Censored?
Vox found it, Tampa Pirate confirmed it. Story @ Pushing Rope

Britain and US ranked last in child well-being league

The study found Britain lagged behind on key measures of poverty and deprivation, health and safety, relationships, risk-taking and young people's own sense of well-being giving it the lowest overall placing, along with the United States.......more

India, China and Russia meet to counter US power

India, China and Russia account for 40 per cent of the world’s population, a fifth of its economy and more than half of its nuclear warheads. Now they appear to be forming a partnership to challenge the US-dominated world order that has prevailed since the end of the Cold War.......more

Putin 'Tells Off' the United States

Wanted: A Progressive Party
In the past year, and particularly this week it’s occurred to me that we do not have a progressive political party in America; and as the two parties we currently have become more like one another, we desperately need one......more

No Gang Signs

Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007

Please take a moment to watch the video and read the text of the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007, sign on as a citizen co-sponsor, and forward the bill to your personal networks.

Faux News can't refrain from dig at Dixie Chicks

This is a good example of how a piece, at first glance straightforward, promotes the agenda at FOX. First, Smith (or his producers - whatever) chose to highlight the Police, doing a little history of the band and showing extensive footage and snips, even though the Dixie Chicks were the big winners of the night........more

Grammy Sweep by Dixie Chicks Is Seen as a Vindication.......NY Times

The music doctor who revived the Dixie Chicks.......NZ Herald

Dixie Chicks' victory shows country's anti-war turn.......Boston Globe

Protesting the Dixie Chicks

"I'm ready to make nice! I think people are using their freedom of speech with all these awards. We get the message."

The Low Blow From Down Under

Prime Minister John Howard said Obama's plan to withdraw troops by March 2008 would play into terrorists' hands. "If I were running Al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats," Howard said. Obama noted that Australia has only 1,400 troops in Iraq. "If he's ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq. Otherwise it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric," Obama said.......more

Joan Baez - We Shall Overcome - Woodstock 1969

The Dixie Chick's Rule The Grammys

And The Grammys Go To.......

Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Country Album, Record of the Year

Country Music Establishment And Wingnuts, Up Yours!

"Well, to quote the great 'Simpsons' — 'Heh-Heh.'

California Dreaming?

The Psycological Chains of Slavery Continues!

Kiri Davis is a young filmmaker whose high school documentary has left audiences at film festivals across the country stunned -- and has re-ignited a powerful debate over race

Excellent Stevie Nicks Concert: Almost 2 Hours

Getting Out Of The Florida State Fairgrounds Parking Lot: Over 2 Hours

Stevie Nicks Can Still Rock

It's Howard Dean's party

If there's one thing obvious in this room, it is that Emanuel might be clever, but it's Howard Dean's party. Dean electrified a similar DNC gathering four years ago when he said that he was "from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," and launched his anti-war candidacy briefly into the stratosphere. Now, all the Democratic presidential candidates appearing here borrow from Dean and try to appease the party's yowling, anti-war base........more

Bill Donohue A 'Cafeteria Catholic'

To rightwing Catholic activists, "cafeteria Catholic" is a term of contempt for those who pick and choose which Church doctrine to follow. Bill Donohue arrogantly dismissed the Pope's pleas against the Iraq War in order to serve his political bosses, yet some reporters is still characterize him as a Catholic spokesman. Donohue's selectivity in following Church teachings is as "cafeteria" as it gets.....more

Natasha Henstridge

The Svalbard International Seed Vault

The final design for a "doomsday" vault that will house seeds from all known varieties of food crops has been unveiled by the Norwegian government. The Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built into a mountainside on a remote island near the North Pole. The vault aims to safeguard the world's agriculture from future catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change.......more

The End of Conservative Hegemony

Ronald Reagan is dead, Margaret Thatcher is senile and the ideological world that they created is now dying with them. From 1979 to 2004, the political Right won the Western world's battle of ideas. Conservatives triumphed because they were correct about the two biggest issues of that era: They were for free markets and against communism. But now confusion on the Right prevails, because today it is they who are on the wrong side of the West's two greatest political issues: climate change and the Iraq War.......more

Let's Have A War Tax

Right-wing Blogosphere has gotten its scalps

John Edwards has fired the two controversial bloggers he recently hired to do liberal blogger outreach. The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare's Sister, had come under fire from right-wing bloggers for statements they had previously made on their respective blogs. A statement by the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, which called Marcotte and McEwan "vulgar trash-talking bigots,"......more

