Iraq

Todays Laugh,
Uncle Ted's Special Skill
Joe loved golf, but his eyesight had gotten so bad, that he couldn't find his ball once he'd hit it. He consulted with his wife, and she recommended that Joe bring along her uncle Ted.
Joe said, "But Ted is 80 years old and half senile!"
His wife replied, "Yes, but his eyesight is incredible."
Joe finally agreed and took Ted along. He teed off and could feel that he had hit it solidly. He asked Ted, "Do you see it?"
Ted nodded his head and said, "Boy, that was a beautiful shot!"
Joe excitedly asked, "Well, where did it land?!"
Ted said, "Hmmm. I forget."
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Todays quote,
"I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -- but that could change."...Governor George W. Bush, 5/22/98
You said it George
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SADDAM TO BE HANGED BY SUNDAY
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, sentenced to death for his role in 148 killings in 1982, will have his sentence carried out by Sunday, NBC News reported Thursday. According to a U.S. military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, Saddam will be hanged before the start of the Eid religious holiday, which begins this Sunday.
The hanging could take place as early as Friday, NBC’s Richard Engel reported
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Read this new report from Iraq and you will see how much better we have made the lives of the Iraqis.


far different - and worse off
By Hannah Allam
McClatchy Newsp BAGHDAD, Iraq — The tiny, dusty shops of Kadhemiya are treasure chests filled with agate, turquoise, coral and amber. I used to spend hours in this colorful Baghdad market district, haggling over prices for semi-precious stones etched with prayers in Arabic calligraphy.
That was just before I left Iraq in 2005, when rings from Kadhemiya were simply sentimental reminders of a two-year assignment here. When I returned to Baghdad last month, however, I found a city so dramatically polarized that sectarian identity now extends to your fingers. Slipping on a turquoise ring is no longer an afterthought, but a carefully deliberated security precaution.
A certain color of stone worn a certain way is just one of the dozens of superficial clues - like dialect, style of beard, how you pin a veil - that indicate whether you're Sunni or Shiite. These little signs increasingly mean the difference between life and death at the terrifying illegal checkpoints that surround the districts of Baghdad. In a surprise reversal, Shiite militiamen have usurped Sunni insurgents as the most feared force on the streets.
When I was last here in 2005, it took guts and guards, but you could still travel to most anywhere in the capital. Now, there are few true neighborhoods left. They're mostly just cordoned-off enclaves in various stages of deadly sectarian cleansing. Moving trucks piled high with furniture weave through traffic, evidence of an unfolding humanitarian crisis involving hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced Iraqis.
The Sunni-Shiite segregation is the starkest change of all, but nowadays it seems like everything in Baghdad hinges on separation. There's the Green Zone to guard the unpopular government from its suffering people, U.S. military bases where Iraqis aren't allowed to work, armored sedans to shield VIPs from the explosions that kill workaday civilians, different TV channels and newspapers for each political party, an unwritten citywide dress code to keep women from the eyes of men.
Attempts to bring people together have failed miserably. I attended a symposium called "How to Solve Iraq's Militia Problem," but the main militia representatives never showed up and those of us who did were stuck inside for hours while a robot disabled a car bomb in the parking lot.
On one of my first days back, I took a little tour with my Iraqi colleagues to get reacquainted with the capital. We decided to stay on the eastern Shiite side of the Tigris River rather than play Russian roulette in the Sunni west.
Even on the relatively "safe" side of the river, a dizzying assortment of armed men roamed freely. In the space of an hour, we encountered the Badr Organization militia, the Mahdi Army militia, the Kurdish peshmerga militia, the Iraqi police, interior ministry commandos, the Iraqi military, American troops, the Oil Protection Force, the motorcade of a Communist Party official and Central Bank guards escorting an armored van.
I asked my colleagues to arrange meetings with old Iraqi sources - politicians, professors, activists and clerics - only to be told they'd been assassinated, abducted or exiled.
Even Mr. Milk is dead. The grocer we called by the name of his landmark shop in the upscale Mansour district was kidnapped and killed, along with his son, my colleagues said. The owner of a DVD shop where I once purchased a copy of "Napoleon Dynamite" also had been executed.
So many blindfolded, tortured corpses turn up that an Iraqi co-worker recently told me it was "a slow day" when 17 bodies were found. Typically, the figure is 40 or more. When the overflowing morgue at Yarmouk Hospital was bombed last month, one of our drivers wearily muttered, "How many times can they kill us?"
Even the toughest of my Iraqi colleagues hit their breaking points after experiencing the indignity of being forced from their homes, the trauma of a bomb outside a doorstep, the grief for a cousin killed by a mortar, the shame of staying silent while a neighbor's house was torched.
My colleagues were fearful of the future when I left, but at least they went home every night to home-cooked meals and the bustle of domestic life. A few had even purchased land in the optimistic belief that 2006 would bring a measure of calm. Now, half the staff has sent their families to safer countries, and others plan to do the same. For them, there is no ivory-tower debate over whether they're living in a civil war.
Electricity is on for just a couple of hours a day in most districts. Gas lines stretch for block after block. Food prices are higher than ever, especially for fresh produce, which requires rural farmers to make the treacherous drive to Baghdad markets. The water is contaminated. Gunmen in police uniforms stage brazen mass abductions, evaporating faith in the Iraqi security forcesOn the drive back to our hotel from the Green Zone last week, I saw a group of adorable little girls in pinafores, knee socks and ponytails. They were walking home from a nearby elementary school, stepping over trash and yanking their skirts from barbed wire. I had my camera with me and asked the driver to stop so I could take a picture.
A year ago, I would have snapped away. This time, I hesitated.
Perhaps a guard somewhere would think I was a kidnapper and shoot at me. Perhaps a parent would come screaming and cause a ruckus over a suspicious foreigner in the neighborhood. But more than anything, I was stopped by the thought of the terrified looks on the girls' faces if a stranger holding a camera approached them.
In a country where there is so much fear, why add even a little bit more?
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Former Interior Sec. Norton Now Adviser For Shell"Gale Norton is back providing oversight of energy development issues on public lands in the American West, this time as a key legal advisor for a major global oil company.
"Months after she resigned her cabinet post as President Bush's Interior Secretary—and then seemed to disappear from public view—the Coloradan apparently has accepted an offer to serve as counsel for Royal Dutch Shell PLC." (NewWest)
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This must be why she was hired.

