. These will allow them to crush people's cars, issue more on-the-spot fines and ban 'undesirables' from any area they choose without having to go to court. Even parish councils are to become part of this culture of minatory bossiness. Instead of having to apply to central government to introduce new bylaws, they are to be given powers by Ruth Kelly, the Communities and Local Government Minister, to levy instant £100 fines for skateboarding, not cleaning up dog mess, busking and, no doubt, scrumping for apples and playing Pooh sticks. How will it end - with CCTV cameras watching small boys for inappropriate behaviour in the vicinity of horse chestnuts?
In his frantic terminality, Blair plans the sinister information-sharing index, otherwise known as the universal child register, and last week was musing that we should all have our DNA stored on the national base. Link this to his earlier remarks about identifying problem children who might grow up to be a menace to society by intervening before they were born and you begin to feel the chill of the technology-driven authoritarianism.
What runs through all this seems to be a rather surprising dislike of the British people. It was once possible to believe the government's unusual attention to law, order and behaviour was benevolent yet ill-conceived. Now it looks more like the result of late-onset sociopathy, influenced by a long period in power and the degenerate entanglement between Downing Street and the seething red-top newspapers.
The prevailing account of Britain in the current political establishment has become deeply pessimistic and, to my mind, wrong. Yes, we have problems with home-grown terrorism, loutishness, a swelling underclass, unintegrating minorities, but there is another story. Britain is also a success and it should occur to one of our political leaders to defy the orthodoxy of decline and compliment the nation on its adaptability and deep reserves of virtue and toleration.
Think of the charitable activity in this country, of the level of public debate that wells up in BBC programmes such as Any Questions, the deep interest in history, the eagerness of the audiences at arts festivals all over Britain, the humour and generosity of spirit, the commitment to local communities, to understanding each other's needs and of the array of passions and hobbies which absorb so many millions of people whose quiet, law-abiding fulfilment as Britons goes undescribed by the furious negativity of the moment. It is these people, with their stored-up virtue and unself-conscious decency, who the government seeks to turn into suspects and infantilise by its morbid intrusion.
It is not the government's business to encroach on our experience as individuals in a democracy, to threaten us with so much oppressive legislation and always to assume our guilt. But there is another reason and that is because we are soon going to have to have the debate about individual liberty in the context of rapid climate change. That will only work if the government treats us like adults and says: 'Look, this is potentially the greatest crisis civilisation has ever faced and we need your help.' The resulting contract must be between equals - the people and the state - and in a relationship where respect flows both ways.That, ultimately, is what this nagging and suspicious government threatens.
Great speech by the mayor of Salt Lake City. sm
Speech by Mayor Rocky Anderson, democrat, on 10/27/07. They should bump Hillary and put this guy out there.
Salt Lake City, Utah --
Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah’s entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: “You have failed us miserably and we won’t take it any more.”
“While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss.”
“You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law.”
“You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation’s history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder.”
“We are here to tell you: We won’t take it any more!”
“You have acted in direct contravention of values that we, as Americans who love our country, hold dear. You have deceived us in the most cynical, outrageous ways. You have undermined, or allowed the undermining of, our constitutional system of checks and balances among the three presumed co-equal branches of government. You have helped lead our nation to the brink of fascism, of a dictatorship contemptuous of our nation’s treaty obligations, federal statutory law, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”
“Because of you, and because of your jingoistic false ‘patriotism,’ our world is far more dangerous, our nation is far more despised, and the threat of terrorism is far greater than ever before.
It has been absolutely astounding how you have committed the most horrendous acts, causing such needless tragedy in the lives of millions of people, yet you wear your so-called religion on your sleeves, asserting your God-is-on-my-side nonsense – when what you have done flies in the face of any religious or humanitarian tradition. Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling – and disgraceful. What part of “Thou shalt not kill” do you not understand? What part of the “Golden rule” do you not understand? What part of “be honest,” “be responsible,” and “be accountable” don’t you understand? What part of “Blessed are the peacekeepers” do you not understand?
