shocking

and sad and unbelievable. we all know there are crazy people in the world. amoral, no conscience, yes even evil. however, to have three, four or five of these people all together cannot be a coincidence, can it? i do so hope this entire story is NOT true.

AP: Alleged U.S. Atrocity in Iraq May Have Been Premeditated Murder
Published: July 01, 2006 1:00 PM ET
BAGHDAD Investigators believe a group of U.S. soldiers suspected of raping an Iraqi woman, then killing her and three members of her family plotted the attack for nearly a week, a U.S. military official said Saturday. Up to five soldiers are being investigated in the March killings, the fifth pending case involving alleged slayings of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops. The Americans entered the Sunni Arab's family home, separated three males from the woman, raped her and burned her body using a flammable liquid in a cover-up attempt, a military official close to the investigation said. The three males were also slain. A senior Army official who also requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing said one of the victims was a child. The soldiers had studied their victims for about a week and the attack was "totally premeditated," the official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. The family had just moved into the home in the insurgent-riddled area around Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad. The U.S. military issued a terse statement about the killings Friday, saying only that Maj. Gen. James D. Thurman, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, ordered a criminal investigation into the alleged slaying of a family of four in Mahmoudiya. U.S. officials said they knew of the deaths but thought the victims were killed in sectarian violence. But Mahmoudiya police Capt. Ihsan Abdul-Rahman said Iraqi officials received a report on March 13 alleging that American soldiers had killed the family in the Khasir Abyad area, about 6 miles north of Mahmoudiya. ..........

UPDATE: AP Embed Gets Scoop on Latest Alleged U.S. Atrocity

By E&P Staff Published: July 01, 2006 12:05 PM ET
NEW YORK AP correspondent Ryan Lenz, embedded with the 101st Airborne Division in Beiji, Iraq, produced the latest news bulletin today concerning yetr another alleged U.S. atrocity in Iraq, and one of the worst yet.Lenz reported this morning that five U.S. Army soldiers are being investigated for allegedly raping a young woman, then killing her on March 12-- and three members of her family in Iraq. The soldiers also allegedly burned the body of the woman they are accused of raping. Iraqi police had been told about the killings three months ago. The U.S. contended the killings were by insurgents, until two or three soldiers spoke up. The New York Times followed on this report later in the afternoon: "The deaths were originally attributed by the military to 'insurgent activity,' American officials said. That implies that soldiers involved in the incident may have misreported it to their commanders, or that there may have been a cover-up in the chain of command, as is suspected in the case of the Haditha killings last November.............

whew! not to worry THE greatest actor of all time IS ALL RIGHT

it was touch and go there for a while, but we can now breathe a collective sigh of relief

Hasselhoff in chandelier accident

US actor David Hasselhoff has been treated in hospital after being hurt in a chandelier accident.
Hasselhoff, 53, hit his head on a chandelier in the men's room after using the gym at the Sanderson Hotel in London's West End on Thursday.
His right arm was cut by shards of glass, severing a tendon.
A spokeswoman for the former Baywatch and Knight Rider star said he was "out of hospital and ready to continue his work tomorrow". ......................

Glenda in the Land of Oz: July 4th. Let's Post for Peace!! Join in!!

Glenda in the Land of Oz: July 4th. Let's Post for Peace!! Join in!!

just because

the lovely and talented cv rick sent this along to the comments section of a posting...................................... (and he's posted it in his blog as well - along with a link to a video of the speech)

"The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as
a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret
oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of
excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the
dangers which are cited to justify it."

