Olbermann: Lexus Nexus of terror threats

by Geezer Power …9:21 PM PDT

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Evening Jukebox… One

by- Suzie-Q @ 8:03 PM MST

One of my favorite U2 songs and featuring Mary J. Blige.  

Have a nice evening Justice Bloggers.   🙂

U2 & Mary J. Blige – One

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Americans Are Eating Seafood Imports From China Raised In Untreated Sewage

by- Suzie-Q @ 6:08 PM MST

I don’t want to spoil your dinner but this just caught my eye and I think I am sick now. China is raising seafood in sewage plants and that is totally disgusting! What makes this story really bad is the fact that they are the largest exporter of seafood to the U.S. 

So, my question is, why are they getting away with this?

Fish products consumed by Americans treated with dangerous drugs, chemicals

WASHINGTON – China, the leading exporter of seafood to the U.S., is raising most of its fish products in water contaminated with raw sewage and compensating by using dangerous drugs and chemicals, many of which are banned by the Food and Drug Administration.

The stunning news follows WND’s report last week that FDA inspectors report tainted food imports from China are being rejected with increasing frequency because they are filthy, are contaminated with pesticides and tainted with carcinogens, bacteria and banned drugs.

China has consistently topped the list of countries whose products were refused by the FDA – and that list includes many countries, including Mexico and Canada, who export far more food products to the U.S. than China.

While less than half of Asia has access to sewage treatment plants, aquaculture – the raising of seafood products – has become big business on the continent, especially in China.

In China, No. 1 in aquaculture in the world, 3.7 billion tons of sewage is discharged into rivers, lakes and coastal water – some of which are used by the industry. Only 45 percent of China has any sewage-treatment facilities, putting the country behind the rest of Asia.

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Senators Warn Bush Not To Block G8 Efforts

by- Suzie-Q @ 2:33 PM MST

A bipartisan group of US senators Monday warned President George W. Bush not to block efforts by the Group of Eight summit this week to agree concrete measures to combat global warming.

In a letter to Bush, 20 senators also called for American leadership to tackle climate change, and voiced support for G8 host Germany’s plan for concrete steps to tackle the threat.

The senators upped pressure on Bush days after he announced plans for a “new framework” in which the world’s biggest carbon polluters would set long-term goals for curbing greenhouse gases.

The plan was criticized by some Bush political opponents, and in some foreign capitals, as not going far enough.

“President Bush has offered promising rhetoric, but has been short of real commitments and specifics,” said Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Democratic-led Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“I hope the US can be a consensus builder in this weeks G8 discussions, not a roadblock,” Biden said in a statement accompanying the letter.

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US can forget about winning in Iraq: top retired general

Posted by Anthony @ 21:10 BST

AFP
Monday June 4, 2007

The man who commanded US-led coalition forces during the first year of the Iraq war says the United States can forget about winning the war.

“I think if we do the right things politically and economically with the right Iraqi leadership we could still salvage at least a stalemate, if you will — not a stalemate but at least stave off defeat,” retired Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez said in an interview.

Sanchez, in his first interview since he retired last year, is the highest-ranking former military leader yet to suggest the Bush administration has fallen short in Iraq.

“I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time,” Sanchez told AFP after a recent speech in San Antonio, Texas.

“We’ve got to do whatever we can to help the next generation of leaders do better than we have done over the past five years, better than what this cohort of political and military leaders have done,” adding that he was “referring to our national political leadership in its entirety” – not just President George W. Bush.

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The Masters of War

by Geezer Power …1:06 PM PDT

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Rabbi Eliyahu: “All civilians living in Gaza are collectively guilty”

by Geezer Power …1:01 PM PDT

Jerusalem Post

Eliyahu advocates carpet bombing Gaza

All civilians living in Gaza are collectively guilty for Kassam attacks on Sderot, former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu has written in a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Eliyahu ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings.

The letter, published in Olam Katan [Small World], a weekly pamphlet to be distributed in synagogues nationwide this Friday, cited the biblical story of the Shechem massacre (Genesis 34) and Maimonides’ commentary (Laws of Kings 9, 14) on the story as proof texts for his legal decision.

According to Jewish war ethics, wrote Eliyahu, an entire city holds collective responsibility for the immoral behavior of individuals. In Gaza, the entire populace is responsible because they do nothing to stop the firing of Kassam rockets.

The former chief rabbi also said it was forbidden to risk the lives of Jews in Sderot or the lives of IDF soldiers for fear of injuring or killing Palestinian noncombatants living in Gaza.

Eliyahu could not be reached for an interview. However, Eliyahu’s son, Shmuel Eliyahu, who is chief rabbi of Safed, said his father opposed a ground troop incursion into Gaza that would endanger IDF soldiers. Rather, he advocated carpet bombing the general area from which the Kassams were launched, regardless of the price in Palestinian life.

“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand,” said Shmuel Eliyahu. “And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”

In the letter, Eliyahu quoted from Psalms. “I will pursue my enemies and apprehend them and I will not desist until I have eradicated them.”

Eliyahu wrote that “This is a message to all leaders of the Jewish people not to be compassionate with those who shoot [rockets] at civilians in their houses.

