Tag: Proto Docudharma Times

It’s an Open Thread: Play Nice

Brothers and sisters of the soul unite
We are one, indivisible and strong
They may try to break us
But they dare not underestimate us
They know our memories are long

USA

For many black women, it’s Clinton or Obama?
Loyalties tested in S.C. as voters contemplate Democratic primary
By Katharine Q. Seelye
Updated: 5:30 a.m. ET Oct. 14, 2007

LORIS, S.C. – In the beauty parlors that are among the social hubs for black women in the Carolinas, loyalties are being tested as voters here contemplate the first Democratic primary in the South.

Clara Vereen, who has been working here in rural eastern South Carolina as a hairstylist for more than 40 of her 61 years, reflects the ambivalence of many black women as she considers both Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

$4.5 million for a boat that nobody wanted

By David Heath and Hal Bernton

Seattle Times staff reporters
Tucked away on Seattle’s Portage Bay, a sleek, 85-foot speedboat sat idle for years – save for an annual jaunt to maintain its engine.

The Navy paid $4.5 million to build the boat. But months before the hull ever touched water, the Navy gave the boat to the University of Washington. The school never found a use for it, either.

Why would the Navy waste taxpayer dollars on a boat that nobody wanted?

It may not be a bridge yet it still didn’t go anywhere.

Its an Open Thread. Yea!

Brothers and sisters of the soul unite
We are one, indivisible and strong
They may try to break us
But they dare not underestimate us
They know our memories are long

Building Blackwater
Founder Seeks ‘Better, Smarter, Faster’ Security As History, Iraq Shape the Firm’s Fortunes

By Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 13, 2007; Page A01

MOYOCK, N.C. Erik Prince bounded up the stairs of a sand-colored building and paused on the flat roof, a high point of the 7,000-acre facility in North Carolina known as Blackwater Lodge and Training Center.

As owner of Blackwater, he has been the focus of intense scrutiny recently by Congress and critics because the company’s private security forces have at times operated with impunity in Iraq, including allegations that they murdered innocent civilians. But on a steamy afternoon this week, just days after testifying on Capitol Hill, Prince seemed like a king surveying his domain.

Key activists arrested in Burma
Burma’s military rulers have arrested three of the last remaining leaders of the recent pro-democracy protests which were violently suppressed.

Among those detained was Htay Kywe, who led some of the first marches and was a prominent activist in a 1988 uprising.

Truth hides under fallen rocks and stones
At the end of a disconnected phone (that’s where the truth hides)
This is an Open Thread

News Happening Now

Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize
OSLO, Norway – Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures needed to counteract it
Gore, who won an Academy Award this year for his film “An Inconvenient Truth,” a documentary on global warming, had been widely expected to win the prize

Scream All You Want. Its an Open Thread

Yesterday President Bush announced that he was against the passage of a Congressional Resolution calling the massacre of Armenians by the Turkish military in 1915 Genocide.

I urge members to oppose the Armenian genocide resolution now being considered by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915. This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings, and its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror.

However when the “Cheerleader for Torture” was a candidate in 2000 he was signing a whole different tune.

The twentieth century was marred by wars of unimaginable brutality, mass murder and genocide. History records that the Armenians were the first people of the last century to have endured these cruelties. The Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign that defies comprehension and commands all decent people to remember and acknowledge the facts and lessons of an awful crime in a century of bloody crimes against humanity. If elected President, I would ensure that our nation properly recognizes the tragic suffering of the Armenian people.

Look Inside and Discover WaiWai

Ostentatious Magnificence Thread
US

Democrats See Wedge Issue in Health Bill
By CARL HULSE
Published: October 8, 2007
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 – Representative John R. Kuhl Jr. of New York received just his second telephone call ever from his state’s Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer, last week and was not surprised at the topic: children’s health insurance.
“He said, ‘I am calling you to come over to the dark side,’ ” said Mr. Kuhl, who was urged by the governor to drop his opposition to health care legislation and join the effort to override President Bush’s veto of the bill.

It’s too bad they don’t see anything else as a Wedge Issue.

This is an Anarchy Thread

This happened while you slept. Or maybe not as you could have been out partying all night.

US

For Schools, Lottery Payoffs Fall Short of Promises
By RON STODGHILL and RON NIXON
Published: October 7, 2007
Last year, North Carolina’s governor, Mike Easley, finally delivered on his promise to start a lottery, making his state the most recent of the 42 states and the District of Columbia to cash in on legalized gambling.

Bush, Texas at odds over death case
WASHINGTON – To put it bluntly, Texas wants President Bush to get out of the way of the state’s plan to execute a Mexican for the brutal killing of two teenage girls.
Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin in what has become a confusing test of presidential power that the Supreme Court, which hears the case this week, ultimately will sort out.

George “Hang Em High” Bush suddenly believes in the International Court of Justice. 

Grab your morning cup of coffee and I’ll have a beer and let’s discover what’s been happening in the world while you slept.

Remember Morning News is an Open Thread

Myanmar democracy leader Suu Kyi considers offer to meet top general
YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi will consider positively a heavily conditioned offer to meet the junta leader, her party said Friday, as a US envoy headed to meet leaders of the isolated regime.The ruling generals made the offers of dialogue as the United Nations readied to discuss the violent crackdown on the largest pro-democracy demonstrations in almost 20 years in the country formerly called Burma.

U.S.: 25 killed in firefight with Shiite militia
Military says troops were targeting commander believed linked to Iran
BAGHDAD – U.S. forces killed at least 25 members of a rogue Shiite militia in a heavy firefight early Friday, the military said.

The troops were targeting a militia commander believed to be associated with members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force and responsible for moving weapons from Iran into Baghdad, the military said.

Pakistan court ruling a setback for Musharraf
Court OKs election, but rules that announcement of results has to wait
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that the country can hold its presidential election Saturday but may only declare the winner after the court rules on whether President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the expected victor, is eligible to run.

Editorial
Misleading Spin on Children’s Health
Trying to justify his ideologically driven veto of a bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, President Bush and his staff have fired a barrage of misinformation about this valuable program. Before the House votes on whether to override the veto, all members – especially those from Mr. Bush’s party who say they are concerned about millions of uninsured children – must look behind the rhetoric.