wanna see an idiot on video?

why is it a DECORATED marine who VOLUNTEERED to go to viet nam (unlike EVERYONE in the bushwhacked white house) is called a coward? the good news is the asswipe representative in the house had her idiotic remarks STRICKEN FROM THE RECORD. when these idiots pick up arms and have their children pick up arms and actually GO to iraq and start fighing in this unjust war (they insist IS just), then i just may change my tune. i am no coward and i am NOT unamerican. THIS WAR MUST END NOW

Schmidt was later forced to return to the House floor and have her remarks stricken from the record. Despite having said the purpose of her “coward” statement was to “send Congressman Murtha a message,” Schmidt claimed:
Mr. Speaker, my remarks were not directed to any member of the House and I did not intend to suggest they applied to any member, most especially the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania.......................

it takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'

or the world keeps going round and round and round and round

those wild and wacky jesuits

Vatican Official Refutes Intelligent Design


By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer
Fri Nov 18, 5:04 PM ET
The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.
The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.
"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."
His comments were in line with his previous statements on "intelligent design" — whose supporters hold that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.
Proponents of intelligent design are seeking to get public schools in the United States to teach it as part of the science curriculum. Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism — a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation — camouflaged in scientific language, and they say it does not belong in science curriculum.
In a June article in the British Catholic magazine The Tablet, Coyne reaffirmed God's role in creation, but said science explains the history of the universe.
"If they respect the results of modern science, and indeed the best of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly.".................

glasses are kinda on the large size, no???

if i'm ever in portland, you know where i'm headed!


The Queen of Portland

The long, fabulous reign of Walter Cole and his drag cabaretConnie MonaghanSpecial to The TimesNovember 13, 2005On a hot summer day in 1937, Walter Cole, 7 years old, pulls a little red wagon loaded with a 25-pound block of ice down the two-lane highway through Linnton, a small community on the edge of Portland. He chips at the ice with a rock as he goes, and offers a sliver to his black-and-white mutt, Spot. A nameless pet crow clings to the dog's back as they head home past the barbershop and the feed store. The crow swoops across the street to snatch a grape from the produce display outside the grocery, and the Italian proprietor comes out and yells.The highway runs parallel to the Willamette River, visible just to the north, where the town's three lumber mills are busy night and day. Walter's father, Richard, works in a millpond as a boom man. He balances in cleated boots atop the floating logs, guiding them into the mill. Here in Oregon, at the end of the Depression, lumber is big business. For Richard Cole it's a living, about a dollar a day when he can get work.Walter's hauling the ice home to his mother, Mary, in their two-bedroom company house on Front Street. It isn't much bigger than a cabin. The floors are linoleum. There are chickens in the yard. Most of the houses in town are like this, except for the doctor's and a few others. Mary has a heart problem and stays in bed much of the time.For entertainment, Walter might run down to the Cherrys' house to listen to "The Lone Ranger" on the radio, or walk three miles, all the way over the soaring St. John's Bridge, with a dime in his pocket for a Saturday movie. But the bridge is so high it gives him nightmares, and the walk is so long. It's a big day, then, when the boy and his mother take the bus nine miles to downtown Portland to see "Gone With the Wind." The part where Scarlett pulls a radish from the dirt and swears, "As God as my witness, I'll never be hungry again" impresses him deeply.On a warm spring night in 2005, 74-year-old Walter Cole steps into the spotlight in front of 200 people as a garishly gorgeous blond, her hair a fright wig of froth, her red-glitter eyebrows angled toward the mirror balls, her lips heavily lined and gooey pink. Gallons of rhinestones drip down her bosom, and her Santa Claus-shaped figure is draped in a glittering gown. Onstage, Walter is Darcelle, and this is her club, Darcelle XV Showplace, quite possibly the longest-running drag cabaret in the country, offering six performances a week, every week, for 37 years.

it's NO bad news friday!