Democrats eye Rollback of Big Oil Tax Breaks
That's only one legislative hit the oil industry is expected to take next year as a Congress run by Democrats is likely to show little sympathy for the cash-rich, high-profile business.
Whether the issue is rolling back tax breaks -- some approved by Congress only 18 months ago -- pushing for more use of ethanol and other biofuels instead of gasoline, or investigations into shortfalls in royalty payments to the government, oil industry lobbyists will spend most of their time playing defense.
Details of a renewable fuels fund have yet to be worked out. Nonetheless, it's one of the initiatives the House will take up during its first 100 hours in session in January, according to aides to Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi. At least some of the money -- revenue gained by rolling back some tax breaks -- will go to a program to support research into making ethanol from sources other than corn.
"What we'll do is roll back the subsidies to Big Oil and use the resources to invest in a reserve for research in alternative energy," Pelosi, a California Democrat, recently told reporters




HOPE YOU HAVE PEACEFUL NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!

Republican Presidents

Thursday, December 28, 2006REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS
Todays Laugh,
Bush's Morning Run ,A kid was sitting on his lawn with a box of puppies one morning. George Bush was on his morning run, accompanied by some Secret Service workers. Dubya asked the boy what kind of puppies were in the box.
The little boy said, "Republicans."
The President beamed, patted the boy on the head, and said, "Atta boy!"
A few weeks later Bush was jogging again, this time with Dick Cheney in tow. Bush stopped at the boy's house, winked at Dick and said, "Hey kid, what kind of pupies are in the box?"
The boy said, "Democracts"
Bush looked crushed, saying, "What happened? A few weeks ago they were Republicans!"
The boy said, "Well, the puppies opened their eyes
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Todays Quote,
Ronald Reagan once described a particular man he knew who was good steward of resources in the biblical sense. "This is a man," Reagan said, "who in his own business, before he entered politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan, before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn't work. He provided nursing care for the children of mothers who worked in the stores."
That man was Barry Goldwater, a businessman before he entered politics.
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In my bad ole republican conservative days I was county chairman for Golddwater's election in 1964. Compared to todays breed of conservatives he was a liberal.He having seen a UFO, as I have, was a believer. He tried as a senator and as Major General to access the government files on the famous Roswell incident. He was denied, which convenienced him that there was truth to the incident.
The last Republican presidental candidate for whom I voted was Gerald Ford.Our 38th President, Gerald R. Ford Jr., is dead at 93. The only president never elected either to the presidency or vice presidency, he took office in the wake of the Watergate scandal. "Our long national nightmare is over," he said in his inaugural address, and though permanently restoring the country's faith in government proved slightly too tall an order for Ford or, well, anyone, he did make a great deal of progress in that direction. Though he served for only 2 1/2 years, during that time he ended the U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, helped mediate a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Egypt, signed the Helsinki human rights convention with the Soviet Union and traveled to Vladivostok in the Soviet Far East to sign an arms limitation agreement with Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev. He also launched the careers of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, but hey, nobody's perfect. Famous for being candid, in a State of the Union address in 1975, he told Congress, "the State of the Union is not good." Rest in Peace, Mr. Ford, and thanks for keeping it real.
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Ronald Reagan
I never voted for him. I thought his politics of mean and greed was evident in his terms as governor of California.Also the republican party had taken a decided shift to the far right.Reagan was the architech of the starve the beast philosophy.The beast being any and all social programs, social securiety,medicare,food stamps etc. all of which he hated.This philosophy which is prevalent in the republican party today is accomplished by reducing taxes and other revenue. Thus increasing the deficit and the interest thereon, ipsofacto no money for social programs old or new. It is also Bush's philosophy now as it was when he was Texas governor where he cut taxes and left the state in a ten billion dollar deficit.
Bush, as the rest of the republican party, would like to see Reagan on Mt. Rushmore. Hey just a minute Bush probably invisions himself on Mt. Rushmore!
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In Spain one can get high by just going into a bank and cashing a check.
MADRID, Dec 24 (Reuters Life!) - Traces of cocaine can be found on 94 percent of banknotes in Spain, a country that has one of the world's highest rates of users, according to a study published on Sunday.
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They are making a list and checking it twice to see who's been naughty or nice.
prostitute-free New Year
Tue Dec 2
SEOUL (Reuters) - The South Korean government is handing out gifts for office workers who promise not to visit brothels this holiday season.
"If you promise yourself to make it a healthy night out at the end of the year, and if you recommend this to others, we are giving lots of prizes," the Ministry of Gender Equality said in an Internet posting.
The ministry is offering to pay companies whose employees pledge not to buy sex after what are typically alcohol-soaked, year-end parties.
A ministry spokesman confirmed the campaign but declined to answer questions about it.
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A New Policy for Iraq
Calvin Trillin




The new plan may be bold, we're being told.It's daring thought the White House now recruits.Will Feith and Wolfowitz and Perle be askedFor bold ideas? They're bound to have some beauts.