"The Catholic church is not about to let something like compassion for girls get in the way of using the state as an instrument to force women to bear more tithing Catholics,"......Amanda Marcotte

Bush, The Divider

The roots of most of American Jewry's anger toward the current president, George W. Bush, cannot be traced to Israel. They did not vote for him in the first place. His ongoing support for Israel may be recognized and appreciated by the establishment, Israeli and Jewish, but it does not receive due credit among a wide Jewish-American public that is liberal, Democratic, dovish and very angry at Bush for significant and various reasons......more

"Move On" Ad: Blocking Debate

Is Edwards the Howard Dean of 2008?

With his call earlier this week for higher taxes on both the wealthy and businesses to support his massive $120 billion-per-year universal health-care plan, John Edwards continued a series of moves that have made him the 2008 campaign's Howard Dean......more

Fruitcake Polling Higher Than Bush

According to the latest CBS News poll, the president's overall approval rating has dipped to 28 percent—the lowest number in his presidency and dangerously close to Nixon's all-time low of 24 percent. To lend a little context to this historic feat, we found some other people and things with equal or greater popularity........more

“Let’s get rid of the Mexicans!”

Supremacist activity flourishes

Groups linked to the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads and neo-Nazis grew significantly more active, holding more rallies, distributing leaflets and increasing their presence on the Internet — much of it focused on stirring anti-immigrant sentiment........more

Florida Hate Groups

Michelle Malkin's Lips

Activists Launch The Occupation Project:

A Campaign of Sustained Nonviolent Civil Disobedience to End the Iraq War

Ten people were arrested occupying the offices of the staunchly pro-war and likely-presidential hopeful Senator John McCain. The activists sang the names of seventy-five servicemembers from McCain’s home-state of Arizona who died in Iraq and chanted “We remember you.” The action is part of a new campaign called The Occupation Project: A Campaign of Sustained Nonviolent Civil Disobedience to End the Iraq War. It's being led by the group Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

Kathy Kelly's, (Executive Director of Voices for Creative Nonviolence) interview with Amy Goodman.....here

Red Eye - Faux News' Answer to The Daily Show

Dean on the GOP's Obstruction on Iraq Resolution

"This is the most important issue facing our nation and the American people have made it clear where they stand. We believe that the American people deserve to know where their representatives in Congress stand on the President's escalation of the Iraq War. Why are the president's supporters in Congress afraid to have to stand up and tell the American people where they stand on the president's efforts to escalate the war? By voting to block this debate, Republicans have essentially given a green light to President Bush to continue down the same failed strategy in Iraq.....more

Lieberman joined with the Republican filibuster. Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota switched sides and voted with the Democrats.

Limbaugh compared American troop deaths in Iraq to Philly murder rate

We're concerned with death here. We're concerned with body counts. We're concerned with the breakdown of law and order. Insurgencies, gangs, whatever you want to call them. They're out of control in major American cities, and Philadelphia is just one example, and where are the hearings on this?........more

Beirut Store Owners Ban Political Talk

It's one of the ways Lebanese are coping with the standoff between pro- and anti-government camps."It's better without politics," reads the red and white sticker at the entrance of a pub on the restaurant- and bar-filled Gemayzeh Street in the Christian sector of Beirut.......more

Kuwaiti Singer Satirizes the Bush War

The Kingdom's Religious Police
Mutaween
A Saudi Arabian judge sentenced 20 foreigners to receive lashes and spend several months in prison after convicting them of attending a party where alcohol was served and men and women danced....more
The Official Religious Police site (Arabic)

If Clinton Wins Nomination, Nader May Run

I don’t think she has it. And she has this increasingly distasteful habit of pandering and flattering in her public appearances. And she panders to special interest groups that need to be given the straight truth, and she flatters people in her audience. And I think that is a sign that she thinks she’s a frontrunner and she can play cautious......more

The New Mass Migration

There are journeys that change a traveler, that transform him into a different person. And there are travelers who, by the end of their journey, want nothing so much as for life to return to the way it used to be. But they discover that there is no turning back, that their world has changed irrevocably.......more

