:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 4.29.2007 ::

:: "U.S. fight over Iraq war funds to enter new phase" ::

U.S. fight over Iraq war funds to enter new phase
By Caren Bohan
Reuters

WASHINGTON, April 28 (Reuters) - A fierce political battle over a Democratic plan to pull U.S. troops from Iraq triggered a veto promise from President George W. Bush, but negotiations on a new bill have quietly begun.

The Democratic-led Congress plans to send Bush a bill on Tuesday that gives $124 billion for the war in Iraq but requires a pullout to begin by Oct. 1. The White House has said Bush will waste no time in vetoing it and may do so the day he gets it.

Debate on the bill has been marked by escalating rhetoric, with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada saying Bush has already lost the war and Republicans labeling him a defeatist.

Read more here.

Meanwhile...

Poppies fuel Taliban’s return in Afghanistan
MSNBC

posted by me

:: 12:25:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Bush veto may come 4 years after 'victory' speech" ::

President expected to receive -- and reject -- bill ordering troop withdrawal
By Anne Flaherty
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON // President Bush next week is expected to receive, and swiftly reject, legislation ordering U.S. troops to begin coming home from Iraq this fall. The veto could fall on the fourth anniversary of the president's Iraq "victory" speech.

The House on a 218-208 vote Wednesday passed a $124.2 billion supplemental spending bill that contains the troop withdrawal timetable. The Senate was expected to follow suit today.

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The legislation is the first binding challenge on the war that Democrats have managed to execute since they took control of both houses of Congress in January.

"The sacrifices borne by our troops and their families demand more than the blank checks the president is asking for, for a war without end," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said.

Democrats said the bill was on track to arrive on the president's desk on Tuesday, the anniversary of Bush's announcement aboard the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001, and still goes on," Bush said on May 1, 2003, in front of a huge "Mission Accomplished" banner.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:02:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Love Your Mother ::

This Earth Day, Corporate Accountability is the Inconvenient Truth
The Huffinston Post

The great green bandwagon that has come of age this Earth Day has been a very long time coming. With Rachel Carson's 1963 Silent Spring and Earth Day 1970 and the first arrests at the Seabrook Nuke in 1976 and the decades of writing and marching and organizing and fundraising, the landmarks to a growing green consciousness are epic.

The past fifty years have seen the rise of the movements for civil, gay, and women's rights; for an end to nuclear bomb testing and atomic power plants; for peace in Vietnam, central America and Iraq; for the right to open access and accurate vote counts in elections that cannot again be stolen, and much much more.

These national and global campaigns have been accompanied by never-ending battles at the grassroots, against Jim Crow, for equal housing, against local polluters, for paper ballots, and for an ever-growing range of vital causes that demand human attention if we are to retain our rights and dignity.

This on-going grassroots fervor is the essence of democracy, the lifeblood of our ability to survive and grow.

Today, another specific cause---this time the environment---has finally become fashionable.

But this moment has been long delayed by big corporations that profit immensely from the destruction of the Earth, and that intend to continue.

It comes with a classic hijack---the theft of imagery. It's now the height of corporate fashion to be painted green.

Many companies have indeed come around, and deserve their new badge of honor. But some paint themselves green no matter how much harm they do.

From Exxon to Ford, from Mobil to Monsanto, the world's worst polluters buy fuzzy, feel-good advertising with an environmental message. Columnists and politicians who have pushed catastrophic policies like utility deregulation and the war in Iraq now genuflect at the media's green altar. Without a hint of irony, some even claim authorship of a movement they've scorned for decades.

To be sure, we can be thankful for genuine progress. But some of this advertising costs more than what the companies spend to actually save the planet.

It is absolutely true that individual behavior is a core element of our eco-crisis. Each of us bears some guilt for our part in fouling our global nest.

We consume too much. We waste with impunity. So at its finale, Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" rightly lists individual steps we can take for saving the planet. We all must do our individual part.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 8:09:00 PM [+] ::
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:: RE Mr. Bill ::

Open source protester crashes Bill Gates speech at Chinese university
InfoWorld

A protester calling for free computer software and open source programming crashed a speech Friday by Bill Gates at Beijing University.

Gates had just finished a speech at Beijing University and was handing out prizes to students when a man walked on stage and unveiled a banner with "free software, open source" written on it.

Here is a Reuters photo.

posted by me

:: 7:55:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Emailgate puts White House under siege" ::

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
The Independent UK

The White House is locked in a new battle with the Democrat-controlled Congress - this time over charges it is withholding, and may have destroyed, compromising emails that Congress is seeking as it investigates alleged wrongdoing by the Bush administration.

The new battle between the executive and legislative branches stems from the row over the eight federal prosecutors who were dismissed last November, in what Democrats say is a blatant example of political meddling in the judicial system by the White House.

The affair already threatens to bring down Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, accused of turning a blind eye as Karl Rove - the influential political adviser to President George Bush - and other White House officials schemed with their opposite numbers at the Justice Department to have the prosecutors removed.

But the affair has gained a new dimension with evidence that Mr Rove and some of his colleagues may have deliberately used Republican party email accounts instead of the White House system to send messages relating to the attorneys and other controversial issues. These messages, Democrats suspect, may have been deleted - thus circumventing rules that White House and government emails must be preserved.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 8:58:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Pope: 'Nothing Positive' From Iraq" ::

By FRANCES D'EMILIO
The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY -- In an Easter litany of the world's suffering, Pope Benedict XVI lamented that "nothing positive" is happening in Iraq and decried the unrest in Afghanistan and bloodshed in Africa and Asia.

"How many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world," the pontiff told tens of thousands gathered Sunday at St. Peter's Square on what is Christianity's most joyful feast day.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:41:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Catholics outraged by chocolate Jesus" ::

By Nicole Lyn Pesce and Gina Salamone
New York Daily News
via Pittsburgh Post Gazette

NEW YORK -- A controversial artist outraged New York City Catholics yesterday with plans to display a nude 6-foot chocolate Jesus during Holy Week.

Cosimo Cavallaro's anatomically correct candy Christ, titled "My Sweet Lord," was made from almost 200 pounds of dark chocolate. The sculpture is to be displayed in a street-level window at the Roger Smith Hotel's Lab Gallery starting Monday.

"It's an all-out war on Christianity," fumed William Donohue, a former sociology professor at La Roche College who is now president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. "They wouldn't show a depiction of Martin Luther King Jr. with genitals exposed on Martin Luther King Day, and they wouldn't show Muhammed depicted this way during Ramadan. It's always Christians, and the timing is deliberate."

Mr. Cavallaro, who is best known for slathering both a Hell's Kitchen hotel room and model Twiggy with melted cheese, insisted that the timing was purely coincidental. "The choice of Easter was that there was availability in the gallery now," he said.

posted by me

:: 1:26:00 AM [+] ::
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