Because of you, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, many thousands of people have suffered horrendous lifetime injuries, and millions have been run off from their homes. For the sake of our nation, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of our brothers and sisters around the world, we are morally compelled to say, as loudly as we can, ‘We won’t take it any more!’ ”
“As United States agents kidnap, disappear, and torture human beings around the world, you justify, you deceive, and you cover up. We find what you have done to men, women and children, and to the good name and reputation of the United States, so appalling, so unconscionable, and so outrageous as to compel us to call upon you to step aside and allow other men and women who are competent, true to our nation’s values, and with high moral principles to stand in your places – for the good of our nation, for the good of our children, and for the good of our world.”
In the case of the President and Vice President, this means impeachment and removal from office, without any further delay from a complacent, complicit Congress, the Democratic majority of which cares more about political gain in 2008 than it does about the vindication of our Constitution, the rule of law, and democratic accountability.
It means the election of people as President and Vice President who, unlike most of the presidential candidates from both major parties, have not aided and abetted in the perpetration of the illegal, tragic, devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq. And it means the election of people as President and Vice President who will commit to return our nation to the moral and strategic imperative of refraining from torturing human beings.
In the case of the majority of Congress, it means electing people who are diligent enough to learn the facts, including reading available National Intelligence Estimates, before voting to go to war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will jealously guard Congress’s sole prerogative to declare war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will not submit like vapid lap dogs to presidential requests for blank checks to engage in so-called preemptive wars, for legislation permitting warrantless wiretapping of communications involving US citizens, and for dangerous, irresponsible, saber-rattling legislation like the recent Kyl-Lieberman amendment.
We must avoid the trap of focusing the blame solely upon President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. This is not just about a few people who have wronged our country – and the world. They were enabled by members of both parties in Congress, they were enabled by the pathetic mainstream news media, and, ultimately, they have been enabled by the American people – 40% of whom are so ill-informed they still think Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks – a people who know and care more about baseball statistics and which drunken starlets are wearing underwear than they know and care about the atrocities being committed every single day in our name by a government for which we need to take responsibility.
As loyal Americans, without regard to political partisanship -- as veterans, as teachers, as religious leaders, as working men and women, as students, as professionals, as businesspeople, as public servants, as retirees, as people of all ages, races, ethnic origins, sexual orientations, and faiths -- we are here to say to the Bush administration, to the majority of Congress, and to the mainstream media: “You have violated your solemn responsibilities. You have undermined our democracy, spat upon our Constitution, and engaged in outrageous, despicable acts. You have brought our nation to a point of immorality, inhumanity, and illegality of immense, tragic, unprecedented proportions.”
“But we will live up to our responsibilities as citizens, as brothers and sisters of those who have suffered as a result of the imperial bullying of the United States government, and as moral actors who must take a stand: And we will, and must, mean it when we say ‘We won’t take it any more.’”
If we want principled, courageous elected officials, we need to be principled, courageous, and tenacious ourselves. History has demonstrated that our elected officials are not the leaders – the leadership has to come from us. If we don’t insist, if we don’t persist, then we are not living up to our responsibilities as citizens in a democracy – and our responsibilities as moral human beings. If we remain silent, we signal to Congress and the Bush administration – and to candidates running for office – and to the world – that we support the status quo.
Silence is complicity. Only by standing up for what’s right and never letting down can we say we are doing our part.
Our government, on the basis of a campaign we now know was entirely fraudulent, attacked and militarily occupied a nation that posed no danger to the United States. Our government, acting in our name, has caused immense, unjustified death and destruction.
It all started five years ago, yet where have we, the American people, been? At this point, we are responsible. We get together once in a while at demonstrations and complain about Bush and Cheney, about Congress, and about the pathetic news media. We point fingers and yell a lot. Then most people politely go away until another demonstration a few months later.
How many people can honestly say they have spent as much time learning about and opposing the outrages of the Bush administration as they have spent watching sports or mindless television programs during the past five years? Escapist, time-sapping sports and insipid entertainment have indeed become the opiate of the masses.
Why is this country so sound asleep? Why do we abide what is happening to our nation, to our Constitution, to the cause of peace and international law and order? Why are we not doing all in our power to put an end to this madness?
We should be in the streets regularly and students should be raising heck on our campuses. We should be making it clear in every way possible that apologies or convoluted, disingenuous explanations just don’t cut it when presidential candidates and so many others voted to authorize George Bush and his neo-con buddies to send American men and women to attack and occupy Iraq.
