rmsmith

Many people think that they are against oil drilling in the north for environmental reasons, against the big-box stores that hurt mom-n-pop stores, and against outsourcing of jobs; then they drive their SUV's down to Walmart to buy those low-cost Foreign goods.

Well, there's socialist healthcare for 'ya!

That seditionist should have his U.S. travel visa revoked.

I'd love to see the neo-conservatives get the boot; Rumsfeld can be the first to have the door slap his ass, Wolfowitz second!

Sorry to hear he is in a coma; I was hoping that he would linger...in pain.

Might as well take George Clooney along too. He makes his living casting guns in crime movies, and then blames the NRA for gun violence in America.

I dislike Bush, but I dislike Kerry even more, so I voted for the second amendment. Now if Bush can eject the neo-conservative hawks from his administration... I was surprised by New Mexico, which has been a typical Democratic vote; however, I read about 18-months ago that over 50% of the children born there were to mothers on welfare and out of wedlock. I guess the working stiffs have grown weary of compassion.

The problem today is that all one has to do is send an e-mail from a mosque saying the Golden Gate Bridge looks like a sweet target, and we over-react; cost of the e-mail v. our over-reaction?

What is really disturbing is how the decision process to prosecute the war was wrested from the Army general staff who have the experience and training to produce results with minimal losses. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz can be blamed for this as well as other neo-conservative hawks within the current administration. They ignored crucial evidence and warnings of a humanitarian disaster. The Bush, Clinton, and Bush administration's economic sanctions did little to thwart Saddam's policies of terror against Israel, the Kurds, and Iran, but they did serve to cripple the middle class and whip the poor into an extremist fury. It was folly to think that they would welcome us in Iraq, and the Army general staff expected exactly what our soldiers encountered. I would imagine that morale among the Army general staff is poor these days. I wanted to vomit when I heard Bush in the news say that Rumsfeld is doing a superb job.

I'm absolutely numb this morning. Please post some photos of better times. Blue skies, Chris.

It is years of economic sanctions around the world that ferment hatred and violence; Al Qaeda simply offers the means of an effective response. On the ground in Iraq it is pretty easy to ambush U.S. soldiers and civilian contractors. I don't doubt for a second that they would carry out these relentless attacks on our own soil if it were easy to do so.

The reasons haven't changed at all. Our newspapers have had many articles for the U.S. public to digest that always deflect any blame or criticism away from Israel's struggle with its neighbors. Osama has merely spelled it out for those too dull to see what is going on. I'm surprised that the Saudis have never used their wealth to buy some major American newspaper publishing companies in order to get out a counter-point perspective. Personally, I think that the U.S. shouldn't support any government that doesn't have a clear separation of church and state.

Your getting warm, Milo. Which party does the Pro Israeli influence control? Why do you think Osama is appealing to the people? Do you really think either party can break free of this middle east influence? Only a grass roots uprising can change things since it is political suicide for a politician to even discuss middle east support.

The west has a vast knowledge of the sciences, but we know little about the world's people or customs.

Oil is everything about modern life. Pakistan's father of the bomb, Abdul Kahn was busted recently for selling WMD technology to North Korea and Iran as well as anyone with money to spend. However, Musharif quickly granted him a pardon! We always end up in bed with the worst of friends. BTW, Musharif might control the cities, but he has no power at all in the countryside or mountains.

I agree! The problem is the middle east and our addiction to oil. Don't you love seeing those SUV's with "Support Our Troops" stickers. The public at large doesn't want drilling on the north slope, but they purchase huge SUV's, right? And we can't just buy oil in the middle east like bananas in South America because Israel doesn't want these Muslim countries to have economic power. Bottom line is that the United States economic prosperity is being wasted in the middle east to the tune of $5-Billion per month in Iraq alone. Toss in payments to Israel to pay for military protection of their people's occupation of the West Bank, and the payments to Israel's enemies...Egypt for example. It's simply a huge waste, and there's no end in sight.

How old are you, Rhino?

