Category: News and politics

It’ll Be Gore again not Hilary

Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: It’ll Be Gore?
…but once Feingold exposes that Hillary has been wrong on so many issues Dems care about (Iraq, civil liberties, Iraq, attacking Bush), she’ll be reduced to normal size for others to take on. Gore can sit back and watch Feingold do the dirty work and get in as Hillary weakens.
Gore’s big advantages: he’s been right on the issues, he retains stature among Democrats, and, surprisingly, he’ll appear fresh from being away so long. Other than SNL last night, when was the last time you saw Gore on TV (and if you didn’t see Gore on SNL see it here) and you will soon see his environmental documentary in the theatres

Blacks see threat from Hispanic illegal aliens

Blacks see threat from Hispanic illegal aliens – Metropolitan – insider.washingtontimes.com
“Illegal immigration is the greatest threat to black people since slavery,” Mr. Hayes said. “The civil rights movement was made by black citizens of this country, but [illegal aliens] are claiming civil rights as a key to cross the American border illegally.”

Northwest resident Mae Bruce, 68, said her biggest concerns are illegal aliens’ “flooding” historically black neighborhoods without assimilating and taking advantage of overburdened government resources such as public education and health care.

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove Revealed Last Year

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report – New York Times

Maybe because evryone was on Holiday in the USA, that nobody picked up on this December 23rd story, until USA Today splashed it across their front page today.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 – The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

Bush’s high spot: a fish

Bush's high spot: a fish – World – smh.com.au
It might sound fishy but US President George W Bush says that catching a bass in a lake on his Texas ranch has been the high spot of his five years in office.

Asked by German newspaper Bild to name the "most wonderful moment" of his presidency, Bush said: "I don't know, it's hard to characterise the great moments.

"They've all been busy moments, by the way.

"I would say the best moment was when I caught a seven and half pound (3.4kg) largemouth bass on my lake." Continue reading “Bush’s high spot: a fish”

Rush Limbaugh’s Booking Blotter

Here is the link to the Palm Beach Sherrif’s Office to see the booking. Thanks to Jeff Ullian.
. . Call it vanity, call it good PR, but Palm Beach-based conservative talkmeister Rush Limbaugh seemed very concerned about his mug shot when he was booked at the county jail on a doctor-shopping charge Friday evening. Apparently not wanting anything close to the famous arrest photos of actor Nick Nolte and soul man James Brown, the White House apologist actually asked the deputy whether he could see his photo before leaving the jail. “We put it on the computer screen and showed it to him,” said jail boss Capt. Mark Chamberlain. The porky-again radio host must have liked what he saw; he didn’t ask for a re-shoot. . .

France’s Plan: Pay ‘Em To Go Home

By Carol Matlack
As demonstrations intensify and legislation stalls in the U.S. over the status of illegal immigrants, France has been taking another tack. It's offering cash payments — the equivalent of about $2,400 per adult and $600 per child — to illegals who agree to return to their native countries. The government began to offer the payments last September but so far has found fewer than 200 takers. Now, law-and-order Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is urging officials to cut the program's red tape to make participation easier, according to the French daily Le Figaro, which obtained a copy of an Interior Ministry memo sent to local officials. But critics say the payments are too low to entice many of France's estimated 400,000 illegals to say adieu.

Meanwhile, France is getting tougher on those who don't leave voluntarily. Since 2002, the number of illegals expelled annually from the country has doubled, to 20,000 last year. At the same time, Sarkozy is spearheading legislation to make it easier for well-educated, highly skilled immigrants to enter the country. Sarkozy, the front-runner in the 2007 French presidential race, is himself the son of an immigrant. His father fled communist Hungary in 1949 and was granted refugee status in France.

Can You Say, ‘Bienvenidos’?

Can You Say, 'Bienvenidos'?
Maybe the real fear is more visceral than that. Maybe it's that you don't have to extrapolate immigration and fertility rates very far into the future to see an America in which minorities — Hispanic, African and Asian Americans — are a majority. To put it another way: an America in which whites join the rest of us as just another minority. That's already the case in our two most populous states, California and Texas, according to the Census Bureau, with others including New York, Arizona and Florida likely to follow soon.

Don't freak out, folks. It's not the end of the world. You might ask your black neighbors for advice on how to cope.

Forget Dubai — worry about Smartmatic instead

MiamiHerald.com | 03/27/2006 | Forget Dubai — worry about Smartmatic instead
Congress spent two weeks overreacting to news that Dubai Ports World would operate several American ports, including Miami's, but a better target for their hysteria would be the acquisition by Smartmatic International of California-based Sequoia Voting Systems, whose machines serve millions of U.S. voters. That Smartmatic — which has been accused by Venezuela's opposition of helping Chávez rig elections in his favor — now controls a major U.S. e-voting firm should give pause to anybody who thinks that replacing our antiquated butterfly ballots and hanging chads will restore Americans' faith in our electoral process.

Chávez, Seeking Foreign Allies, Spends Billions

Chávez, Seeking Foreign Allies, Spends Billions – New York Times
With Venezuela's oil revenues rising 32 percent last year, Mr. Chávez has been subsidizing samba parades in Brazil, eye surgery for poor Mexicans and even heating fuel for poor families from Maine to the Bronx to Philadelphia. By some estimates, the spending now surpasses the nearly $2 billion Washington allocates annually to pay for development programs and the drug war in western South America.