The race for the presidency in Iran was thrown into turmoil on Saturday when one of the top vote getters accused conservative hard-liners of rigging the election and threatened to continue to press his case publicly unless the country's supreme leader ordered an independent investigation - a bold move in a country that does not generally tolerate such forms of public dissent....
...This year, only about $80 billion, or 1 percent, of mortgage debt will switch to an adjustable rate based largely on prevailing interest rates, according to an analysis by Deutsche Bank in New York. Next year, some $300 billion of mortgage debt will be similarly adjusted.
But in 2007, the portion will soar, with $1 trillion of the nation's mortgage debt - or about 12 percent of it - switching to adjustable payments, according to the analysis....
Here's an interesting dilemma. How to turn over power to an army you're not certain will not kill you. It's an occupying force's nightmare. Dead if you do, there forever if you don't.
Ore’s suit: Sherwood beat me
$5.5 million is sought from congressman
By KEVIN AMERMAN
kamerman@leader.net
U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood repeatedly punched and choked a Maryland woman during a “five-year intimate relationship” with her, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Cynthia Ore, 29, of Rockville, Md., says that after each “unprovoked and vicious attack” Sherwood, 64, promised he wouldn’t do it again and begged her leave him, according to the four-count lawsuit filed by Patrick M.not to Regan, a prominent Washington, D.C., attorney.
The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court of the District of Columbia, asks for $5.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages and accuses the congressman of assault and battery, gross negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
It also says Ore plans to pursue obtaining a restraining order against Sherwood, R-Tunkhannock, forbidding him from having contact with her Sherwood assaulted Ore inside his Hill House apartment, a complex occupied mostly by members of Congress, on the morning of June 24, 2004. …
…According to the suit:
Sherwood assaulted Ore inside his Hill House apartment, a complex occupied mostly by members of Congress, on the morning of June 24, 2004.
Sherwood, who is married and has three daughters, struck Ore on her face and body with a closed fist while she attempted to sleep and he began “violently choking her.”
I can't figure out the Wal-Mart employees complacency either. It's some kind of collective death wish. I wish to be ruled. My father, the very humble honey-dipper, would have been red-faced, incensed, and spitting bullets at the thought of being under Wal-Mart's thumb. He would have told his boss to fuck off. But, of course as you point out, there was a vibrant union movement then. Still, he would not have considered that fact one way or the other when in righteous mode. He was proud.
Is that it, personal pride bled out of us?
Wal-Mart institutes availability requirement
New rule requires workers to work any shift or be fired
By Joe Morris
Business Editor
Wal-Mart officials in Cross Lanes told employees on Tuesday they have to start working practically any shift, any day they’re asked, even if they’ve built up years of seniority and can’t arrange child care. ...
...Workers who have had regular shifts at the store for years now have to commit to being available for any shift from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. If they can’t make the commitment by the end of this week, they’ll be fired.
“It shouldn’t cause any problem, if they [store employees] are concerned about their customers,” Knuckles said.
Several single mothers working at the store have no choice now but to quit, said one employee, who would not give her name for fear of retribution.
“My day care closes at 6 and my baby sitter can’t work past 5,” said the employee, a mother of two who has been a cashier for more than three years. Neither of the services is available over the weekends, she added. “I have to be terminated; I don’t know what I’ll do.”...
...“A lot of people were mad and there were women crying — it’s just terrible,” said the worker, who has been at the store six years. “I’ve put up with a few things, but this has got to be the worst thing I’ve seen them do.”...
Either way, serious energy market problems are more than possible even if there's still plenty of hot tasty oil just waiting for the taking if that demand curve is flirting with the production capacity level. It's hard to comprehend the impact on the world economy if even a temporary massive oil price spike combined with some supply disruptions occurs. It's also hard to imagine that such an event won't occur at some point. Long run, however, the future depends on how much oil is out there, how fast worlwide demand is increasing, and how fast new substitutes for oil come into being, either by using existing technologies (wind,nuclear, etc...) or finding new ones.
The president of Gold Star Families for Peace, a mother who lost a son in Iraq, criticized the United States' "illegal and unjust war" yesterday during an interfaith rally in Lexington....
