Free Speech Goes Up In Smoke

punditman says @ 21:12 EDT
Earlier today I pointed out on another post’s Comments about the encroachment on free speech that this group of high school students from Connecticut had to contend with:

Banned High School Iraq Play Goes Off Broadway

If you think that was stupid, now focus your gaze north and then go west to the tiny prairie town of Wawota, Saskatchewan. Seems we go from stupid to utterly ridiculous:

Free Speech Goes Up In Smoke

Damn, I feel sorry for these kids today, having to put up with such autocratic lunacy. It is well worth reading the Comments section as well (I laughed out loud after reading the first one):

Free Speech Goes Up In Smoke-Comments

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Thinking Blogger Award

by- Suzie-Q @ 4:17 PM MST

Ron at Revolt Today gave me a Thinking Blogger Award today! Thank you very much Ron and I deeply appreciate it! 😉

First of all, I have to thank my great team of authors who so generously donate their time to this blog. Also, to all the bloggers who read and comment here. This blog would be nothing without all of you! I feel very fortunate to know each and every one of you! Okay, so enough of the ‘mushy stuff’…and on with the rules and my choices today.. 🙂

Here are the rules of the Thinking Blogger Award:

1. If, and only if you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.

2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.

3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

I visit tons of blogs daily and it’s difficult for me to pick 5 that make me think because all of them do! Wow, this is gonna be tough!! Some of my favorites were already chosen by Ron today but I promise I will catch them at a later time… that is if I ever get tagged again. 😉

So here goes….

1. Liberally Mirth is a fairly new blog and one of my favorites to visit. Mirth adds so much of her charming personality to her posts and a great variety of topics are covered each day. She and D-Day have very interesting articles, videos and photos! Besides, they are both super nice people! 😉

2. Simply Left Behind offers a daily dose of reality in this crazy world. Actor212, (Carl), will make you think… sometimes I think he makes me think too hard! Well, anyway, he has a great sense of humor too. Be sure to say hello to his cat, Thumbpurr, who blogs on Fridays… LOL

3. Uber Highwayman is one of my favorites to visit because he has a great deal of knowledge regarding the NWO and the Neocons. Also, you will find he has good taste in music and as you have seen, I love music! So, go see “The Highwayman”… you won’t be disappointed! 🙂

4. Dad2059’s House of Tin Foil is guaranteed to be interesting! Dad2059 has news and topics that makes me want to stay and chat all day! He says, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. Today he has an article on the science of quantum mechanics/physics. Get the picture? Go read it! 😉

5. From The Left is another cool blog to visit and I bet he has been tagged at least 100 times before! Chris’s banner says it all, “We The People”. You will find current and interesting articles pertaining to our country. Also, some of my favorite blogging buddies are always there too. 🙂

If I didn’t mention your blog this time, that doesn’t mean I have forgotten how great your blog is! I wish they didn’t limit us to 5 blogs because I could have listed at least 20 awesome blogs without even blinking! 😉

Ron, again, thank you for tagging my team and I for this award!! 🙂

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Get Out! Iraqi Labor Leaders Blame US for Violence in Iraq

by- Suzie-Q @ 2:46 PM MST

Don’t tell Faleh Abood Umara or Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein that you want the U.S. quit Iraq, but that you’re worried about a resulting civil war.

The two Iraqi labor leaders, currently in Philadelphia as part of a U.S. tour sponsored by a coalition of American labor unions called U.S. Labor Against the War, say the U.S. is the cause of all the violence in Iraq, and argue that the sooner U.S. forces leave their country, the sooner things will start to get better.

“Did the occupier find us fighting each other when they came to Iraq?” asks Hashmeya, who is president of the Electric Utility Workers Union of Iraq. “No. The fighting among Iraqis started two and a half years after the Americans came.”

Faleh, general secretary of the Southern Oil Company Union based in Basra, agrees, saying that while the U.S. claims to be trying to quell the violence, “actually, since the U.S. has come into Iraq, they have done everything they could to encourage sectarian strife.” He asks, if Iraqis are just a bunch of sectarian fanatics, “How did we manage to get along in the past?”

Faleh, whose own brother was killed in the wake of the US invasion of Iraq, accuses the U.S. of adopting policies that encourage divisions in Iraq, and of working covertly to foster more domestic violence.