Let’s awaken, and wake up the country by committing here and now to do all each of us can to take our nation back. Let them hear us across the country, as we ask others to join us: “We won’t take it any more!”
I implore you: Draw a line. Figure out exactly where your own moral breaking point is. How much will you put up with before you say “No more” and mean it?
I have drawn my line as a matter of simple personal morality: I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has voted to fund the atrocities in Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who will not commit to remove all US troops, as soon as possible, from Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has supported legislation that takes us one step closer to attacking Iran. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has not fought to stop the kidnapping, disappearances, and torture being carried on in our name.
If we expect our nation’s elected officials to take us seriously, let us send a powerful message they cannot misunderstand. Let them know we really do have our moral breaking point. Let them know we have drawn a bright line. Let them know they cannot take our support for granted – that, regardless of their party and regardless of other political considerations, they will not have our support if they cannot provide, and have not provided, principled leadership.
The people of this nation may have been far too quiet for five years, but let us pledge that we won’t let it go on one more day – that we will do all we can to put an end to the illegalities, the moral degradation, and the disintegration of our nation’s reputation in the world.
Let us be unified in drawing the line – in declaring that we do have a moral breaking point. Let us insist, together, in supporting our troops and in gratitude for the freedoms for which our veterans gave so much, that we bring our troops home from Iraq, that we return our government to a constitutional democracy, and that we commit to honoring the fundamental principles of human rights.
In defense of our country, in defense of our Constitution, in defense of our shared values as Americans – and as moral human beings – we declare today that we will fight in every way possible to stop the insanity, stop the continued military occupation of Iraq, and stop the moral depravity reflected by the kidnapping, disappearing, and torture of people around the world.
ACORN hired inner city people, paid by commission, probably to buy
dd
Some educational advice. Go to your local hospital and city hall....sm
Ask them how births are recorded. I think you will be surprised. EVERYTHING is now computerized. Even old birth records.
Europe - Swastika vigilantes kill foreign students to keep their city 'clean' ...see article.
Swastika vigilantes kill foreign students to keep their city 'clean'From Jeremy Page in Moscow
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![src=http://images.thetimes.co.uk/images/trans.gif]() |
THE African students did not even see the man raise the swastika-emblazoned shotgun as they emerged from the Apollo nightclub in St Petersburg.
When he opened fire from the shadows behind them, some of the group thought it was a firecracker going off.
Then they saw Samba Lampsar Sall, a 28-year-old student from Senegal, lying dead on the pavement with his throat blown apart.
Within hours, a sinister message had appeared on the website of a group called the Party of Freedom. “The clean-up of the city continues,” it said.
Mr Sall had come to study at St Petersburg’s State Communications University in 2001 in the hope of finding a better life when he went back home.
Instead, around dawn yesterday, he became the latest victim of a hate campaign by neo-Nazi extremists on the streets of Russia’s cultural capital.
“How can people be so evil?” asked Michael Tanobian, an African student who was with Mr Sall when he was killed. “We come here just to study, for nothing else. We don’t take anything here.”
Mr Sall’s brutal murder exposes one of Russia’s most disturbing problems as President Putin prepares to host the G8 summit in St Petersburg in mid-July. For all its grandeur and impressive art collections, Russia’s second city is fast becoming the racist capital of the world.
Critics say that the authorities are not doing enough to combat the extremists who routinely attack, and kill, Africans, Asians and immigrants from the Caucasus or Central Asia.
Seven people have been killed, and 79 injured, in more than 40 racist attacks this year, according to Sova, a non-governmental organisation that monitors extremism in Russia.
Last year, 28 people were killed and 366 injured in racially motivated crimes, it says.
The Interior Ministry sent a team of special investigators from Moscow to work on yesterday’s murder. The Foreign Ministry expressed “sincere condolences to the relatives and loved ones of the deceased”. The Prosecutor’s Office said that the case was being treated as a racist killing.
But dozens of similar cases have been treated as “hooliganism”, a crime that carries a far lighter sentence. One of the most shocking attacks occurred in 2004, when teenagers stabbed to death a nine-year-old Tajik girl in St Petersburg. Last month, a court convicted them of hooliganism, giving six of them 18-year jail sentences and one of them five years.