The 11-Year Quest to Create Disappearing Colored BubblesChemical burns, ruined clothes, 11 years, half a million dollars—it's not easy to improve the world's most popular toy. Yet the success of one inventor's quest to dye a simple soap bubble may change the way the world uses color




Tim Kehoe has stained the whites of his eyes deep blue. He's also stained his face, his car, several bathtubs and a few dozen children. He's had to evacuate his family because he filled the house with noxious fumes. He's ruined every kitchen he's ever had. Kehoe, a 35-year-old toy inventor from St. Paul, Minnesota, has done all this in an effort to make real an idea he had more than 10 years ago, one he's been told repeatedly cannot be realized: a colored bubble.

No, not the shimmering rainbow effect you see when the light catches a clear soap bubble. Kehoe's bubble would radiate a single, vibrant hue throughout the entire sphere—a green bubble, an orange bubble, a hot-pink bubble. It's a bubble that can make CEOs giggle and stunned mothers tear up in awe. It's a bubble you don't expect to see, conditioned as you are to the notion that soap bubbles are clear. An unnaturally beautiful bubble.

Kehoe made a bubble like that when he was 26, after only two years of trashed countertops and chemical fires. He showed it to toy-company executives, who called it a "holy grail." And then it broke, as bubbles always do. And when it did, the dye inside escaped onto clothes and carpets and walls and skin, staining everything it touched. The execs told him to come back with a bubble they could wash off their boardroom table.

That was nine years ago. In the intervening years, Kehoe continued to mix, boil, and brew with endless enthusiasm and little success. Until one day, his stubborn persistence led him to $500,000 in financial backing, enough to hire a dye chemist. Together, they took Kehoe's obsession to an outcome even more amazing than he had ever hoped, an outcome no one could have anticipated for the simple reason that no one imagined it possible. The secret to nonstaining colored bubbles, it turns out, is a dye that could unlock a revolution in color chemistry. All you need to do is make color disappear. Anatomy of a Bubble
Bubbles, the plain kind, have been around for as long as there have been water and surfactants, a material found mainly in soaps that interacts with water to reduce surface tension. This allows the fluid to spread across a bubble wand without breaking. Introduce air, and the thin film pushes outward until it eventually detaches, forming a bubble. People have been onto this for at least 400 years; 17th-century Flemish paintings show children blowing bubbles with clay pipes.........

how to take a shower in japan (and other things)

(i STILL don't know how)

Take shower
There are two "don't"s regarding the bath. Do not drain the hot water after your usage! Do not wash your body in the tub.Japanese bath has a deep bath tub and washing space. You can dip your body in it.We shares same hot water for a night. So please wash your body and legs before getting into the hot tub.Wash your body at the washing space. They may not equip the shower.In that case use Faucet to bawl.




pictures of japanese vending machines

and more pictures

awwwwwwwwwww kitties!

Tiger pictured mating lioness
A Chinese zoologist has captured a picture of a tiger mating with a lioness.


Ananova:
Tiger pictured mating lioness
A Chinese zoologist has captured a picture of a tiger mating with a lioness.
Zhao Yunhua took the rare photograph in Shenzhen Safari Park last weekend.
It's not unusual for tigers and lions to breed in safari parks - but it is seldom caught on film.
This year, two tigons - the product of a male tiger and a lioness - and three ligers - the cub of a male lion and female tiger - have been born in the park.
The five offspring are all growing up healthily, reports Shenzhen Evening Post.

i'm addicted to spuds

one of my all time favorite foods. i love sweet potatoes as well. comfort food. you can fix a spud any way and i'll still love it. boiled or fried or baked or broiled. whole or grated or cubed or mashed. they make me happy


