warpedskydiver

If I remember correctly, the Dems had us a surplus until repubs came and shit it away. Uh no, we still had a trade imbalance and did not pay off our nations foreign debts. I'm libertarian But I have and will continue to vote for the candidate that scares me the least.

I do not agree with any of the options provided.

Ok, some guy is good enough info when you agree? Bill you are an engineer, do you think carpenters here are that knowledgeable about power generation and distribution?

aware

Camp Roberts was a MOFO in august back in the day.

Surgery Forces Castro to Cede Power Tuesday, August 1, 2006 6:48 AM EDT The Associated Press By ANITA SNOW Listen to Audio HAVANA (AP) — Little was known of Fidel Castro's condition Tuesday after he underwent an operation and temporarily turned over the Cuban presidency to his brother Raul, ushering in a period of uncertainty at home and celebrations by his enemies abroad. The surprise announcement that Castro had been operated on to repair a "sharp intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding" stunned Cubans on the island and in exile, and marked the first time that Castro, two weeks away from 80th birthday, had relinquished power in 47 years of absolute rule. The news came Monday night in a statement read on state television by his secretary Carlos Valenciaga. The message said Castro's condition was apparently due to stress from a heavy work schedule during recent trips to Argentina and eastern Cuba. He did not appear on the broadcast. Castro, who took control of Cuba in 1959, resisted repeated U.S. attempts to oust him and survived communism's demise elsewhere, said he was temporarily handing over the presidency and the leadership of Cuba's Communist Party to his brother, Raul. Raul Castro, Cuba's defense minister who turned 75 in June, also did not appear on television and made no statement on his own. For decades the constitutional successor to his brother, Raul Castro has assumed a more public profile in recent weeks. Fidel Castro last appeared in public Wednesday as he marked the 53rd anniversary of his July 26 barracks assault that launched the revolution. The Cuban leader seemed thinner than usual and somewhat weary during a pair of long speeches in eastern Cuba. "The operation obligates me to undertake several weeks of rest," Castro's letter read. Extreme stress "had provoked in me a sharp intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding that obligated me to undergo a complicated surgical procedure." The calm delivery of the announcement appeared to signal that there would be an orderly succession should Fidel become permanently incapacitated. Cuban exiles celebrated in the streets of Miami, but Havana's streets were quiet overnight as Cubans awaited further word on Castro's condition. It was unknown when or where the surgery took place, or where Castro was recovering. Ongoing intestinal bleeding can be serious and potentially life-threatening, said Dr. Stephen Hanauer, gastroenerology chief at the University of Chicago hospitals. He said it was difficult to deduce the cause of Castro's bleeding without knowing what part of the digestive tract was affected. Ulcers are a common cause of bleeding in the stomach or upper intestine, while a condition called diverticulosis also can provoke bleeding in the lower intestine, especially in people over age 60, said Hanauer. He said this condition involves weakened spots in the intestinal lining that form pouches, which can become inflamed and provoke bleeding. Fidel seemed optimistic of recovery, asking that celebrations scheduled for his 80th birthday on Aug. 13 be postponed until Dec. 2, the 50th anniversary of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces. With Havana's streets calm, an electronic news ticker at the U.S. diplomatic mission provided the only clue that something dramatic had occurred inside Cuba's government: "All Cubans, including those under the dictatorship, can count on our help and support. We respect the wishes of all Cubans." Waiters at a popular cafe in Old Havana were momentarily stunned by the news, but quickly returned to work. "He'll get better, without a doubt," said Agustin Lopez, 40. "There are really good doctors here, and he's extremely strong." But Martha Beatriz Roque, a leading Cuban government opponent in Havana, said she believed Castro must be gravely ill to have stepped aside — even temporarily. "No one knows if he'll even be alive Dec. 2 when he's supposed to celebrate his birthday," she said in a telephone interview. She said opposition members worried they could be targeted for repression during a government change — especially if authorities fear civil unrest. White House spokesman Peter Watkins said U.S. authorities were monitoring the situation: "We can't speculate on Castro's health, but we continue to work for the day of Cuba's freedom." Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Castro's strongest international ally, was the first foreign leader to react to the news, expressing his distress during a visit to Vietnam. He said he called the Cuban leader's office after hearing the news. "Waking up this morning and receiving that news, you may see what feeling one would have toward a good friend," Chavez said Tuesday morning. "When there is such an announcement, it's worrisome." "We wish President Fidel Castro will recover rapidly," Chavez said. "Viva Fidel Castro." Across the Florida straits in Miami, exiles waved Cuban flags on Little Havana's Calle Ocho, shouting "Cuba! Cuba! Cuba!" as drivers honked their horns. Over nearly five decades, hundreds of thousands of Cubans have fled Castro's rule, many of them settling in Miami. Castro has been in power since the Jan. 1, 1959 triumph of the armed revolution that drove out dictator Fulgencio Batista. He has been the world's longest-ruling head of government and his ironclad rule has ensured Cuba's place among the world's five remaining communist countries, along with China, Vietnam, Laos and North Korea. Castro resisted U.S. demands for multiparty elections and an open economy and insisted his socialist system would long outlive him. The son of a prosperous plantation owner, Castro's official birthday is Aug. 13, 1926, although some say he was born a year later. Talk of Castro's mortality was taboo until June 23, 2001, when he fainted during a speech in the sun. Although Castro quickly recovered, many Cubans understood for the first time that their leader would eventually die. Castro shattered a kneecap and broke an arm when he fell after a speech on Oct. 20, 2004, but laughed off rumors about his health, most recently a 2005 report he had Parkinson's disease. But the Cuban president also said he would not insist on remaining in power if he ever became too sick to lead: "I'll call the (Communist) Party and tell them I don't feel I'm in condition ... that please, someone take over the command." ——— Associated Press writers Vanessa Arrington in Havana, Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami, Tran Van Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner in Chicago contributed to this report.