Desire Defaut, chairman of the local community group African Unity, urged Mr Putin to lead the fight against neo- Nazism. “They must make an announcement at a state level that such a problem exists and state organs must work on it,” he said. “We can’t say they are doing enough if there are two attacks within one week.”
Last week, the nine-year-old daughter of a Russian woman and her African husband was wounded in a knife attack in St Petersburg. “What more proof of extremism do they need in St Petersburg?” asked Juldas Okie Etoumbi, chairman of the Association of the African Students of Moscow. But, he added, the problem is not confined to St Petersburg. In the past week, skinheads in Moscow beat up a journalist of Caucasian origin and the culture minister from the Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria.
Mr Putin has called racism “an infection” and pledged to stamp it out. But critics say that the Kremlin has tolerated, and even encouraged, ultra-nationalist groups to foster loyalty to the State and make itself look relatively liberal.
MURDER CITY
Sept 2003 Tajik girl, 5, beaten in St Petersburg
Feb 2004 Tajik girl, 9, stabbed
Mar 2004 Syrian student pushed in front of train
June 2004 Anti-Nazi campaigner shot dead
Oct 2004 Vietnamese student stabbed
Sept 2005 Congolese student beaten
Dec 2005 Cameroonian student stabbed
Feb 2006 Malian medical graduate stabbed
Apr 2006 Senegalese student shot |
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I didn't miss any part and didn't say...
anything either way. I just posted a link.
This is the reason we are in Iraq and it's the same reason I didn't vote for him in 2000: Didn't
his own personal reasons.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050620/why_george_went_to_war.php
The Downing Street memos have brought into focus an essential question: on what basis did President George W. Bush decide to invade Iraq? The memos are a government-level confirmation of what has been long believed by so many: that the administration was hell-bent on invading Iraq and was simply looking for justification, valid or not.
Despite such mounting evidence, Bush resolutely maintains total denial. In fact, when a British reporter asked the president recently about the Downing Street documents, Bush painted himself as a reluctant warrior. "Both of us didn't want to use our military," he said, answering for himself and British Prime Minister Blair. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."
Yet there's evidence that Bush not only deliberately relied on false intelligence to justify an attack, but that he would have willingly used any excuse at all to invade Iraq. And that he was obsessed with the notion well before 9/11—indeed, even before he became president in early 2001.
In interviews I conducted last fall, a well-known journalist, biographer and Bush family friend who worked for a time with Bush on a ghostwritten memoir said that an Iraq war was always on Bush's brain.
"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He went on, 'If I have a chance to invade…, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"
Bush apparently accepted a view that Herskowitz, with his long experience of writing books with top Republicans, says was a common sentiment: that no president could be considered truly successful without one military "win" under his belt. Leading Republicans had long been enthralled by the effect of the minuscule Falklands War on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's popularity, and ridiculed Democrats such as Jimmy Carter who were reluctant to use American force. Indeed, both Reagan and Bush's father successfully prosecuted limited invasions (Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War) without miring the United States in endless conflicts.
Herskowitz's revelations illuminate Bush's personal motivation for invading Iraq and, more importantly, his general inclination to use war to advance his domestic political ends. Furthermore, they establish that this thinking predated 9/11, predated his election to the presidency and predated his appointment of leading neoconservatives who had their own, separate, more complex geopolitical rationale for supporting an invasion.
Conversations With Bush The Candidate
Herskowitz—a longtime Houston newspaper columnist—has ghostwritten or co-authored autobiographies of a broad spectrum of famous people, including Reagan adviser Michael Deaver, Mickey Mantle, Dan Rather and Nixon cabinet secretary John B. Connally. Bush's 1999 comments to Herskowitz were made over the course of as many as 20 sessions together. Eventually, campaign staffers—expressing concern about things Bush had told the author that were included in the manuscript—pulled the project, and Bush campaign officials came to Herskowitz's house and took his original tapes and notes. Bush communications director Karen Hughes then assumed responsibility for the project, which was published in highly sanitized form as A Charge to Keep.
The revelations about Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged during two taped sessions I held with Herskowitz. These conversations covered a variety of matters, including the journalist's continued closeness with the Bush family and fondness for Bush Senior—who clearly trusted Herskowitz enough to arrange for him to pen a subsequent authorized biography of Bush's grandfather, written and published in 2003.