THE ESSENTIAL THANKSGIVING: POTATOES
Choosing sides? Why not have both?By Regina SchramblingSpecial to The TimesNovember 16, 2005APPARENTLY there are people on the planet who actually think you can serve turkey without potatoes. These are the same traitors who would trot out a cheesecake instead of a pumpkin pie. Traditions are traditions, and potatoes are not just an essential ingredient. You have to have them twice in the same meal. You need mashed potatoes, creamy and soulful, to soak up the gravy — and sweet potatoes, because they taste both so different and so good with the turkey. Because the sweet potatoes are so often mislabeled as yams, which are a different tuber altogether, it must have been easy for them to slip onto the menu over the nearly century and a half since Thanksgiving became a national holiday. Because you might eat mashed potatoes at any old meal, they need dressing up for the holiday. But the sweet potatoes, which are less of an everyday thing, actually need to lose a few accessories, starting with the marshmallows and brown sugar. The best mashed potatoes start at the store. Yukon golds or russets are ideal because of their assertive flavor and excellent texture — buttery in the case of Yukon gold, flaky for russet. But if you find other smooth-textured, full-flavored potatoes at the farmers market, use them. Some taste creamy-rich even before you tear off the wrapper on a stick of Land O'Lakes. For even cooking, peel them and cut them into chunks (not slices, which turn too mushy). Start them in a big pot of cold water with salt (hot water keeps the potatoes from cooking evenly from the inside out). Cook them at a rolling simmer until they are just soft, not falling apart, then drain them completely and return them to the hot pot. Now comes the only tricky part. You can mash in as much softened butter as you find conscionable (this is a good day for an artisanal butter, or at least Plugra). Then start mashing in a mixture of cream and milk (it's a holiday; you need both). The secret here is warming the two liquids so they blend into the potatoes without cooling them down. ..........


as if that were not enough -
the potato information site

thursday is no bad or nasty news day here in my hood

so let's start off with this film review (for cathy and jean and dottie and ok, me too). and oh, by the way, i LOVED the first two movies unlike this reviewer

'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'

After three attempts, the latest film in the series finally captures the magic that made J.K. Rowling's books such a phenomenon.
By Kenneth Turan
Times Staff Writer
November 17, 2005

It's taken them long enough, but the movies have finally gotten Harry Potter right. Despite the reported $2.7 billion earned by the series' three previous attempts, it's not until "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" that a film has successfully re-created the sense of stirring magical adventure and engaged, edge-of-your-seat excitement that has made the books such an international phenomenon.Viewed as a whole, the Potter movies are shaping up to be a fascinating experiment in big-budget filmmaking. Using the same J.K. Rowling source material, the same screenwriter (the excellent Steve Kloves), largely the same cast but a variety of directors, the Potter pictures have ended up reflecting the sensibility of their filmmaker more than that of the author.With the reliably commercial Chris Columbus in charge, the first two Potters were soulless but safe-as-houses copies of the books. The gifted Alfonso Cuarón attempted to escape the bonds of the conventional in "The Prisoner of Azkaban" but succeeded only in part. It has fallen to the veteran Mike Newell, anxious, in his own words, "to break out of this goody-two-shoes feel," to make the first Harry Potter film to be wire-to-wire satisfying.Newell is an impeccable craftsman with four decades of cinematic experience, a veteran less concerned with projecting a lofty auteur sensibility than giving the best of his films, from the chilling "Dance With a Stranger" to the comic "Four Weddings and a Funeral," what they need from a practical point of view.The first thing Newell has added to the mix is a welcome sense of ownership of the book's setting. Having been a boarding school boy himself, Newell, the series' first British director, displays a comfort level with the world of Hogwarts that comes with knowing it in his bones.Newell works equally well with the preexisting cast and the film's new British actors, principally a convincing Ralph Fiennes as the dread Lord Voldemort, a comic Miranda Richardson as weaselly journalist Rita Skeeter and, best of all, Brendan Gleeson as the irrepressible Mad-Eye Moody, the latest in Hogwarts' notably eccentric series of Defense Against the Dark Arts instructors.The presence of Voldemort in the creepy-crawly flesh signals that this is the first Potter movie to have a PG-13 rating for "sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images." Fortunately, "Goblet" is not an R-rated movie trying to pass as something tamer but a genuine PG-13, pleasantly shivery but in no way savage or sadistic...........

awwwwwwwwwww fat joe we hardly knew ya!