Ger the runs at the border, taco bell has your order.

@1200 rpm I would say possibly 30mph Dammit I was driving! I swear!! I was cruisin' down the road when that pic was snapped!! And I swear on my dead granny's grave that i have NO CLUE how fast I was going!! I did take another snap....attached.

I did not say it was a great idea, I just was saying it can be done.

We now have the AIM 152

Side note - Iraqi government death squads are becoming more and more of a problem; they're being a lot more brazen about it, and more witnesses are living to tell about the abductions and killings. It will be interesting when they start tangling with US troops. Um death squads leave witnesses?...wow they aren't very good or very smart huh?

Has Israel conducted a test? N. Korea? None needed, a computer will suffice.

That I believe is closest to the truth

Oh I am sutre those detainees would never do something they view as despicable.

OK. I guess I have to spell it it out AGAIN> If G8 and the fuckin powers that be (the big corps.) would stop trying to TAKE OVER THE FUKIN WORLD and kill the planet in the process maybe they woudn't fuck w/ us. Food for thought If you think those are the only reasons we are attacked, and also hated, you are sorrowly mistaken.

Meanwhile real offenders go unchallenged. JFC are you happy now?...gonna call the typo SWAT team?

Hroes are people who survived doing miraculous things, not an athlete who cashes his paycheck.

Maybe he was hoping they would all just do each other

I could use some cash

15 million? Is this a guaranteed payment? and if so what is the USDOJ stance on this? I am serious does anyone know?

Just FYI - According to the newspaper this morning, one of the women shot was a Christian woman who worked in Administration. We're also reading that the guy was certified bipolar and not taking his meds. He was also out on bail for standing on a machine at a mall and exposing himself to some women. Quote BOTH

How can you count those as terrorist attacks, in Iraq we have placed ourselves on the battlefield with the terrorists in an effort to draw them into the fight. That's not a terrorist attack, it's called combat. You are right about how the majority of those attacks in the list though were against soldiers, kind of funny how the US public couldn't give two shits less about the loss of a few soldiers, but when civilians get attacked its horrible. Oh wait, I forgot, we're soldiers, we're expendable and mean nothing to the public we protect Sadly most people really seem to feel that way. Oh yeah they bought a yellow ribbon and now they are absolved of having to serve their country, that is for someone else or somebody elses kid to do. What a bunch of fuckwads.

