44 Democrats Sell Us Out, Good Bye Tom DeLay, Trade Deficit, Zarqawi's Replacement, Haditha First of Many?, Cost of Dead Iraqis and Ann Coulter.

44 Democrat Congressmen, including my smarmy Republican voting squirt, Dan Boren, voted to hand the internet over to the major telecoms, not because they believe in representing the people, but because they are just little suck-ups to Big Business.

"Net neutrality" advocates believe that phone and cable companies should be
barred from blocking, slowing down or otherwise discriminating against the
Internet content that flows over their networks. They fear network owners will
cut deals to give some content providers priority delivery, putting those who
don't pay for this at a disadvantage.

Phone and cable companies say they will not block Web sites but should be
allowed to manage their networks -- which handle an ever-increasing amount of
traffic -- and to charge more to those who want guaranteed fast delivery

.

Here are the sellout "Democrats", the ones that need to be replaced with real Democrats.

John Barrow, Shelley Berkley, Sanford Bishop, Dan Boren, Leonard Boswell, Rick Boucher, Allen Boyd, G.K. Butterfield, Dennis Cardoza, Russ Carnahan, Ben Chandler, William Clay, James Clyburn, Jim Costa, Bud Cramer, Joseph Crowley, Henry Cuellar, Artur Davis, Lincoln Davis, Norman Dicks, Harold Ford, Bart Gordon, Gene Green, Luis Gutiérrez, Brian Higgins, William Jefferson, Eddie Johnson, Jim Marshall, Kendrick Meek, Gregory Meeks, Charles Melancon, Michael Michaud, Dennis Moore, Ed Pastor, Nick Rahall, Mike Ross, Dutch Ruppersberger, Bobby Rush, David Scott, John Spratt, John Tanner, Tom Udall, Robert Wexler, Al Wynn


Here's an excellent article on the people we voted for to represent us, but instead they put themselves first and latched on to the corporate teat. It's by John Nichols of The Nation.

The First Amendment of the Internet – the governing principle of net
neutrality, which prevents telecommunications corporations from rigging the web
so it is easier to visit sites that pay for preferential treatment – took a blow
from the House of Representatives Thursday.

Bowing to an intense lobbying campaign that spent tens of millions of
dollars – and held out the promise of hefty campaign contributions for those
members who did the bidding of interested firms – the House voted 321 to 101 for
the disingenuously-named Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement
Act (COPE). That bill, which does not include meaningful network-neutrality
protections creates an opening that powerful telephone and cable companies hope
to exploit by expanding their reach while doing away with requirements that they
maintain a level playing field for access to Internet sites.

Well known Texas crook and all around low life, Tom DeLay gave his farewell speech to Congress. Unrepentant and bombastic, which I'm sure he'll remain until his cellmates takes a fancy to his girlish good looks. At least, he'll finally realize that homosexuality is not a choice.

He was forced out of his leadership post after being indicted in September for
allegedly funneling corporate dollars into Texas legislative races. Defiant as
always, he flew on a tobacco company's jet to his arraignment, and told Time
magazine that he had prayed that Americans would see Christ through his smiling
mug shot.

Course, after a statement like that, he could get off on an insanity plea. Here's the transcript.



More good news on Bush's economy. Well, for the oil companies and China, for the rest of us it pretty much sucks.

Critics of President Bush point to the soaring trade deficits to bolster their
argument that the administration's free trade policies are not working and have
contributed to a loss of nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs since Bush took office.

The deficits have spawned rising protectionist sentiment in Congress where
many lawmakers are pushing for legislation that would raise trade barriers in
this country as a way to protect American workers from what they see as unfair
foreign competition. Much of their ire has been aimed at China, with which the
United States suffered a deficit of $202 billion last year.

After Bush blew it by not catching Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussien became the poster boy for the "evil ones", caught Saddam and al Zarqawi became the face of evil. Now that al Zarqawi's dead, for about the tenth time, someone has to represent the evil that the righteous War President can lead us into battle against. The newest bad guy is Abu al-Masri, an Egyptian and a veteran of the Afghan conflicts.

Almost as soon as American officials declared Zarqawi dead on Thursday, they
pointed to a foreigner as the man they thought likely to take his place.

Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a U.S. military spokesman, identified the
man as Abu al-Masri, an Egyptian and a veteran of the Afghan conflicts. Masri
appeared to have come to Iraq in 2002, probably helped found the first Baghdad
cell of al-Qaeda in Iraq and was involved in bombmaking, Caldwell told reporters
at a Baghdad news conference.

The latest excuse for why things aren't going so well in Iraq.


Haditha might just be the tip of the iceberg.

BAGHDAD, Jun 6 (IPS) - An Iraqi doctor who was in Haditha during a deadly
U.S. raid last year says there are many more stories like that in Haditha that
are yet untold.

"There are many, many, many cases like Haditha that are still undercover
and need to be highlighted in Iraq," Dr. Salam Ishmael, projects manager with
the organisation Doctors for Iraq, and former chief of the junior doctors in
Baghdad's Medical City Hospital told IPS.

Something's sure not going right over there, because U.S. payoffs for civilian deaths is really going up.

A chilling report from the Boston Globe on Thursday reveals that the amount of
cash the U.S. military has paid to families of Iraqi civilians killed or badly
injured operations involving American troops "skyrocketed from just under $5
million in 2004 to almost $20 million last year, according to Pentagon financial
data." The payments can range from several hundred dollars for a severed limb to
a standard of $2500 for loss of life.

Another self-rightgeous conservative blowhard busted. Ann Coulter whose latest book is titled, Godless: The Church of Liberalism.

Not long ago, I went to church with Coulter--Redeemer Presbyterian, an
evangelical congregation in Manhattan. The actor Ron Silver had also tagged
along--Coulter brings lots of people to church, including, at one time, an ex
who is Muslim. Pastor Timothy Keller spoke of the importance of allowing one's
heart to be "melted by the sense of God's grace because of what he did on the
cross for you."

When contacted by Raw Story, however, Redeemer Presbyterian's Communications and Media Director Cregan Cooke could not confirm that Coulter had ever
attended services at the church.