Sheehan ridiculed Bush for saying that it's "hard work" comforting the widow of a soldier who's been killed in Iraq.
"Hard work is seeing your son's murder on CNN one Sunday evening while you're enjoying the last supper you'll ever truly enjoy again. Hard work is having three military officers come to your house a few hours later to confirm the aforementioned murder of your son, your first-born, your kind and gentle sweet baby. Hard work is burying your child 46 days before his 25th birthday. Hard work is holding your other three children as they lower the body of their big (brother) into the ground. Hard work is not jumping in the grave with him and having the earth cover you both," she said.
Since her son's death, Sheehan has made opposition to the Bush administration a full-time job.
"We're watching you very carefully and we're going to do everything in our power to have you impeached for misleading the American people," she said, quoting a letter she sent to the White House. "Beating a political stake in your black heart will be the fulfillment of my life ... ," she said, as the audience of 200 people cheered.
Why is it that we, as a civilization, still seek resolution to international differences by dressing our children in uniform and sending them off to destroy the enemy in face-to-face battle? Aren’t we sophisticated enough to raise the level of conflict above mass destruction? And what constitutes a win when the repercussions are intangible? The impact on these families is astounding, overwhelming, and on so many levels incomprehensible to those of us who haven’t endured their experience. As a good number of us continue to live untouched by the turbulence in Iraq--thank you, Cynthia and Tracy for a brief, yet sobering glimpse of the personal side of war
The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity.
It's not a pretty picture - which is why right-wing partisans try so hard to discredit anyone who tries to explain to the public what's going on.
I've been resisting the idea of encouraging people to donate to party orgs for various reasons. But, the Democrat insider attacks on Howard Dean are, frankly, an attack on all of us.
As Bobbi Flekman told us, "money talks and bullshit walks." So, if you're a wee bit unhappy with the way the spoiled brat Dem insiders are behaving, go give Howard Dean a few bucks.
-Atrios 9:00 PM
In a hypothetical race against the better known of at least two Democratic Senate hopefuls, the poll showed Santorum apparently trailing state Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr., 37 percent to 44 percent. Nineteen percent were undecided.
“The contents of the Downing Street Minutes confirm that the Bush Administration was determined to go to war in Iraq, regardless of whether there was any credible justification for doing so. The Administration distorted and misrepresented the intelligence in its attempt to link Saddam Hussein with the terrorists of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, and with weapons of mass destruction that Iraq did not have.
"In addition, the Downing Street Minutes also confirm what has long been obvious – that the timing of the war was linked to the 2002 Congressional elections, and that the Administration’s planning for post-war Iraq was incompetent in all its aspects. The current continuing crisis is a direct result of that incompetence.
In exchange for our uniformed young people's willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them something important: It is our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary for the security of the country. In the case of Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don't expect untruths from those in power. But that works better as an explanation than as an excuse.
A Los Alamos lab whistleblower scheduled to testify before Congress was lured to a bar and then badly beaten in an attack his wife and lawyer believe was designed to keep him quiet.
Tommy Hook was treated for a fractured jaw and other injuries, according to his wife, Susan Hook. She said the assailants told him during the attack early Sunday that "if you know what's good for you, you'll keep your mouth shut."
Tommy Hook has a pending lawsuit against the University of California alleging whistleblower retaliation. He had been scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee later this month about alleged financial irregularities at the nuclear weapons lab....
The Bush Economy
Published: June 7, 2005
With all of the debate about taxes, the economy and domestic spending, it is hard to imagine anyone supporting the notion of taking money from programs like Medicaid and college-tuition assistance, increasing the tax burden of the vast majority of working Americans, sending the country into crushing debt - and giving the proceeds to people who are so fantastically rich that they don't know what to do with the money they already have. Yet that is just what is happening under the Bush administration. Forget the middle class and the upper-middle class. Even the merely wealthy are being left behind in the dust by the small slice of super-rich Americans.
A CIA scheme to sponsor trainee spies secretly through US university courses has caused anger among UK academics.
The Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program pays anthropology students, whose names are not disclosed, up to $50,000 (£27,500) a year.
They are expected to use the techniques of "fieldwork" to gather political and cultural details on other countries.
Britain's Association of Social Anthropologists called the scholarships ethically "dangerous" and divisive.
