November 4, 2006

THE THINKING SPOT

Foreclosure USA - We the people once owned our democracy. We elected “representatives” to run it for US. Have you noticed? Somewhere along the way we lost our democracy. It was foreclosed by wealthy and power elites that corrupted our “representatives” who literally sold us out. Our homeland was foreclosed right in plain sight.
http://tinyurl.com/wpjzz

I DON'T BELIEVE THIS!

GAY 'CURE' ROW -- TENNIS legend Martina Navratilova has slammed experiments aimed at turning gay sheep straight.
http://tinyurl.com/y86qdq

WAR

Baghdad is Surrounded: “The American Era in the Middle East has ended” - After 3 and a half years of violence and mayhem we still know as little about the Iraqi resistance as we did in March 2003. This is inexcusable. In addition, there’s been no attempt to engage the representatives of the resistance in political dialogue. How can we possibly reach a political solution without dialogue and negotiation?
http://tinyurl.com/yxlpej

ARCHITECTS OF WAR REGRET INVASION OF IRAQ --- Fired investigators: Republicans had 'no appetite for oversight'
http://tinyurl.com/yn2g24

Neocons turn on Bush for incompetence over Iraq war Several prominent neoconservatives have turned on George Bush days before critical midterm elections, lambasting his administration for incompetence in the handling of the Iraq war and questioning the wisdom of the 2003 invasion they were instrumental in promoting.
http://tinyurl.com/y84src

US spy chief on secret Iraq mission: John Negroponte, the US national intelligence director, has made an unannounced visit to Baghdad for talks with Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister.
http://tinyurl.com/y52lro

ABC News: Cheney: 'Full Speed Ahead' on Iraq---"We've got the basic strategy right," Cheney told George Stephanopoulos in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on "This Week." (The man is delusional, and needs professional psychiatric help PRONTO, or is lying trhough his teeth (again, still, yet).
http://tinyurl.com/uvkal

1999 war games foresaw problems in Iraq - The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, and even then chaos might ensue.
http://tinyurl.com/yxdzks

'NYT' Sunday Preview: Ahmad Chalabi Says, 'The Real Culprit is Wolfowitz'-- So, Ahmad Chalabi, what went wrong in Iraq in the war you helped to sell? “The Americans sold us out,”-- worked -- via everyone from Paul Wolfowitz to Judith Miller
http://tinyurl.com/5soo

A Review of John Yoo's 'War By Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror'
http://tinyurl.com/yyljmg

CHENEY: IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THE PUBLIC THINKS... (Of course not Cheney, only you have any IQ to speak of – right Cheney?)
http://tinyurl.com/uvkal

How the 101st Fighting Keyboarders (and Rick Santorum and George W. Bush) are helping Iran get the nuclear bomb
http://tinyurl.com/y85pub

SCANDAL

Fired investigators: Republicans had 'no appetite for oversight'
http://tinyurl.com/vdu5y

Hate Crime Charges Filed Against Five Jewish Teenagers in Brooklyn -- Five Jewish teenagers have been charged with hate crimes for attacking a Pakistani-American man with brass knuckles in the Midwood section of Brooklyn and calling him a "terrorist," officials said.
http://tinyurl.com/yxksbk

Latest Conrad Burns Scandal: Gave Judgeship To Donor One Day After Campaign contribution...
http://tinyurl.com/ydrnc4

Bush Admin. Trying To Bar Detainees From Speaking To Lawyers...
http://tinyurl.com/y7mjp6

LEGAL ITEMS

Dick Cheney may be fitted for new Halliburton uniform: a striped jumpsuit --- The payments were made during Cheney's tenure, and according to the Boson Globe, "If such payments were made and Cheney approved them, he could be guilty of violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act." Mr Tesler swears that Cheney knew about the bribes. He testified under oath in May 2004 that he made payments to Jack Stanley, while Stanley was president of KBR, and specifically testified that Cheney approved the payments
http://tinyurl.com/whcor

Court halts release of Cheney visitor logs -- Three appeals judges agree to suspend a ruling that ordered the release of information about the vice president's visitors UNTIL AFTER THE MIDTERM ELECTION.
http://tinyurl.com/ym8oj6

US Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons --- The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk.
http://tinyurl.com/y26rft

War Criminals, Beware
http://tinyurl.com/y3m5c5

Supreme Court to Hear Major Abortion Case Next Week -- The first nationwide ban on a specific abortion procedure faces US Supreme Court scrutiny next week.
http://tinyurl.com/y4l2d7

Kansas abortion MD wants O'Reilly probe - An abortion doctor plans to ask for an investigation of the state attorney general and Bill O'Reilly over comments by the Fox television host that he got information from Kansas abortion records, the doctor's attorneys said Saturday.
http://tinyurl.com/y4yugs

How to gag enemy with Copyright Act
http://tinyurl.com/te8m7

Beating a Speeding Ticket After You Get One - Learn from a law student who has successfully avoided 30 speeding tickets in his short life.
http://tinyurl.com/sbn5d

ELECTION ITEMS

Outlook “Grim” For GOP...
http://tinyurl.com/yjjc2r

The Party Leapfrogging Leftward --- Even veteran Republican leaders are bailing out of the party bandwagon this year as the GOP has positioned itself to the left of the Democrats (and voted that way too!).Absent a post-election internal GOP revolution, the recent realignment of the two major political parties –with the Republicans as the party of big government – would be consolidated more or less permanently
http://tinyurl.com/yyoavd

