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Politics : THE WHITE HOUSE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pompsander who wrote (11083)	11/19/2007 4:38:41 PM
From: Bill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

Oh, the Guardian is just mad that FOX is the only network not owned lock, stock and barrel by the DNC.

To: pompsander who wrote (11083)	11/19/2007 5:39:27 PM
From: goldworldnet	Respond to of 25737

While Fox is more conservative than liberals like, there's not much room for Democrats to complain when most journalists vote democratic. * * *

To: pompsander who wrote (11083)	11/19/2007 6:56:53 PM
From: GROUND ZERO™	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

This only illustrates how left leaning all the other so called news stations really are, they actually think Fox is right leaning when it's not... GZ

To: pompsander who wrote (11083)	11/20/2007 12:04:14 AM
From: MJ	Respond to of 25737

Thank God for Fox News and America. Freedom of Speech is one of the reasons we came to America. Murdock must enjoy knowing he is being successful when he has the whole of the Progressive leftist media attacking. mj

To: pompsander who wrote (11083)	11/20/2007 2:04:21 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

Who woulda thunk it, because they use their smarts at the Fox Business Channel.... alternet.org By the bye... your new first lady?

To: pompsander who wrote (11083)	11/20/2007 9:22:53 AM
From: GROUND ZERO™	Respond to of 25737

The hildabeest claims her "experience" will save the economy... I suppose she means her experience as wife of bj clinton... the truth is she has absolutely no experience, she never ran a business, she never governed over a State, city, not even a small township, she has some grand delusions, she's mentally ill, what a pathetic joke...<g> foxnews.com GZ

To: pompsander who wrote (11083)	11/20/2007 12:06:15 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 25737

from lefty magazing: nytimes.com Around Baghdad, Signs of Normal Life Creep Back With security in Baghdad improving, residents across the city are taking steps to return to normalcy. More Iraqis are traveling between Shiite and Sunni areas to shop, work and go to school. While there are still neighborhoods too dangerous to enter, interviews across the city reveal the personal ways Baghdad residents are fighting to reclaim the lives they lost. Select below to see videos, photos and written reports from locations around the city. Weddings A Celebration Made Public Once More Fish Restaurant A Business Presses On Resolutely Zawra Park Picnickers Return Computer Street A Cautious Resurgence Theater A Play With Few Words, but a Clear Message Liquor Store An Un-Islamic Product Is Again Changing Hands

To: pompsander who wrote (11083)	11/20/2007 12:06:31 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 25737

Weddings: A Celebration Made Public Once MoreThe happy couples announced their unions with the blare of car horns, bursting from freshly washed sedans draped with garlands of sunshine-yellow flowers. A wedding! For at least a year, they were private affairs, if they happened at all. Those who depended on them for work — Iraqis like Ali Muhammad, 36, a gold-chain-wearing trumpet player and band leader who owns a music shop just off Haifa Street in Baghdad — were just plain out of luck. "We work on happy occasions," he said. "There were no opportunities for happiness." These days, marriages are back, in public and in some cases, after dark. Mr. Muhammad's shop has reopened. And at a photo studio in western Baghdad recently, three young happy couples appeared for portraits, arriving with an entourage and bands in tow. The brides and grooms ascended a long line of stairs to get their pictures taken in front of landscapes depicting pastoral gardens, sunsets or even an American-style suburban home with a white picket fence. Their friends and relatives bounced and hooted. Plastic string filled the air and the thump of drums announced the celebration. None perhaps were happier than Rifaat al-Haliji, 32, one of the bandleaders who arrived with a couple from Allawi, a neighborhood close by. After Ramadan ended last month, he said that business started to increase. "We were stuck out of work for seven months," he said. Now, he added, "we do five weddings a week." The revival, however, has been far from complete. Mr. Haliji said there were still many neighborhoods where he could not go. "Dora, Saydia, Ghaziliya, Jihad, Shula" — he ticked them off one by one. Then, fearing that someone from the Mahdi Army might be listening, he leaned in and whispered: " Sadr City, too." Mr. Muhammad said that the wedding business was still only about 25 percent of what it once was. The large music halls and hotels are still closed. All the best singers are still out of the country, and while weddings are indeed running later than a year ago, they still end around 7 p.m. What time did they used to finish in 2002? "Three, maybe 4 in the morning." "It's like the first step," Mr. Muhammad said. "It's just the beginning."

