January 16, 2006

News -- January 16, 2006

McCain: Oil Prices Can't Stop U.S. From Pressing Iran - ""If the price of oil has to go up, then that's a consequence we would have to suffer," McCain said on "Face the Nation" on CBS."
http://www.wsoctv.com/news/6128443/detail.html

US senators say military strike on Iran must be option - "Republican and Democratic senators said on Sunday the United States may ultimately have to undertake a military strike to deter Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but that should be the last resort."
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N15194172.htm

Planting WMD in Iraq to justify the illegal invasion - " According to a recent report by Larissa Alexandrovna, the Office of Special Plans didn’t just present cherry-picked pre-war "intelligence" to the White House and the media. It also dispatched personnel to Iraq after the 2003 invasion, when it was known that there were no WMD in the war-torn country, to examine the possibility of planting such weapons in order to avoid the U.S.‘s embarrassment."
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=1/16/2006&Cat=4&Num=15

Bush to push for health care cost-cutting in 2006 - "He said the administration believed encouraging individuals to buy health insurance would spur more competition than in the current system, which relies heavily on employer-provided health benefits. Duffy said one of the reasons health-insurance costs were so high was that "third parties" -- meaning employers -- assume the bulk of the costs so there was little incentive for consumers to shop around to save money."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/12/AR2006011201451.html

Dusting off the Brown-shirts and Jackboots - "The spiking gold market is a sure sign that the dollar is headed for the dumpster. Large institutional investors are hastily moving boatloads of cash into precious metals that promise to retain their value while the hemorrhaging dollar goes the way of Icarus. ... The Bush team has been spending $400 billion more than it takes in in tax revenues for 4 years, a practice it wants to enshrine as "permanent tax cuts". Huh? Question: How can anyone argue that the plundering of America is not intentional when deficits are defended as a "permanent" function of government? Deficits are theft; and it is future generations that will have to pay for the criminal largesse of the Bush administration. Secretary of the Treasury John Snow announced just last week that the national debt would have to be raised to $9 trillion by February to keep the government operating. That means that Bush has generated a whopping $3 trillion dollars of debt in just 5 years. Unbelievable! ... In just months Bush has claimed that he has the right to torture prisoners, unilaterally declare war, spy on Americans, and incarcerate citizens without charging them with a crime. Why? Is Bin Laden somehow weakened by the steady erosion of civil liberties? Or, is the White House cabal anticipating massive civil disorder from their planned economic meltdown?"
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19659&hd=0&size=1&l=x

Fifteen Years of War -- And Who's Better Off? - "Fifteen years have passed since Bush the Elder first attacked the nation of Iraq. Just remembering that evening recalls the fear and foreboding those first US bombs brought with them. No matter how you look at it, Washington is no closer to conquering Iraq than it was on January 16, 1991. Yet, its armies march onward into a hell of their own making. And they are taking the rest of us with them, whether we acknowledge it or not. Is Iraq a better place? Although the answer to this question depends on where one sits, I will only say that a country being torn apart by war is rarely better off than when it is at peace."
http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=580&mode=nocomments&order=0&thold=0

Cronkite: Time for U.S. to Leave Iraq - "Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, whose 1968 conclusion that the Vietnam War was unwinnable keenly influenced public opinion then, said Sunday he'd say the same thing today about Iraq. "It's my belief that we should get out now," Cronkite said in a meeting with reporters."
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/15/D8F5DU680.html

Bush's Unlikely Co-conspirators - "At least seven House Democrats learned about the NSA's secret spying program four years ago. So why didn't anyone blow the whistle?"
http://alternet.org/story/30600/

Lange's secret papers reveal USA's bully tactics - "The Americans threatened to spy on New Zealand if it did not back down on its anti-nuclear policy, former Prime Minister David Lange's private papers show."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3541021a10,00.html

Satisfaction with Congress Falls to 27% in U.S. - "Few Americans are satisfied with their federal lawmakers, according to a poll by CBS News. 27 per cent of respondents approve of the way the United States Congress is handling its job, down six points since December."
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/10562

Stupid in America - "If people got to choose their kids' school, education options would be endless. There could soon be technology schools, cheap Wal-Mart-like schools, virtual schools where you learn at home on your computer, sports schools, music schools, schools that go all year, schools with uniforms, schools that open early and keep kids later, and, who knows? If there were competition, all kinds of new ideas would bloom. This already happens overseas. In Belgium, for example, the government funds education—at any school—but if the school can't attract students, it goes out of business. Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents. "If we don't offer them what they want for their child, they won't come to our school." She constantly improves the teaching, "You can't afford ten teachers out of 160 that don't do their work, because the clients will know, and won't come to you again." "That's normal in Western Europe," Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. "If schools don't perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S." ... A Gallup Poll survey shows 76 percent of Americans are either completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school, but that's only because they don't know what their kids are missing. Without competition, unlike Belgian parents, they don't know what their kids might have had."
http://www.reason.com/hod/js011306.shtml

'Stupid in America' - "American students fizzle in international comparisons, placing 18th in reading, 22nd in science and 28th in math — behind countries like Poland, Australia and Korea. But why? Are American kids less intelligent? ... "We're not stupid. … But we could do better," one high school student tells Stossel. Another says, "I think it has to be something with the school, 'cause I don't think we're stupider."" -- Enough said.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1491217

Scientists question trees' role in global warming - "Until now, the mainstream belief is that atmospheric methane chiefly comes from bugs: from bacteria working in wet, oxygen-less conditions, such as swamps and rice paddies. But in a study published in the journal Nature, a team led by Frank Keppler of the Max Planck Institute in Germany has found living plants, dried leaves and grass emit methane in the presence of air. Nor is this gas just a piffling amount."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1545977.htm

Search engines going far beyond maps - "The images are so detailed you can tell whether a neighbor's hedge was recently trimmed or whether the car parked in front of a favorite local eatery might belong to a friend. Such views are available online for anyone to see from some of the biggest names on the Internet, including Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. ... Never before have searchable databases of detailed pictures covering wide swaths of urban areas been readily available like this to the public. And that has privacy advocates worried about the risks of such picture perfect exposure to vulnerable citizens such as women in domestic violence shelters."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1700AP_Picture_Perfect_Search.html




Quote of the Day
"My government is the world's leading purveyor of violence."
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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