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IKEA’s Polish Catalogue Introduces “Ian and Steve” as a Model of the New Family By Hilary White December 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An ad campaign in the latest catalogue by the Swedish furniture giant, IKEA, purporting to depict “modern” life, includes twelve portraits of “families” that promote a “new model of living together.” Among these is the domestic arrangement of “Ian” and “Steve,” under the slogan, “the family is ... two sister souls.” “Ian and Steve,” the ad says, have no intention of having children, but enjoy their “command centre” IKEA kitchen and herb garden. The catalogue, says a pro-family...

As he prepared to meet US presidential candidate Barack Obama later Friday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told a French newspaper that the Illinois senator was his "buddy." "Obama? That's my buddy," Sarkozy was quoted as saying in Friday's edition of Le Figaro. "Contrary to my diplomatic advisors, I never thought Hillary Clinton had a chance. I always said Obama would be chosen" as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. "I am the only French person who knows him," Sarkozy said, recounting that he had met Obama during a visit to the United States in 2006, when he was Interior...

“War is much too serious a thing to be left to military men,” in Talleyrand’s memorable words. In the same spirit, one could say: The American presidential elections are much too serious to be left to the Americans. The US is now the only superpower on earth. It will remain so for quite some time to come. The decisions of the president of the United States affect every human being on this planet. Unfortunately, the citizens of the world have no part in these elections. But they may, at least, voice an opinion. Availing myself of this right I say:...

WASHINGTON - In one week, Southern California's wildfires spewed the same amount of carbon dioxide — the primary global warming gas — as the state's power plants and vehicles did, scientists figure. A new study by two Colorado researchers shows that U.S. wildfires pump a significant amount of the greenhouse gas into the air each year, more than the state of Pennsylvania does. It raises questions about how useful it is to plant trees to offset rising carbon dioxide emissions and soothe environmental consciences. Because the California wildfires occurred just as the study was about to be published, the researchers...

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

There is a wave of progressive change sweeping Latin America and the Caribbean after the many lonely years in which Cuba held high the torch, with free universal health care and education, and world-class cultural, sports and scientific achievements. Although you won’t find a Cuban today who says things are perfect — far from it — probably all would agree that compared with prerevolutionary Cuba, there is a world of improvement. George Bush, the antithesis of this process, is now in Latin America at the start of a mission to lure five countries away from regional economic integration. However, the...

NEW YORK - Celebrating your birthday on the day of your birth is common. Celebrating it by getting your wealthy friends to donate to your charitable foundation is presidential. Former President Bill Clinton was celebrating his 60th birthday this weekend, with deep-pocketed donors forking over sizable checks to the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation for the chance to dine, play golf and attend a Rolling Stones concert with him. Clinton, who turned 60 in August, has already observed the occasion at parties on Martha's Vineyard and in Toronto. This weekend's bash — a fundraiser — is being co-hosted by Chelsea Clinton...

WASHINGTON Combine some of the salient qualities of Muhammad Ali, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon and you have the world's most captivating character: William Jefferson Clinton.

In his highly anticipated memoir, former Gov. James E. McGreevey writes of his deep love for the man who ended his political career, the destruction of his second marriage and the events that forced him into his stunning admission on national television that he is gay. In "The Confession," the former governor also touches on New Jersey's sometimes seamy political landscape, where cash, cronyism and a handful of powerful men intersect. But the 384-page book focuses mostly on McGreevey's secret life, from his frequent sexual encounters with men at highway rest stops to his infatuation with Golan Cipel, the Israeli...

SAVANNAH, Mo. -- A children's book about two male penguins who raise a baby penguin has been moved to the nonfiction section of two public library branches after parents complained it had homosexual undertones. The illustrated book, And Tango Makes Three, is based on a true story of two male penguins, named Roy and Silo, who adopted an abandoned egg at New York City's Central Park Zoo in the late 1990s. The book, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, was moved from the children's section at two Rolling Hills' Consolidated Library's branches in Savannah and St. Joseph in northwest Missouri....

A NEW POLL OUT TODAY CONFIRMS THE INEVITABLE Most Think Clinton Will Run in '08 Two-thirds of Americans believe Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will run for president, but only one-third believe she can win, according to a national poll released Wednesday. The first is no surprise, but the mere 33% of people who even "believe" she can win has to be chilling for Mrs. Clinton's ambitions. To have come so far and yet fallen so low. How can she possibly recover? How can she have a candle's chance of grabbing the gold ring, of cashing in her big chip, of...

