Saturday, April 28, 2007

Tolerance Is Controversial

In Indiana a teacher has been disciplined after allowing an article in the school newspaper which asked for tolerance for homosexuals. She was disciplined because all controversial articles need to be cleared through the principal.
The agreement she signed includes a written reprimand that says she neglected her duties as a teacher and was insubordinate in refusing to obey school officials' orders.

Sorrell said she is "very proud" of Megan Chase, the student who wrote the editorial calling for tolerance and acceptance of gays, and the Tomahawk's other writers and editors. But she said she could not financially afford to fight the school district over her discipline.
After reading this article I became extremely angry. Since when is tolerance controversial? Are we still living in America when a teacher who advocates tolerance for all is disciplined? I would guess that if the article was about how homosexuality was against the bible she would have been given a salary raise. This is disgusting on every level. When will our so called Christian nation finally realize that Christianity on its most basic level is tolerance and love. The American Taliban strikes again.

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Friday, April 27, 2007

Car Bombs Don't Count

In order to lie to the people of the United States about sectarian violence in Iraq, the casualty totals do not include those killed or injured in car bombings.
U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more U.S. troops into Baghdad aren't counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians.

Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts cited in reviews of the surge of additional U.S. forces.

President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday: "If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory," he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.
When you know your policy has failed you lie to make it appear that it is working.
"Since the administration keeps saying that failure is not an option, they are redefining success in a way that suits them," said James Denselow, an Iraq specialist at London-based Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank.
This administration does not know how to tell the truth. This war is lost and it is time to admit that and make the necessary adjustments to get our troops home.

Read the rest of this article here.

Economic Growth at a 4 Year Low

It was reported by the Commerce Department that economic growth slowed to a crawl in the first three months of 2007. The GDP for that period was 1.3% following a 2.5% growth rate in the last quarter of 2006. I have posted before that I believe the collapse of the housing market will lead to a recession. This data does nothing to change my mind.
Economic growth slowed to a near crawl of 1.3 percent in the first three months of 2007, the worst performance in four years. The main culprit: the housing slump.

The fresh reading on gross domestic product, released by the Commerce Department on Friday, was even weaker than the 2.5 percent growth rate logged in the final three months of last year. The new figures underscored just how much momentum the economy has been losing as it copes with the strain of the troubled housing market, which has made some businesses more cautious in their spending.

Even though the economy slowed in the first quarter, inflation picked up — a development that will complicate the Fed’s work.
Read the rest of this article here.

Giuliani No Longer Supports Civil Unions

In a complete reversal of his stated position on civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, Rudy Giuliani said he does not support a law recently passed in New Hampshire allowing such unions
" Mayor Giuliani believes marriage is between one man and one woman. Domestic partnerships are the appropriate way to ensure that people are treated fairly," the Giuliani campaign said in a written response to a question from the Sun. "In this specific case the law states same sex civil unions are the equivalent of marriage and recognizes same sex unions from outside states. This goes too far and Mayor Giuliani does not support it."
I wonder if Rudy called the gay couple that he lived with after his second wife discovered his affair, with his now third wife, and told them that he was against any legal rights for them? Why do people who show no respect for marriage in any way seem so determined to tell me that my relationship is wrong? The one difference between myself and Rudy is that I have never cheated on anyone that have been in a relationship with. Is there anyone in the Republican field that can say that? These people make me sick. Rudy is a worthless panderer who has now insured that even if he won the nomination, he will lose New York.

Read the rest of this article here.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Bush Approval At An All Time Low

Those approving of the job done by President Bush has slid to its lowest level since his inauguration
President Bush's approval rating slipped to new lows in the most recent Harris Interactive survey, but he's not alone: For the first time since the series began, all of the political figures and institutions included in the survey have negative performance ratings.

Of the 1,001 American adults polled online April 20-23, only 28% had a positive view of Mr. Bush's job performance, down from 32% in February and from a high of 88% in the aftermath of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The current rating is his weakest showing since his inauguration.
My question is who are these 28%? The results for Congress were not much better. This poll shows that most Americans are completely disillusioned with our political system.

Poll Results here.

Justices Raise Doubts on Campaign Finance

It would appear that the Supreme Court is ready to open loopholes in the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Law:
At issue is a major provision of the five-year-old law that bars corporations and labor unions from paying for advertisements that mention the name of a candidate for federal office and that are broadcast 60 days before an election or 30 days before a primary. By a 5-to-4 vote in December 2003, the court held that the provision, on its face, passed First Amendment muster.
Since 2003 the court has taken a decidedly conservative turn. Campaign Finance reform remains one of the greatest challenges facing the middle class. How can we reasonably expect our elected officials to represent all of their constituents when only a small percentage has the financial ability to donate. Our campaigns have become all about money. If we as the Middle Class do not force a change, we will cease to exist. The time to stand up and demand change in the way we finance campaigns is long overdo.

Read the rest of this article here.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

NY Post Rewrites Story To Make It Appear Worse For Dems

Anyone that lives in New York knows that the NY Post is a worthless rag. Rewriting a story to make a political point while not acknowledging that the story has been changed is on a level with the National Enquirer. What a surprise that this paper and Fox News are owned by the same company. So much for fair and balanced reporting.

