What's News?

**gus danger** · July 12th, 2008, 04:11 AM

Hey folks, I am now closing the GIVE PEACE A CHANCE political topic, so it will decend into the archives,
and I'm opening this new one called WHAT'S NEWS?.

It can be used as our new catch-all topic, for recent news items or, basically, anything
you happen to have on your mind, and would like to share, or conversate about.

I intend to continue talking about that **** , in the White House, as the death toll rises, in his war of choice!

Let's hope for peace!
flaggen05

Gus

**gus danger** · July 12th, 2008, 04:24 AM

Day 1900 since "mission accomplished" was declared by that *******.
The U.S. death toll is now 4118. That's 118 since Easter Sunday!

And let's not forget the wounded, the majority of which have totally devastating injuries that they could never have survived in previous wars.
The marvels of modern medicine should not minimize the toll this "war" is taking, in our minds!

U.S. Wounded By Month

Period//Wounded

Apr-2008 323
Mar-2008 326
Feb-2008 215
Jan-2008 234
Dec-2007 212
Nov-2007 203
Oct-2007 297
Sep-2007 361
Aug-2007 565
Jul-2007 616
Jun-2007 754
May-2007 658
Apr-2007 653
Mar-2007 618
Feb-2007 519
Jan-2007 647
Dec-2006 706
Nov-2006 548
Oct-2006 781
Sep-2006 791
Aug-2006 592
Jul-2006 525
Jun-2006 459
May-2006 444
Apr-2006 434
Mar-2006 499
Feb-2006 343
Jan-2006 289
Dec-2005 414
Nov-2005 399
Oct-2005 607
Sep-2005 545
Aug-2005 541
Jul-2005 478
Jun-2005 512
May-2005 571
Apr-2005 598
Mar-2005 371
Feb-2005 413
Jan-2005 497
Dec-2004 544
Nov-2004 1,431
Oct-2004 650
Sep-2004 709
Aug-2004 895
Jul-2004 552
Jun-2004 588
May-2004 759
Apr-2004 1,215
Mar-2004 324
Feb-2004 150
Jan-2004 187
Dec-2003 263
Nov-2003 336
Oct-2003 413
Sep-2003 247
Aug-2003 181
Jul-2003 226
Jun-2003 147
May-2003 55
Apr-2003 340
Mar-2003 208
Total 29,978

This madness must end!
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GD

[ July 12, 2008 01:43 AM: Message edited by: gus danger ]

**gus danger** · July 13th, 2008, 04:19 PM

By KAREN AUGE and JOHN INGOLD

ARMED with new DNA evidence that points to an unknown male as JonBenet Ramsey?s killer, the Boulder District Attorney in Denver took the extraordinary step this week of publicly exonerating the child?s parents and family in her 1996 death.

In a letter hand-delivered to John Ramsey, JonBenet?s father, Mary Lacy said she was confident the DNA belonged to the killer.

?Significant new evidence ... convinces us that it is appropriate, given the circumstances of this case, to state that we do not consider your immediate family, including you, your wife, Patsy, and your son, Burke, to be under any suspicion in the commission of this crime,? Lacy wrote.

Patsy Ramsey died in June 2006 after battling ovarian cancer for more than a decade.

The exoneration is an unusual move, particularly when no other suspect has been identified, observers said, but one that could potentially aid any future prosecution.

Legal analysts have long said the Ramseys have been identified as suspects so widely and for so long that if anyone else is ever charged in the case, prosecutors would not only have to prove that person?s guilt, but also the Ramseys? innocence.

Lacy also offered an apology to Ramsey.

?To the extent that we may have contributed in any way to the public perception that you might have been involved in this crime, I am deeply sorry,? Lacy wrote.

?We intend in the future to treat you as the victims of this crime, with the sympathy due you because of the horrific loss you suffered.?

JonBenet was six years old and in kindergarten when her body was found in her parents? basement in Boulder on the day after Christmas in 1996. She had been strangled and her skull had been fractured.

John Ramsey said he was ?grateful for the acknowledgement that we are innocent?.

But, he said, ?the most important thing is now we have very very solid evidence that could lead us to the killer?.

It has long been known that DNA evidence recovered from JonBenet?s underpants did not match samples taken from family members.

