The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

18:42 Aug 23 2008
Times Read: 770

Naturally there are many Clinton fans upset with their dream of Obama/Clinton ticket being shut down. But I suppose we all knew that she could never be his number 2 for a laundry list of reasons.



An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released this past week found that only half of Clinton supporters are backing Obama, and 21 percent said they will support McCain. Twenty five percent saying they're undecided.



I won't vote for McCain, but I can understand the hesitation and the frustration with the Obama camp. Biden makes voting for Obama easier. He is a good man. Maybe a little to frank at times, but there is genuineness about him (and a long voting trail) that neither McCain nor Obama can touch. I hope other Clinton supporters come on board with him because I'm pretty sure our bank accounts can't handle another 4 years of neoconservative economic policies.

17:07 Aug 21 2008
Times Read: 792

How many homes do you own?



Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.



"I think--I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where--I'll have them get to you."

20:53 Aug 20 2008
Times Read: 807

Who in their right mind thought voting machines could be safe from fraud if they have unmonitored ”sleep overs” in poll workers garages?

23:06 Aug 17 2008
Times Read: 832

919 days away from the office and no sign of slowing your pace of vacation days. Is there any wonder we have an economic, energy, food, and global crisis on our hands?

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The New York Times

Op-Ed Columnist

Russia Is Not Jamaica

By MAUREEN DOWD



WASHINGTON



America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.



Talk about your fearful symmetry.



After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.



He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David. And there’s still time to mountain-bike through another historic disaster.



As Russian troops continued to manhandle parts of Georgia on Friday, President Bush chastised Russian leaders that “bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century” — and then flew off to Crawford.



His words might have carried more weight if he, Cheney and Rummy had not kicked off the 21st century with a ham-fisted display of global bullying and intimidation modeled after Sherman’s march through the other Georgia.



We knew we could count on the cheerleader in chief to be jumping around like a kid in Beijing with bikini-clad beach volleyball players while the Re-Evil Empire was sending columns of tanks into its former republic. (Georgia made the mistake of baiting the bear.)



If only W. had taken the rest of his presidency as seriously as he’s taken his sports outings.



Click here to read the rest of the article.

22:52 Aug 14 2008
Times Read: 852

Yesterday John McCain declared that "We are all Georgians now" Ummm no I am not.



I am an American and damn proud!

19:50 Aug 11 2008
Times Read: 870

According to a July New York Times/CBS News poll, when whites were asked whether they would be willing to vote for a black candidate, 5 percent confessed that they would not. That's not so bad, right? But wait. The pollsters then rephrased the question to get a more accurate portrait of the sentiment. They asked the same whites if most of the people they knew would vote for a black candidate. Nineteen percent said that those they knew would not. Depending on how many people they know and how well they know them, this universe of voters could be substantial. That's bad.





Welcome to the murky world of modern racism, where most of the open animus has been replaced by a shadowy bias that is difficult to measure. As Obama gently put it in his race speech, today's racial "resentments aren't always expressed in polite company." However, they can be -- and possibly will be -- expressed in the privacy of the voting booth.



Excert from Racism and the Race By CHARLES M. BLOW.

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Many people would like to assert that we have moved beyond racism and that Affirmative Action and minority right groups are no longer needed. There will be people suggesting that by the very token that Obama has made it the ballot, our history of racial discimination is a thing of the past.



However, it couldn't be further from the truth. We live in a country that has developed a new form of quieter prejudice. We claim to not see race as factor- but the discrepancy in convictions, harsh sentences, pay equity, along with the survey answers like the above is indicative of a country still very racially divided.

16:56 Aug 10 2008
Times Read: 888

Recently, the lead suspect in the anthrax case, Bruce Edwards Ivins, committed suicide. The justice department is quick to state that the anthrax case is closed, and that his suicide indicated guilt. However, their statements about his guilt or the strength of the case does not mean that the evidences gathered against him would provide a jury that he (and he alone) was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt for carrying out the anthrax attacks that claimed the lives of 5 Americans.