- John F. Kennedy

just because

guerrillas in the midst sent me this picture of an aye aye

and mr shakespeare thought the OTHER picture looked strangely similar to a notorious blood sucking boney long fingered vampire......

and now for something i really DO like - lemurs!!!

little TEENY TINY ones at that. can you imagine ANYTHING cuter? well putting aside my baby pictures that is

Microcebus mittermeieri is one of three newly announced mouse lemur species found on the African island of Madagascar.Photograph by Mark Thiessen/NGS

Three New Lemurs Discovered, Add to Madagascar's Diversity
Scott Norrisfor National Geographic News
June 26, 2006
Three new species of lemur in the African island nation of Madagascar have been discovered (Madagascar map and facts).
(Related: "Madagascar Movie Magic Might Be Real-Life Nightmare.")

All three are mouse lemurs and are as tiny as their name implies. The palm-size creatures are primates—the group that includes apes and humans.
Researchers first located the three new mouse lemurs in Madagascar's eastern rain forests in 2001. .........

a little animated slide show with audio (warning: not all of the pictures are nice)

my head is spinning and i'm spewing from my ears

how are we letting these people get away with this shite? i don't get it. more and more and more abuse then THEY (the king and his court) have the balls to say WE (the common folk) are at fault? WE don't have the right to know we are being SPIED UPON ILLEGALLY. our king and his court are NOT following that little piece of paper called THE CONSTITUTION? WE are undermining the safety and security of our GREAT NATION? i understand following party lines and if you're republican you stick with your party TO A POINT. how can ANYONE ALLOW THIS TO CONTINUE? THE VERITABLE RAPING OF OUR SOULS. HOW? i just don't get it.

VIDEO: Snow Lashes Out at Media, Suggests NYT Has Undermined Americans’ ‘Right to Live’ President Bush today called the New York Times story revealing the administration’s monitoring of bank records “disgraceful,” and said the decision to publish details of the program “does great harm to the United States of America.”
Press Secretary Tony Snow followed up with another attack at today’s press briefing:
[T]he New York Times and other news organizations ought to think long and hard about whether a public’s right to know in some cases might override somebody’s right to live, and whether in fact the publications of these could place in jeopardy the safety of fellow Americans.
Watch it: .......

and

LATEST BLOW TO OUR WAR EFFORT NATIONAL REVIEW? wtf????????? do you actually believe we SHOULD be in iraq? why? i want to know. sure saddam was an evil man but then ago so are so many others we are actually BUDDIES with. so that makes no sense. they bombed the world trade center? NOPE, wasn't iraqis that did that either, so THAT isn't it. ok, they had weapons of MASS destruction! NOPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE no one found any of THOSE either (well we have 'em but we don't want anyone ELSE to have 'em). so THAT isn't it. mmmmmmmm did the iraqi's dis the king's dad back in the day? could be. could be a LOT of things but we ain't gonna know in this lifetime OR the next. there IS NO REASON OUR MEN AND WOMEN (AND THEIR MEN AND WOMEN) are dying. HOW THE HELL can the national review say revealing an ILLEGAL operation by the king and his court is threatening our 'war effort'. THERE SHOULD BE NO WAR EFFORT you bunch of steamin' wankers

'National Review' Urges Revoking 'NYT' White House Credentials

By Joe Strupp Published: June 26, 2006 3:30 PM ET
NEW YORK The same day that President Bush criticized The New York Times for disclosing a secret bank records monitoring program, editors of the National Review - the influential conservative magazine - are urging the White House to revoke the Times' press credentials.In an unusual move that has one publication seeking to block the press credentials of another, National Review wrote online today that the publication of the bank records story by the Times and other newspapers is the "latest body blow to the war effort.""Every passing week, it becomes more apparent that disgruntled leftists in the intelligence community and antiwar crusaders in the mainstream media, annealed in their disdain for the Bush administration, are undermining our ability to win the War on Terror," the editorial began. Although it noted that both The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times had disclosed the same information in stories that were first posted online late Thursday, the editorial aimed squarely at The New York Times."President Bush, who said on Monday morning that the exposure 'does great harm to the United States of America,' must demand that the New York Times pay a price for its costly, arrogant defiance," the editorial continued. "The administration should withdraw the newspaper's White House press credentials because this privilege has been so egregiously abused, and an aggressive investigation should be undertaken to identify and prosecute, at a minimum, the government officials who have leaked national-defense information."........