To: pompsander who wrote (11083)	11/20/2007 12:10:20 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 25737

Zawra Park: Picnickers Return"Gardens are the paradise of God on earth," reads the sign welcoming an ever-growing but still cautious group of pleasure-seekers visiting Baghdad's largest public park, beside the Green Zone. Beneath trees and models of traditional Marsh Arab and Bedouin homes, picnicking families sit in clusters chatting and sipping Alpha Cola, against a backdrop of police sirens and shots from outside — some perhaps in anger, but mostly armored Blackwater-style convoys forcing their way through traffic jams. Some families are here for the first time in years. Beside painted climbing frames Alaa Hussain Ali, an unemployed Sunni said the situation had improved enough to bring his children and orphaned cousin to a park, but not to return to the home from which he was driven out 12 months ago by the Shiite Mahdi Army. "The situation is very good," he said. "This is the first time we have come here since 2003." He is reassured by the large number of American and Iraqi troops on the streets but fears a relapse if the Americans depart without crushing the Shiite gunmen. "If they destroy the militias before they start to reduce their numbers then the situation will be good. If not, there will be civil war," he shrugs. At a picnic yards away Ahmed Mohammed, a Shiite engineer, voices similar hopes and fears. "The situation is very good," he said. "There are still some dangers but we decided to come anyway." However he is deeply mistrustful of the armed Sunni "Awakening" forces to whom the Americans have given money and security duties in recent months. "I don't feel comfortable with them. When I go to work I see some of them on the street and they look the same as militias," he frowned. "They are illegal forces." —Stephen Farrell and Qais Mizher

To: pompsander who wrote (11083)	11/20/2007 12:11:02 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

Formerly housed in squat windowless buildings in the Green Zone, Iraq's National Tips Hot Line now sits in a modern, crisply painted two-story structure alongside the looming headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior in Central Baghdad. Under the dusty glare of a noonday sun this weekend, Iraqi officials unveiled the new home with the pomp of a political convention, complete with cake and an Iraqi police band that labored its way through the national anthem. The interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani, trumpeted the hot line's successes. Terrorists had been routed, kidnappings stymied and unexploded bombs discovered, he said — all because of tips from hundreds of thousands of callers from all over Iraq. Yet despite the new building, and the large, airy room where the calls are now answered (most by former Iraqi policemen) many of the nettlesome problems that have long plagued the hot line persist. Jointly run by the Iraqi government and the American military, the system remains unable to handle or filter all that it receives. The number of lines still outstrips the number of people who answer them. Nuisance callers — some threatening, some female and flirty, others lonesome insomniacs — still account for four out of five calls that come in, according to Shane McCann, a contractor from Northern Ireland hired to train the hot line's staff members. Mr. McCann said the abusive callers would hurl invectives, or say things like: "Your mother's a whore. We know who you are." And, quite often, the operators would yell right back. "We're trying to get them away from getting into arguments with nuisance callers," Mr. McCann said. "They get into slagging matches." Estimates on the number of answered calls range from 1,000 to 3,000 a week, not including calls made to smaller, local call centers. But because there is no answering service or hold system to digitally answer the calls, many ring on and on, unanswered, until the caller gives up. "So many of the problems are still here, just transferred to the new building," Mr. McCann said. "The difference is here we will have to capacity to change that." Mr. Bolani has pledged to double the number of answerers, to 120 from 59 in the coming months, and he said more phone lines would be added. Phil Scott, another contractor from Northern Ireland, said the Iraqi government had no choice but to ensure that the hot line worked. While the violence in Iraq has subsided, Mr. Scott said, criminality has not. "This is people's lifeline," he said. —Cara Buckley