Sunday’s elections were a great success. An estimated 60% of Iraq’s 14 million eligible voters cast their ballots and all went as expected. While Sunni turnout was low, the Shiites voted in great numbers. In the insurgent-Sunni stronghold of Ramadi for example, only 1,700 of the eligible 400,000 went to the ballot box, but in [...]
Archive for January, 2005
Election Day was a push towards troop withdrawal
Posted in Uncategorized on January 31, 2005 | 8 Comments »
Kennedy’s speech was not extreme
Posted in Uncategorized on January 28, 2005 | 4 Comments »
Speaking at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy cautioned Americans against falling into another Vietnam and called for a phased-withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Republicans and conservative talk radio instantly labeled Kennedy an irresponsible liberal extremist out of touch with America; but the numbers tell a different story. [...]
Early election chaos
Posted in Uncategorized on January 27, 2005 | 1 Comment »
The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq released the names of all the candidates for Sunday’s vote yesterday but has so far withheld the names of 5,600 polling centers. That information will be released on Sunday morning. David Enders, a Mother Jones reporter stationed in Iraq, writes that while the location of many polling stations is [...]
One neocon down, many more to go
Posted in Uncategorized on January 27, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy is stepping down. Feith ran the Office of Special Plans where he manufactured and cherry picked evidence to support the administration’s claims of large WMD stockpiles in Iraq. Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks called Feith “the stupidest guy on the face of the Earth.”
New civil service system at the DHS
Posted in Uncategorized on January 27, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
The Bush administration is instating a new play-plan in which employees of the Department of Homeland Security will have their salary ranges determined by geographic location, annual market surveys of what similar employees earn in the private sector and other government entities. Workers will be assigned to 1 of 4 pay bands, based on skill [...]
Few Americans support Bush’s empty ideals
Posted in Uncategorized on January 27, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
Speaking to reporters for the first time since his second inauguration, President Bush distanced himself from speculations that his second term foreign policy will “confront all manner of autocrats around the planet” and acknowledged, like his handlers had on Friday, that the inaugural “reflected the policies of the last four years,” not a major policy [...]
In Iraq, torture is still routine
Posted in Uncategorized on January 25, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
According to Human Rights Watch, “Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of them holding the same jobs they had under Hussein, are ‘committing systematic torture and other abuses.’” As a result, Iraqis are routinely beaten, hung and shocked with electrical wires. Meanwhile, the ACLU has released more documents of prison abuse in American-controlled prisons. [...]
Republicans misrepresent Clinton on social security, take a page out of Limbaugh
Posted in Uncategorized on January 24, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
The Republicans are desperate. To boost their claim that Social Security is in crisis, Bush administration officials are taking a page out of Rush Limbaugh and claiming that Bill Clinton and other Democrats had previously supported a SS privatization plan. But there is only one problem: “Clinton’s repeated calls during his second term to ’save [...]
Bush’s 2006 budget will bring big cuts in domestic programs
Posted in Uncategorized on January 23, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
Rumors of large budget cuts began swirling in May 2004 when a White House budget memorandum warned government agencies that if Bush won reelection, his 2006 budget would seek cuts in education, veteran’s affairs, environmental protection, and urban development. While on the campaign trail, Bush boasted of his administration’s commitment to education and veteran affairs [...]
Bush to cut Medicaid benefits
Posted in Uncategorized on January 22, 2005 | 1 Comment »
“Don’t cut Medicaid pa!”
From the AP: “President Bush is readying a new budget that would carve savings from Medicaid and other benefit programs, congressional aides and lobbyists say…White House officials are not saying what Bush’s $2.5 trillion 2006 budget will propose saving…”
But back to (what the media likes to focus on) the inauguration festivities. New [...]
