On CNN’s Late Edition today, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) claimed that the argument that John McCain would, in effect, be a third Bush term “isn’t going to stick”:
BLITZER: [Obama] says he welcomes a debate with John McCain on the issue of the economy, taxes, spending policy because John McCain would simply be more George W. Bush. … Does John McCain want to continue what Obama called the failed policies of the Bush administration?
ROMNEY: Well I think you’re going to hear that time and again, Wolf, throughout the campaign season. And I just don’t think it’s going to stick.
But earlier on the same program, a leading McCain surrogate — Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) — conceded that McCain is indeed promising a third Bush term on the economy:
BLITZER: So it would be in effect a third Bush term when it came to pro-growth tax policies?
BLUNT: It would be. I think it would be. And I think that’s a good thing.
These hacks are out of touch and out of their minds.
I guess the Military is so short on "troops" that they are prepared to enter the 21st century!
For quite some time, U.S. troops have supported repealing the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy. A December 2006 poll of servicemembers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan found 73 percent of those polled were “comfortable with lesbians and gays.” A 2004 poll found that a majority of junior enlisted servicemembers believed gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military, up from 16 percent in 1992.
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The military’s leadership is finally catching up to its troops. On Sunday, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen told graduating cadets at the U.S. Military Academy that the military was ready to accept gay servicemembers if Congress repeals DADT:
No more excuses! Just do at and re-hire all the good folks who were kicked out for being who they are.
In a Fox News interview this afternoon, former UN Ambassador John Bolton discussed his desire to bomb camps inside Iran that are reportedly training and arming Shiite insurgents who fight in Iraq. Fox host Martha McCallum asked, “Can you imagine a scenario where President Bush would do that before the end of his term?” Bolton responded, “I think so, definitely.” He added later, “This is entirely responsible on our part.”
The Army is desperate for fresh bodies to fight these trumped up wars. I bet they'll even take Bolten.
The general manager and possibly other senior staff at the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah, where 9 miners died in August 2007, hid information from federal mining officials that could have prevented the disaster and should face criminal charges, according to a Congressional investigation whose results were released Thursday.
The report also said that the mining company should never have submitted a request to remove coal from the section of mine where the collapse occurred, and that federal mining officials should not have approved the proposal, because of foreseeable dangers.
John McCain is no "straight talker." Flip Flopper? Indeed. He's not a moderate Republican and he exhibits no leadership qualities at all. He is, however, showing more "senior moments" all the time as his sad campaign of "100 more years of *war* in Iraq " goes on. Get a load of this:
Another day, another oops for McCain
Yesterday -- channeling Woodrow Wilson and Henry Cabot Lodge -- McCain referred to the "League of Nations." He had meant to say "League of Democracies," his proposal for a new organization of allies beyond the U.N.
And today, opening his judicial speech at Wake Forest, McCain got his "w's" mixed up: "I appreciate the hospitality of the students and faculty of West Virginia," McCain said, before correcting himself as the Deacs in the audience laughed.
It's a disgrace that the Supreme Court upheld Indiana's odious voter ID law. There is already hard evidence that some IN voters, nuns, were not allowed to vote today, but it makes you wonder how many regular voters just didn't bother to show up to the polls because they lacked a government issued ID. This Supreme Court, like Bu$h, will go down in history as shameful, incompetent party hacks
About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.
Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.
The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway.
"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.
They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts."
No wonder only twenty some odd percent of voters identify themselves as Republicans these days.
Orwell couldn't make this stuff up. As is typical in the Bu$h WH, Bloch acted like other industry insiders and loyal Bu$hies: he thought his main job was to promote GOP positions and protect WH lawbreaking and wrong doing. Seems he got too "creative" at last. From the NYTimes:
The office of the official responsible for protecting federal workers from political interference was raided by F.B.I. agents on Tuesday as part of an investigation into whether he himself mixed politics with official business.
The raid took place at the office of Scott J. Bloch, the head of the Office of Special Counsel. Computers and documents were seized by agents trying to determine whether Mr. Bloch obstructed justice by hiring an outside company to “scrub” his computer files, The Associated Press reported. Investigators were also said to be obtaining a subpoena to search Mr. Bloch’s home.
. . .