"Venezuela, by sending heating oil free of charge for poor and homeless people and at very low prices for those that can pay, is giving a great example of cooperation and solidarity with the American people; and the whole world is bearing witness to it," said the outstanding scholar, historian and university professor Noam Chomsky during a presentation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The event brought together professors, researchers, politicians, scholars, journalists, and social leaders from that city. Chomsky, who is also well-known in the field of linguistics, has lashed out the Bush administration foreign policy through his books...

Hillary Clinton may be the preferred leader of the free world, but her husband still rules the globe. Michael Gawenda reports. THERE are few truly magical moments in politics in the United States and in recent times, such moments, rare as they have been, have all involved Bill Clinton. The man whose presidency at the end was mired in a tawdry sex scandal has transcended the bitter divisions of American politics to emerge, in retirement, as the best-loved politician in the country. Perhaps even the world. Everywhere he goes - and he seems to go everywhere - the Clinton magic...

I just can't STOP laughing! This is absolutely the FUnniest most ABSURD photo I've seen in ages! Best of all it is the Far Left British MP, George Galloway, making an ABSOLUTE FOOL of himself. Anyway, this photo is RIPE for captioning.

The president showed class and passion in a far-reaching lecture. Saturday evening’s Distinguished Carlson Lecture Series speech by former President Bill Clinton was a breath of fresh air for many of the attendees, most of whom were left-thinking. Clinton outlined five points relating to his goal of creating more integrated communities in a world where, in his opinion, “interdependence” rather than the more common term “globalization,” prevails. The lecture had a broad focus with a “how to fix the world as told by Bill Clinton” feel, but it was clear the president is still as passionate as ever about the...

IT'S OFFICIAL: 2005 WILL BE the newspaper industry's worst year since the last ad industry recession. And things aren't looking much better for next year either, according to a top Wall Street firm's report on newspaper publishing. "Sadly, 2005 is shaping up as the industry's worst year from a revenue growth perspective since the recession impacted 2001-2002 period," says the report from Goldman Sachs, adding a warning that meaningful growth in 2006 is "very unlikely."

UNDER THE COVERS, CONSERVATIVE-STYLE By Azi Paybarah Two new books for the kiddies are hitting stores—one that will help get them laid, and another to turn those one-night-stand spawn into good little conservatives. First up is the long-awaited The O'Reilly Factor for Kids. Those with strong visual imaginations will doubtless be pleased to learn that O'Reilly (as he frequently refers to himself) didn't get laid until he was twenty. But it's about the children, and O'Reilly gives spin-free lessons about teenage sex, drugs, and what kind of junior high school girls turns him on. The Long Island native spills the...

Linda McQuaig says right may have met its match in hurricane crisis When terrorists struck the World Trade Center, George W. Bush and his handlers quickly adopted a muscular approach to the crisis. Not so with Katrina. While 9/11 prompted the administration to unleash the full resources of America in response, the deadly Katrina crisis had trouble catching Bush's attention. But then 9/11 was quickly spotted as the perfect justification for what Republicans wanted to do anyway: mobilize the U.S. for war and enhance the power of the military-industrial complex. The Katrina disaster offers no such opportunities. On the contrary,...

This is a review of the performance of George W. Bush in tight times in this nation. It might explain the single solitary most catastrophic collapse of American government in all of our times. Mark ye well. This was the week when we turned a major American city into Haiti, and racism put its hand out and started to choke a nation, and it may not let go. With the water coming from the sky and the bottom of the sea, driving with such ferocity that a major American city, New Orleans, followed its face into the water, George W....

DUMMERSTON, Vt. — The easiest way to judge a person's reputation is to see who their enemies are and what they are saying. By this measure, Cindy Sheehan is eligible for sainthood. Even by the admittedly low standards of the Karl Rove era, the amount of slime that has been dumped on Sheehan has been disgusting. "Wacko." "Crackpot." "In bed with the radical left." "Traitor." "Communist." "Self-righteous ignoramus." "Hateful." "Un-American." "Unhinged." And these are some of the milder epithets directed at her (see FreeRepublic.com and some of the other right-wing hate blogs for the truly vile characterizations). But it's the...

If we are at war like your socialist neocon idol suggests, then why is he going on vacation. Shouldn't he be manning the command post? AND closing down the borders. Geez, I bet enough illegals swam into Texas just this week to pick a year's supply of lettuce. Yeah, I know, go back to DU or whatever. I just figured that since this is BOT Central, I'd just like to see you Bots try and defend this. And those of you who are eligible for military service shouldn't be here anyway. You should be over in Iraq helping to fight...

he city of London was shaken by terror when three bombs exploded last week on the London subway. In the middle of the chaos, media outlets lacked professional and objective integrity by jumping to hasty conclusions and blaming Muslims for the atrocity. The words “Islam” and “terrorism” were recklessly used by media staff and political analysts on television. Not only was it difficult for professionals to differentiate between the act of terror and the faith of Islam, but the connection was made without the slightest afterthought. British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that the evidence points to al-Qaida but that...