There are questions that still need to be answered, and I can almost guarantee you that the government is not willing to divulge information about the case. The real story here is the government's involvement in the proliferation of the faulty Iraq- anthrax connection.



Irvins along with other scientists at Fort Detrick played a pivotal role in the anthrax investigations prior to him becoming a suspect. He along with other scientists and government officials pointed the finger at Iraq as the natural instigator of the attacks due to the bentonite found in the anthrax.



Could this be more pre-fabricated evidence to push the American people to back an unprovoked war? ABC news reported having multiple sources stating that this anthrax did in fact come from Iraq and this suggestion was aired as fact prior to the war with Iraq.



These claims were fodder for the WMD claims- and the anthrax was not the only misleading and unsubstantiated evidence that the US government presented in their war propaganda.



Did they know all along that it was anthrax created from our own government’s stockpile? Did we jump the gun or did the administration choose to use this tragedy as a pretext for war?



For more information on the cloud that is the case against Irvins and the government’s propoganda for war, check out this sites.



Salon’s Greenwald has provided some great journalism on this story. Here is his initial report and here is one of the many follow ups on it.





Other good background articles by the Washington Post, New York Times, and GNN.

It's about time.
15:14 Aug 10 2008
Times Read: 895

Government owes American Indians $456 mln: judge

Fri Aug 8, 2008 10:36 AM ET







By Tom Doggett



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After 12 years of litigation, a federal judge rejected claims that the government owed American Indians $47 billion for mismanaging their money held in a special trust fund, but ruled they were owed less than 1 percent of the amount sought.



The U.S. Interior Department was sued for mishandling the revenue in the Indian trust fund going back to 1887. The trust includes 10 million acres of land owned by individual Indians and 46 million acres belonging to Indian tribes.



On this lands, the department manages more than 100,000 leases and the money they generate from mineral mining, oil and gas drilling, timber, livestock grazing, recreational and agricultural uses are deposited into the trust. That money is disbursed by the department to individuals and tribes.



U.S. District Court Judge Robertson ruled on Thursday that the model used to estimate how much money was withheld by the government was faulty because it "did not make use of the best available evidence and did not make fair or reasonable comparisons of data."



Robertson said the there was no evidence of the "prodigious pilfering of assets from within the trust system" that the Indian plaintiffs had claimed and that they failed to prove the government used any money from the fund for its own benefit.



Instead, the judge accepted the Interior Department's position that it was 99 percent confident that no more than $455.6 million was missing from the trust fund.



"This statement has the character of an admission -- by responsible civil servants -- that there are limits to what can be confidently stated with respect to the (trust fund), and that a history of accounting nonfeasance makes such a substantial error plausible," Robertson wrote in his ruling.



Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in the class action lawsuit against the government and a member of Montana's Blackfeet tribe, said she was disappointed by the ruling and her lawyers would consider whether to appeal the decision.



"We believe we presented a strong, compelling case that individual Indian trust beneficiaries are entitled to much more than the government's admitted mismanagement of our trust monies over the past 120 years," she said.



The case is not over yet, because the judge said another hearing will determine how the missing money should be restored and allocated.



The Interior Department said it looked forward to working "with the court, the Congress, and the plaintiffs to bring the case to final closure."



(Reporting by Tom Doggett; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

21:49 Aug 07 2008
Times Read: 908

Both Obama and McCain do have a plan for dealing with infrastructure, health care, the economy, education, energy... but the media has figured out that we like seeing Britney Spears plastered on headline news and that divisive shiny politics brings in the viewers.



Maybe it isn't the media, but or own damn apathy that allows our own interests to be trampled upon.



We say we care about these issues... but do we read the politician's plans? Do we engage each other in lengthy discussion about the pros and cons of single pay heath care system? A huge part of this country can't even balance a check book let alone comprehend far reaching economical theories such as NAFTA.



So we have a state today where we are angry, upset, we want change. We've moved beyond the apathy- but do we know what kind of change we need? Can we form the questions that both candidates need to be giving us the answer to?



Governing is not an easy task, and before we empower anyone with that kind of authority over us, we should make it a priority to know the issues, ask the questions, and demand their answers.