Infamatory statement considering he made it to a primarily all black audience! What he wants the LA riots again?
"President Obama" sounds like name of a leader of a third world country.
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Is U.S. Safer Since 9/11? Clinton and Rivals Spar!
By MICHAEL COOPER and PATRICK HEALY
Published: June 6, 2007
The Bush administration’s efforts to thwart terrorism at home have created a fissure among the three leading Democratic presidential candidates, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton coming under attack for saying that America is safer now than before 9/11 — contrary to a popular line of argument among some Democratic officials.
In a televised debate on Sunday night, Mrs. Clinton, who has tried to minimize her differences with her rivals on commander-in-chief issues, bluntly disagreed with a main rival, former Senator John Edwards, who had just said that the administration’s so-called war on terror was little more than a slogan.
“I believe we are safer than we were,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We are not yet safe enough, and I have proposed over the last year a number of policies that I think we should be following.”
And these two are the top in the Democratic field? Hello Mr. Republican in 2008!
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Blair and Bush: the final reckoning
On the eve of his last G8 meeting, Tony Blair has made a last-ditch appeal to President Bush to repay Britain's loyalty over Iraq
Tony Blair will make a final appeal to George Bush to repay his loyal support over Iraq by signing up to a firm global target to cut carbon emissions at the G8 summit in Germany starting today.
Three weeks before he stands down as Prime Minister, Mr Blair will join forces with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in an attempt to secure a breakthrough in the battle against climate change. They will press a reluctant US president to agree that the world should cut carbon emissions by 50 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050. ____________
Antarctica, proof that action on climate change is more urgent than ever
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 06 June 2007
Fears that global sea levels this century may rise faster and further than expected are supported by a study showing that 300 glaciers in Antarctica have begun to move more quickly into the ocean.
Scientists believe that the accelerated movement of glaciers in the Antarctic Peninsula indicates a dramatic shift in the way melting ice around the world contributes to overall increases in global sea levels.
Instead of simply adding huge volumes of meltwater to the sea, scientists have found rising temperatures are causing glaciers as far apart as Alaska, Greenland and now Antarctica to break up and slip into the ocean at a faster rate than expected.
The findings will raise concerns within the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which, earlier this year, downplayed the so-called "dynamic" nature of melting glaciers - when rising temperatures cause them to break up quickly rather than simply melt slowly.
Using radar images taken between 1993 and 2003, scientists at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge mapped a 12 per cent increase in the average rate of movement of more than 300 glaciers in the Antarctic Peninsula over the period.
"It is yet another example of how subpolar glaciers are responding very quickly to climate change because they are close to the temperature transition from ice to water," Dr Vaughan said.
In its fourth report published in February, the IPCC said sea levels this century could rise by between 20 cms and 43cms but it accepted that this could be a serious underestimate if ice sheets and glaciers undergo the sort of dynamic changes that existing computer models do not take fully into account.
Hamish Pritchard, a co-author of the study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, said the findings demonstrated how melting glaciers can change in a way that speeds up their eventual disappearance into the sea.
The study showed that rising temperatures cause glaciers to become thinner, which makes them more buoyant when resting on submerged bedrock, so allowing them to slip faster into the ocean, Dr Pritchard said.
"The Antarctic Peninsula has experienced some of the fastest warming on Earth, nearly 3C over the past half-century. Eighty-seven per cent of its glaciers have been retreating during that period and now we see these glaciers are also speeding up," Dr Pritchard said.
"They are speeding up in a steady, progressive way. Warming causes widespread thinning, which causes widespread acceleration due to an increase in buoyancy. They speed up and the fronts of the glaciers break off and float away."
Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, said: "Without doubt we are seeing a striking global picture of ice on the retreat."
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How to Win Friends etc.
Bush Fires Back At Putin For "Derailed" Democratic Reforms In Russia
Bush to Putin: Join us on missile defenseBy William Douglas, McClatchy NewspapersPresident Bush gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a double-edged message Tuesday, reassuring him that he has nothing to fear from a missile-defense system that he abhors, then slapping him verbally for backsliding on democratic reforms. _____________________________________
Obama in Second Place By Paul Krugman The New York Times
One of the lessons journalists should have learned from the 2000 election campaign is that what a candidate says about policy isn't just a guide to his or her thinking about a specific issue - it's the best way to get a true sense of the candidate's character.
Do you remember all the up-close-and-personals about George W. Bush, and what a likeable guy he was? Well, reporters would have had a much better fix on who he was and how he would govern if they had ignored all that, and focused on the raw dishonesty and irresponsibility of his policy proposals.
That's why I'm not interested in what sports the candidates play or speculation about their marriages. I want to hear about their health care plans - not just for the substance, but to get a sense of what kind of president each would be. Would they hesitate and triangulate, or would they push hard for real change?
Now, back in February John Edwards put his rivals for the Democratic nomination on the spot, by coming out with a full-fledged plan to cover all the uninsured. Suddenly, vague expressions of support for universal health care weren't enough: candidates were under pressure to present their own specific plans.
And the question was whether those plans would be as bold and comprehensive as the Edwards proposal.
Four months have passed since then. So far, all Hillary Clinton has released are proposals to help reduce health care costs. It's worthy stuff, but it's hard to avoid the sense that she's putting off dealing with the hard part. The real test is how she proposes to cover the uninsured.
But last week Barack Obama, after getting considerable grief for having failed to offer policy specifics, finally delivered a comprehensive health care plan. So how is it?
First, the good news. The Obama plan is smart and serious, put together by people who know what they're doing.
It also passes one basic test of courage. You can't be serious about health care without proposing an injection of federal funds to help lower-income families pay for insurance, and that means advocating some kind of tax increase. Well, Mr. Obama is now on record calling for a partial rollback of the Bush tax cuts.
Also, in the Obama plan, insurance companies won't be allowed to deny people coverage or charge them higher premiums based on their medical history. Again, points for toughness.
Best of all, the Obama plan contains the same feature that makes the Edwards plan superior to, say, the Schwarzenegger proposal in California: it lets people choose between private plans and buying into a Medicare-type plan offered by the government.
Since Medicare has much lower overhead costs than private insurers, this competition would force the insurance industry to cut costs - making our health-care system more efficient. And if private insurers couldn't or wouldn't cut costs enough, the system would evolve into Medicare for all, which is actually the best solution.
So there's a lot to commend the Obama plan. In fact, it would have been considered daring if it had been announced last year.
Now for the bad news. Although Mr. Obama says he has a plan for universal health care, he actually doesn't - a point Mr. Edwards made in last night's debate. The Obama plan doesn't mandate insurance for adults. So some people would take their chances - and then end up receiving treatment at other people's expense when they ended up in emergency rooms. In that regard it's actually weaker than the Schwarzenegger plan.
I asked David Cutler, a Harvard economist who helped put together the Obama plan, about this omission. His answer was that Mr. Obama is reluctant to impose a mandate that might not be enforceable, and that he hopes - based, to be fair, on some estimates by Mr. Cutler and others - that a combination of subsidies and outreach can get all but a tiny fraction of the population insured without a mandate. Call it the timidity of hope.
On the whole, the Obama plan is better than I feared but not as comprehensive as I would have liked. It doesn't quell my worries that Mr. Obama's dislike of "bitter and partisan" politics makes him too cautious. But at least he's come out with a plan.
Senator Clinton, we're waiting to hear from you.
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