Amnesty International investigates, documents and takes action on human rights violations around the globe using one standard – that of international human rights and humanitarian law – and strives to do so in an impartial way. Nevertheless, the annual Amnesty International Report 2005 covering human rights violations around the globe in 2004 generated criticism in this newspaper from David Forman ("We are not paranoid," May 30) and Michael Ehrlich ("Amnesty International – do your homework," June 2). Forman accuses Amnesty International (AI) of being "out to get" Israel while ignoring serious human rights violations elsewhere in the world. Most of...

<p>Thank you four allowing me to join your esteamed sight. i feel i am on the cutting edge of moderate republican progressive! i have been a life long republican. you have to believe me.</p>

'Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it. 'The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." 'Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed . . . ."

I appeal to you today to be part of a historical movement and moment that may bring an end to more than a century of colonization, occupation and dispossession of Palestinians. I appeal to you as an Israeli Jew, who for years wished, and looked, for other ways to bring an end to the evil perpetrated against the Palestinians in the occupied territories, inside Israel and in the refugee camps. I devoted all my adult life, with others, to creating a substantial peace movement inside Israel, in which, so we hoped, academia will play a leading role. But after 37...

When the White House says Democrats are trumping up accusations against John Bolton, nominated to be U.N. ambassador, it's kind of like the White House saying Martin Luther King Jr. trumped up accusations of racial bias: sad, laughable and demonstrably untrue on its face. But that's the line the Bush administration is taking on Bolton, despite an almost certainly fatal wound his nomination suffered Tuesday in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After an impassioned plea by Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said what he had heard troubled him enough that he didn't feel comfortable voting for Bolton....

Bill Clinton's remarks at Davos may end being more controversial than Eason Jordan's. Other blogs, especially Little Green Footballs, have been all over the story. Here is the latest. It is now fully evident that a gloablist left-leaning elite uses Davos as an exercise to get similarly-inclined Americans to denounce their own country and pay homage to the icons of "progressive" politics - meaning, basically, anti-Americanism. How anyone could classify the mullahs of Iran as "progressive" and keep a straight face is beyond my understanding. It demonstrates how illogical and twisted a group the global anti-Americans have become.

Jane Fonda now says she was bulimic for the past 35 years

Jan. 31 issue - Not long ago, the American dream was a global fantasy. Not only Americans saw themselves as a beacon unto nations. So did much of the rest of the world. East Europeans tuned into Radio Free Europe. Chinese students erected a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square. You had only to listen to George W. Bush's Inaugural Address last week (invoking "freedom" and "liberty" 49 times) to appreciate just how deeply Americans still believe in this founding myth. For many in the world, the president's rhetoric confirmed their worst fears of an imperial America...

Give me a break — or a big glass of vodka. We've gone from shock and awe to shuck and jive, and Captain Quagmire ran the table anyway. Now he's got the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the military and a chip on his shoulder he's calling a mandate. I don't know about you, but I'm getting a Republican haircut just to blend in. For four years it's been one big all-you-can-eat buffet for the corporations, and now they're coming back for more. Go ahead, you marvelous bastards! Rip out all the trees, pave the beaches, build 12-lane...

THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world. This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation. This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes...

I say forget introspection. It's time to be honest about our antagonists. My predecessors in this conversation are thoughtful men, and I honor their ideas, but let's try something else. I grew up in Missouri and most of my family voted for Bush, so I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million—my relatives are not ignorant,...

October 16, 2004 Service Members, Families Say Pentagon Sent Too Few Troops To Iraq, Stressed National Guard and Reserves, Should Allow Photos of Coffins at Dover Even though they support George W. Bush’s handling of the situation in Iraq in general, America’s military service members and their families are convinced that the Administration underestimated the number of troops it needed in Iraq and put too much of a burden on inadequately trained and equipped National Guard and reserve forces. From September 22 through October 5, Annenberg polled 655 adults who have either served on active duty between February and October...

Many Still Troubled by Reagan's Legacy By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer As one of the first physicians to confront AIDS when it began its rampage through the gay community, Dr. Marcus Conant lobbied the Reagan administration in 1982 to launch an emergency campaign to educate Americans about the disease. It took the president five more years to publicly mention the crisis. By then, almost 21,000 Americans had died and thousands more had been diagnosed. Conant, who lost scores of friends and patients to the disease, is still deeply angry — one of many Americans who view Reagan's legacy in...