Now, using an emerging forensic method known as ?touch DNA? analysis, a private lab determined that genetic material left on the waistband of long johns JonBenet was wearing when her body was found matches the DNA left in her underwear.

?Unexplained DNA on the victim of a crime is powerful evidence,? Lacy wrote.

?The match of male DNA on two separate items of clothing worn by the victim at the time of the murder makes it clear to us that an unknown male handled these items.?

Whoever left that genetic material behind is probably the killer, Lacy said in her letter.

Four months after JonBenet?s murder, then- District Attorney Alex Hunter publicly acknowledged that her parents were suspects.

?Obviously, the focus is on these people,? Hunter said of John and Patsy Ramsey. ?You can call them what you want to.?

Soon afterwards, Boulder Police Commander Mark Beckner, who is now the city?s police chief, coined the now-famous phrase ?under an umbrella of suspicion? to describe the couple.

From the beginning, Boulder Police were under their own umbrella of suspicion ? accused of having botched the investigation, when officers searched the house but failed to find the child?s body in the basement.

For six hours, police, the Ramseys and their friends filled the house, walking around, leaving trails of fingerprints and DNA in their wake, waiting for a kidnapper?s phone call that never came.

In an interview this week with 9News, John Ramsey recalled those hours as among the worst of the family?s ordeal.

It was Ramsey himself, and a family friend, who found her body on a second search of the basement. A cord, with a broken paint-brush handle at the end, was tied around her neck. Her hands were also bound and police suspect she had been sexually assaulted, but that her body had been wiped clean to destroy evidence.

Ramsey carried her upstairs, and a Boulder police detective covered the body with a blanket, possibly destroying crucial evidence.

Within months, the bizarre murder spawned networks of JonBenet junkies who posted pictures of her on the Internet, most often in sequins and makeup, performing in a child beauty pageant. The complete autopsy report, even photos from the autopsy, are splashed across cyberspace.

But no piece of evidence, except the unidentified DNA, captured more attention than the unusual ransom note Patsy Ramsey told police she found at the bottom of the stairs in the family?s home.

The note, handwritten on a legal pad most likely from inside the home, claimed that JonBenet had been kidnapped by a ?small foreign faction?, and demanded R900000 (118000) in ransom.

The strange ransom amount was the exact amount that John Ramsey?s Boulder company had paid him as a bonus that year.

Handwriting analysis ruled out John Ramsey as the note?s author, but could not eliminate Patsy Ramsey.

After that, suspicion narrowed to Patsy Ramsey. A detective who worked on the investigation for a time wrote a book about the case in which he asserted that Patsy Ramsey killed JonBenet because the child had wet the bed.

This week John Ramsey speculated that people wanted to believe her parents killed JonBenet because ?people want an answer to that horrendous crime. It?s hard for people to accept that someone would come into a home and murder a child. We were perhaps an answer?. ? ? (2008) New York Times Partner Publications

I always believed that the Ramseys were innocent and were being "Richard Jewelled" by an increasingly inept news media, "reporting" what the do not know!

R.I.P. Patsy and JonBenet

**home girl** · July 13th, 2008, 05:45 PM

Them poor people i don't think i could handle what they went through.

**gus danger** · July 16th, 2008, 02:45 AM

I can't imagine how her parents felt. They lost their precious daughter, like that, and then were accused, unmercifully, of being her killers, for all these years.
Patsy went to her grave, branded guilty of murdering her own little girl. Hopefully, they met in heaven and she was able to learn the truth from JonBenet.
It went way beyond suspicion and the media and the poor excuses for "investigators" should be ashamed of themselves but I seriously doubt they are.
They only care about their ratings and book sales.

Abusing the first ammendment has become a way of life for cable pundits with too much time to fill!
And the cops who pointed their fingers, to make a name for themselves, are scum!

The Ramseys, Richard Jewell, Gary Condit, Howard K, Stern! The list goes on and on and the false accusers become millionaires doing what they do, which is disgusting!

IMO
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GD

**gus danger** · July 21st, 2008, 03:43 AM

Day 1908 since "mission accomplished" was declared by that *******.
The U.S. death toll, in Iraq, is now 4125.
That's 7 more, since last weekend!