Fat Joe Expires At Mystic Aquarium
POSTED: 11:42 am EST November 15, 2005
UPDATED: 12:08 pm EST November 15, 2005
WEST HARTFORD, Conn. -- "Fat Joe” the lobster barely made it to Mystic Aquarium.
As promised, Milford's Dakota Restaurant delivered the 12-pound monster of the deep to Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration Sunday evening, but Fat Joe was too weak.
He expired on Monday.
Scientists at the aquarium estimate the lobster was 87-years-old.

halliburton appears to be SCUM

but we knew that. lets just keep awarding them contracts.

Gulf Coast slaves
Halliburton and its subcontractors hired hundreds of undocumented Latino workers to clean up after Katrina -- only to mistreat them and throw them out without pay.

By Roberto Lovato

Nov. 15, 2005 NEW ORLEANS and GULFPORT, Miss. -- Arnulfo Martinez recalls seeing lots of hombres del ejercito standing at attention. Though he was living on the Belle Chasse Naval Base near New Orleans when President Bush spoke there on Oct. 11, he didn't understand anything the ruddy man in the rolled-up sleeves was saying to the troops.
Martinez, 16, speaks no English; his mother tongue is Zapotec. He had left the cornfields of Oaxaca, Mexico, four weeks earlier for the promise that he would make $8 an hour, plus room and board, while working for a subcontractor of KBR, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton that was awarded a major contract by the Bush administration for disaster relief work. The job was helping to clean up a Gulf Coast naval base in the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina. "I was cleaning up the base, picking up branches and doing other work," Martinez said, speaking to me in broken Spanish.
Even if the Oaxacan teenager had understood Bush when he urged Americans that day to "help somebody find shelter or help somebody find food," he couldn't have known that he'd soon need similar help himself. But three weeks after arriving at the naval base from Texas, Martinez's boss, Karen Tovar, a job broker from North Carolina who hired workers for a KBR subcontractor called United Disaster Relief, booted him from the base and left him homeless, hungry and without money.
"They gave us two meals a day and sometimes only one," Martinez said. ..............

wow, and he can WRITE too?

from the huffington post

an entry by one of my favorite actors, john cusack

Murder is a crime. Uunless it is done...by a poooollliiicceeeman. Or an ariissssstoocrat -- Joe Strummer
Bush 2. How depressing, corrupt, unlawful and tragically absurd the administration's world view actually is...how low the moral bar has been lowered...and (though I know I'm capable of intellectually lazy notions of collective guilt) how complicit our silence as citizens is...Nixon, a true fiend, looks like a paragon of virtue next to the criminally incompetent robber barons now raiding the present and future.

But where are the Dems? American foreign policy is in chaos. We are now left in the surreal position of having to condemn American-sponsored torture as official policy while a deranged President Bush orders his staff to attend ethics briefings -- a "refresher course" -- from the White House counsel. The very idea of America is in chaos and this chaos has created a vacuum. 

One question for any Democrat: Who will have the balls to get us out of Iraq? 

If the Democrats don't step up and fill this vacuum, the Republicans will. They will take us out of Iraq. And then the Democrats will be left holding the bag -- first as the enablers who let the Republicans take us into an unnecessary and immoral war, and then as the whipping boys who stood by while the Republicans kept justifying what was clearly an unnecessary and immoral war. They were so worried about positioning themselves as hawks, not being seen as soft on terror and war, that they lost the capacity for outrage when the person responsible for a legal memo that denied the validity of the Geneva Conventions was appointed Attorney General. And it was downhill from there.
The Republicans, especially leading up to the 2006 elections, with the Bush administration crumbling, KNOW they have to find a way out of Iraq. So they will basically find a way to declare victory and do something that looks like a withdrawal, and the Democrats will be left as passive bystanders -- because they don't have the courage to suggest that people who lied to get us into war should not only not be in office, they should be in prison. ............

as the talking heads said, 'we're on the road to nowhere'