abuse of power?

our king and his court? our phone calls, our emails, our meetings to protest, our post office mail and now our bank records (you know they're checking our health records and atm records as well. NO ALL of that stoli was NOT JUST for me). they say they are only 'spying' (WITHOUT A WARRANT) on SUSPECTED TERRORISTS. c'mon now who is buying that? how much are YOU going to let THEM get away with BEFORE you open your mouths? are you going to wait until they put an electric collar around your neck? i am not. sure they just caught those five or six (i've forgotten now) YOUNG 'terrorists'. 'terrorists' who were all talk, never had any weapons, never met with any formed terrorist organizations. did they need to read MY mail to do that? did they need to read YOUR mail to do that? did they need to listen to a phone conversation (well it was more of a fight actually) i had with my sister? NO we weren't arguing about anything to do with being a terrorist. we were talking about my father's dvd player........at any rate; Keller of 'NYT' Responds to Criticism of Bank Records Bombshell By E&P Staff Published: June 25, 2006 7:35 PM ET
NEW YORK Responding to comments and criticism of the newspaper's revelations last week about government surveillance of certain interantional banking records, Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, has crafted a lengthy letter and had it posted on the Times' Web site today.A link can be found on the home page at www.nytimes.com. Keller's document is described as a reply that has been sent to numerous readers who have written the newspaper concerning the article by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen.Here are excerpts from the Keller letter.*It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish. ........

money money money

the all mighty or is that almighty dollah!

it's ok to sell 'em it just ain't ok to wear 'em

(of course NO ONE could say WHY they were offensive, but that's NOT the point)

hey, i wonder if belly shirts are allowed or mini skirts or tshirts with 'nra' emblazoned upon them are allowed? i wonder........

Bandanna banned in Springfield mall Officials wonÂ’t explain how headgear is offensive.

SPRINGFIELD (AP) - A southwest Missouri mall defended its dress code after a security guard told a 10-year-old girl her bandanna decorated with peace signs, smiley faces and flowers violated the mallÂ’s code of conduct.
Lydia Smith, who was shopping with her mother at Battlefield Mall for new church clothes when the incident happened Saturday, said she wore the orange and yellow bandanna to give her outfit some color.
Lydia and her mom, Susan Smith, were eating lunch when the girl saw a mall security officer ask a nearby teenager to remove a bandanna. Then the officer approached her.
"(The officer) asked me to take it off and said thereÂ’s this new rule we have or something like that," Lydia said.
The officer handed LydiaÂ’s mother a printed copy of the Battlefield Mall Code of Conduct, which prohibits patrons from engaging in certain activities while on mall property.
Lydia had violated No. 10 on the list of 17 offenses: "failing to be fully clothed or wearing apparel which is likely to provide a disturbance or embroil other groups or the general public in open conflict."
Mall officials wonÂ’t clarify what clothing and accessories are prohibited..........

watch out sri lankans are trying to take away YOUR guns (NOT)

my friend richard from australia forwarded this article to me.

if you notice those christian organizations who are protesting a television show or a cd write TENS OF THOUSANDS OF LETTERS (well really a computer is writing them and they aren't from tens of thousands of people. perhaps five or six). same with the nra. what THIS person has to do with guns in america is beyond me (and beyond mr kariyawasam as well)

UN takes aim at gun runners

Those trying to control the trade in small arms find themselves in the sights of the powerful US gun lobby.


PRASAD Kariyawasam seems an unlikely person to get 5000 letters a day. Sri Lanka's ambassador to the UN is a softly spoken diplomat, trained to avoid controversy, not provoke it. But in the past few weeks, his office has been overwhelmed with 100,000 letters.
They are not friendly postcards. They come from supporters of America's National Rifle Association, who claim that he is trying to take away their guns.
How this man poses a danger to the right to bear arms of 80 million gun-owning Americans is a puzzle. He is the chairman of a two-week United Nations conference starting on Monday that will review progress in the past five years to curb the trade in small arms, which fuels and sustains many international conflicts.............

this is a real picture

Photograph courtesy World Picture Network

this comes as a total shock........