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The Ninth Man Out: Todd Graves, A Fired U.S. Attorney

by- Suzie-Q @ 12:04 PM MST

Todd Graves

Written by Murray Waas

The first sign that crimes may have been committed was when the victims no longer felt nauseous and their hair stopped falling out. Also, it wasn’t cold going deep into the vein the way it was before. They needed that hurt. And when it was too long in coming, they grew anxious. Their discomfort after all was their comfort. That was the only way that they knew that the chemotherapy was working.

When the FBI believed that they had enough to make a case, they brought the file to Todd Graves, the then-U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Missouri. Ultimately, Robert Courtney, a local pharmacist would be sentenced to thirty years in prison without parole for watering down chemotherapy prescriptions for thousands of cancer patients.

When the Bush administration ordered Graves to resign as U.S. attorney in Jan. 2006, the prosecutor wondered if it might have something to do with the Courtney case. Graves was the first of nine U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration for reasons that still are not entirely clear.

On Tuesday morning, Graves will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his firing.

At the time of his dismissal, Graves had had relatively few conflicts with his superiors at Main Justice in Washington. But one of them involved the Courtney matter.

This can’t be over the Courtney case, Graves thought.

Diluting drugs for at-risk patients had proved to be lucrative business for pharmacist Robert Courtney. At the time of his arrest, Courtney was worth $18.7 million. He owned two manses in the small exurban enclave of Kansas City known as Tremont Manor and was considering the purchase of a condominium in St. Croix.

Main Justice wanted Courtney’s seized assets to be deposited in the U.S. treasury. But Graves had his own ideas: Why not give over the money to compensate the cancer patients and their families?

“Nobody wanted it,” Graves told me recently, “The FBI was leaning on me. My own assistants were telling me no.”

Eventually, Graves told everyone involved that if he heard from the DAG–the Deputy Attorney General, his boss–that he couldn’t do it, he wouldn’t. But the call from the DAG never came. The money went to Courtney’s victims.

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No More Mr. Nice Guy

by- Suzie-Q @ 11:03 AM MST

In one of the more interesting exchanges from the New Hampshire Democratic debate, John Edwards takes Senators Clinton and Obama to task for not opposing Bush’s Iraq War bill more vehemently.

In the video to your right, John Edwards (no more Mr. Nice Guy from 2004) pulls no punches in differentiating between what he considers a Democrat who leads versus one that follows. While Hillary Clinton kept trying the make the debate about how all of the ’08 candidates were united against Bush, and others like Bill Richardson hammered away on their resumes, Edwards consistently made the most persuasive point. At the crucial moment when the President vetoed the Iraq bill with timetables and sent it back, Democrats like Clinton and Obama needed to show more backbone and they didn’t. On the other hand, in defense of Obama in particular, Edwards now has the luxury of being able to criticize the members of the Congress from the outside, when he himself voted for this war when he had the chance (and according to Democratic consultant Bob Shrum it was for strictly political reasons). Still Edwards, seems to be the be the strongest serious candidate on the Iraq War right now in either party. Which is a good thing since the Iraq War happens to be the most important issue of this campaign, whether Hillary likes it or not.

Story

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Bush’s Magic Economic Formula…

by- Suzie-Q @ 10:19 AM MST

The economy keeps growing, as does the enormous largesse of the wealthy, while the average person makes less than they did when Bush took Office. This is Bush’s magic economic formula.

Supposedly we are in a sustained economic recovery and have been since 2002.

Part of this is Bush hot air and the Republican Noise Machine, which the media quotes verbatim.

By a certain measure, however, it’s real.

The economy has grown. Corporate profits are at an all-time high. Average income is up. There’s lots of money around.

But the recovery has some really strange features. Oddities never before seen in a recovery.

Jobs: During Bush’s first term the US actually lost private-sector jobs.

It finally improved in 2005, and now job creation is almost keeping pace with the increase in population. Still, over all, it’s the worst record since Hoover, the fellow who presided over the onset of the Great Depression.

How do you have a recovery without creating jobs?

Income: Yes, average income is up during the tenure of the current administration.

The joke about average income is: Bill Gates walks into a bar. The average income of every person in the room immediately goes up 10,000 percent.

But median income, the amount that people in the middle of the group earn, barely budges. So let’s look at that figure. Median income is down. The average person makes less now than when Bush came into office.

Not only that, the downward pressure on wages is no longer just a blue-collar issue, it’s moved up to white-collar workers, the educated classes, even doctors.

How do you have a recovery when people are making less than before the recovery?

Cost of living: Key factors of the cost of living are much higher than they were six years ago.

In particular, fuel is up 100 percent, higher education costs are up about 44 percent, health care premiums are up 80 percent, and affordable housing is scarce.

Normally, when the cost of living goes up, we have inflation. But we’ve had low inflation during the Bush years.

How can the cost of living go up while the cost of money stays low?

Here’s the most peculiar statistic of all: the Dow Jones index

You may have been hearing that the Dow Jones Index is at an all-time high. It’s true. However, it is only 16 percent higher than the day George Bush came into office. By comparison, when Clinton left office the Dow was 320 percent higher than when he came into office.

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