You're right, another tape just surfaced today, and Osama bin Laden says that 9/11 *was* about American sponsored Israeli treatment of Muslims. I recall many newspaper articles from Pro Israeli Americans saying that 9/11 was not about Israel...never Israel's fault. *** CAIRO, Egypt — Osama bin Laden, injecting himself into the campaign four days ahead of presidential elections, said in a videotape aired today that the United States can avoid another Sept. 11 attack if it stops threatening the security of Muslims. In the segment broadcast, the al-Qaida leader refrained from directly threatening new attacks, although he said "there are still reasons to repeat what happened." "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry, Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands," bin Laden said, referring to the president and his Democratic opponent. "Any state that does not mess with our security, has naturally guaranteed its own security." Admitting for the first time that he ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden said he did so because of injustices against the Lebanese and Palestinians by Israel and the United States. It was the first footage in more than a year of the fugitive al-Qaida leader, thought to be hiding in the mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The video, broadcast on Al-Jazeera television, showed bin Laden with a long gray beard, wearing traditional white robes, a turban and a golden cloak, standing behind a table with papers and in front of a plain, brown curtain. His hands were steady as he spoke and he appeared healthy. The Bush administration said today it believes the videotape was authentic and had been made recently. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the administration did not plan to raise the nation's threat level for now. "All Americans are united in our strength and resolve to defeat the ideology that bin Laden articulates in this tape," McClellan said. "We are doing everything we can to prevail in the war on terrorism." Al-Jazeera said it broadcast one minute of the five-minute tape. The station's spokesman, Jihad Ali Ballout, said they aired what was "newsworthy and relevant" and refused to describe the unaired portions, including whether they included any threats. There was no way to determine when the tape was made — but it offered evidence that bin Laden was alive and actively following events. Sen. John Kerry emerged as the Democratic candidate in the spring. In Florida, Kerry said all Americans are united against bin Laden, adding he would "stop at absolutely nothing to hunt down, capture or kill the terrorists wherever they are, whatever it takes, period." Bin Laden said he wanted to explain why he ordered the suicide airline hijackings that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon so Americans would know how to avoid "another disaster." "To the U.S. people, my talk is to you about the best way to avoid another disaster," he said. "I tell you: security is an important element of human life and free people do not give up their security." He accused President Bush of misleading Americans by saying the attack was carried out because al-Qaida "hates freedom." Bin Laden said his followers have left alone countries that do not threaten Muslims. "We fought you because we are free .... and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours," he said. He said he was first inspired to attack the United States by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon in which towers and buildings in Beirut were destroyed in the siege of the capital. "While I was looking at these destroyed towers in Lebanon, it sparked in my mind that the tyrant should be punished with the same and that we should destroy towers in America, so that it tastes what we taste and would be deterred from killing our children and women," he said. "God knows that it had not occurred to our mind to attack the towers, but after our patience ran out and we saw the injustice and inflexibility of the American-Israeli alliance toward our people in Palestine and Lebanon, this came to my mind," he said. Bin Laden suggested Bush was slow to react to the Sept. 11 attacks, giving the hijackers more time than they expected. At the time of the attacks, the president was listening to schoolchildren in Florida reading a book. "It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone," he said, referring to the number of people who worked at the World Trade Center. "It appeared to him (Bush) that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God," he said. In planning the attacks, bin Laden said he told Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers, that the strikes had to be carried out "within 20 minutes before Bush and his administration noticed." The image of bin Laden reading a statement was dramatically different from the few other videos of the al-Qaida leader that have emerged since the Sept. 11 attacks. In the last videotape, issued Sept. 10, 2003, bin Laden is seen walking through rocky terrain with his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, both carrying automatic rifles. In a taped message issued at the same time, bin Laden praises the "great damage to the enemy" on Sept. 11 and mentions five hijackers by name. In December 2001, the Pentagon released a videotape in which bin Laden is shown at a dinner with associates in Afghanistan on Nov. 9, 2001, saying the destruction of the Sept. 11 attacks exceeded even his "optimistic" calculations. But in none of his previous messages, audio or video, did bin Laden directly state that he ordered the attacks. U.S. authorities have long said they believe bin Laden is hiding in a rugged, mountainous tribal region of Pakistan that borders Afghanistan, but there has been no firm evidence of his whereabouts for three years. The last audiotape purportedly from bin Laden came in April. The speaker on the tape, which CIA analysts said likely was the al-Qaida leader, offered a truce to European nations if they pull troops out of Muslim countries. The tape referred to the March 22 assassination by Israel of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin. Al-Zawahri, bin Laden's Egyptian deputy, has spoken on three recent audiotapes that emerged on June 11, Sept. 9 and Oct. 1 this year. In the latest, he called on young Muslims to strike the United States and its allies.

I used to sleep in my GQ Unit or Pegasus in the packing area at Antioch when I was too wasted to find my van.

So how's the cost of living there in Hollister? I already know that Monterey is out of my reach...not counting a $400k broom closet.

This crossfire has some red and black in it.

Have you sprayed any pesticides or weed posion lately?

Here's an informative article. Historically, the average family could never enter into a mortgage that was 2.5 times your annual household income, but deregulation has produced some fancy fine print.

You're right about this site, and others with copyrighted images such as satellite imagery. I tried saving images here on dropzone with mozilla on linux, and it saves them ok, but it also gives an error message. There's probably some script that the browser's interpreter reads as copy-protected or some such thing. Unfortunately, I'm way out of my depth in this area.

Nope, no conspiracy! I just tried a fresh install of w2k & ie6sp1 in a vmware instance, and the images were rendered as JPG's with ie, but following the security hotfixes (windows update) the images were rendered as BMP's. This is a feature...or bug depending on how you see things.