I conducted those interviews last fall and published an article based on them during the final heated days of the 2004 campaign. Herskowitz's taped insights were verified to the satisfaction of editors at the Houston Chronicle, yet the story failed to gain broad mainstream coverage, primarily because news organization executives expressed concern about introducing such potent news so close to the election. Editors told me they worried about a huge backlash from the White House and charges of an "October Surprise."
Debating The Timeline For War
But today, as public doubts over the Iraq invasion grow, and with the Downing Street papers adding substance to those doubts, the Herskowitz interviews assume singular importance by providing profound insight into what motivated Bush—personally—in the days and weeks following 9/11. Those interviews introduce us to a George W. Bush, who, until 9/11, had no means for becoming "a great president"—because he had no easy path to war. Once handed the national tragedy of 9/11, Bush realized that the Afghanistan campaign and the covert war against terrorist organizations would not satisfy his ambitions for greatness. Thus, Bush shifted focus from Al Qaeda, perpetrator of the attacks on New York and Washington. Instead, he concentrated on ensuring his place in American history by going after a globally reviled and easily targeted state run by a ruthless dictator.
The Herskowitz interviews add an important dimension to our understanding of this presidency, especially in combination with further evidence that Bush's focus on Iraq was motivated by something other than credible intelligence. In their published accounts of the period between 9/11 and the March 2003 invasion, former White House Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke and journalist Bob Woodward both describe a president single-mindedly obsessed with Iraq. The first anecdote takes place the day after the World Trade Center collapsed, in the Situation Room of the White House. The witness is Richard Clarke, and the situation is captured in his book, Against All Enemies.
On September 12th, I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room, was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. "Look," he told us, "I know you have a lot to do and all…but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way…"
I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. "But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this."
"I know, I know, but…see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…" …
"Look into Iraq, Saddam," the President said testily and left us. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty stared after him with her mouth hanging open.
Similarly, Bob Woodward, in a CBS News 60 Minutes interview about his book, Bush At War, captures a moment, on November 21, 2001, where the president expresses an acute sense of urgency that it is time to secretly plan the war with Iraq. Again, we know there was nothing in the way of credible intelligence to precipitate the president's actions.
Woodward: "President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.'"
Wallace (voiceover): Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam—and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.
Woodward: "Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the necessary preparations in Kuwait specifically to make war possible."
Bush wanted a war so that he could build the political capital necessary to achieve his domestic agenda and become, in his mind, "a great president." Blair and the members of his cabinet, unaware of the Herskowitz conversations, placed Bush's decision to mount an invasion in or about July of 2002. But for Bush, the question that summer was not whether, it was only how and when. The most important question, why, was left for later.
Eventually, there would be a succession of answers to that question: weapons of mass destruction, links to Al Qaeda, the promotion of democracy, the domino theory of the Middle East. But none of them have been as convincing as the reason George W. Bush gave way back in the summer of 1999.
I didn't know that.
Thanks, Democrat. I wasn't aware of that point at all, and to me, that makes a huge difference. I will visit the site and check it out. Thanks again. 
I though you said you didn't
Sorry, but I didn't see anywhere
in AR's post that she was against it. Instead, she acted as if the topic has no place on this board and shouldn't be discussed... like some kind of dirty little secret. 
The *attack the messenger* technique has been used constantly in the last 5 years by the current administration (and his followers) when someone gets too close to the truth. Don't believe me? Ask Valerie Plame.
I didn't say that.nm
It is me, but I didn't get it...sm
I think there is a problem wiht the email on forumatrix because I tried to send an email to the poster ????? who posted on the conservative board today and got an error message as well.
Nevermind it though. Have a good day! I have to get ready for my mini vacation later this week, so I will be working mucho hours til Wednesday.
I didn't know it was q/yours/q.
I just made a fast post. I don't know what the rest of the stuff is you are talking about. ForuMatrix is a worldwide board. Some of us don't even live in the United States. People here might want to realise that when making responses. It is of no consequence to me one way or the other. Just asking a question.
I didn't think so.
Same old. Same old.
No way. He didn't say that, did he??? nm
.
