Open Head Thread!

by GEF @ 10:24 PM MST

What would you like to see in the Future of American Government ?

Leaner and Wiser America – Cutting the Pork!

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Motorcycle Daredevil Knievel Makes his Biggest Jump Yet!

by GEF @ 7:28 PM MST

Motorcycle stuntman Robert “Evel Knievel” died in Florida Friday at the age of 69.

Born in Butte, Montana, Oct. 17, 1938, Knievel made a name for himself for his daredevil feats, jumping rows of vehicles, natural chasms and other obstacles. He claimed to have broken every bone in his body at least twice.

The death was reported by Butte architect and Knievel’s graphic design artist Bob Corbett, who said Knievel’s wife, Krystal Kennedy, rushed him to the hospital earlier today.

According to Corbett, who did all the promotional posters and pins for Butte’s annual Evel Knievel Days each summer, Knievel was suffering from a lung ailment, pulmonary fibrosis. “When you spoke with him, it was an effort for him to finish a sentence without taking another breath,” he said. “But he faithfully came to Evel Knievel Days in Butte, even though the severe altitude change, from sea level to mile-high, was especially hard on him. But he was tough.”

Despite his poor health, Corbett recalled, Knievel wanted to attempt one last record jump with his motorcycle. So Corbett did a graphic rendering of several views of the proposed 320-foot, ramp-to-ramp jump, including side views and helmet views. “After you see this, you will quit talking about making this jump.”

He said Knievel looked at the renderings and exclaimed simply, “Holy s—.”

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JOHN “9/11 Commission did a good job” McCAIN

by Geezer Power …1:22 pm

Republican presidential candidate John McCain was literally overwhelmed by reporters from WeAreChange.org and Infowars.com seeking 9/11 truth during a campaign stop.

McCain, who wrote the forward to Popular Mechanics’ Debunking 9/11 Myths, repeatedly told reporters, “I do not support a new investigation” and stated that he believes the “9/11 Commission did a good job.”

But other reporters continued to hammer the complicit senator with further questions and demands for a new 9/11 investigation. Seemingly frustrated that he could not simply brush off 9/11 truthers, McCain retreated to his SUV where he entertained questions from the mainstream media only.

Staff members attempted to take away a bullhorn and remove alternative media from the site, but backed off at warnings not to assault the reporters or stifle the first amendment.

Reporters cited hundreds of witnesses, including police officers, firefighters and former janitor William Rodriguez, who all reported hearing bombs go off in the lower levels of the WTC towers– accounts that contradict the basic findings of the 9/11 Commission.

McCain flatly told reporters that he did not support a new investigation and claimed to have “additional information,” stating that he did not believe there was a cover-up.

If such settling “additional information” indeed exists, John McCain has an obligation to share it– though the mere fact that he has withheld information about 9/11 from the public seems to directly point to a cover-up.

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Biden’s warning to Bush: Bomb Iran and face impeachment

anthony @ 19:15

David Edwards and Nick Juliano | Raw Story | Published: Friday November 30, 2007

Sen. Joe Biden, the loquacious long-shot Democratic presidential candidate, warned President Bush Thursday that he would move for impeachment if the president unilaterally authorized a military strike against Iran.

“The President has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran and … if he does, as foreign relations committee chairman and former chairman of judiciary, I will move to impeach him,” Biden told a crowd of about 100 potential voters at a campaign stop in New Hampshire.

Biden said he is meeting with constitutional law experts and plans to send Bush a legal memo formally outlining his warning, according to Seacoast Online, which reported his comments.

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Annapolis’s sole purpose is to serve the Bush agenda

Sudhan @10:55 CET

 

 

By Adrian Hamilton |The Independent, November 29, 2007

There can have been few more excruciating sights than President Bush parading the Israeli and Palestinian leaders before the cameras at the Annapolis summit on Tuesday, clasping their hands, squeezing their shoulders, pushing them together for a handshake and then leaving them to return to their seats like awkward boys summoned to the podium to be congratulated for their efforts at a school prizegiving.

But then that was only right for the occasion. Why were President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert there in the first place, if not because the White House had propelled them there with not an iota of prior agreement between them? And why did their joint statement of intent single out the end of 2008 as the time by which they hoped to reach a peace settlement? Because that is when President Bush will be leaving office.

This is not just the carping of a Bush critic. No one in their right mind would wish for anything other than peace to come to the Middle East. For the last four decades since the 1967 war, Palestinians and Arabs everywhere have begged and prayed for the West, and America in particular, to enter the fray and force the pace of peace. One could hardly complain that this is what Washington now appears to be doing, and under a president who has so long resisted it.

Keep reading . . .

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GOP Hagel: The President and Vice President have failed us!

by GEF @ 1:48 PM MST

Hagel on Bush & Cheney: “They Have Failed the Country”

The Nation — It is too bad that Chuck Hagel decided against running for the Republican nomination for president. While it is true that Texas Congressman Ron Paul is saying much of what the Republican senator from Nebraska would have said about the madness of the war in Iraq, Paul is actually too polite about the madness of the president and the vice president.