Hashmeya, who regularly faces death threats, and threats to kidnap her seven-year-old son, for her part accuses not just the U.S, but also Britain, Israel, “and Iraq’s neighbors” of all working covertly to encourage the violence in Iraq. “They all have an interest in destroying the country,” she says angrily. A frequent international traveler, she notes that Iraqi and U.S. border control authorities make people leaving the country go through five or six checks, but that entering the country requires just one perfunctory showing of a passport. “They make it very easy for people to come into the country,” she says.

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Afternoon Jukebox… No Ordinary Love

by- Suzie-Q @ 2:21 PM MST

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Bush Vetoed Stem Cell Bill

by- Suzie-Q @ 1:20 PM MST

WASHINGTON — Pushing back against the Democratic-led Congress, President Bush vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have eased restraints on federally funded embryonic stem cell research.

“Our innovative spirit is making possible incredible advances in medicine that can save lives and cure diseases,” the president told an invited audience in the East Room. “America is also a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred. And our conscience calls us to pursue the possibilities of science in a manner that respects human dignity and upholds our moral values.”

Democrats, who had made the stem cell legislation a top priority when they took control of the House and Senate in January, were quick to denounce the president’s decision.

“This is just one example of how the president puts ideology before science, politics before the needs of our families, just one more example of how out of touch with reality he and his party have become,” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, told the Take Back America conference of liberal activists Wednesday.

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The Spin; I’m In! Whatever It Takes(W.I.T)

by GEF @ 11:34 AM EDT

GETTING THE STIFF COLLAR CROWD TO DO THE RIGHT THING..

Congress to investigate Bush’€™s signing statements.

After a recent GAO report found that federal agencies ignored 30 percent of the laws President Bush objected to in signing statements last year, lawmakers now €œsay they plan to dig deeper into the Bush administration’™s use of bill-signing statements as ways to circumvent Congressional intent.€ Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said that €œtheir next step would be to explore the signing statements to determine the broad extent of their impact.

Go Read It–>

Devo – Whip It!

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The Bushites Have Outsourced Our Government To Their Pals

by- Suzie-Q @ 8:05 AM MST

The sprawling $43 billion homeland security department is known for being in charge of America’s color-coded terrorist-threat alarm system, a sham that obscures HSD’s real mission: to serve as a giant federal cookie jar for corporate America.

The sprawling $43 billion homeland security department (HSD) is known chiefly for being the agency in charge of America’s color-coded terrorist-threat alarm system (“Good morning, Americans. Today is Yellow. Be vigilant. Report all suspicious people.”) It’s boogeyman nonsense, of course, doing absolutely nothing to make our country safe. But such falderal helps those in charge obscure HSD’s real mission: to serve as a giant federal cookie jar for corporate America. Go to HSD’s website, and you’ll find a prominent section called “Open For Business.” There, on any given day, corporate shoppers can scroll through the hundreds of contracts and grants available to them. Just dip in and grab some cookies, each one worth from $50,000 to more than $80 million. Like the department’s color codes, the vast majority of these projects do nothing to make our country safe. Instead, they are make-work studies, silly technologies, and useless systems that essentially serve as mediums for transferring billions of our tax dollars to a few corporate big shots. Ever helpful to its clients, HSD also maintains a private-sector office, headed by an assistant secretary who is not a security expert but a former banker from JP Morgan Chase. This office provides concierge service for cookie grabbers. For example, it recently held a corporate seminar, entitled “The Business of Homeland Security,” offering “tips, hints, and directions” on how to grab the latest contracts and grants. Lest you think that patriotism or even national security might be the motivating force behind these government-industry confabs, a Sikorksy Helicopters executive who attended the session bluntly explained why he was there: “To us contractors, money is always a good thing.”

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When You Have Your Priorities “Straight” …

by- Mentarch … 10:25 AM EDT

(Updated below) (Update II)

Nothing beffudles me more than watching incompetents straightening their priorities.

Case in point:

US concerned about mental health of diplomats in Iraq, Afghanistan – Dixit Laurence Brown, head of the State Department’s Office of Medical Services: “The war in Afghanistan and in Iraq represent another level of stress due to the high levels and widespread incidence of violence that involve greater numbers of serving Foreign Service employees than past incidents (…) (This has resulted) in larger number of acute anxiety reactions and we might well expect an increase un numbers of those with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) as well (…) (Officials) will (…) develop additional support programs or services if needed (…) “.

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