Impeach Bush

Dedicated to exposing the lies and impeachable offenses of George W. Bush.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

The mounting cost of food

March 30, 2008
The mounting cost of food

Next time you restock your pantry, be prepared for sticker shock. The price of wheat has more than tripled during the past 10 months, making Americans' daily bread -- and bagels and pizza and pasta -- feel a little likAnd baked goods aren't the only ones getting more expensive: Experts expect about 80 percent of grocery prices will spike, too, and could remain steep for years because wheat and other grains are used to feed cattle, poultry and dairy cows.

"It's going to affect everything . . . impact on every section of the grocery store," said Michael Bittel, senior vice president of King Arthur Flour Co. in Norwich, Vt.

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Investment firms tapping Fed for billions

March 27, 2008
Investment firms tapping Fed for billions

WASHINGTON - Big Wall Street investment companies are taking advantage of the Federal Reserve's unprecedented offer to secure emergency loans, the central bank reported Thursday.

Those firms averaged $32.9 billion in daily borrowing over the past week from the new lending facility, compared with $13.4 billion the previous week. The program, which began last Monday, is part of the Fed's effort to aid the financial system.

On Wednesday alone, lending reached $37 billion.

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Obama, Clinton Lead McCain

March 27, 2008
Obama, Clinton Lead McCain

Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton hold roughly comparable leads in head-to-head matchups with John McCain. Obama edges McCain by a 49% to 43% margin among registered voters nationwide; Clinton holds an almost identical 49% to 44% edge. Obama and Clinton held similar leads over McCain in late February.

Yet there are positive signs for McCain. He now leads Obama among independent voters by six points. In late February, McCain trailed Obama among independents by seven points.

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ANALYSIS-Iraqi crackdown backfires, strengthens Sadrists

March 31, 2008
ANALYSIS-Iraqi crackdown backfires, strengthens Sadrists

BAGHDAD, March 31 (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's crackdown on militias in the southern oil port of Basra appears to have backfired, exposing the weakness of his army and strengthening his political foes ahead of elections.

U.S. President George W. Bush has praised the crackdown, calling it a "defining moment" for Iraq, but it has unleashed a wave of destabilising violence in southern Iraq and in Baghdad that risks undoing the security improvements of the past year.

It has also exposed a deep rift within Iraq's Shi'ite majority -- between the political parties in Maliki's government and followers of populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.


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Top US housing official resigns

March 31, 2008
Top US housing official resigns

The US housing secretary has resigned amid claims he misused his position.

Critics had been calling for Alphonso Jackson to step down since an FBI investigation into claims of cronyism in awarding housing contracts began.

His resignation comes as the US housing market suffers a slump, with falling prices and high foreclosure rates.

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Bush Aide Resigns for Alleged Wrongdoing

March 28, 2008
Bush Aide Resigns for Alleged Wrongdoing

An aide to President Bush has resigned because of his alleged misuse of grant money from the U.S. Agency for International Development when he worked for a Cuban democracy organization.

Felipe Sixto was promoted on March 1 as a special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and stepped forward on March 20 to reveal his alleged wrongdoing and to resign, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said on Friday. He said Sixto took that step after learning that his former employer, the Center for a Free Cuba, was prepared to initiate legal action against him.


The alleged wrongdoing occurred when Sixto was chief of staff at the center, where he worked for more than three years before moving to the White House.


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Bear Stearns Chairman Cayne Sells $61.3 Mln In Stock

March 27, 2008
Bear Stearns Chairman Cayne Sells $61.3 Mln In Stock

NEW YORK (Reuters) - James Cayne, Chairman of Bear Stearns Cos Inc (BSC.N) sold $61.3 million of his shares of the company according to a filing on Thursday, signaling the bank's shareholders are unlikely to get a higher price for their shares.

JPMorgan agreed earlier this week to increase its original bid for Bear Stearns, which had faced a run on the bank and was close to collapse.

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FBI Focusing on 2001 Anthrax Attacks

March 27, 2008
FBI Focusing on 2001 Anthrax Attacks

WASHINGTON — The FBI has narrowed its focus to "about four" suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.

Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.

