| Keeping a campaign promise 12,000 American soldiers will be coming home from Iraq in the coming months and will not be replaced, dropping the number of combat brigades in country from 14 to 12. In addition to the American drawdown, all 4000 British soldiers will be out of the country by the end of July.
Stem Cell research ban to be reversed tomorrow On Monday President Obama will sign an executive order lifting the limits on embryonic stem cell research. "Public policy must be guided by sound scientific advice," said Nobel Prize winner Harold Varmus, co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. It's about damned time.
And of course the Wingnut Chorus is setting up a howl about it, which we expected, but Eric Cantor came up with a new stupid reason to delay joining the 21st century..."Why are we going and distracting ourselves from the economy? This is job No. 1. Let's focus on what needs to be done," he told CNN's State of the Union this morning.
Orzag sets the record straight Tired of the idiots in perpetual opposition to everything yammering endlessly about earmarks in the Omnibus Spending bill and blaming the president (who signs legislation, but does not write it) Orzag, appearing on State of the Union argued that the White House has little choice but to sign the bill when it makes it to his desk, and pointed out that the 110th congress and Bush were running the show. "[Such bills] will not happen when the president has the full legislative and appropriations process in place," Orzag told the host, John King.
Let justice rain down, swift and sure A Professor of International Law at Syracuse University said the same principle of law used to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir could also apply to George Bush for authorizing torture. The professor, David Crane, is not just talking out of his hat, either. He was one of the prosecutors in the Sierra Leone tribunal that indicted Liberian President Charles Taylor and put him on trial at The Hague. Richard Dicker, the director of Human Rights Watch said the al-Bashir warrant was likely to fuel discussion about investigations of possible crimes by the Bush administration.
The incredible shrinking (global) economy The World Bank is predicting that the global economy will contract for the first time since WW II, and that trade will be at the lowest level in eight decades. But there's more...it's a veritable hat-trick of bad economic news...the financial crisis will create a multibillion-dollar shortfall of development aid for emerging nations.
Talking points! Get your right-wing talking points here! Tom "the tool" Raum ties them all up with one bow. And by the way - has anyone else noticed that since there is a Democrat in the Oval, everything became his fault at 12:01 pm on January 20 - but everything that went wrong on 43s watch was Clinton's fault? Even the terrorist attack that killed thousands of Americans on September 11, 2001 - even though he was warned in the August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing, and dismissed the briefer with a glib, "Okay, you've covered your ass now," and went back to "clearing brush" for the cameras.
Is G.E. next? The company spent the last week battling rumors that they will be the next mega-corp to need a government bailout because, those fanning the rumors say, they have billions in unacknowledged losses in GE Capital, their finance arm of the company. The CEO insists that they aren't in trouble, so they probably are.
Yoo screwed up...royally. And now he and the rest of the legal eagles who masterminded the imprimatur for torture and war crimes now face some serious blowback as accountability comes knocking in the wake of the legal memos released last week. "I think the legal profession in the United States has been seriously hurt by their conduct," said Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University. He called the disputed legal opinions "sloppy, one-sided and incompetent" and added, "There has to be accountability."
The dollar is rising - and while that is good for us, it's bad for the global economy As Americans pull their money out of foreign ventures and bring their dollars home and put them in government bonds, it lifts the value of the dollar at a time we desperately need it as we funnel trillions into rescuing banks, but it exacerbates the problems in confidence and capital abroad. |
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Best New SoapBlox - 2008