I didn't think of it this way.
I really didn't think of that, but you are right. My brother-in-law made over $20K in a few months. My sister has paid off just about everything, including the mortgage.
But, that is a heck of a risk to take for a little cash.
Didn't know about that one.
nm
You'd be #$%*@ing if they didn't do anything -
But, it IS the RNC, so they are damned either way with socialists oops I mean democRATS like yourself. 
Please tell me he didn't say that
I received a call from an friend who was so upset and said Obama called Palin a pig in lipstick. I responded, surely no, you must be mistaken. Obama is running for office of the President of the United States. Why would he ruin his chances of winning by calling this lady a pig. That doesn't sound like rational behavior for a presidential candidate. However, to my surprise I opened several different news sources (both liberal and conservative) and sure enough he did. I'm thinking why, why in the world would you fall down that path of being so low that you would call Palin a pig saying "you can put lipstick on a pig and it will still be a pig". If he was trying to make a joke in reference to her joke about the difference between a soccer mom and a pit bull is lipstick, this joke could not have come at a worse time for him. How in the world is he going to explain that one.
Shame shame Barack Obama. This has to be one of the lowest comments anyone can make about another candidate. - Not funny! Why would you go and ruin any chance you had that people may have thought you had a little bit of "class" to you.
I haven't watched MSNBC but am curious as to how they are going to respond. How can they support someone when this is his opinion of other people.
Talk about low class. One more reason I will not be voting democrat this election.
I didn't know this either, but....sm
I was a little disappointed in McCain yesterday, blaming Bush for the current crisis, just like Obama.
What he needs to do, is link Obama and Biden to this, as they both took bribes from the lobbyists, from these corporations, that went under.
Where's the outrage against the dems and the democratic congress, that knew these things were going on, and refused to step in and stop these from happening?
Once again, it's blame George Bush, and McCain has to remember he's running against Obama, not George Bush.
I don't think he didn't know where
Spain was. I think he is just old, tired from the campaign and wasn't thinking very clearly at that moment. But that is not any more comforting than not knowing where Spain is. Geography he can learn; energy, youth and vitality he cannot get back. My mom is a pretty spry 75YO, but would I want her as President at that age, no way.
I didn't go after anything she said . . .
I posed a question, which is worse?. You read far more into it than was intended. Lady R. brought up Obama's bitterly clingly to guns and religion insult and added an additional insult of referring to those people as rednecks. Thus, my question, which is worse? She was just as clueless that it was offensive.
And as far as going after what my opponent says, I am not running for anything, I have no opponent. I voted for McCain in the primary of 2000 and was very disappointed when he wasn't the nominee then. I am an independent that has actually voted both parties.
You didn't see this on NBC, etc.
Subject: Bet Ya didn't hear about this on NBC
Family with Down Syndrome Child Meets John McCain and Sarah Palin
September 9, 2008
((( BEGIN PHONE TRANSCRIPT WITH RUSH LIMBAUGH )))
RUSH: Kurt in Pittsburgh, hello, sir. Nice to have you on the EIB Network, and how about the Steelers defense? CALLER: How about those Steelers, huh? RUSH: How about that? CALLER: Hey, listen, Rush, longtime listener, first-time caller, one of those Bible, family, gun clingers from western Pennsylvania. RUSH: Thank you. CALLER: And I wanted to share a story with you. A week ago last Saturday we went to the Palin-McCain rally in Washington, Pennsylvania, was the day after he announced her, and we have a five-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, and we made a sign that said: "We Love Kids with Down Syndrome." So when they pulled in their bus, the sign did catch their eye (McCain and Palin and the rest of their family) it caught their eye, we could tell, they gave us a thumbs-up from the bus, so we were all excited just by that --
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Who gave you the thumbs up, McCain and Palin? CALLER: McCain, Palin, Cindy McCain, we could see them from the bus. We were in a position where we had eye contact with them -- RUSH: Oh, cool! CALLER: My wife was holding our daughter. RUSH: Very, very, very cool. CALLER: It was really cool, Rush. I was like, "Wow, that's awesome," because I love Governor Palin and so I thought that's really neat. So then we moved around as the bus was getting ready to pull out, we kind of positioned ourselves so we could just wave them on and a Secret Service agent came up to us and said, "Hey, can you come with us?" I was like, "Do we have a choice?" RUSH: (laughing) You shouldn't have worried. It's not the Clinton administration. CALLER: Right. So we accompanied them up the hill, we went right to the bus, where it was, and Governor Palin, Senator McCain, Cindy, Todd Palin, they're all standing there. We're in this inner circle with just us and them, and the Secret Service agent, and they came right up to us and thanked us for coming out, said they loved our sign, and Governor Palin immediately said, "May I hold your daughter?" and our daughter Chloe, who's five, went right to her, and I have some pictures I'd love to send you maybe when I'm done here, but Governor Palin was hugging Chloe, and then her little daughter brought their baby Trig who has Down syndrome from the bus, he was napping, and Chloe went right over and kissed him on the cheek, and my son Nolan who's nine, he thanked her.