Giuliani Says a Democratic President Will Lead to Terrorism

Rudy Giuliani who made the decision to place the NYC Emergency Response Center in the World Trade Complex after it was attacked in 1993 has said that a Democratic Presidential victory will lead to another terrorist attack.
Democratic presidential candidates on Wednesday rebuked Republican rival Rudy Giuliani for suggesting that the United States could face another major terrorist attack if a Democrat is elected in 2008. The former New York mayor did not back down.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said Giuliani, who was in office on Sept. 11, 2001, should not be making the terrorist threat into “the punchline of another political attack.”

Giuliani stood by his comments Wednesday, saying Democrats don't understand the threat posed by terrorists.

“They do not seem to get the fact that there are people, terrorists in this world, really dangerous people that want to come here and kill us,” Giuliani said on “The Sean Hannity Show,” according to a transcript distributed by his campaign. “They want to take us back to not being as alert which to me will just extend this war much, much longer.”
Did Rudy forget that it was a Republican President that was in office on September 11, 2001? Did he forget that Osama Bin Laden is still free? Did he forget that those responsible for the 1993 bombing are all in jail as a result of action by the Clinton Administration? Rudy is taking a play out of Rove's book but this time it will not work. The Bush Administration has been a disaster on every level and Rudy can't lick their boots quickly enough.

Read the rest of this article here.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Still Support This Surge?

President Bush said when the Iraqi's stand up then the U.S. will stand down. All the surge has done is increase the U.S. military dead in Iraq.
A devastating suicide car bombing on Monday killed nine American soldiers and wounded 20 others near a patrol base in Diyala Province, the military announced early today.

It was one of the most lethal suicide bomb attacks on American troops in Iraq. Another occurred on Dec. 21, 2004, when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest walked into a mess tent on an American base in Mosul and detonated his charge, killing 14 United States soldiers.
Today on CNN Rep. John Murtha said "I think the surge has failed. I think there was no possibility that it was going to work."

How much longer will the American people stand by, nearly silent to the growing carnage in Iraq? When will they finally and unequivocally tell the President enough is enough?

Read the rest of this article here.

Sales Of Existing Homes Plunge

I have been telling friends for quite some time that the current housing market was way too overpriced and that eventually the bottom will fall out. It seems the bottom keeps getting lower.
The National Association of Realtors said today that sales of existing homes, which account for about 80 percent of all home sales, fell 8.4 percent in March. That was the steepest decline since 1989.

At the same time, prices also dropped. The median price of an existing single-family home decreased 0.9 percent last month, to $215,300, compared with a year earlier.
With the sub prime mortgage disaster still unfolding and home prices at historically unaffordable prices, this was bound to happen. Just how long this slump will last and what effect it will have on the broader economy is still unknown. I believe the housing market is just the first in what will be many dominoes falling that will lead the U.S. into a recession by late this year or early next year. This is the nightmare scenario that Republicans have been dreading. Middle Class wages have been stagnant for years while home prices have climbed beyond their reach. This is the perfect storm created by years of foolish policies that benefit those at the upper levels of the economic scale.

Read the rest of this article here.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Rove has Argument Over Global Warming

The White House correspondents dinner turned a bit combative when Laurie David, the producer of "An Inconvenient Truth" and singer Sheryl Crow met Karl Rove.
As Ms. Crow and Ms. David described it on the Huffington Post Web site on Sunday, when Mr. Rove turned toward his table, Ms. Crow touched his arm and “Karl swung around and spat, ‘Don’t touch me.’ ”

Both sides agreed that Ms. Crow told him, “You can’t speak to us like that, you work for us,” to which Mr. Rove responded, “I don’t work for you, I work for the American people.” Ms. Crow and Ms. David wrote that Ms. Crow shot back, “We are the American people.”

In their Web posting, Ms. Crow and Ms. David described Mr. Rove as responding with “anger flaring,” and as having “exploded with even more venom” as the argument continued.

“She came over to insult me,” Mr. Rove said Saturday night, “and she succeeded.”
This is fun stuff.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Infant Mortality Grows In The South

Are cuts in welfare and Medicaid responsible for a leap in the rate of infant mortality in the South? No one is sure but the trends are alarming as the infant mortality rate skyrocketed in Mississippi.
To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.

Most striking, here and throughout the country, is the large racial disparity. In Mississippi, infant deaths among blacks rose to 17 per thousand births in 2005 from 14.2 per thousand in 2004, while those among whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. (The national average in 2003 was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.)
The Republicans constantly talk about being a culture of life yet every day we see results of their policies whether it is the War in Iraq, the lack of Gun Control or the cutting of social programs that lead to more and more death. I think it is time that they stop using the term "A Culture of Life". It is false advertising at the highest level.

Gore campaign team assembles in secret

Is former Vice President Gore assembling a campaign staff? According to this article it would appear he is:
Friends of Al Gore have secretly started assembling a campaign team in preparation for the former American vice-president to make a fresh bid for the White House.

But, aware that he may step into the wide open race for the White House, former strategists are sounding out a shadow team that could run his campaign at short notice. In approaching former campaign staff, including political strategists and communications officials, they are making clear they are not acting on formal instructions from Mr Gore, 59, but have not been asked to stop.
I would welcome his entry into the race. I believe he would be nearly unbeatable.