Bill Clinton says Barack Obama must 'Kiss my ass' for his Support

What makes that scum, Bill Clinton, think that Barack Obama needs him to win in November. Didn't he just cause his wife lose her chance at winning? Now he's guaranteed that Obama won't pick Hillary as his running mate:

Mr Obama is expected to speak to Mr Clinton for the first time since he won the nomination in the next few days, but campaign insiders say that the former president's future campaign role is a "sticking point" in peace talks with Mrs Clinton's aides.

The Telegraph has learned that the former president's rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence.

A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could "kiss my ass" in return for his support.

[...]"He's saying he's not going to reach out, that Obama has to come to him. One person told me that Bill said Obama would have to quote kiss my ass close quote, if he wants his support.

"You can't talk like that about Obama - he's the nominee of your party, not some house boy you can order around.

"Hillary's just getting on with it and so should Bill."

Another Democrat said that despite polls showing Mr Obama with a healthy lead over Republican John McCain, Mr Clinton doesn't think he can win.

You want to know why Obama is going to win, Bill? Read this article from the NY Times on how loyal the Democratic nominee's followers are.

Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father.

“Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads.

With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name.

The result is a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.

NRA Sues to Overturn San Francisco Gun Ban

The high court has granted the NRA a gift. The powerful gun lobby was almost unchallenged in Washington. Now they seek to steamroll the entire country. And America will pay the price in uncontrolled gun violence.

The National Rifle Association sued the city of San Francisco on Friday to overturn its ban on handguns in public housing, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in the nation’s capital.

The legal action follows a similar lawsuit against the city of Chicago over its handgun ban, filed within hours of Thursday’s high court ruling.

In San Francisco, the NRA was joined by the Washington state-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and a gun owner who lives in the city’s Valencia Gardens housing project.

The gun owner, who is gay, says he keeps the weapon to defend himself from “sexual orientation hate crimes.” He was not identified in the complaint because he said he fears retaliation.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said that the Supreme Court ruling didn’t address gun bans on government property and that he is “confident that our local gun control measures are on sound legal footing and will survive legal challenges.”

[...]A state appeals court has overturned a broader citywide gun ban that voters approved in 2005.

The Chicago lawsuit challenges the city’s 1982 ordinance making it illegal to possess or sell handguns there.

And tragically Obama will be no help:

In recent weeks, he toughened his stance on Iran and backed an expansion of the government's wiretapping powers. On Wednesday, he said states should be allowed to execute child rapists. When the Supreme Court the next day struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, he did not complain...

..."I've been struck by the speed and decisiveness of his move to the center," said Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute...

...And Obama endorsed a compromise wiretapping bill despite stiff opposition from liberal activists. MoveOn.org, the liberal online activist group, asked its members to flood Obama's campaign office with phone calls and e-mails urging him to support a filibuster of the bill.

The changes carry some risk that Obama will diminish the image he has sought to build as a new type of leader who will change how Washington conducts business. McCain and other Republicans have used his recent policy statements to argue that Obama is a traditional politician, unwilling to take clear stands on tough issues and abandoning his principles when he finds it advantageous.

Zimbabwe's Mugabe may be Sworn in on Sunday: Govt Sources

And who is going to stop him? Only military force will remove this monster? This is a test for the world. Failure means catastrophe for everyone. Dictators everywhere are watching.

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is expected to be sworn in on Sunday after a landslide victory in a one-candidate election boycotted by the opposition, government sources said on Saturday.

The sources told Reuters official tallies from two-thirds of polling stations showed Mugabe, 84, defeating opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai by a huge margin in a widely condemned poll.

Tsvangirai's name remained on ballot papers after electoral authorities refused to accept his decision to withdraw a week ago on the grounds of violence against his supporters. He has taken refuge in the Dutch embassy since then.

Election authorities said on Saturday evening that counting was complete and they hoped to finish verification and collation shortly, clearing the way to announce the result.

"The tallies are indicating that despite the wishes of our detractors and the propaganda of our enemies, the voter turnout was very big and that we are going to see a landslide victory," said one of the government sources, who declined to be identified.

"If the official results are released today as we are all hoping, the indications are the inauguration will be tomorrow," he added.

A Sunday inauguration would be timed to enable Mugabe to attend an African Union summit in Egypt on Monday after extending his 28-year rule of Zimbabwe, a once-prosperous country crippled by poverty and hyper-inflation.

President George W. Bush dismissed the vote as a sham and said Washington would enforce new sanctions on what he called an illegitimate government.

