"There is no way that Senator Clinton is going to win enough delegates to get the nomination. She ought to withdraw and she ought to be backing Senator Obama. Now, obviously that's a decision that only she can make frankly I feel that she would have a tremendous career in the Senate."
"At least 97 percent of the deaths occurred after US President George W. Bush announced the end of “major combat” in Iraq on May 1, 2003, as the military became caught between a raging anti-American insurgency and brutal sectarian strife unleashed since the toppling of Saddam.
Despite the losses, Bush on the eve of the war’s fifth anniversary defended his decision to invade Iraq, vowing no retreat as he promised American soldiers would triumph despite the “high cost in lives and treasure.”
(mosaic image of fallen soldiers courtesy Nico Pitney @ HuffPo)
"The Politico laid it out very clearly yesterday - and solidified what we've known for weeks - this race is over. Obama has the nomination."
"Even Hillary Clinton's own campaign admits it! Politico reports, "One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives. In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe."
"I've been trying to figure out for weeks why Hillary Clinton is still in this campaign because the math has been obvious for quite some time now. Even Mitt Romney had the - what would you call it, decency, wisdom, common sense - to drop out after he realized it was mathematically impossible (or next to impossible) for him to win."
"There is one possibility as to why Senator Clinton might still be in this race, inflicting heavy damage on the presumptive Democratic nominee. That reason is Hillary 2012."
"With heavy snow still covering the park’s vast grasslands, hundreds of bison have been leaving Yellowstone in search of food at lower elevations. A record number of the migrating animals — 1,195, or about a quarter of the park’s population — have been killed by hunters or rounded up and sent to slaughterhouses by park employees. The bison are being killed because they have ventured outside the park into Montana and some might carry a disease called brucellosis, which can be passed along to cattle.
The large-scale culling, which is expected to continue through April, has outraged groups working to preserve the park’s bison herds, considered by scientists to be the largest genetically pure population in the country. It has also led to an angry exchange between Montana state officials and the federal government over a stalled agreement to create a haven for the bison that has not received the needed federal financing."
“The public should be outraged,” said Amy McNamara, national parks program director for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition in Bozeman, Mont., which has worked to allow bison to leave the park. “An American icon is being taken to slaughter.”
She added, “By next week they’ll be in somebody’s freezer.”
NINA ROMPS!
It is the one moment every man wants to get right -- and which London floor-fitter Lefkos Hajji could hardly have got more wrong....Hajji, of Hackney, east London, had concealed a $12,000 engagement ring inside a helium balloon. The idea was that she would pop the balloon as he popped the question. But as he left the shop, a gust of wind pulled the balloon from his hand and he watched the ring -- and quite possibly the affections of his girlfriend -- sailing away over the rooftops.Idiot!
"I had to tell her the story -- she went absolutely mad. Now she is refusing to speak to me until I get her a new ring."
a time honored tradition here in Chicago, that after 3 decades, or more, I still don't quite understand fully."While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.
Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.
This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.
Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer."
“Why would the Administration oppose a judicial determination of whether the companies already have immunity? There are at least three explanations:
“First, the President knows that it was the Administration’s incompetence in failing to follow the procedures in statute that prevented immunity from being conveyed – that’s one possibility. They simply didn’t do it right. Second, the Administration’s legal argument that the surveillance requests were lawfully authorized was wrong; or public reports that the surveillance activities undertaken by the companies went far beyond anything about which any Member of Congress was notified, as is required by the law.
“None of these alternatives is attractive but they clearly demonstrate why the Administration’s insistence that Congress provide retroactive immunity has never been about national security or about concerns for the companies; it has always been about protecting the Administration.”
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..."
the new legislation the House is considering this week to modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “would undermine America’s security.”
“Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say "Hell is other people at breakfast." Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring.”
“Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially "on," we introverts need to turn off and recharge. My own formula is roughly two hours alone for every hour of socializing. This isn't antisocial. It isn't a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating.”
“Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.”
If you’re looking to nestle into a good Irish film this St. Patrick’s Day, look no further than this film by director Ken Loach. (winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2006, for good reason) It tells the poignant tale of the beginnings of the Irish Revolution in the early 1920's, focusing on a small resistance group from Cork. It’s beautifully filmed & wonderfully acted by a cast comprised mainly of actors from the region. (the British Soldiers are portrayed by Brits. many of them ex-British military, that's how Loach rolls) You’ll recognize Cillian Murphy in the lead role, but his acting is so superb that he soon fades away into his character. The film was a huge success in the UK & Ireland, but failed to garner similar appeal over here, which is a real shame. I would encourage anyone interested to Netflix this film today. You won’t regret it.
"into the NSA's massive database goes data collected by the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Treasury. This information includes data about email (recipient and sender address, subject, time sent), internet searches (sites visited and searches conducted), phone calls (incoming and outgoing numbers, length of call, location), financial information (wire transfers, credit-card use, information about bank accounts), and information from the DHS about airline passengers."
'Here's an example: If the feds suspect there's a terrorist in Detroit, "the government's spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of the city."'
"President Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks."
"he announced that he'd vetoed the Senate authorization bill, which would have effectively outlawed waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques for the CIA by limiting the CIA to the Army's guide for interrogations, the Army Field Manual"
"In the final analysis, our ability to lead the world will depend not only on our military might, but also on our moral authority. We will begin to reassert that moral authority by attempting to override the President’s veto next week. The world must know that America does not torture."
