bush insists outsourcing good for us

with this speech, Bush wins the gold medal for stupidity.


Bush insists outsourcing to India has its benefits
By Jim Puzzanghera
Mercury News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - To people in Silicon Valley and around the country concerned about the outsourcing of jobs to India, President Bush on Wednesday offered something to make the practice more palatable.

Pizza.

It's just one of the U.S. products that India's rapidly growing middle class is developing an appetite for, Bush said in a speech to the Asia Society as he prepares for a trip to India and Pakistan next month. While acknowledging the individual trauma of Americans who lose jobs when companies move operations abroad, Bush said India's economic growth is an overall plus for the U.S. economy.
...

radiation spike blamed on DU shells

it's a small planet, and what goes around comes around.

The Sunday Times February 19, 2006
UK radiation jump blamed on Iraq shells
Mark Gould and Jon Ungoed-Thomas

RADIATION detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the “shock and awe” bombing campaign against Iraq, according to a report.

Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain.

Government officials, however, say the sharp rise in uranium detected by radiation monitors in Berkshire was a coincidence and probably came from local sources.

The results from testing stations at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Aldermaston and four other stations within a 10-mile radius were obtained by Chris Busby, of Liverpool University’s department of human anatomy and cell biology.

Each detector recorded a significant rise in uranium levels during the Gulf war bombing campaign in March 2003. The reading from a park in Reading was high enough for the Environment Agency to be alerted.

Busby, who has advised the government on radiation and is a founder of Green Audit, the environmental consultancy, believes “uranium aerosols” from Iraq were widely dispersed in the atmosphere and blown across Europe.

“This research shows that rather than remaining near the target as claimed by the military, depleted uranium weapons contaminate both locals and whole populations hundreds to thousands of miles away,” he said.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) countered that it was “unfeasible” depleted uranium could have travelled so far. Radiation experts also said that other environmental sources were more likely to blame.

The “shock and awe” campaign was one of the most devastating assaults in modern warfare. In the first 24-hour period more than 1,500 bombs and missiles were dropped on Baghdad.

During the conflict A10 “tankbuster” planes — which use munitions containing depleted uranium — fired 300,000 rounds. The substance — dubbed a “silver bullet” because of its ability to pierce heavy tank armour — is controversial because of its potential effect on human health. Critics say it is chemically toxic and can cause cancer, and Iraqi doctors reported a marked rise in cancer cases after it was used in the first Gulf conflict.

The American and British governments say depleted uranium is relatively harmless, however. The Royal Society, the UK’s academy of science, has also said the risk from depleted uranium is “very low” for soldiers and people in a conflict zone.

Busby’s report shows that within nine days of the start of the Iraq war on March 19, 2003, higher levels of uranium were picked up on five sites in Berkshire. On two occasions, levels exceeded the threshold at which the Environment Agency must be informed, though within safety limits. The report says weather conditions over the war period showed a consistent flow of air from Iraq northwards.

Brian Spratt, who chaired the Royal Society’s report, cast doubt on depleted uranium as a source but said it could have come from natural uranium in the massive amounts of soil kicked up by shock and awe.
...

drunk driver given one more chance

another chance to kill someone. he doesn't deserve any more chances like that. he needs to do some serious jail time. AND we need to adopt technology to PREVENT people from driving without a license.

Notorious Bad Driver Gets Year in Prison
Friday, February 3, 2006
(02-03) 19:23 PST Mandan, N.D. (AP) --

A man convicted more than 40 times of drunken driving or driving without a valid license has been sentenced to a year in jail, a day after his arrest on yet another driving charge.

Craig Irwin, 45, of Mandan, was sentenced Friday for a driving under revocation offense last year. He was arrested Thursday on charges of driving under revocation and having no liability insurance.
...

Irwin is not scheduled to get his driver's license back for at least 35 years. State records show that he has had more than 100 citations for driving infractions in the last 22 years, and has not been allowed to drive legally for 20 years.

Irwin told Jorgensen on Friday that he has a drinking problem.

Jorgensen's sentence allows Irwin to knock one day off his jail time for every day he spends in treatment.

"I'm going to grant you a chance," the judge said.
...

two ejected for "protest" t-shirts at SOTU speech

the world must have gone mad. a war criminal has the microphone, and spreads his deadly lies unmolested, applauded, and fawned-over; while silent truth-tellers are hauled off lest they disturb the emperor's "beautiful" mind. these arrests say more about the real "state" of our union, than anything the chimp might have uttered.

Police remove two from State of the Union address
By LAURIE KELLMAN
Associated Press Writer
February 01. 2006 11:00AM

[AP Photo/The Washington Times, Allison Shelley
Security escorts Peace activist Cindy Sheehan from the U.S. House of Representatives before President Bush's State of the Union address on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2006, in Washington. Sheehan, the mother of a fallen U.S. soldier in Iraq who reinvigorated the anti-war movement, was arrested and removed from the gallery, a police spokeswoman said.]

Cindy Sheehan, mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq, wasn't the only one ejected from the House gallery during the State of the Union address for wearing a T-shirt with a war-related slogan that violated the rules. The wife of a powerful Republican congressman was also asked to leave.

Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida - chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee - was removed from the gallery because she was wearing a T-shirt that read, "Support the Troops - Defending Our Freedom."

"Because she had on a shirt that someone didn't like that said support our troops, she was kicked out of this gallery," Young said on the House floor Wednesday morning, holding up the gray shirt.

"Shame, shame," he scolded.
...

"They said I was protesting," she told the St. Petersburg Times. "I said, "Read my shirt, it is not a protest.' They said, 'We consider that a protest.' I said, 'Then you are an idiot.'"

They told her she was being treated the same as Sheehan, a protester ejected before the speech Tuesday night for wearing a T-shirt with an antiwar slogan. Sheehan wrote in her blog Wednesday that she intends to file a First Amendment lawsuit.
...

Capitol Police took Sheehan, invited as a guest of Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., away in handcuffs and charged her with unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor. She later was released on her own recognizance.

Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said police warned her that such displays were not allowed in the House chamber, but Sheehan did not respond.
...

In her blog, Sheehan wrote that her T-shirt said, "2245 Dead. How many more?" - a reference to the number of soldiers killed in Iraq.
...

She said she had one arm out of her coat when an officer yelled, "Protestor."

"He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs," she wrote. She was then cuffed and driven to police headquarters a few blocks away.

"I was never told that I couldn't wear that shirt into the Congress," Sheehan wrote. "I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things...I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later."

Sheehan was arrested in September with about 300 other anti-war activists in front of the White House after a weekend of protests against the war in Iraq. In August, she spent 26 days camped near Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he was spending a working vacation.