RUSH: This is amazing. CALLER: I will send you all the stuff, Senator McCain was talking to my son, and we thanked him for his service, and he asked my son if he wanted to see the bus, and we were hanging out and it was very surreal. I felt like we could have had a pizza and a beer with them, they were so warm. RUSH: You know what? I want to put you on hold. I want Snerdley to give you our super-secret, known-only-to-three-people here, e-mail address. CALLER: I will send you everything, Rush. RUSH: And then could you send us these pictures? Would you mind if we put them on the website? CALLER: I would be honored, and my main thing is they are warm, kind, genuine people, and they represent the best of this country. RUSH: That's right. And when you send these pictures, make sure you identify them. I mean, we'll know Palin and McCain, of course. Identify yourselves. CALLER: I will, I will identify everybody in the picture, Rush, and God bless you for being a beacon of hope and truth in this country. RUSH: Oh, no, no. It's nothing, it's nothing. You're doing the Lord's work. CALLER: Well, we're very blessed and I want people to know what a blessing it is to have a child with Down syndrome. These kids, they're angels. RUSH: That's the thing. There's always good to be found in everything that happens. It may be a while before it reveals itself.
CALLER: Absolutely. RUSH: Right, and when she hugged my daughter I said, here's the difference, this candidate embraces life and all its limitless possibilities. RUSH: All right. CALLER: That's what she is. RUSH: Terrific, okay, I gotta run here, but I'm going to put you on hold. CALLER: Thank you, Rush. RUSH: Thank you, Kurt. I really appreciate it. ((( END TRANSCRIPT )))
![](http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1&realattid=0.1&attid=0.4&disp=emb&view=att&th=11c90284585cb1ca")
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Well, you didn't say that s/m
you didn't agree with everything in that propaganda. Therein lies the problem. Don't put stuff out there as fact if you don't agree with it.
Sorry the Dems didn't have enough votes to pass the bail-out without their Pub counterparts. They are all a greedy bunch of vipers and I intend to vote AGAINST my Senator (Democrat) and Represent (Republican) when they come up for re-election and I have told them so! Both have voted to support big business in their district and gone against the will of there constituents on every issue.
Sorry, I didn't see
your post before I posted mine. I said apology accepted. I forgot about "that dog won't hunt." LOL
I didn't know he had said this....
Obama told an evangelical church in South Carolina: "I am confident we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth."
hmmm.
I didn't say it was okay - sm
But they both aspire to be dictators. Obama just hides it.
No not all democrats are socialists. Obama IS. So is Hillary. Although now in all fairness to her, knowing what I know about what type of person Obama is, I should have voted for her.
Please tell me he didn't say this....
"My job this morning is to be so persuasive....that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack."
- Barack Obama, January 8, 2008, speaking at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
What in the heck? He really does think he is the messiah! Anyone else ever see or hear of this? I came across it somewhere, googled it and it's out there...
no didn't see it
I don't turn the TV during the day, otherwise, I get nothing done. The internet is bad enough, lol.
ACTUALLY I DIDN'T
swampmamma
She didn't put you down.
You are the one getting defensive because we don't see your point of view. She asked for facts to back up your statement when it was just your opinion and not a fact at all.
If that was your opinion...fine. I do not agree but that is my opinion. However, when people ask for facts...don't get all bent out of shape when you can't give them any.
I didn't, but I think I'm going to.
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