Democrats praise Dean's much criticized 50-state strategy

The Democratic National Committee showcased the party's presidential candidates at its winter meeting here, but the gathering also was a victory lap for Chairman Howard Dean and his much criticized 50-state strategy.Just months ago, as the 2006 congressional elections were approaching, Dean came under fire from some party officials, who charged that the national party was wasting money in so-called red Republican states instead of pouring resources into blue states that tend to vote Democratic......more

THE CANDIDATES: Presidential hopefuls court the party faithful

Four years ago, Howard Dean burst onto the national stage with a fiery speech at the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting that captured his party's anger toward President Bush and the brewing war in Iraq.......more

Right Sees Lemons in White House Race

Contemplating the current field of Republican presidential candidates, Rush Limbaugh sounded like a man with malaise. "To be honest with you, there's nobody out there that revs me up," he confessed to his audience of several million conservative sympathizers on his radio show last week, "so why should I pretend there is?"......more

Hillary The Opportunist

Orange snow falls in Siberia

Russia's emergency situations ministry said today it was dispatching experts to a Siberian province to find out why yellow and orange snow has been falling in several villages. Snow ranging in colour from light yellow to orange and carrying a distinctive "musty" odour was observed yesterday in five districts of Omsk province, which lies in western Siberia and borders Kazakhstan.....more

Echoes of Dean in '08

"People were going crazy," committee Chairman Howard Dean said to ABC News of the February 2003 speech in which he ignited his presidential campaign by forcefully identifying himself as representing the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.".......more

"By about the fifth sentence, when I gave that line about the Democratic Party, I realized that it was pretty powerful."

The Other Miami

Our relentless tour guides have yet more reality in store for us. We head north to the Umoja Village shantytown, a 45-person squatter settlement on a barren city-owned lot that looks like the sort of thing you might find in Bangladesh. A couple of residents show us around—the “kitchen” area buzzing with flies, the “living room” crammed with tattered old furniture and the dwellings made of plywood, cardboard and tarp.......more

“We can have a democratic society, or we can have the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.”- Louis Brandeis. Supreme Court Justice

Umoja Village USA

"REAL MEN DON'T SEXUALLY ABUSE WOMEN OR ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN."

Spc. Swift, facing a redeployment to Iraq while serving under the command of the same individuals that allowed her to be raped and sexual harassed, suffered a breakdown due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and went absent without leave rather than subject herself to the horrors she experienced during her first tour of duty.......more

Dear 2008 Presidential Candidate

We call on you to oppose any escalation of the Iraq War, to demand a swift end to the occupation, and to propose a plan that brings our brave men and women home.

The Democracy for America community awaits your response

Sign the Petition......here

Bush wants to put giant mirrors in space

The US wants the world's scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming. It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be "important insurance" against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a UN report on climate change.......more

WHY THIS SUDDEN INTEREST IN GLOBAL WARMING?

The Real John McCain

Rush Limbaugh for 2007 Nobel Peace Prize?

"The foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world today"

Landmark Legal Foundation today nominated nationally syndicated radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Limbaugh, was nominated for the prestigious award for his "nearly two decades of tireless efforts to promote liberty, equality and opportunity for all humankind, regardless of race, creed, economic stratum or national origin......more

Ms. Bondi, Lies About Master Tank

I legally fostered and adopted a dying dog who had a serious medical condition that long predated the hurricane," Pam Bondi (Hillsborough County Prosecutor)

"If he had been as close to death as Ms. Bondi claims, he would never have been placed on a transport that would take on a good day over 10 hours to get to the destination," Ceily Trog (Manager of St. Bernard Parish Animal Control)

Judge rules against Katrina dogs' new owners

New Orleans SWAT Team Raids Saint Bernard Housing Project

Last night at 2:30 in the morning, MayDay NOLA, which had been in the middle of a 17-day occupation of the New Day Community Center, with permission of the leaseholders, had been raided by SWAT team members at gunpoint. It was quite scary......more

Right-Wing Follies on UTube

A model wears a creation with a portrait of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her skirt, by Italian fashion designer Gattinoni for his Spring-Summer 2007 collection at Rome's Auditorium.....more

The Right to Live Here!

