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47 million Americans without health care, 47.4 Americans in poverty, a 17.5% unemployment rate
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says once the economy improves, she's afraid there will be another wave of illegal immigration, so the Obama administration will push for a path to citizenship to some 12 million illegal immigrants as early as next year - promising a "tough and fair pathway to earned legal status. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125816110639347917.html
Meanwhile, a new poll by Zogby International has found Mexicans believe an amnesty that would grant legal status to undocumented immigrants would prompt more people to enter the U.S. illegally, the Center for Immigration Studies (CRS) has said. The survey noted that 56 percent of respondents thought that legalizing the status of illegal immigrants in the U.S. would make it more likely that people they know would go there illegally. It also found that interest in immigrating to the U.S. remains strong, despite the recession, and that 36 percent of Mexicans say they would move north if they could. That percentage represents 39 million people.
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Make waves, but make them peacefully.
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Greenwald - The new White House counsel and Scooter Libby justice.: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/barack_obama/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2009/11/14/bauer.
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Chuck Norris indulges violent eliminationist fantasies about liberals if he ran for office: http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/chuck-norris-indulges-violent-elimin
Be sure to read the comments.
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SSDD
Pursuant to new powers delegated to him by Congress, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has executed an order blocking the release of photos depicting the torture of detainees. In doing so, it becomes highly unlikely that the Supreme Court will further consider making the photos public, as a lower court had ordered.
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Anyone surprised by this please raise your hands
FAA & NORAD changed records to accord with Cheney lies
A senior counsel for the 9/11 Commission, John Farmer, has written a book exposing the degree to which our response to 9/11 was disorganized and and outdated–geared to respond to an attack from Russia rather than from terrorists. Most significantly, Farmer reveals that FAA and NORAD altered their chronologies of the day only after a briefing at the White House.
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Planning on eating turkey this holiday season? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGJryC4XIdo
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Why die for Karzai? Does U.S. support for the Afghan president really make sense? - By Tom Hayden
Fifty-nine Americans died in October fighting to protect the corrupt Afghan electoral process that resulted in a second five-year term for Hamid Karzai. Since July and the run-up to the August election, 195 Americans were killed and more than 1,000 were wounded, a higher casualty rate than during the 2007 military "surge" in Iraq. A principal purpose cited by President Obama for sending 17,000 more combat troops to Afghanistan earlier this year was to protect the election, which, according to most observers, Karzai stole.
http://freedomsyndicate.com/fair0000/latimes00056.html
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Army sends infant to protective services, mom to Afghanistan: http://original.antiwar.com/jamail/2009/11/13/army-sends-infant-to-protective-services-mom-to-afghanistan/
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Twenty years from now you will lie to your children: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/14-1
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Maybe he's a fierce advocate for human rights too. Reaching out to Myanmar to try another path forward is fine but dropping calls for the release of Suu Kyi in a public statement is beyond disappointing. So now supporting a Nobel Laureate who is under house arrest is even too hot to handle for Obama. Who will be thrown under the bus next?
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MSNBC.com: Bernie Madoff's computer programmers arrested.
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The Olympics changed everything. How about a big round of applause for the IOC. Oh that's right, they already patted themselves on the back despite no sign of change.
China has detained several dissidents and campaigners ahead of US President Barack Obama's much-anticipated first visit to the country, their relatives and close contacts told AFP Saturday.
...But as the visit drew close, the head of an activist group for parents whose children were sickened by tainted milk in China had been detained, his wife told AFP.
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A good day for America, a horrible day for the new "hate America" crowd
Jim Riches, whose firefighter son, Jimmy, died in the attacks, welcomed the decision.
"Let them come to New York," said Mr. Riches, a retired deputy chief with New York Fire Department. "Let them get on trial. Let's do it the right way, for all the world to see what they're like. Let's go. It's been too long. Let's get some justice."
Meanwhile, I can't decide whether to laugh or cry at the unvarnished, infantile fear and the abject anti-Americanism that I heard or read today expressed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Hannity-wannabe Mark Simone, Rep. John Boehner, Sen. John Cornyn, Rudy Giuliani and so on. Their rage - why do they hate our freedom? -- was laced with some of the most inane logic or phony rhetoric I've ever heard, that Mohammed will be wearing suits and eating lunch at a fancy New York restaurant during recesses in the trial (he'll probably be shackled), that KSM's lawyers will get the trial delayed endlessly (not mentioning how George W. Bush and Dick Cheney delayed justice in the case for seven years), that the defendant will be found not guilty because of waterboarding (wait, now they're against waterboarding?), that New York City will now be a target for terrorists (not to be flip, but I think they've already thought of that)....
...and, most importantly, that the American legal system and the constitutional rights that so many soldiers fought and died to preserve, is actually -- it can now be revealed after 233 years! -- a joke, a farce, not worth the parchment paper that it's written on. And that deep down they think the country that they profess to love so much in all their best-selling books is so weak that it can't even keep a handful of two-bit extremists safely in custody. Of course, the only thing the Limbaugh-Giuliani-Boehner crowd really revealed today is their own pathetic fear to breathe the air of a free and just country. How sad.
I hark back to Jack Nicholson's line in Easy Rider forty years ago: "They're scared to death of freedom". Worse, they want us to be as well. We're easier to control that way.
For the rest of America and the rest of the world, if they want to see in the coming months how a nation can prosper and defeat terrorism by respecting human rights within a system of real justice, I can only echo the Kennedyesque words of everyday citizen Jim Riches.
Let them come to New York.
New York took the punch and it's karmically appropriate for New York to get to hit back. Rule of law is a mighty fist.
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Who would Jesus assassinate?
Right wing blog: Pray for Obama:
Psalm 109:8 – May his days be few; may another take his office.
I guess I don't get it, in a way, because Joe Biden would just become president then. Maybe they're concurrently praying for his death.
But that would just make Nancy Pelosi president.
How far down do you have to go in the order of succession before a Republican becomes president?
Update. Via the comments, apparently they need to be praying for the deaths of Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Robert Byrd, Hillary Clinton, and Tim Geithner. That gets you to Robert Gates.
A metaphysical question: can God create a line of succession so long that He cannot kill everyone on it?