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Afghan Farmers Forced to Sell Daughters to Pay Loans

March 27, 2008
Afghan Farmers Forced to Sell Daughters to Pay Loans

The family's heartbreak began when Shah borrowed $2,000 from a local trafficker, promising to repay the loan with 24 kilos of opium at harvest time. Late last spring, just before harvest, a government crop-eradication team appeared at the family's little plot of land in Laghman province and destroyed Shah's entire two and a half acres of poppies. Unable to meet his debt, Shah fled with his family to Jalalabad, the capital of neighboring Nangarhar province. The trafficker found them anyway and demanded his opium. So Shah took his case before a tribal council in Laghman and begged for leniency. Instead, the elders unanimously ruled that Shah would have to reimburse the trafficker by giving Khalida to him in marriage. Now the family can only wait for the 45-year-old drugrunner to come back for his prize. Khalida wanted to be a teacher someday, but that has become impossible. "It's my fate," the child says.

Afghans disparagingly call them "loan brides"—daughters given in marriage by fathers who have no other way out of debt. The practice began with the dowry a bridegroom's family traditionally pays to the bride's father in tribal Pashtun society. These days the amount ranges from $3,000 or so in poorer places like Laghman and Nangarhar to $8,000 or more in Helmand, Afghanistan's No. 1 opium-growing province. For a desperate farmer, that bride price can be salvation—but at a cruel cost. Among the Pashtun, debt marriage puts a lasting stain on the honor of the bride and her family. It brings shame on the country, too. President Hamid Karzai recently told the nation: "I call on the people [not to] give their daughters for money; they shouldn't give them to old men, and they shouldn't give them in forced marriages."


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U.S. Has Little Influence, Few Options in Iraq's Volatile South

March 27, 2008
U.S. Has Little Influence, Few Options in Iraq's Volatile South

As U.S. warplanes attacked targets in Basra yesterday, Bush administration officials acknowledged that their hands-off strategy toward southern Iraq in recent years has left them with little knowledge of the conflicts among competing Shiite groups there and few ways of influencing them.

President Bush yesterday hailed the decision of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to launch a full-scale military offensive against militias in Basra as a "defining moment" for his leadership. But other officials said the administration remains unsure of Maliki's motives and warned that the ongoing battle risks sending the country spiraling back toward the cataclysmic violence levels of 2006 and early 2007.


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PEW: Obama Leads Clinton in Poll

March 27, 2008
PEW: Obama Leads Clinton in Poll

Barack Obama maintains a 49%-39% lead over Hillary Clinton among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, despite heavy media coverage in the past week of Obama's controversial former pastor. Obama's advantage over Clinton is now about the same as it was before his losses in the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas (49%-40%).

Age, race and gender continue to be significant factors in the Democratic race. Obama enjoys strong support among men, younger voters and blacks, while Clinton does well among white women and older voters.

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Areas of Baghdad fall to militias

March 27, 2008
Areas of Baghdad fall to militias

Iraq's Prime Minister was staring into the abyss today after his operation to crush militia strongholds in Basra stalled, members of his own security forces defected and district after district of his own capital fell to Shia militia gunmen.

With the threat of a civil war looming in the south, Nouri al-Maliki's police chief in Basra narrowly escaped assassination in the crucial port city, while in Baghdad, the spokesman for the Iraqi side of the US military surge was kidnapped by gunmen and his house burnt to the ground.

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Catholics Must Get Up Out of the Pew and Walk Out of the Church Forever

March 28, 2008
Catholics Must Get Up Out of the Pew and Walk Out of the Church Forever

Bill Mahr: When Barack Obama didn't hear Reverend Wright say those awful things about America, he still should have rushed the stage, smite Reverend Wright with the cross, and left the church. If there's anything the right wing can agree on, it's that. And that gays are going hell, right after they suck them off in the airport bathroom.

But it raises an obvious question, one that I haven't heard asked, which is strange because it's so obvious: If you leave a church when the head of the church says bad things about America, what do you do when your church hierarchy is caught up in a systematic and decades-long sex abuse scandal? And did I mention the people being sexually abused were children? Hundreds of them?


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Obama Weathers the Wright Storm

March 27, 2008
Obama Weathers the Wright Storm

The videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial sermons and Barack Obama's subsequent speech on race and politics have attracted more public attention than any events thus far in the 2008 presidential campaign. A majority of the public (51%) said they heard "a lot" about the videos, and an even larger percentage (54%) said they heard a lot about Obama's speech, according to the weekly News Interest Index.