It causes me to loose sleep when we agree, Professor. I was stationed in Europe in the mid-70's. Then, it was the Bader-Meinhoff gang shooting at us. Whose fault was that? There will always be fanatics and targets of opportunity. Quote Didn't you just love those rascals? I used to sleep less than a quarter of a mile away from their politcal headquarters(sure they were politicians just like Hamas and Hezb'allah) Those rotten fuckers weren't nearly as bad as what we have now, nice huh?

I would bet NO

Will Cuban Oil Find Break U.S. Embargo? Saturday, July 29, 2006 12:27 PM EDT The Associated Press By TODD LEWAN MIAMI (AP) — Some facts about America's trade embargo with Cuba: — It's been U.S. policy since 1961. — It has yet to loosen Fidel Castro's grip on power. — It has cost America little strategically or economically. Until now, that is. From here on out, say a growing chorus of experts, America will pay a price for maintaining its 45-year trade ban with the communist nation — a strategic and economic price that will have negative repercussions for the United States in the decades to come. What has changed the equation? Oil. To be more specific, recent, sizable discoveries of it in the North Cuba Basin — deep-water fields that have already drawn the interest of companies from China, India, Norway, Spain, Canada, Venezuela and Brazil. This, in turn, has reheated debate in the U.S. Congress and the Cuban-American community on an old question: Has the time finally come to shelve the embargo — given America's need for more sources of crude at a time of rising gas prices, soaring global demand and the outbreak of war in the Middle East? Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, an expert on Cuba energy matters and a political science professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, says America's thirst for oil will soon force a fundamental change in Washington's relations with Havana. "I've always argued that we would keep the Cuban embargo in place until we got to the point where it started to cost us something." Today, he adds, "we're almost there." Says Phil Peters, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, Va., that defends limited government and free trade, and a Cuba expert: "If Cuba discovers a lot of oil and becomes an oil exporter, the embargo almost becomes an absurdity." Kirby Jones, founder and president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association in Washington, D.C., which has long sought an end to the trade ban, says the reality of Cuba as an oil producer makes the embargo too costly a policy to keep. "Our choice is: Are we going to let those other countries take that oil? Or are we going to look at our strategic interests and recognize that very close to our shores is a substantial quantity of oil that is going to be exploited?" Cuba has been oil hunting, not always successfully, for decades. With Soviet help, it discovered the Varadero Oil Field in 1971. This reservoir, within 5 miles of Cuba's northern coast, today yields about 40 percent of Cuba's total production — roughly 75,000 barrels a day of poor-quality, heavy, sour crude. In July 2004, however, the Spanish oil company Repsol-YPF, in partnership with Cuba's state oil company, CUPET, identified five fields it classified as "high-quality" in the deep water of the Florida Straits, 20 miles northeast of Havana. Seven months later, a report by the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed it: The North Cuba Basin held a substantial quantity of oil — 4.6 billion to 9.3 billion barrels of crude and 9.8 trillion to 21.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Cuba wasted no time, dividing the 74,000 square mile (120,000 square kilometer) area into 59 exploration blocks, and then welcoming foreign oil conglomerates with offers of production-sharing agreements. Oil companies from China and Canada, already prospecting for oil along Cuba's coast, began talks with Cuban energy officials about investments in deep-water operations. Then, in May, Spain's Repsol-YPF announced it was partnering with India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp., and Norsk Hydro ASA of Norway to explore for oil and gas in six of the 59 deep-water blocks along Cuba's maritime border with the United States. (Sherritt International Corp., the Canadian oil company, has acquired exploration rights in four of the deep-sea blocks.) That raised the eyebrows of many an oil executive, says Jorge Pinon, a former senior executive with Amoco Oil and a research associate at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. Norsk and ONGC are among a select group of companies with deep-water know-how and