The Office of Special Counsel gives advice to federal employees on which activities are proper and which are not allowed under the Hatch Act, which is supposed to guard against direct political interference in governmental affairs. Mr. Bloch’s duties including shielding whistle-blowers who disclose such political meddling.
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Mr. Bloch was in the news a year ago when his office began to look into political briefings given to employees of several agencies by aides to Karl Rove, who was then President Bush’s chief political adviser. The White House insisted at the time that the briefings met the definitions of allowable activities.
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Mr. Bloch’s critics quickly accused him of announcing an inquiry into the Rove-inspired briefings simply to draw attention away from his own shortcomings. At the time, he was the target of a complaint filed by a group of employees who accused him of trying to dismantle his own agency, of illegally barring employees from talking to journalists and of reducing a backlog of whistle-blower complaints by simply discarding old cases.
This is the same guy who is being investigated by the inspector general for politicizing his own office and retaliating against his employees for whistleblowing against HIM! hahahahahahaha!
Let's review all of the accomplishments since Bu$h dressed up in a flight suit costume and strutted around an aircraft carrier proclaiming victory! OK, let's not. How about how well the surge worked? Oh yeah, April was the most deadly month since the "surge" was completed.
A pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up amid a wedding convoy Thursday in northeastern Iraq, killing 35 people and wounding 76 others, Iraqi authorities said.
The attack took place on a main street in a market area in Balad Ruz, northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province, the official said.
A wedding convoy was driving slowly when the first suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest, the official said. When bystanders and police gathered, a second bomb exploded.
One of the bombers was a woman, the official said.
This attack involved the fourth female suicide bomber in Iraq in 11 days.
It sure looks like it to me. The head of the organization, Page Garner, is a longtime Clinton (Bill) organizer and John Podesta (Clinton staffer) and Erskin Bowels are board members. This stinks to high hell yet news orgs barely mention it. See for yourself These calls were illeagl, as well. The group never identified themselves on the calls.
Yesterday we posted about suspicious calls being made in North Carolina. The calls purported to be from a man who identified himself only as "Lamont Williams" and told people to wait for a vote registration packet in the mail and said, "All you need to do is sign it, date it and return your application. Then you will be able to vote and make your voice heard."
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Democracy North Carolina, a government watchdog, cried foul, saying that the calls went out to "black neighborhoods" and was evidently a vote suppression tactic since the registration deadline for the presidential primary has already passed. The North Carolina state elections board got involved and asked for the public's help in determining the source of the calls, which apparently blocked caller ID from showing the number. You can listen to the call here (wav).
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Now Facing South reports that a Washington nonprofit called Women's Voices Women Vote is behind the calls.
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The group's spokeswoman Sarah Johnson confirmed to me that those were the group's calls and said that they were part of an effort to register three million women voters in 24 states. The fact that the calls came shortly before the North Carolina primary, potentially confusing voters, was unfortunate mistake, she said. We're "incredibly apologetic about the timing of this." The group was simply working at such a "high volume" that it was "extremely difficult to tailor the mailing to every single state's schedule," she said. The calls precede the mailers, she said, because it increases the rate of response.
Right, so they just HAPPENED to go out to black neighborhoods a week before Primary voting. There has to be a better explanation than that or it ends up looking like a KKKarl Rove tactic.
- Army officials said Tuesday they are inspecting every barracks building worldwide to see whether plumbing and other problems revealed at Fort Bragg, N.C., last week are widespread.
Brig. Gen. Dennis Rogers, who is responsible for maintaining barracks throughout the Army, told reporters at the Pentagon that most inspections were done last weekend but he had not seen final results.
. . .
Rogers said it was too soon to know whether the Fort Bragg problem was an isolated incident. He acknowledged the revelations from a video shot by the father of an 82nd Airborne Division soldier showing poor conditions such as mold inside the barracks, peeling interior paint and a bathroom drain plugged with sewage.
The soldier's father, Ed Frawley, said he was disgusted by the conditions that greeted his son and the rest of his 82nd Airborne unit that returned on April 7-8 after a 15-month tour of duty in Afghanistan.
"We let our soldiers down, and that's not like us," Rogers told reporters. "We let our soldiers down. That's not how we want America's sons and daughters to live. There's no good excuse for what happened."
