November 3, 2006

THE THINKING SPOT

The Spoils of Corruption - The mainstream media is used to program public perceptions-to steer us away from truth and to perpetuate fairy tales that extol the virtues of bribery, violence, and greed. Unfortunately, it makes useful idiots of those who cannot think for themselves and persuades them to act like fools in the eyes of the world. (Why were so many in other countries not fooled? They don't have our press!)
http://tinyurl.com/ukrdm

ALERT #1

California officials announce plan to inject infants with mercury-laced vaccines:
http://tinyurl.com/yxglph

NO WAY !!!!!!!!!!

You're Kidding Me, Right? The Bush administration put nuclear weapons details on a web site for anyone to read?
http://tinyurl.com/y3r2zt

WAR

George Bush Attitudes Of Ridicule, Intolerance and Contempt Have Killed American Troops (Time For Change)
http://tinyurl.com/wpvea

Just One Month - November Off to Bloody Start in Iraq We lost 101 of our folks, 1,272 Iraqis were killed
http://tinyurl.com/y944s2

Senators: Keep Iraq watchdog office - Senate supporters of an investigator‘s office that has unearthed waste and fraud in the rebuilding of Iraq say they will try to keep it alive, setting up a potential showdown with a Republican lawmaker who helped pass legislation to shut it down. - Democrats said the office was being killed by Hunter, R-Calif., and other administration loyalists to bury bad news.
http://tinyurl.com/wpybb

Evil Is as Evil Does - The Iraq and Afghanistan invasions have turned out to be a catastrophe for the U.S. and UK as well as for the Iraqis and Afghans. Only a totally deranged political leadership would want to spread the catastrophe to Iran. British private security firm personnel – mercenaries to some – outnumber British soldiers in Iraq six to one.
http://tinyurl.com/y6hecu

America fights to take charge of UN peacekeepers around world --- The United States is lobbying to put an American, possibly a general, in charge of all UN peacekeeping operations in a move that could offer Washington an exit strategy in Iraq.
http://tinyurl.com/ydbbok

Swiss Find Evidence of CIA Spy Attempt: Swiss authorities have found enough evidence to seek a full investigation into allegations the CIA was trying to obtain personal details of about 500 labor union members, most of them Arabs, officials said Friday.
http://tinyurl.com/y2l93c

THE WHITE HOUSE
The Pro-Lie President." ..............."Leave No Child a Dime."

What Wisdom Did Ted Haggard Share with George W. Bush Every Monday Morning?
http://tinyurl.com/y2t2gu

Bush : U.S. Must Stay In Iraq To Control Oil --- During an interview with conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh, US President George Bush expressed deep concerns about the possibility of the United States leaving the Middle East, raising fears that extremists could topple governments to "control oil resources."
http://tinyurl.com/yxv87y

Two versions of Dubya’s Yale grades - this could explain why we heard the Kerry joke point as it did to the students flunking courses having to go to Iraq. The "grade changing" that occurred cerainly makes one wonder.
http://tinyurl.com/yajulv

Bush Admin Officials: Iraq War Ruined By President's Incompetence....
http://tinyurl.com/y72m6a

POLITICS

Big Oil's 10 favorite members of Congress - Wonder why we don't have a national energy policy or a serious push toward alternatives? Follow the money that oil and gas companies send to Congress.
http://tinyurl.com/y32l8t

John McCain: The Straight Talk Express Moves Behind Closed Doors Apparently, McCain's straight talk is now for GOP donors only.
http://tinyurl.com/y33c7m

SCANDAL Any one said *Katrina* lately?

Cover Up Attempted: Senior GOP Aides Had Foley “Damage Control” Calls Up Until Scandal Broke...
http://tinyurl.com/y7h8kr

As Bechtel Goes - leaving Iraq - Its mission - to rebuild power, water and sewage plants - wasn't accomplished: Baghdad received less than six hours a day of electricity last month, and much of Iraq's population lives with untreated sewage and without clean water. ($2.3 Billion from you and me for nothing)
http://tinyurl.com/vhx9n

GOP Congress Closes Oversite Office After Scandals Exposed --- Investigations led by a Republican lawyer, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges,
http://tinyurl.com/yx9cyp

LEGAL ITEMS

We're All Prisoners, Now: US Citizens to be Required ''Clearance'' to Leave USA
http://tinyurl.com/ymahbj

"Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby will not be allowed to use a memory expert at his perjury and obstruction trial, a federal judge ruled yesterday, blocking a key tactic in Libby's defense strategy.
http://tinyurl.com/y7mjp6

ELECTION ITEMS

Reuters/Zogby Poll: Senate Battle
http://tinyurl.com/y7vs2b

Female Voters Courted in Affirmative Action Fight --- In Michigan, with Democrats trying to re-elect Governor Jennifer M. Granholm and Senator Debbie Stabenow over their male Republican challengers, no state has a more feminist cast to its ballot.
http://tinyurl.com/y66ga9

Md. Democrats Say GOP Plans to Block Voters --- A recently distributed guide for Republican poll watchers in Maryland spells out how to aggressively challenge the credentials of voters and urges these volunteers to tell election judges they could face jail time if a challenge is ignored.(Watch for this to become a tactic played out nationally.)
http://tinyurl.com/y92o84

BREAKING: Lieberman Thugs Threaten Lamont, Again - I'm hearing that Lieberman had a bunch of his people cause a near-riot outside of a Lamont event this morning at a senior center. Apparently, they blocked the door to the Lamont bus, screaming at Lamont with Joe signs and not letting anyone out of the vehicle.
http://tinyurl.com/y276bl

Rumsfeld's Lethal Denial - to send a distorted message to the American people about the reality on the ground in Iraq right before midterm elections. Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, sr. cabinet members will be going across the country spouting poop!
http://tinyurl.com/y74gc8

A way to restore confidence: Voters in the United States are denied the one powerful technique that might restore confidence in election results -- an independent exit poll. (They worked for years, why only when the Bushites tied in with Diebold did exit polls no longer give the same results they had given for years?)
http://tinyurl.com/thbqt

Democrats unleash TV attack, radio ads
http://tinyurl.com/tu42f

Election Creates Panic Among Drug Makers - Contribution from a former Vice President of Pfizer and author of "The Whistleblower, Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman"
http://tinyurl.com/yyza6c

GOP Party Appears Chock Full Of People Who Make A Life Of Preaching Against The Very Vices They Can't Shake…
http://tinyurl.com/uq9vg

Barring massive vote fraud, the GOP is TOAST!
http://tinyurl.com/yegf5t

Negative campaign ads seen backfiring for Republicans
http://tinyurl.com/y83kzu

FOX News rearranging weekend line-up to air terror film, scare jaded voters to polls The film, which is actually a year old, will be shown four (4) times this weekend to help Republicans scare their base to the polls.
http://tinyurl.com/y97doq

ECONOMY

US credit quality in 25-year retreat toward junk-S&P - U.S. corporate credit quality has been on a 25-year decline toward junk status, with almost half of all companies now rated below investment grade, Standard & Poor's said on Thursday.
http://tinyurl.com/y45uog

Medicare Cuts Payments For Many Services 5% --- Doctors caring for the elderly and the disabled will see a 5 percent cut in reimbursement rates when they treat Medicare patients next year. (the people who need the most help get the least help.)
http://tinyurl.com/y857n4

Ford Cuts Health Benefits, Merit Pay - Salaried workers at Ford Motor Co. won't get pay raises next year and they'll pay more for health insurance under benefit changes announced by the struggling automaker.
http://tinyurl.com/vssfa

Let Justice Roll: Business Owners, CEOs Say Higher Minimum Wage Good for Business
http://tinyurl.com/t2pcc

CONGRESS

Attorney General Proves Steadfast in the Art of Evasion - Open-government advocates are howling this week over a newly released transcript of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. (This administration has been one of the most arrogantly defiant in this country's history in terms of telling congress - and the American people - the truth.)
http://tinyurl.com/y7mjp6

Dems call for investigation of Bush White House publishing on Internet plans for making a nuke - congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Ranking Member of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack, today called on the committee's Republican leaders to immediately start an investigation into allegations uncovered in today's New York Times describing a U.S. government website that posted sensitive details about Iraq's former nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.
http://tinyurl.com/t7ar7

U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer - The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
http://tinyurl.com/y64npl

DOMESTIC

Fake boarding pass generator website shows weaknesses in airport security measures:
http://tinyurl.com/yxm4ab