technology, so when they signed on with the Spanish, "everyone else said, 'Maybe we better take a look at Cuba again.'" The U.S. Congress certainly has. In May, with much fanfare, Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, introduced twin bills to the House and Senate that would exempt Big Oil from the embargo. Before introducing his legislation, Craig told a reporter that "prohibition on trade with Cuba has accomplished just about zero." Ominously, he added: "China, as we speak, has a drilling rig off the coast of Cuba." (The senator failed to mention that the Chinese are working in shallow water near Cuba's shore, and possess neither the technology nor the expertise to tap Cuba's promising deep-water reserves.) Regardless, the bills represent the best chance yet to "punch a big hole into the embargo," says Johannes Werner, editor of Cuba Trade & Investment News, published in Sarasota, Fla. That scenario raises the hackles of the conservative, and highly influential, Cuban-American voting lobby of south Florida — not exactly what President Bush, or his brother, Jeb, who occupies the governor's mansion in Florida, would prefer three months before midterm elections. Says Alfredo Mesa, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami: "Those who would advocate for ... allowing U.S. companies to drill off Cuba lose sight of how that would damage our ability to press the Cuban government on other issues, such as human rights." Environmentalists are also squarely set against oil-industry access to Cuba, though for different reasons. Oil spills — even routine toxic pollution from drilling — could pollute the Everglades and Florida's most economically important beaches, they say, and wreck the state's tourism industry. Thanks to Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Rep. Jim Davis, D-Fla., they, too, have measures in Congress for which to cheer: twin bills that would deny U.S. visas to executives of foreign companies that drill for oil in Cuban waters. Nelson's bill would undo a 1977 maritime boundary agreement between the countries that bisects the Straits of Florida and allows Cuba to perform commercial activities (e.g., oil drilling) near the Florida Keys. It's not clear how this could keep the Cubans from exploiting waters closer to their shores than America's. One semiofficial response from Cuba, an editorial by the state-run Prensa Latina newswire, called the measures "extraterritorial." How likely is it that Congress will act? "If the oil industry continues to sit on the fence as it has been — not too likely, especially with this administration and Congress," says Werner, editor of the Cuba trade newsletter. "But there are elections in November, which could change the whole equation." Peters, of the Lexington Institute, agrees. "I think if you call (oil companies) up and ask them, 'What is your position on this?' they'd say yes, we're behind an exemption in the embargo. But I'm not sure if they would get behind it in a major way yet." In response to queries from The Associated Press, the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, D.C., the industry's lobbying arm, issued this statement: "We cannot speak to individual interest in Cuba, but we can say that API members are more focused on expanding access on the U.S. portion of the outer continental shelf, which is much closer to the existing pipeline network and where they have more information about oil and natural gas reserves." All of this is still somewhat premature, says Pinon, the former oil executive and research associate. "We are still three to five years away from commercializing any of those Cuban reserves." There is at least an 18-month backlog on the leasing of deep-water rigs, he says, and "crude oil is worth zero if you can't move it or process it. Even if they find the oil, what are they going to do with it?" Benjamin-Alvarado, a regular visitor to Cuba who has been following that nation's energy development for 15 years, concurs. Cuba, he says, needs help "downstreaming" — upgrading its ports, refineries and maintenance equipment. Already, though, Venezuela's state oil monopoly, PDVSA, has signed a $100 million deal to revamp Cuba's Cienfuegos refinery, a Russian relic from Cold-War days, and to increase oil storage capacity at the Port of Matanzas. "Every day the United States puts off making the path into Cuba, that window of opportunity closes a little more," says Benjamin-Alvarado. Once Cuba gets to the platform stage of deep-water drilling, he says, "the Americans are going to be left out." Quote I do not think we should deal with Fidel, but I hope he won't live much longer, his successor may be much more favorable to US policy.