It's Craptastic!

Hours after Gov. Haley Barbour signed a bill that removes 65,000 people from Medicaid, more than 100 people rallied at the Capitol and asked him to reconsider.

Barbour said he stands by the plan and he won't add Medicaid to the list of issues lawmakers can debate during their current special session. The plan takes effect when the new budget year starts July 1, and Barbour said it will save the state $106 million a year.

Responding to a question, the governor said it's wrong for some House members to say the Medicaid changes will cause widespread suffering or even death.
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"We just are not going to ask the taxpayers of Mississippi who work two or three jobs to pay taxes to pay for free health care for people who can work and take care of themselves and just choose not to," Barbour said during a bill signing ceremony in his Capitol office.

Letter to Des Moines Register from Congressman Steve King

Washington, D.C.— The Des Moines Register has called my word of choice to describe the abusive acts committed by several soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison “an embarrassment”. Words and their meaning are the business of newspapers and politicians. Words are the most effective and versatile means of precisely conveying a thought- so effective and so necessary that we invent a word where no suitable word exists.

Forty two states saw the need to pass a law against the act of “causing physical or mental harm or anxieties which may demean, degrade, or disgrace another person.” The criminal behavior outlawed by the 42 states lists: causing indecent exposure, embarrassing dress, deprivation of sleep, food, or drink, branding or marking, offensive physical contact, or other forced activity which could adversely affect the mental health or dignity of the person. All of the listed activities are alleged to have occurred at Abu Ghraib prison and all of the activities mentioned fall under the legal definition of the states that carefully chose one word to describe that activity. All forty two states listed the crime as “hazing” and prosecute it as hazing. The question of flippant usage of a word objectionable to opponents of the administration is now closed.
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Our enemies, and let’s be clear, our enemies are approximately 10% of the Islamic world, the radical jihadists. There are two ways to win this war.

One way is to identify them and kill them all. Their crimes of infamy give some justification to this approach. The fact is that 10% of 1.2 billion people are too many to kill.

At some point in the night, the guards broke a phosphorescent light stick — "the glowing finger," he called it — and poured its liquid on his body "until I was glowing and they were laughing."

"They took me to the room and they signaled me to get onto the floor," he said. One of the guards, he said, sodomized him with a nightstick.
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Mustafa Jassim Mustafa, who was in a cell opposite and above Mr. Waleed's, identified one of the guards as Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. However, he said he saw the guards sodomize Mr. Waleed with the phosphorescent light.
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"That was Ramadan, around 12 midnight approximately, when I saw them," said Kasim Medahhi Hilas, who also testified that on another occasion he saw a prison interpreter, identified as Abu Hamid, raping a young male prisoner. "The female soldier was taking pictures," he said.
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"They ordered me to curse Islam and because they started to hit my broken leg, I cursed my religion," he said, referring to an injury he previously suffered in circumstances not made clear. "They ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive. And I did what they ordered me."

I work for a major oil company - one that anyone reading this has heard of, and many of you may have used my company's name at the end of a long string of epithets (no it is not Halliburton). My job is such that I get to review the details of a very large number of opportunities that we have on the drawing board for bringing new oil to market. The opportunities that I review are literally in the four corners of the globe and in environments and situations that most people in their right minds would just shake their heads at due the difficulties (both technical, political, and economic) in pulling these projects off. Let me tell you people, the future is scary. There is no easy oil left. I just shake my head and wonder, not only about the future of my company, but the future of the world economy that's life blood is oil.

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said Sunday he had advised John Kerry to choose North Carolina Sen. John Edwards or Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt as his running mate on the Democratic ticket.
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Nader also said he wouldn't support Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh for vice president because "he's a very soft Democrat."