Well, Karl, however good the civil rights act was or was not, LBJ's "halo" gets tarnished just a bit when he tells a colleague (re the legislation)

The cops there wern't much more impressed with us, than we would have been with them, had the posistions be reversed.

Moosie, whether or not they had other, different guns; can you imagine how it harmed US-Mexican relations when they figured out the story?

As for the whole capital punishment which Crimpie and others raise, it is a gnarly issue. The opponents have a rock solid argument in saying that what would ever prevent the execution of an innocent man

SCAF has finally embarked on a course meant to reduce the powers of the fundamentalists, regain control of the Sinai Peninsula, reduce to a minimum the impact of Israel on its policies, and maintain its huge economic empire within Egypt's economy. Tantawi might be tempted, like his predecessors, to remain Egypt's leader in order to maintain Egypt as he inherited it from Mubarak. Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah was formerly Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Deputy Head for Assessment of Israeli Military Intelligence. (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)


Obama, what a screw up.

Did you read and understand the response I posted to you?

Hmmmm....... a real man of compassion and noble intent.

"Lyndon Johnson was an under-recognised American transformer, focused on those in the hull of the ship," says Mr Jackson.

"He came from a very poor background in Texas, and he taught poor children. He came bottom-up. Most presidents come top-up, and pay their donors back first.

"Lately, you hardly hear politicians use the word poverty; they talk about the middle classes all the time."

Jesse Jackson says LBJ changed America profoundly. He is, of course, talking in part about Johnson's civil rights legislation.

"The 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial segregation illegal," he says.

Thumping the pew for emphasis, he continues: "From Texas to Florida to Maryland, we couldn't use a public toilet; could not buy ice cream in Howard Johnston [restaurant chain]; we could not rent a room in the Holiday Inn. Staunch legal apartheid. Johnson ended that."

But LBJ wasn't just about civil rights for blacks, he says.

"Women often couldn't serve on juries; 18-year-olds got the right to vote," he says.

"The whole body democratising democracy is Lyndon Johnson. Fair Housing Act. Child Nutrition act, the Clean Air Act, Medicare, Medicaid.

"We've done ourselves a disservice focusing on the Kennedys, Camelot and the how Lyndon Johnson inherited the war and got trapped trying to finish it. But Johnson took us way back up to higher moral ground."

One of the hardest things for me to learn was that one does not need to respond to everyone esp people who post inappropriate comments at you. You can just ignore them. As a person given to confrontation, this one took a long time in coming.

Billionaire investor George Soros says he can sympathise with the ongoing protests on Wall Street, which have spread to other US cities.

He said he understood the anger at the use of taxpayers' cash to prop up stricken banks, allowing them to earn huge profits.

Answering questions during a news conference at UN headquarters, Mr Soros said: "The decision not to inject capital into the banks, but to effectively relieve them of their bad assets and then allow them to earn their way out of a hole leaves the banks bumper profits and then allows them to pay bumper bonuses."

Mr Soros was announcing a gift of $40m (£26m) to a development project in Africa.

Israel is becoming increasingly isolated in the Middle East, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has warned.

He said Israel should restart peace talks with the Palestinians and restore good relations with Turkey and Egypt.

Diplomatic efforts have intensified recently to push the two sides back to peace talks that were abandoned last year.

Israel has agreed to participate in such talks, but the Palestinians want Israel to stop building more homes for settlers in the occupied territories.

Israel announced last week it planned to build 1,100 more homes in a settlement in occupied East Jerusalem

"It's pretty clear, at this dramatic time in the Middle East when there have been so many changes, that it is not a good situation for Israel to become increasingly isolated. And this is what has happened," Mr Panetta told journalists aboard a US Air Force plane en route to the Middle East.
.
.
.
Mr Panetta said the US would make sure Israel maintained its military superiority in the region, but should use this advantage to press for peace.

"As they take risks for peace, we will be able to provide the security that they will need in order to ensure that they can have the room hopefully to negotiate," he said.