The Senate Appropriations Committee removed earmarks for two controversial "bridges to nowhere" in Alaska: the Gravina bridge, which would connect Ketchikan to an island of 50 people, and the Knik Arm bridge, which would link Anchorage to a sparsely populated area. The projects have been the subject of strong criticism because of the general backlog of existing roads and bridges in desperate need of repair, especially those affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. According to the National Association of Civil Engineers, one in four bridges nationwide is structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, not including the damage from Katrina and Rita. The issue has been particularly controversial for Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) who has served as a strong advocate for the Gravina bridge despite the fact that her family owns 33-acres of undeveloped land 3/4 of a mile from the point where the bridge would touch down. Since the State would now decide how the money would be spent, her father, Governor Frank Murkowski, would now face the same ethical scrutiny. Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, responded to the news with the following statement: "Most Americans are risking their lives driving on crumbling roads and bridges that don't get fixed because there simply isn't enough money. That explains why there was such a visceral public reaction to the idea of wasting national tax dollars on two bridges to nowhere in Alaska. "Removing the budget earmarks for these projects is absolutely the right thing to do, but it doesn't actually mean the money will go where it is needed most, namely to fixing our nation's existing roads and bridges. We are particularly disappointed that the money was not redirected to rebuilding transportation infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. ............

watch nature on pbs this sunday

or check your local listings for date and time. i saw a preview for this episode. it's on the animals of katrina. i am sure it won't be easy to watch.

more second class citizens (those with a vagina) news

Report Details F.D.A. Rejection of Next-Day Pill
By GARDINER HARRIS
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - Top federal drug officials decided to reject an application to allow over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill months before a government scientific review of the application was completed, according to accounts given to Congressional investigators.
The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, concluded in a report released Monday that the Food and Drug Administration's May 2004 rejection of the morning-after pill, or emergency contraceptive, application was unusual in several respects.
Top agency officials were deeply involved in the decision, which was "very, very rare," a top F.D.A. review official told investigators. The officials' decision to ignore the recommendation of an independent advisory committee as well as the agency's own scientific review staff was unprecedented, the report found. And a top official's "novel" rationale for rejecting the application contradicted past agency practices, it concluded.
The pill, called Plan B, is a flashpoint in the debate over abortion, in part because some abortion opponents consider the pill tantamount to ending a pregnancy. In scientific reviews, the F.D.A. has concluded that it is a contraceptive.
The report suggested that it quickly became apparent that the agency was not going to follow its usual path when it came to the pill. "For example," it said, "F.D.A. review staff told us that they were told early in the review process that the decision would be made by high-level management."
Top agency officials denied many of the report's findings, including its conclusion that the top officials' involvement was unusual and that they had decided to reject the application before the agency's own scientific review was concluded. Julie Zawisza, an F.D.A. spokeswoman, said the agency stood by its rejection of the morning-after pill application.
"We question the integrity of the investigative process that results in such partial conclusions by the G.A.O.," Ms. Zawisza said.
Earlier this month, after Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, denounced the agency's decisions on the pill, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt also said the agency had acted appropriately.
But on Monday, Dr. Susan F. Wood, former director of the agency's office of women's health, said that what she described as the F.D.A.'s willingness to ignore science in the service of abortion politics has "only gotten worse" since the events that were the focus of the G.A.O. investigation. Dr. Wood resigned in August after the agency decided to delay its decision on the morning-after pill once again.
Senator Murray and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, issued a statement saying that the report "has confirmed what we have always suspected, that this was a politically motivated decision that came down from the highest levels at the F.D.A."........

uh oh i'm vegan too

there is NOTHING to surveill with me though. i am not in a commune, i don't travel, i pay my taxes, i work, i vote, i even have been called (SEVERAL times) for jury duty (i was never selected of course). i DO hate hummers but i would NEVER destroy one (i just YELL like mental at the owner). i'd never bomb anything. hell, i'm afraid of butane lighters. i would rather protest with words and NON violent actions than causing anyone or anything PHYSICAL harm. i wouldn't even throw paint on someone with a fur coat. it's THEIR choice not mine. what goes around comes around and i don't have to do a thing. it will all work itself out eventually.

mmmmmmmm then why is it i think my phone is being tapped???