NOT

according to the ny times .. YOUR king, george the meek and mild, has been looking into YOUR bank records in addition to listening to your phone calls, reading your emails and opening your regular mail. according to the article the king and his court say, 'The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of ties to Al Qaeda'. well they said that about the WARRANTLESS phone calls too didn't they? but we all know they're listening to us say, 'grandma, can you send me 200 bucks?' too!!! NOTE: neither my grandma (my noni died at 102 years old AND i NEVER asked her for money) nor i are members of al qaeda OR any other TERRORIST organizations. now the right really didn't complain about the calls or the mail but i think THIS (money money money) may get them whining so it MAY indeed be a GOOD thing after all. we shall see we shall see


Bank Data Secretly Reviewed by U.S. to Fight Terror
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, June 22 - Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.
The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas or into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.
Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia, the officials said. The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, "has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks and is, without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities," Stuart Levey, an undersecretary at the Treasury Department, said in an interview Thursday. The program is grounded in part on the president's emergency economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans' records. .........

Colbert hits Fox claim that Gay Marriage leads to Animal Marriage



saw this in rawstory and i HAD to post it myself. i am amazed more and more at the thought patterns of some

i HATE to generalize. i really do

but the republicans DO NOT CARE ABOUT US, the common (well we're not common but you know what i mean) worker. they have NO idea about making ends meet on a minimum wage. education, health care, housing, jobs.............

THEY HAVE NO EFFING IDEA

Senate defeats Democrats' minimum wage increase Wed Jun 21, 2006 11:59 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Wednesday defeated a proposal pushed by Democrats to raise the federal minimum wage in increments from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour by January 1, 2009.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, unsuccessfully tried to attach the proposal raising the wage for the first time since 1997 to a defense authorization bill that is expected to be passed by the Senate soon.

two (more that is) of our soldiers are dead

it appears they were tortured before being 'brutally murdered'. my thoughts and prayers go out to their families and those of every other soldier wounded and killed in this war (and any other war).

to those that support this war AND us torturing the prisoners we've captured, how do you feel about the two VERY YOUNG americans that were just tortured and killed? do you think the people that did this to them are barbarians? what are we? why did every single newspaper (well, most of them) have a picture of a dead terrorist on their covers for days? i couldn't handle seeing that. just tell us he's dead, don't show us the pictures UNLESS you show us the pictures of ALL of our service members who come home in a box and those that come home with a limb missing or worse.

why are WE dictating to iraq (and north korea and pakistan and iran and just about everywhere else) what is right and wrong, what can and cannot be done?

to those of you who support our presence in iraq, how do you justify 2,500 PLUS of our men and women being killed? for what? the iraqis did NOT fly planes into the world trade center. the iraqis did NOT have weapons of mass destruction. sure, saddam was evil AND a murderer. what is king george?

we no longer live in a free society and i for one am scared. our doors can be knocked down without those doing it identifying themselves. our conversations (both in print and orally) can be spied upon WITHOUT warrants. big business is getting all sorts of breaks while the common citizen can barely afford to fill up their gas tanks. the earth is dying and all sorts of laws that were passed to protect her are being repealed.

i am absolutely sick to my stomach.

cash

The New Johnny Cash Album Will Tear Your Soul Apart

i don't like john stossel

i've seen him on the abc weekly news magazine show spouting off stupid things (so very smugly i might add). so i was very happy to see this in kos

VIDEO: Embarrassing John Stossel on CNBC
by davidsirota
Sun Jun 18, 2006 at 08:29:46 AM PDT