The political is always personal. I wonder if the lack of interest evident in our local authorities' attitude toward affordable housing stems from the perception that the problem will eventually get resolved on its own. Or from the fact that they personally happened to buy their first homes when housing was indeed affordable......more

St. Pete's Tent City On My Space

Tony Dungy, the NFL and the IFI

The IFI is one of the leading proponents of SJR7, the proposed Indiana Constitutional amendment on marriage rights, and other legislative efforts to deny equal rights to LGBT folks. Under the guise of protecting traditional family values, it helps spread misinformation that fosters bigitory toward our community and our own families......more

"Silence Is No Longer An Option"
Jane Fonda, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins Speak Out
Anti-war protesters filled the streets of Washington on Saturday in one
of the largest protests since the invasion of Iraq. Veterans and military
families joined lawmakers, peace groups and celebrities to urge Congress and
President Bush to bring the troops home now. Protest organizers United
For Peace and Justice estimated 500,000 took part in the demonstration. In
California, smaller rallies were held in San Francisco, Los Angeles and
Sacramento. In Washington, marchers converged on the National Mall for a
two-hour rally........more

Dear Howard Dean: What I wanna know...

I have never lost an election. But my career has never been about winning elections. My career in this campaign is about changing the Democratic Party, it's about changing America, and this campaign is about taking back the White House so we can have health insurance, so we can have a balanced budget, so we can have an inclusive society where everybody believes in each other and believes in America.....more

Keith, Happy Birthday Dude
click here

George's speech to Parliament, January 2007

Anti-troop supporters at the Nature Coast Coalition for Peace

Brian Moore, a former U.S. Senate candidate and the leader of the Nature Coast Coalition for Peace and Justice, tried to create a forum for diverse and opposing viewpoints on the war in Iraq. He invited representatives from several groups that he thought would defend President Bush’s strategy in the war-torn country and help create a robust debate. Instead, the two dozen people who came to the town hall meeting at the Spring Hill Library Thursday night were largely forced to play devil’s advocate........more

Opposing Viewpoint

Department of Peace

Participate in an historic citizen lobbying effort to create a U.S. Department of Peace. There is currently a bill before both Houses of Congress. This landmark measure will augment our current problem-solving options, providing practical, nonviolent solutions to the problems of domestic and international conflict.

click here

Bloody Condi

Drinking Liberally is compiling a bartender's guide of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to sell as a fundraiser for the 2007 Drinking Liberally National Conference (DLNC), scheduled for September 14-16 in Des Moines, Iowa

click here

Lee's Summit, Missouri
"My overall view of President Bush is I don't think we could have a better leader" Dwight McGarrah

The bedroom community of about 80,000 just outside Kansas City has a median family income of more than $70,000 and is largely made up of people who are white and well-educated. But while concerns about the war in Iraq, the economy, health care and education are on the minds of many here, a random sampling found few who blame Bush.......more

Progressive Talk Radio – Why not in Tampa?

Many people believe the time has come to have voices heard on our local airwaves other than Rush Limbaugh and his extremist imitators. Several progressive talk radio shows are now available, and most are entertaining and informative. The only way these shows will ever be heard in our area is for our local station managers to know that people are interested.....more

Lawmakers call for Bush impeachment

Two New Mexico lawmakers have introduced a measure calling on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The measure alleges that Bush and Cheney conspired with others to intentionally mislead Congress and the public about the threat posed by Iraq in order to justify the war. It also cites the administration's warrantless wiretapping program and alleges the torture of prisoners and the denial of constitutional rights to enemy combatants.......more

No Impeachment, Prison

Web a hot medium for campaigns

Howard Dean may have been the first presidential candidate to actively use the Internet to advance his candidacy, but it has already become obvious that he won't be the last. What is also becoming obvious is that politicians in the 2008 presidential campaign can -- and will -- use the Web for things Dean may never have considered........more

Love the Warrior, Hate the War
Why progressives have more in common with the military than they think

When Army Col. Ike Wilson returned home in March 2004 from a 12 month deployment in Iraq, one thought remained with him: “Why such a deliberate plan to fight the war, but none to win the peace to follow?”.......more

Attack on Iran would be catastrophe

"It would be absolutely counterproductive, and it would be catastrophic," ElBaradei said at a discussion on nuclear proliferation at the World Economic Forum. The Bush administration in recent weeks has toughened its stance against Iran, which the West has accused of seeking to secretly build an atomic bomb, raising fears among political and business leaders that the U.S. plans an attack.......more

The fragile myth of the deserving rich

"Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is. And so, the schools, the churches, the popular literature taught that to be rich was a sign of superiority, to be poor a sign of personal failure, and that the only way upward for a poor person was to climb into the ranks of the rich by extraordinary effort and extradordinary luck......more