The death toll is rising faster, all the time, in Afghanistan too!

Coalition Military Fatalities By Year
Year US Other Total
2008 83 62 145
2007 117 115 232
2006 98 93 191
2005 99 31 130
2004 52 6 58
2003 48 9 57
2002 49 20 69
2001 12 0 12
Total 558 336 894

Sadly, if our war criminal-in-chief hadn't sent all our troops into that Iraqi quagmire,
the war in Afghanistan would have been over, a long time ago!

Kudos to Dennis Kasinich for not giving up on the impeachment issue!
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Gus

**gus danger** · July 22nd, 2008, 02:55 AM

?Shannen Doherty will be returning to 90210,? Gabe Sachs, executive producer of the CW?s new spin-off, said during the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills on Saturday.

?Shannen is looking forward to returning to 90210,? Doherty?s rep told PEOPLE magazine, exclusively.

Doherty, who played the twin sister to Jason Priestley?s character Brandon Walsh for four seasons of the original Beverly Hills, 90210, will return as Brenda Walsh when the new show premieres Sept. 2.

Now, Brenda will be a visiting drama teacher who directs a musical at West Beverly High School.

Jennie Garth was the first original 90210 cast member to reprise her role as Kelly Taylor, who will be a counselor at West Beverly.

Earlier this month, Tori Spelling, who played Donna Martin in the original, was also announced as a returning cast member but said she would be unable to appear in the pilot of the spin-off after giving birth to her daughter in June.

?I?m looking forward to returning to 90210 in a later episode,? Spelling told PEOPLE earlier this month.

According to Sachs, original cast members won?t just have cameos. ?They will be in multiple episodes,? he said at the TCA event.

I never liked 90210 THAT much but my kids watched it and I thought Shannen Doherty was a gifted child actress, even before she was cast as Brenda. I've "sort of" followed her career, since then, and will probably check this new show out, because she'll be in it!

What say you?!?!
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Gus

**Sportyfan** · July 23rd, 2008, 03:30 AM

That you need to put the pipe down and just walk away Gus!

Actually I thought she was a talented actress that unfortunately can't keep from imploding. If memory serves she's been kicked off every show she's been on starting with 90210. Wonder how long she'll last this time?

**gus danger** · August 2nd, 2008, 03:36 PM

Think Progress_by Faiz on Jul 31st, 2008

Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh ? a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker ? revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President?s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.

In Hersh?s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The ?meeting took place in the Vice-President?s office. ?The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,?? according to one of Hersh?s sources.

During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney?s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don?t we build ? we in our shipyard ? build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can?t have Americans killing Americans. That?s the kind of ? that?s the level of stuff we?re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

Hersh argued that one of the things the Bush administration learned during the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz was that, ?if you get the right incident, the American public will support? it.

?Look, is it high school? Yeah,? Hersh said. ?Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We?re playing, you know, who?s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.?

Transcript:

HERSH: There was a meeting. Among the items considered and rejected ? which is why the New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it wasn?t accepted ? one of the items was why not?

There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don?t we build ? we in our shipyard ? build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives.

And it was rejected because you can?t have Americans killing Americans. That?s the kind of ? that?s the level of stuff we?re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

So I can understand the argument for not writing something that was rejected ? uh maybe. My attitude always towards editors is they?re mice training to be rats.

But the point is jejune, if you know what that means. Silly? Maybe. But potentially very lethal. Because one of the things they learned in the incident was the American public, if you get the right incident, the American public will support bang-bang-kiss-kiss. You know, we?re into it.

?What happened in the Gulf was, in the Straits, in early January, the President was just about to go to the Middle East for a visit. So that was one reason they wanted to gin it up. Get it going.

Look, is it high school? Yeah. Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We?re playing, you know, who?s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.

Update Kevin Drum adds:

If this story sounds familiar, that's because it is. In one of David Manning's famous memos describing a prewar meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair, he says that Bush admitted that WMD was unlikely to be found in Iraq and then mused on some possible options for justifying a war anyway:

"The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

In the end, of course, we didn't do this. We just didn't bother with any pretext at all.
_____________________________________

In my opinion, Dick Cheney is insane!
Who knows what he is planning for our October surprise?!?!
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GD