Most voters aware of the sermons say they were personally offended by Wright's comments, and a sizable minority (35%) says that their opinion of Obama has grown less favorable because of Wright's statements.

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Federal Reserve offers $100 billion more to commercial banks

March 28, 2008
Federal Reserve offers $100 billion more to commercial banks

WASHINGTON: The Federal Reserve announced Friday it will auction an additional $100 billion (€63.31 billion) in April to cash-strapped banks as it continues to combat the effects of a credit crisis.

The central bank said it would make $50 billion (€31.65 billion) available at each of two auctions, on April 7 and April 21.

Through the end of March, the Fed has provided $260 billion (€164.6 billion) in short-term loans to commercial banks through the innovative auction process. It also has employed Depression-era provisions to provide money to investment banks.

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Iraqi Police Shed Their Uniforms and Switched Side

March 28, 2008
Iraqi Police Shed Their Uniforms and Switched Side

Abu Iman barely flinched when the Iraqi Government ordered his unit of special police to move against al-Mahdi Army fighters in Basra.

His response, while swift, was not what British and US military trainers who have spent the past five years schooling the Iraqi security forces would have hoped for. He and 15 of his comrades took off their uniforms, kept their government-issued rifles and went over to the other side without a second thought.

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Five Former Secretaries of State: Close Guantanamo

March 27, 2008
Five Former Secretaries of State: Close Guantanamo

ATHENS, Ga. - Five former U.S. secretaries of state on Thursday urged the next presidential administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and open a dialogue with Iran.

The former chiefs of American diplomacy, who served in Democratic and Republican administrations, reached a consensus on the two issues at a conference in Athens aimed at giving the next president some bipartisan foreign policy advice. Each of them said shuttering the prison camp in Cuba would bolster America's image abroad.

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5 Years Later: Pundits Who Were Wrong on Iraq Are Silent

March 25, 2008
5 Years Later: Pundits Who Were Wrong on Iraq Are Silent

(March 25, 2008) -- Given the current tragedy in Iraq--hell, given the past five years--you would think the many pundits who agitated for an attack on that country, largely on false pretenses, would have take the opportunity of the arrival of the fifth anniversary of the war (or the 4000 dead milestone) to drop to their knees, at least in print, and beg the American public for forgiveness.

With more than 60 percent of their fellow Americans now calling the war a "mistake" and agitating for troop withdrawals--and the president's approval rating still heading south, thanks to their war--it would seem to be the right thing to do. We won't even mention the maiming of more than 20,000 young Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

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IRAQ: Fever Named After Blackwater

March 26, 2008
IRAQ: Fever Named After Blackwater

FALLUJAH, Mar 26 (IPS) - Iraqi doctors in al-Anbar province warn of a new disease they call "Blackwater" that threatens the lives of thousands. The disease is named after Blackwater Worldwide, the U.S. mercenary company operating in Iraq.

"This disease is a severe form of malarial infection caused by the parasite plasmodium falciparum, which is considered the worst type of malarial infection," Dr. Ali Hakki from Fallujah told IPS. "It is one of the complications of that infection, and not the ordinary picture of the disease. Because of its frequent and severe complications, such as Blackwater fever, and its resistance to treatment, P. falciparum can cause death within 24 hours."

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Western Antarctic ice chunk collapse

March 25, 2008
Western Antarctic ice chunk collapse

WASHINGTON - A chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed, putting an even greater portion of glacial ice at risk, scientists said Tuesday.

Satellite images show the runaway disintegration of a 160-square-mile chunk in western Antarctica, which started Feb. 28. It was the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf and has been there for hundreds, maybe 1,500 years.

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Taxpayers May Be Liable From Bear, Mortgage Rescue

March 26, 2008
Taxpayers May Be Liable From Bear, Mortgage Rescue

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- Even as the Bush administration insists it won't risk public funds in a bailout, American taxpayers may already be liable for billions of dollars stemming from Federal Reserve and Treasury efforts to quell a financial crisis.

History suggests the Fed may not recover some of the almost $30 billion investment in illiquid mortgage securities it received from Bear Stearns Cos., said Joe Mason, a Drexel University professor who has written on banking crises. Treasury's push to have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy more mortgage bonds reduces the capital the government-chartered companies hold in reserve at a time when foreclosures and defaults are surging. Senators are promising to investigate.

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