Arctic Could See First Ice-Free Summer This Year

Do you still doubt global warming?

The distinct possibility that the North Pole could be free of sea ice -- for the first time in recorded history -- may become a cold reality this summer.

The Arctic's thick, resilient multiyear sea ice (frozen sea surface), which usually accumulates and lasts through the annual melting season, has started to give way to thinner, vulnerable first-year ice.

And if you do, you can bet what's going in California has something to do with it.

Many of the rustic inns, restaurants and art galleries that dot the rugged Central Coast are nearly deserted this weekend at the height of the tourist season as a huge wildfire threatens Big Sur.

The blaze had charred nearly 42 square miles as of Friday in the Los Padres National Forest and destroyed 16 homes in the Big Sur area, one week after it was started by a lightning storm that also ignited more than 1,000 wildfires from the Central Coast to the Oregon state line.

[...]Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked President Bush on Friday for a federal emergency declaration to free up more resources, saying most of the major fires were less than 20% contained. Some 11,000 firefighters from 41 states were battling the blazes.

Scientist Is Paid Millions by U.S. in Anthrax Suit

I've argued from the beginning that the FBI had the wrong man. Hatfill fit the profile. As a result, the FBI made the facts fit the theory. It is very simple: al Qaeda was behind the attack as part of a second wave of terror following 9-11. Is it any wonder that the Federal government failed to prevent the September 11th attacks in the first place?

The Justice Department announced Friday that it would pay $4.6 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army biodefense researcher intensively investigated as a “person of interest” in the deadly anthrax letters of 2001.

The settlement, consisting of $2.825 million in cash and an annuity paying Dr. Hatfill $150,000 a year for 20 years, brings to an end a five-year legal battle that had recently threatened a reporter with large fines for declining to name sources she said she did not recall.

Dr. Hatfill, who worked at the Army’s laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., in the late 1990s, was the subject of a flood of news media coverage beginning in mid-2002, after television cameras showed Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in biohazard suits searching his apartment near the Army base. He was later named a “person of interest” in the case by then Attorney General John Ashcroft, speaking on national television.

I argued in October of 2006:

No one remembers Steven Hatfill. He was falsely accused of being the anthrax attacks in 2001. Now he is suing. Mr. Hatfill wants to know who is the source of allegations made by the NY Times against himself. A judge in Virginia has determined that the Times does not have the right to help destroy someone's reputation in the pursuit of a story.

- Here's another Previous article on this topic:

• Tables Turned In Anthrax Probe
  (3/12/07)

Credit Card Borrowing Limits Reduced for Tens of Thousands of Consumers

We've been drowning in debt for years. Now we've reached the end of the road. How do we pay our bills now?

Just as Americans grow more reliant on credit cards to help pay monthly bills, they're being hit with a one-two punch: Card companies are reducing borrowing limits for tens of thousands of consumers, which then can lead to lower credit scores.

Those facing this predicament might not even know it until they apply for a loan or another credit card, and then get denied because their credit score has dropped.

This is an unintended consequence of the financial world's widespread ratcheting down of risk. Banks and other card lenders are trying to better protect themselves from more massive losses like those they've seen from subprime mortgages.

As a result, they are looking for ways to reduce their exposure to cardholders more likely to default. That's why they are lowering credit limits, which means they are reducing the maximum amount of credit extended to an individual, along with boosting card interest rates and allowing fewer balance transfers.

"This is what they have to do at this time," said John Hall, a spokesman for the American Bankers Association, a Washington-based trade group.

Such moves come as consumers are increasingly using their credit cards as a source of liquidity, especially since it's becoming harder to tap their home equity as much to pay for everything from renovations to vacations to trips to the mall. As the housing and mortgage markets have collapsed, lenders have also reduced the limits on what are known as home equity lines of credit, or HELOCs.

And the news only gets worse.

Consumer confidence fell more than expected in June, hitting another 28-year low as surging prices and mounting job losses contributed to a bleak outlook, according to a survey released on Friday.

The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said five-year inflation expectations remained steady at the peak of 3.4 percent reached in May, which was the highest in 13 years.

[...]"Moreover, gas prices have risen to an all-time peak, food prices posted the largest increases in decades, home prices have fallen faster than any time since the Great Depression, and there has been widespread distress associated with foreclosures," the report added.

Also weighing on consumers, data earlier this month showed U.S. employers shed jobs for a fifth straight month in May and the unemployment rate jumped to 5.5 percent, its highest in more than 3-1/2 years.