GOP Zeroing In on Senate Races (They have thrown up their hands on the House) --- Republicans entered the campaign's final weekend yesterday desperately trying to keep control of the Senate, with three or four tossup races likely to determine whether the GOP can cling to power there even as it sees its hold on the House eroding.
http://tinyurl.com/sfbh9

$160 Million Spent On Attack Ads This Election Compared With $17 Million On Positive Messages...
http://tinyurl.com/y8gnww

Demos: Voter Suppression Tactics Could Mar 2006 Election, New Publication Finds --- shows how campaigns to suppress voter turnout take a variety of forms, are often mounted in communities of color, and that many go unnoticed or unchallenged until after it is too late
http://tinyurl.com/yywhp4

New Worries Abound about Reliability of US Voting Machines
http://tinyurl.com/tmffv

Time: Haggard scandal could reduce evangelical vote
http://tinyurl.com/y7d8d6

VOTE TAMPERING - CA Secretary of State Bruce McPherson certified the use of electronic voting machines even though he knew about more than 16 identified security flaws.
http://tinyurl.com/y98be5

Ohio Democrats sue to add election-day observers - K - The Ohio Democratic Party on Friday asked a judge to force Secretary of State Ken Blackwell — the Republican candidate for governor — to allow the party to add up to 300 observers to witness Tuesday's election.
http://tinyurl.com/vl6sq

GOP's 'dwindling anti-gay parade'
http://tinyurl.com/y3gmnf

GOP Laying Grounds to Declare Fraud in Tennessee Election…Looks like the GOP is in good shape in Tennesse at this point. If they lose, they can make whatever claims they like: Fraud by Electronic Voting, or Voter Fraud by those nasty double-voting Dems.
http://tinyurl.com/y4k5a8

EXCLUSIVE: LEAKED 2003 REPORT ON MARYLAND'S DIEBOLD VOTING SYSTEMS REVEALS SERIOUS SECURITY CONCERNS WERE WITHHELD FROM ELECTION BOARD, GOVERNOR, PUBLIC!
http://tinyurl.com/womfj

Our Eyes Are Wide Open - "If Diebold designed their ATM machines the way they design their voting machines, none of us would have a dime left in our bank accounts. Such remarkable facts are usually not the result of incompetence, but of design. When the top man at Diebold promised to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush, you are allowed to be a little paranoid
http://tinyurl.com/u7n9b

ECONOMY

Citizens for Tax Justice: Tax Justice Digest, November 3, 2006 - Election Special 2006 --- what Dems will do.
http://tinyurl.com/yxt25b

Will elections bring stock bulls?
http://tinyurl.com/uaez8

Chrysler suffers as cars fail to sell
http://tinyurl.com/y9yynd

RELIGIOUS ITEMS

Pastor takes his life in wake of TV probe - The longtime pastor of a Presbyterian church in Ben Avon who was the subject of a KDKA-TV investigation into what the station called "reports of public and illegal sexual behavior" committed suicide yesterday.
http://tinyurl.com/y29zoq

Saudi court sentences rape victim to 90 lashes - A Saudi court has sentenced a gang rape victim to 90 lashes of the whip because she was alone in a car with a man to whom she was not married.
http://tinyurl.com/yf2enp

Gay People are Not the Problem; Closet Gay People Are! And You Can Blame Religion! - Hypocrisy seems to be par for the course with these religions as their entire goal seems to be showing people the way to heaven as they make life on earth a living hell for some.
http://tinyurl.com/yydcsp

RIGHT WING EVANGELIST ADMITS INVOLVEMENT IN GAY SEX SCANDAL...
http://tinyurl.com/um9ns

Haggard's “Muscle Stud:” The Ads That Lured Bush's Spiritual Advisor...
http://tinyurl.com/tq3rr

Rev. Ted Haggard Comes Out the Same Day as "Borat": One Represents Hypocrisy, the Other Exposes It --- Like Borat exposing America's surreal topsy-turvy world, the house of GOP cards has fallen flat.
http://tinyurl.com/y29zoq

ENVIRONMENT

U.S. seeks another exemption for globally banned pesticide - The Bush administration is seeking world permission to produce thousand of tons of a pesticide that an international treaty banned nearly two years ago, even though U.S. companies already have assembled huge stockpiles of the chemical.
http://tinyurl.com/u6q6c

MILITARY

Army general issues appeal to keep military ranks filled - "We need to remind people we are at war," Honore said.
http://tinyurl.com/t3ajj

ABC News: Military Recruiters Told Students Iraq War “Ended A Long Time Ago”...
http://tinyurl.com/y3dvez

MEDIA AND JOURNALISM

Borat: Bush “Not As Strong As His Father Barbara”…
http://tinyurl.com/y95k58

EDITORIALS - OPINIONS

The Trouble With Borat - Borat reveals to Americans just how brutish and ugly we can be underneath our veneer of civility and hospitality.
http://tinyurl.com/sml8y

HEALTH

Cold Virus Might Harm Long-Term Memory Nervous system infection by a family of pathogens may 'chip away' at cognition, researchers say -- In studies with mice, his team found that a nervous system infection linked to a pathogen called picornavirus could have a permanent effect on memory. The findings are published in the November issue of the journal Neurobiology of Disease. (See ScoutNews)

Finally, Science Starts to Challenge Lower Cholesterol Craziness - The recommendations made by the National Cholesterol Education Program panel appear to have been based on drug company marketing schemes rather than scientific fact.
http://tinyurl.com/y9b2n2

Be VERY Careful Which Hospital You Choose - Hospitals vary widely in quality, and your chances of dying if you go to one of the worse ones can be over 70 percent higher.
http://tinyurl.com/u4yuf