RELIGIOUS ITEMS

Baptist Convention told: Muslims 'are here to take over our country' --- On the same moral level as the Nazi claim that Jews were killing Christian babies in their temples.
http://tinyurl.com/y99kct

Pastor Who Resigned over Gay Hooker Claims Is Bush’s ‘Spiritual Consigliere‘ - Rev. Ted Haggard, who counsels Pres. Bush on a weekly basis and has been called his spiritual consigliere,” resigned today as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and as pastor of the megachurch he founded in Colorado Springs because a gay prostitute says he’s been having sex for pay with Haggard for more than three years.
http://tinyurl.com/y68ag7

ENVIRONMENT

Only 50 years left' for sea fish - There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study.
http://tinyurl.com/ycr6ek

Avoiding Calamity on the Cheap - Apparently we need a carbon tax or a mandtory cop on carbon emisssions. Bush won't do either. This says he thinks we can do this on the cheap.
http://tinyurl.com/vf63p

China to become world's top emitter of greenhouse gases:
http://tinyurl.com/y29xhj

Global collapse of seafood imminent, warn scientists:
http://tinyurl.com/y2eg2d

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Bush Names Exxon Chief to Chart America's Energy Future - "Putting Lee Raymond in charge of solving US energy problems is like putting Jack Abramoff in charge of solving corruption," said Shawnee Hoover, campaign director for the Exxpose Exxon Coalition.
http://tinyurl.com/yeeg2y

FOIA request reveals Homeland Security's computers invaded by computer viruses:
http://tinyurl.com/y46rrf

INTERNATIONAL

Carter Says Claim That North Korea Cheated `Completely False' - ``It lasted until 2002 when the United States in effect abandoned that agreement and branded North Korea as an axis of evil,'' Carter, 82, said in an interview to be broadcast this weekend on ``Conversations with Judy Woodruff'' on Bloomberg Television. Carter also said the U.S. further undermined the agreement by condemning summit meetings that took place in 2000 between North Korea and South Korea.
http://tinyurl.com/y2s5dv

Russia preparing "asymmetric response" to U.S. missile defense Russia (New 'cold war', anyone? And the only folks who win are, again, the weapons developers.)
http://tinyurl.com/y2z4e9

Birth of the International Trade Union Confederation - Jean-Marcel Bouguereau celebrates the birth of the International Trade Union Confederation in Vienna this week and hopes the new organization's creation portends more effective strategies to protect workers globally.
http://tinyurl.com/y3p8cv

MILITARY

Military editorials to call for Rumsfeld resignation
http://tinyurl.com/tm9xk

Depleted uranium has killed 11,000 U.S. military veterans; mainstream media ignores story:
http://tinyurl.com/t87u6

MEDIA AND JOURNALISM

Fox News ratings take a steep tumble - Fox News’s total audience fell 24 percent in the past year, to 1.3 million viewers from 1.7 million, and its key primetime audience, viewers ages 25-54, was down 7 percent in October on a year-to-year basis, to an average 363,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research data.
http://tinyurl.com/y2a6aj

HEALTH

Two-thirds of teenagers too fat to be soldiers
http://tinyurl.com/y38r9w

US Lags in Several Areas of Health Care, Study Finds - Only forty percent of US primary care doctors said they had arrangements for after-hours care, compared with 47 percent in Canada and 87 percent in the United Kingdom.
http://tinyurl.com/yywtkt

"Clean" computer keyboards to fight hospital infections:
http://tinyurl.com/y5w6jh

Lower core body temperature linked with extended lifespan:
http://tinyurl.com/y5qoyn

Burger King struggles with higher health expectations of consumers:
http://tinyurl.com/y8f8mq

Scientists in Japan have discovered that omega-3s can boost brain (I take them and they certainly haven't hurt.)
http://tinyurl.com/y4uz5m

HUMAN RIGHTS

Human Rights Watch: UK: A Dangerous Policy on Torture
http://tinyurl.com/y6mtuo

SPECIAL INTEREST ITEMS

Woman, 92, Cleared Over Linking Head Scarves to Ancient Rites --- A Turkish court yesterday acquitted a 92-year-old archaeologist for claiming that Islamic-style head scarves were first worn more than 5,000 years ago by priestesses initiating young men into sex.
http://tinyurl.com/ubngw