Profiling: How the FBI Tracks Eco-Terror Suspects
Newsweek
Nov. 21, 2005 issue - The FBI collected detailed data on political activities and Web postings of suspected members of a tiny environmentalist commune in southern California two years ago as part of a high-profile counterterrorism probe, bureau records show. Facing further new disclosures about the matter, the bureau last week agreed to settle a lawsuit and to pay $100,000 to Josh Connole, a 27-year-old ex-commune member who had been arrested—and later released—on suspicions he was one of the eco-terrorists who had firebombed SUV dealerships in the summer of 2003. But the bureau's rare concession of error, expected to be publicly announced soon, could bring new attention to what civil-liberties groups say is a disturbing trend: the stepped-up monitoring of domestic political activity by FBI counter-terror agents.
Connole, an anti-Iraq-war protester, had been living in a Pomona, Calif., vegan commune when a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) targeted him after arson attacks on four nearby Hummer dealers—acts blamed on the shadowy Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which the bureau considers a domestic terror group. The case was considered serious enough that Director Robert Mueller briefed President Bush. After concluding Connole looked like a lanky, goateed suspect caught on surveillance tape, agents arrested him at gunpoint on Sept. 12, 2003, then raided the commune. After being interrogated and held for four days, he was released. Another suspect with no connection to the commune was later arrested and convicted..........

i AM a republican (not me, the woman in the story)

and i AM AGAINST THE WAR!!!!


Protesters arrested at GOP fundraiser
Arlington: 2 accused of throwing hard candy; they deny the charges
08:42 AM CST on Sunday, November 13, 2005
By JAY PARSONS / The Dallas Morning News
Two war protesters were arrested at a Republican fundraiser in Arlington on Friday night, accused of throwing candy at partygoers. The candy came attached to a message: "Don't be a sucker for the GOP."
The women denied the charges.
Police cited Hillary Timmers and an unidentified woman with provocative contact assault, a Class C misdemeanor. The two, and a third woman, were also charged with criminal trespassing.
The incident started when a Fort Worth woman, Beatriz Saldivar, objected to a pro-war speech at the fundraiser, at the Wyndham Arlington.
Ms. Saldivar's nephew, Sgt. Daniel Torres, was killed in the Iraq war in February. She said she was a registered Republican who bought a $50 ticket to the event, where Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, was scheduled to speak. She said she held up pictures of Sgt. Torres' mother and infant daughter.
"All these Republicans jumped at me and assaulted me," Ms. Saldivar said.
"They grabbed my purse, grabbed my phone. They looked for my ID. I kept holding my pictures. They kept saying I'm not a Republican, but I said, 'I'm a Republican, and I'm against this war.' "
An Arlington police officer took Ms. Saldivar outside the hotel ballroom, where three of her friends were protesting. Those three women then entered the fundraiser, waited through a singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner," and started chanting, "We don't want your dirty war machine."
Police and the protesters disagree about what happened next. Arlington police Lt. Will Johnson said two of the three women began throwing hard candy.
Ms. Timmers of Fort Worth said the candy fell out of another woman's purse when partygoers tried to grab them...........

how do you feel about OUR soldiers being tortured?

i know how i feel. it goes against ALL that is decent and right.

White House declines to totally rule out torture


Sun Nov 13, 6:36 PM ET
In an important clarification of President George W. Bush's earlier statement, a top White House official refused to unequivocally rule out the use of torture, arguing the US administration was duty-bound to protect Americans from terrorist attack.
The comment, by US national security adviser Stephen Hadley, came amid heated national debate about whether the CIA and other US intelligence agencies should be authorized to use what is being referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques" to extract from terror suspects information that may help prevent future assaults.
The US Senate voted 90-9 early last month to attach an amendment authored by Republican Senator John McCain to a defense spending bill that would prohibit "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees in US custody. But the White House has threatened to veto the measure and has lobbied senators to have the language removed or modified to allow an exemption for the Central Intelligence Agency.
During a trip to Panama earlier this month, Bush said that Americans "do not torture."
However, appearing on CNN's "Late Edition" program, Hadley elaborated on the policy, making clear the White House could envisage circumstances, in which the broad pledge not to torture might not apply.
"The president has said that we are going to do whatever we do in accordance with the law," the national security adviser said. "But... you see the dilemma. What happens if on September 7th of 2001, we had gotten one of the hijackers and based on information associated with that arrest, believed that within four days, there's going to be a devastating attack on the United States?"...........