It's not everyday that you get to publicly embarrass a right-wing pathological liar like John Stossel on national television - but that's what I had the pleasure of doing earlier this week. Now, after popular demand by those who saw the transcript of the interchange, Alternet's Don Hazen tracked down the video of the interchange, which you can now view here. It's pretty hilarious- so go check it out. Frankly, I thought Stossel would be a lot smoother at trying to defend his lies - but he really was an unworthy adversary. He strikes me as someone who has gotten so lazy and so infatuated with the sound of his own voice that he thinks he can just spit out factually inaccurate nonsense and no one will call him on it. Well, at least this week, those of us fighting for the truth nailed him to the wall..................

dyke and faggot!!!!

that's NOT me talking mind you, that is the pentagon. why doesn't it surprise me homosexuality is still listed as a disorder?

Pentagon Lists Homosexuality As Disorder
Jun 19, 6:48 PM (ET)By LOLITA C. BALDOR
WASHINGTON (AP) - A Pentagon document classifies homosexuality as a mental disorder, decades after mental health experts abandoned that position.
The document outlines retirement or other discharge policies for service members with physical disabilities, and in a section on defects lists homosexuality alongside mental retardation and personality disorders.
Critics said the reference underscores the Pentagon's failing policies on gays, and adds to a culture that has created uncertainty and insecurity around the treatment of homosexual service members, leading to anti-gay harassment.
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jeremy M. Martin said the policy document is under review.
The Pentagon has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy that prohibits the military from inquiring about the sex lives of service members but requires discharges of those who openly acknowledge being gay.
The Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, at the University of California at Santa Barbara, uncovered the document and pointed to it as further proof that the military deserves failing grades for its treatment of gays...........

it appears we're in the wrong bid-nez

we're not profiting off of the blood of our men and women in iraq, or the gulf coast. we're tax paying (mostly) law abiding citizens who love our land and most of it's people. we seek to live good moral lives. we want to believe OTHERS live good moral lives as well. THESE PEOPLE DON'T.

Federal contracts up 86% under Bush; Halliburton rises 600%
06/19/2006 @ 1:02 pmFiled by RAW STORY
Top contractor Lockheed got contracts larger than budget of Congress, Dept. of Interior
WASHINGTON -- A new report claims that a "shadow government" of federal contractors has exploded in size over the last five years.
The document, compiled at the request of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and distributed to RAW STORY, indicates that procurement spending increased by over $175 billion between 2000 and 2005, making federal contracts the fastest growing component of federal discretionary spending.
500 reports, audits and investigations by government and independent bodies, including the Government Accountability Office and the Defense Contract Audit Agency, were used to compile the data.
That spending increase -- an astonishing 86 percent -- puts total US federal procurement at $377.5 billion annually. The increase means spending on federal contracts has grown more than two times as fast as other forms of discretionary government spending............

i got this comment on a leonard cohen posting i did a while ago

Well, I also love Leonard Cohen but not like some of your girls out there. I knew and loved the woman who supposedly fucked him over -- better than he did, in some ways, and probably more times in the sack. And I think he had it coming, frankly. If it weren't for her, the best albums of his career would never have happened. She saved him from being another washed up, borderline sociopath abuser-pop-star like Phil Spector, whom Cohen subtly tries to differentiate himself by always recounting that story that puts himself on the wrong end of Spector's pistol -- and yet they're so similar, really. Both alpha-male Jews in Hollywood blessed with extreme talent, extreme ambition and extreme skill in using women (also known as "muses"). Oh, and did I forget to mention. Spector and Cohen both have violent tempers and are into rough sex. But then again, so is every fucker in Hollywood these days.There's much more to the story than any of you two-bit Cohen groupies will ever realize, unless maybe I sell the bloody thing to McLean's for a large sum. A very large sum. It's getting temptinger and temptinger. --Posted by Anonymous to ravings of a semi-sane madwoman at 6/18/2006 01:00:23 AM


and my response:

hey anonymous i'm NOT a two bit cohen groupie.

and here's the link to the original posting