Hagel minces no words.

In an address to the Council on Foreign Relations this week, Hagel told the crowd of foreign-policy wonks that he would give the Bush-Cheney administration “the lowest grade of any I’ve known.”

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War Casualities of Heart & Mind

by Geezer Power …12:22 pm

“When we were doing the night raids in the houses, we would pull people out and have them all on their knees and zip-tied. We would ask the man of the house questions. If he didn’t answer the way we liked, we would shoot his youngest kid in the head. We would keep going, this was our interrogation. He could be innocent. He could be just an average Joe trying to support his family. If he didn’t give us a satisfactory answer, we’d start killing off his family until he told us something. If he didn’t know anything, I guess he was SOL.”

Where is the outrage?

It’s been over a week since Scott McClelland’s statement on “What Happened” hit the innertubes. He was at that time the spinmeister (press secretary) for Bu$hco and now regrets his role in spreading false information.

“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.
There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.”

The illegal war continues

While our troops are fighting in an illegal and immoral occupation of a country where the citizens are treated as the enemy, and are in a situation that nobody should ever be put in, the costs at home touch the hearts of many families. Viet Nam would be the only comparison, and in both cases our troops should have never been there. The death and suffering here is becoming old news, but every aspect of it is under-reported as Bu$hco casually tells us we are in a long war.

Iraq War Veteran Speaks Out Against Iraq Occupation

VIDEO

A US veteran who served in Iraq speaks out on the killing of civilians. How it takes place frequently and how it goes on virtually without any consequences.

VIDEO

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NYC Ex-Mayor Ed Koch says Rudy Giuliani is involved in a Financial Cover-Up!

by GEF @ 11:35 AM MST

Ex-NYC Mayor Koch: Giuliani Acted Improperly, Looks Like A Cover-Up

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani acted improperly and appeared to be covering something up when he charged the cost of his and his girlfriend’s security detail to obscure New York City agencies, former mayor Ed Koch told the Huffington Post.

On Wednesday, the Politico reported that in 2001, Giuliani transferred tens of thousands of dollars in security costs to non-related city organizations such as the New York City Loft Board and the Office for People with Disabilities (both of which, ironically, Giuliani once proposed for elimination). The costs were for trips Giuliani made to the Hamptons, presumably to visit his then-mistress Judith Nathan.

“There is something improper about charging costs to a department other than the NYPD,” said Koch. “They are the ones who are supposed to pick him up no matter where he is whether or not it’s in the city.”

Koch, who served as the mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989, said that the episode gave off the appearance that Giuliani, who was at the time married to his second wife Donna Hanover, was trying to hide his affair. He also argued that providing Judith Nathan her own personal protection (when she was not a member of the first family) constituted an even more flagrant misuse of taxpayer money.

Update: Giuliani’s Mistress Used N.Y. Police as Taxi Service

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Naomi Wolf: America’s Fascist Coup Owes Legacy To Bush’s Nazi Grandfather

anthony @ 16:50 GMT

Author of “10 steps” speaks publicly for the first time about origins of modern-day tyranny

Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet | Thursday, November 29, 2007

Author Naomi Wolf, who made headlines earlier this year after she identified the ten steps to fascism that were being followed to a tee by the Bush administration, spoke publicly for the first time yesterday about the origins of what we see unfolding today, Prescott Bush’s attempt to launch a Nazi coup in 1930’s America.

Speaking on the Alex Jones Show, Wolf said that she was first alerted to begin researching America’s slide into fascism when her friend, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, warned her that the same events that laid the foundations for the rise of the Third Reich in early 1930’s Germany, when it was still a Parliamentary democracy, were being mirrored in modern-day America.

“A small group of people began very systematically to use the law and dismantle the Constitution and put pressure on citizens to subvert the law – and that opened the door for everything that followed,” said Wolf.

“When I started reading, not only are tactics and strategy being reproduced exactly right now by the Bush administration – but actual sound bytes and language and images and scenarios are being reproduced,” she added.

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Gorbachev: US missile plan targeting Russia

Sudhan @12:30 CET

News International, November 29, 2007-11-29

BUDAPEST, Hungary: Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said on Wednesday that he viewed a US plan to deploy a missile defence shield in Central Europe as targeting Russia, not Iran.

“(On Tuesday) Milos Zeman, the former Czech prime minister, said, ‘What kind of Iran threat do you see? This is a system that is being created against Russia,’” Gorbachev said.

“I don’t think Zeman is alone in seeing this. We see this as well as he sees it.” The United States wants to place a radar station in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland, saying the components would defend European allies against a possible Iranian strike. Gorbachev, 76, whose policies of glasnost and perestroika openness and restructuring helped end communism in the Soviet Union and its satellites, criticised the high level of military spending by the United States. “Does America intend to fight the rest of the world, does America need to build a new empire? They will not succeed,” Gorbachev said at the close of a meeting of the World Political Forum, a group he founded in 2003 that includes many former high-ranking politicians.

Keep reading . . .

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