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Democrats again used former President George W. Bush as a foe in their latest TV ad campaign, driving home the point Republicans would restore policies that helped create the economic downturn. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) released a new cable ad Friday that harped on their campaign message that the November midterm elections will be a choice between Democratic policies that will bring the country out of the recession versus Republican policies that helped created it. No Republican is used in the ad aside from Bush -- who is shown saying "you can fool me but you can't get fooled...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama’s 100 days in office have not shaken the world, but he has been compelled to focus on the legacy bequeathed by former President George W. Bush: the worst economic slump since the Great Depression and two wars. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, avoiding any credibility-destroying urge to praise his boss with ridiculous extravagance, gives the president a "B-plus" on his report card. "What the president has achieved is something we’re proud of," Gibbs said, adding: "There is room for improvement." Probably the biggest change Obama has brought about is the country’s new hopeful spirit,...

RUSH: General Peter Pace -- and this is from TIME Magazine, "In his most optimistic remarks since the U.S. troop buildup began, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday that Iraq has undergone a 'sea change' in security in recent months, and that this will influence his recommendation to President Bush on how long to continue the current strategy. After conferring with Maj. Gen. Walter Gaskin and other commanders in this provincial capital west of Baghdad, Pace told reporters he has gathered a positive picture of the security environment not only here but also in...

I was rewriting history, while walking along some cold lakeshore the other day. My thought was: if Churchill had only come to power in 1937, Chamberlain would have been installed to replace him in 1940. Had Churchill been in power, and refused to sign Munich, he would have been blamed for the outbreak of war. I can just hear the prattle in an English pub, circa 1950. "He pushed Hitler to it! Had it not been for Churchill, Hitler would have been satisfied with the Sudetenland, and England would never have had to surrender. Everything was Churchill's fault!" Today, everything...

A small earthquake that struck Basel on Friday was caused by drilling work for a planned power plant that would produce electricity from heat in the Earth's crust. The canton Basel-City prosecutor has launched an investigation to find if the company behind the Deep Heat Mining project can be held responsible for any possible damage. The tremor was felt shortly before 6 pm and measured 3.4 on the Richter scale according to the Swiss Seismological Service. The local police and fire departments received hundreds of phone calls from worried citizens, and some buildings suffered from cracks and broken tiles....

A Fuzzy StrategeryAgree to DisagreeBy Rob FishmanNov 15 2006Yesterday, Sun Columnist Billy McMorris argued that, as students, we should take time away from partying and sleeping, and express our gratitude to the nearly 3,000 soldiers who have died so far in Iraq. Billy does what George Bush does: instead of defending the Iraq War, he points to the sacrifices of our soldiers. It’s a crafty strategy of misdirection, to channel our grief for dead soldiers into support for the ongoing war in Iraq.There was a time when such sacrifices might have been sensible. Maybe at first, we could justify soldiers’...

When things get bad in the United States it is reassuring to turn to Canada, a country with a high standard of living, a small military and a national healthcare plan. Canada always seemed to be, if a bit duller than America, also a bit saner. But this is changing. The new Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, inspired by the neocons to the south, appears determined to visit the worst excesses of George Bush's Presidency on his own country. He plans to pull Canada out of the Kyoto Protocol and expand military spending. He defended Israel's massive bombing of southern...

We, the Overseer Board of New Life Church, have concluded our deliberations concerning the moral failings of Pastor Ted Haggard. Our investigation and Pastor Haggard's public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct. The language of our church bylaws state that as Overseers we must decide in cases where the Senior Pastor has "demonstrated immoral conduct" whether we must "remove the pastor from his position or to discipline him in any way they deem necessary."

Where are the Hurricanes? I blame global warming...http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1155133659.shtml Scott Kirwin Aug 9, 2006 Nearly a year ago the country was being slammed by hurricanes. As Americans suffered some claimed that the ferocity of Katrina and Rita was due to global warming. A search of Dean's World shows that this site is one of the few that argued against that idea over the course of 2005. So here we are, a year later. Where are the hurricanes? Where is the fury of Mother Nature? Where are her righteous swirls of rain and wind that shall smite the evil non-Kyoto Protocol signing...

