I wanted to touch on a few additional topics real quick, stuff that I thought was important to know, from a political and news standpoint.
I covered Gas Prices in detail here, be sure to check it out and see who is really responsible for your pain at the pump.
U.S. Prisons hit a new record! 2.3 incarcerated as of last year! Ummm, yaaay?
Is the Surge Working? Well, if you consider 655,000 dead from 2003 to 2006, more than 2.4 million displaced by the end of 2007, and more than that ethnically cleansed. Yea, going great. Ok, not really...

More than a year on, a growing conventional
wisdom holds that the surge has paid off handsomely. U.S. casualties
are down significantly from their peak in mid-2007, the level of
violence in Iraq is lower than at any point since 2005, and Baghdad
seems the safest it has been since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime
five years ago. Some backers of the surge even argue that the Iraqi
civil war is over and that victory on Washington's terms is in sight --
so long as the United States has the will to see its current efforts
through to their conclusion.

Unfortunately,
such claims misconstrue the causes of the recent fall in violence and,
more important, ignore a fatal flaw in the strategy. The surge has
changed the situation not by itself but only in conjunction with
several other developments: the grim successes of ethnic cleansing, the
tactical quiescence of the Shiite militias, and a series of deals
between U.S. forces and Sunni tribes that constitute a new bottom-up
approach to pacifying Iraq. The problem is that this strategy to reduce
violence is not linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable
Iraqi state. If anything, it has made such an outcome less likely, by
stoking the revanchist fantasies of Sunni Arab tribes and pitting them
against the central government and against one another. In other words,
the recent short-term gains have come at the expense of the long-term
goal of a stable, unitary Iraq.

The Retired two-star General who investigated the torture at Abu-Gharib has come out and said what we all know. George Bush is a war Criminal, him and his whole gang...
"After years of disclosures by government
investigations, media accounts and reports from human-rights
organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current
administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.
The CIA helped craft the torture. Their advice?
"If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."
What the Fuck?!? That is pretty vague. But obviously, if they thought it was OK, why did they hide the prisoners being tortured from the Red cross when they inspected, as documents show they did? They knew it was wrong, raping them with broomsticks or beating them while they were face down in urine.
The report gave one example of the case of a man named
Amir, arrested by U.S. forces in Iraq in August 2003.
Amir said while at Abu Ghraib prison he was placed in a
foul-smelling room and forced to lay face down in urine while
he was hit and kicked. He was also sodomized with a broomstick
and forced to howl like a dog while a soldier urinated on him.
After a soldier stepped on his genitals, he fainted.
Amir experiences physical and psychological symptoms nearly
four years after being released, the report said.
No! really?! you don't say...