big dick

Cheney's 'Dark Arts' Vice president exposed as being above the law, just like the commander in chief
by Nat Hentoff
November 11th, 2005 6:18 PM
Vice President Cheney is the man who unleashed torture and promoted it within our military and our intelligence service. —Scott Horton, chairman, Inter-national Law Committee, Association of the Bar of the City of New York
In more than 50 years of reporting on the national scene, I have seldom seen a more furious attack on a hugely influential public official than a lead editorial, "Vice President for Torture," in the October 26 Washington Post:
"Vice President Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. . . . He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture."
On October 20, Dick Cheney and CIA head Porter Goss tried to bully Republican senator John McCain to at least soften his amendments to the defense appropriations bill that would prohibit the "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of anyone in American custody anywhere in the world. That amendment would establish the Army Field Manual as the standard for interrogation of all "detainees" held by the Defense Department.

you're sending them to battle

NOW TAKE CARE OF THEM!!! Retired general: Bush shortchanging vets
Ex-military chief in Mideast calls veterans' health care inadequate
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government should strengthen the health care system for veterans, retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar said Saturday in the Democratic Party's weekly radio address.
Speaking on the Veterans Day weekend, the former U.S. military commander in the Middle East said "President Bush has consistently refused to provide enough" money for veterans' health care.
"Earlier this year, his administration admitted that they were $1 billion short in funding for critical health care services," he said. "They also repeatedly tried to increase the cost of prescription drugs and health care services for veterans nationwide." (Watch the retired general's radio address -- 2:34)
The Veterans Affairs Department acknowledged in April that it had underestimated medical care costs. Congress reacted by approving an additional $1.5 billion in emergency funds for the current budget year.
Hoar also said, "Thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will require mental health care, yet the Bush administration has not taken action to deal with this emerging problem."
In contrast, Democrats are working to improve the current health care system and strengthen mental health care services, he said............

i believe in justice

and i believe in punishment. punishment for crimes committed against our country and our people. i do NOT believe in torture. when WE do it, WE are NO BETTER than they are. WE have no right to speak out against others who use such barbaric methods. i just don't understand how WE justify this. i don't understand it at all.

Italy Seeks Extradition Of 22 CIA Operatives
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 12, 2005; Page A19
BERLIN, Nov. 11 -- Italian prosecutors on Friday formally requested the extradition of 22 U.S. citizens believed to be CIA operatives on charges that they seized an Egyptian Islamic cleric off a Milan street in early 2003 and flew him to Cairo, where he later said he was tortured.
The prosecutors' decision places added pressure on U.S. officials to explain the Bush administration's alleged role in the abduction of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. Italy and the United States have an extradition treaty that generally requires both countries to hand over defendants facing charges, although there are exceptions.

The prosecutors' extradition request is now before Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli, who has not said whether he will forward it to U.S. officials.
Castelli was in Washington this week to meet with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. After returning to Rome on Thursday, Castelli said they discussed extradition cases but declined to say whether the Abu Omar case was among them, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said Friday the agency would not comment on what was discussed at the meeting.
Arrest warrants previously approved by a judge in Milan allege that 22 covert operatives from the CIA violated Italian sovereignty by kidnapping Nasr, who had been granted political asylum in Italy, and secretly flying him to Egypt............

lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies

Morning Report 11/12/05 Rewriting Hysteria
Bush lies again about his previous lies about Iraq