Toxic Tides: Another reason to worry about hurricanes Sid Perkins When Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne struck Florida in the summer of 2004, they killed 116 people, left thousands homeless, and caused billions of dollars in damage. Now, scientists suggest that the storms may also have triggered an intense, widespread Gulf of Mexico algae bloom that afflicted the state's western coast throughout 2005. DANGER ZONE. The red-and-yellow patch of Gulf of Mexico water off Tampa Bay shows the origin of last year's huge red tide, which may have been fueled by nutrient-rich groundwater discharges boosted by 2004 hurricanes. Hu,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Survivors from New Orleans told a congressional panel on Tuesday they felt abandoned by government at all levels after Hurricane Katrina hit the city and had been subjected to racial slurs and menaced by guns when they sought food and water. "We were abandoned. City officials did nothing to protect us," Patricia Thompson, a New Orleans evacuee now living in Texas, told a House of Representatives panel investigating the response to the storm. "We saw buses, helicopters and FEMA trucks but no one stopped to help us. We never felt so cut off in all our lives,"...

Like many Americans, we have been watching on TV the devastation from Hurricane Katrina that residents of New Orleans and the Gulf States are enduring, and thinking and praying for those affected by this tragedy. Common Cause has state chapters in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Jackson, Mississippi, and our thoughts are with our staff and volunteer leaders in those states, and their families and friends. We send our condolences to those who have lost loved ones, and wish the storm victims the courage and strength to rebuild their lives. Many of us at Common Cause are responding to this national...

Solar Explosion Directed Away from the Earth -- July 29thAURORA ALERT: A coronal mass ejection (CME) is heading toward Earth following an X-class explosion from sunspot 792 on July 30th: movie. Auroras are possible when the CME arrives on July 31st or August 1st. The display, if there is one, shouldn't be intense; the CME was not squarely Earth-directed, which reduces its likely impact. SUNSPOTS: Sunspot 792 poses a growing threat for Earth-directed explosions--and that's not all. At least one more active region could emerge in the days ahead. Towering magnetic fields jutting over the sun's eastern limb--the same place...

Business spending on technology for the rest of this year will likely continue the pace of the first half. That means final figures will hit the $1 trillion mark for only the second time, joining the peak bubble year of 2000.

America's coming economic crisis. A look back from the election of 2016 ***EXCERPT*** Or perhaps we should call it the first domino to fall, because what then happened had a kind of geometric inevitability. The next domino was a thousand miles across the Caribbean, in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez, originally elected as a crusading left-winger, was by then well into his role as an outright military dictator. For years our diplomats had grumbled that Chavez was "Castro with oil," but after the real Castro's death the comparison had new meaning. A right-wing militia of disgruntled Venezuelans, emboldened by the news that...

SEATTLE - With a record number of dead seabirds washing up on West Coast beaches from Central California to British Columbia, marine biologists are raising the alarm about rising ocean temperatures and dwindling plankton populations. "Something big is going on out there," said Julia Parrish, an associate professor in the School of Aquatic Fisheries and Sciences at the University of Washington. "I'm left with no obvious smoking gun, but birds are a good signal because they feed high up on the food chain." Coastal ocean temperatures are 2 to 5 degrees above normal, which may be related to a lack...

This new forum setup just sucks...Why do people always ruin a good thing? I used to like coming here, now its like navigating some bloatware site. Is there a reason for this?

Between commercials and halftime show, NFL should move game to Playboy Channel Viewers who tuned in expecting a big-time football game saw the Super Bowl of Sleaze instead. Sexy and violent commercials that included jokes about flatulence and bestiality mercilessly interrupted the CBS telecast of Super Bowl XXXVIII from Houston last night, making it a dubious choice for family viewing. But it was the unexpected climax of the MTV-produced halftime show that shocked viewers and set the CBS switchboard ablaze. As a musical number ended, out popped one of Janet Jackson's breasts. Fellow performer Justin Timberlake clearly exposed it to...