Monica Lewinsky Says Her Past Has Hurt Her Love Life - Wed Nov 19, 1:46 PM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - Monica Lewinsky says her White House liaison is a liability on the dating scene. The intern infamous for her affair with U.S. President Bill Clinton said in the December issue of GQ magazine that she dates occasionally but her romantic relationships have been short-lived. Lewinsky, 30, said in the interview she sympathized with the men she meets, saying she, too, would be intimidated by the tales of her past. "If I were a guy and I'd heard all those...

In his now legendary interview last month with Brit Hume of Fox News, George W. Bush explained that he doesn't get his news from the news media — not even Fox. "The best way to get the news is from objective sources," the president said, laying down his utopian curriculum for Journalism 101. "And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Those sources? Condoleezza Rice and Andrew Card. Mr. Hume, helpfully dispensing with the "We Report" half of his network's slogan, did not ask the obvious follow-up question:...

"It's easy for people to say that if they shoot up on heroin the only people they're hurting are themselves. But that's not true. ... Drug abusers destroy their families ... If we legalize these vices, we erode the societal support for prohibitions against crimes such as murder. The erosion of the moral fabric of society is a gradual, insidious process." -- Rush Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought to Be, pp 53-54. As I sifted through hundreds of comments from Rush Limbaugh fans over the last week, some interesting trends emerged. About 50 percent just wanted to call me names....

hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history. And, while I'm tempted to leave it at that, the truth is that I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility (disguised behind transparently false modesty) at having done so. His favorite answer to the question of nepotism--"I inherited half my father's friends and all his enemies"--conveys the laughable implication that his birth bestowed more disadvantage than...

Bands Rock Against Bush Concerts and tours to raise awareness about 2004 election Sonic Youth, the Donnas, the Liars, the Locust and Erase Errata are among the groups who have pledged their support for Bands Against Bush, a self-explanatory new artistic collective dedicated to lending its support to the "struggle against a world of perpetual fear and violence bolstered by the Bush administration." BAB has set up more than twenty regional chapters in the U.S. and abroad, with a directory of groups willing to participate in various events to raise voter awareness. Among the events planned is an October 11th...

Franken's book bravely presents the truth by Deborah Locke, Editorial Writer, St. Paul Pioneer PressAt least two sections of Al Franken's book ought to grab the attention of people from Minnesota. In "Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them -- A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," Franken recounts the Paul Wellstone memorial. The chapter is a good example of the way right-wing pundits aided by their media outlets will distort the facts to the American people. A more chilling theme throughout the book is the way mainstream media organizations buy into the lies and report them as...

September 11 is often said to be the defining moment in the Bush presidency, even of modern history. How strange, therefore, that Bush's behavior that morning--along with that of his Administration--is almost never examined in any detail. This is all the more incredible when one considers the fact that 9/11 is among the most exhaustively chronicled days in human history and Bush among its most heavily covered individuals. No less odd has been the media's willingness to let the many inconsistencies in White House stories pass unexamined. They seem content instead to let Showtime tell the story, Leni Riefenstahl-style. That...

FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- Power. Control. Privilege. Old, white, straight, Christian men. These are the power-holders in our society. It's funny. Just a couple of weeks ago, my "feminist" best friend made the comment, "I don't understand why I act more like a man than he does." She was referring to another friend of hers whom she felt was becoming "over-emotional." "Why does he have to act like a man to be strong? Why can't women be strong?" Ding. The light went on. Driving ever so slowly through Old Town last night, I looked at the sparkling lights and the...

Americans who value the Constitution should stand with Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and oppose George Bush's attempted power grab in conjunction with establishing a Department of Homeland Security. The Bushies are trying to frame the debate as either protecting bureaucracy or providing security for Americans. In fact, the debate is about preventing an authoritarian president from sacrificing the Constitution in the name of providing security. Let me remind you that those who prefer security to freedom will lose both. Bush wants to be able to disregard labor contracts and civil-service rules, as well as move money within the department as...

There is a great alternative to the leftist leaning S.F. Comicle, I mean Chronicle. This rag is so polluted, I won't even use it for my bird cage for fearing of endangering my bird. However, there is a new site that critiques the Chronicle everyday, and they need writers, researchers, and computer savvy folks to help them get the site running. Go check them out at www.chronwatch.com And if you're interested in helping contact Tom at: TCSparkman@aol.com