George W. Bush, such a lightweight president that he doesn't even read, is accusing others of rewriting history.
How would he know?
Bush's handlers, who still include that teetering humpty Karl Rove, propped up the POTUS in front of a huge, Soviet-style "Strategy for Victory" slogan in Pennsylvania yesterday and directed him to say the following:
The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges.
And what would those be? I wonder. Bush said:
While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.
Pause here for crowd applause. (You don't think Bush gave this speech just anywhere, do you? He was speaking at the Tobyhanna Army Depot.) He continued:
Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war.
They're right, and Bush is a liar. ...............

a little secret about me

one which i don't reveal (to just anyone)

i DO have a collection (rather small but varied) of stuffed animals and folk dolls (NOT the barbie kind mind you). i have seen many an animal bungeed to a grill. i wouldn't do it, but i DO have my five GIANT RATS (thanks ernie!) seat belted in my car's back seat. they were on loan to museum the half door for halloween and cathy still has them safe and sound in HER car. i'll need them back shortly. it's almost time for my christmas display of the five wise rats around the festively decorated tree (and no, i'm NOT kidding)

They're Soft and Cuddly, So Why Lash Them to the Front of a Truck?

By ANDY NEWMAN
A bear with a prominent grease spot on his little beige nose spends his days wedged behind the bumper guard of an ironworker's pickup in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. A fuzzy rabbit and a clown, garroted by a bungee cord, slump from the front of a Dodge van in Park Slope. Stewie, the evil baby from "Family Guy," scowls from the grille of a Pepperidge Farm delivery truck in Brooklyn Heights, mold occasionally sprouting from his forehead.
All are soldiers in the tattered, scattered army of the stuffed: mostly discarded toys plucked from the trash and given new if punishing lives on the prows of large motor vehicles, their fluffy white guts flapping from burst seams and going gray in the soot-stream of a thousand exhaust pipes.
Grille-mounted stuffed animals form a compelling yet little-studied aspect of the urban streetscape, a traveling gallery of baldly transgressive public art. The time has come not just to praise them but to ask the big question. Why?
That is, why do a small percentage of trucks and vans have filthy plush toys lashed to their fronts, like prisoners at the mast? Are they someone's idea of a joke? Parking aids? Talismans against summonses?
Don't expect an easy answer.
Interviews with half a dozen truckers as well as folklorists, art historians and anthropologists revealed the grille-mounted plush toy to be a product of a tangle of physical circumstance, proximate and indirect influence, ethnic tradition, occupational mindset and Jungian archetype.
Like all adornments, of course, the grille pet advertises something about its owner. The very act of decorating a truck indicates an openness on the driver's part, according to Dan DiVittorio, owner of D & N Services, a carting company in Queens, and of a garbage truck with a squishy red skull on the front............

even his alma mater doesn't want him approved

this, to me, is VERY telling

Yale Law Frets Over Court Choices It Knows Best
By ADAM LIPTAK
NEW HAVEN, Nov. 8 - The morning after Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. was announced as the president's choice for the Supreme Court, some students and professors at his alma mater, the Yale Law School, were already hard at work - to defeat him.
Professor Bruce Ackerman, who teaches constitutional law here, appeared on CNN with this instant assessment: "I don't think conservative is the word. This person is a judicial radical."
A group called Law Students Against Alito was formed the same day. "There is a chunk of the population, probably a majority," said Ian Bassin, a founder of the group, "who does not want this guy on the Supreme Court."
If the past is any guide, the bond between this conservative judge and this law school, which has traditionally attracted liberal students and faculty members, is about to be tested. And the early indications here are that Judge Alito will face some of the hostility that met the last two Supreme Court nominees with connections to the school, Judge Robert H. Bork and Justice Clarence Thomas.
Conservative students here said they were concerned that the Alito nomination would be a replay of what they called the savage treatment meted out to Judge Bork and Justice Thomas, who endured bruising confirmation battles.
Judge Bork's nomination was rejected in 1987, and Justice Thomas was confirmed by a vote of 52 to 48 after his hearings in 1991.
Faculty members testified on both sides both times. But the school was generally opposed to their nominations, said professors, students and alumni. Justice Thomas was thought to be unqualified, and Judge Bork's views were considered too extreme...........