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U.S. diplomats vent over forced Iraq duty

October 31st, 2007 . by TexasFred

WASHINGTON (AP) �? Several hundred U.S. diplomats vented anger and frustration Wednesday about the State Department’s decision to force foreign service officers to take jobs in Iraq, with some likening it to a “potential death sentence.”

In a contentious hourlong town-hall meeting, they peppered officials responsible for the order with often hostile complaints about the largest diplomatic call-up since Vietnam. Announced last week, it will require some diplomats �? under threat of dismissal �? to serve at the embassy in Baghdad and in reconstruction teams in outlying provinces.

Many expressed serious concern about the ethics of sending diplomats against their will to serve in a war zone, where the embassy staff is largely confined to the protected “Green Zone,” and safety outside the area is uncertain while a review of the department’s use of private security contractors to protect its staff is underway.

“Incoming is coming in every day, rockets are hitting the Green Zone,” said Jack Croddy, a senior foreign service officer who once worked as a political adviser with NATO forces.

He and others confronted Foreign Service Director General Harry Thomas, who approved the move to “directed assignments” late last Friday to make up for a lack of volunteers willing to go to Iraq.

Full Story Here:
U.S. diplomats vent over forced Iraq duty

Our troops don’t have a choice, they have to be there, if you want PEACE then you have to have DIPLOMACY to make it happen, that endeavor requires diplomats, and that’s YOUR job, DO IT or get out of the business, suck it up and stop crying, life is NOT fair, this is the job YOU signed on for and you ALL sound like a bunch of wussies…

Anyone want to take bets as to how long before this bunch of cowardly asshats will be screaming that they REALLY DO need people like Blackwater USA to protect them??

“Who’s going to take care of our families if we get hurt or killed?”, that pretty much seems to be the biggest excuse we’re hearing for NOT wanting to go to Iraq and to that I have to say, why, the very same people that are taking care of our wounded troops and the families of our deceased troops, cheer up, you’re in good hands, don’t worry, YOUR government is in charge and will provide care for you…

As far as I am concerned the most serious point of this story would be the questions it poses??

Aren’t we being told, EVERY DAY, that Iraq is safer, Iraq is under control, we are winning hearts and minds, deaths and injuries are WAY down, we are IN CONTROL, isn’t that what the White House is telling us, every day?? Isn’t that what all the Bush Bots sites preach to us??

Isn’t that the rationale being used to BS the American people into being quiet as even MORE of our BILLIONS in tax dollars are wasted in an effort that is NOT going to end in our lifetime??

Well, my BIG question is this, IF Iraq is all those things, WHY are the guys in the Diplomatic Corps crying like little yard bitches that just got slapped?? You don’t suppose they actually know something that the Bush administration isn’t telling us do you?? Like maybe the REAL story about Iraq?? The story that I and many others have been trying to convince folks of for quite some time now??

Surely not…

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Britney Spears Calls the World ‘Cruel’

October 31st, 2007 . by TexasFred

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Britney Spears defended her parenting and chastised her critics, lamenting “how cruel our world can be,” in a brief interview on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show Wednesday.

Spears, always photographed but rarely interviewed these days, also spoke about her new album “Blackout” during the seven-minute talk, during which she giggled frequently as her assistant, Alli Sims, and friend, Sam Lufti, laughed and shouted in the background.

When “American Idol” host, who has a morning radio show on KIIS-FM in Los Angeles, asked Spears if she was doing all she could for her children, Spears replied, “Oh God yeah.”

“People say what they want and do what they do and it’s sad how people, how cruel our world can be,” she said. “At the end of the day … you’ve just got to know in your heart that you’re doing the best you can and that’s basically it.”

Spears’ ex-husband, Kevin Federline, has primary custody of her two sons, Sean Preston, 2, and Jaden James, 1. A judge on Tuesday granted Spears’ three monitored visits a week. She must also take parenting classes and submit to random weekly drug and alcohol tests.

Full Story Here:
Britney Spears Calls the World ‘Cruel’

I don’t often do stories on celebrities and I have NEVER done anything on Spears and the ‘bad girl’ party ilk that she belongs to, but with my recent Op/Ed’s on Louisiana and it’s corruption, pathetic educational system and ‘victim’ attitude this story sort of fell into place and just screams to be written…

First and foremost, Spears IS a product of a Louisiana raising and education, she was born in McComb, MS but raised in Kentwood, LA., and it seems to me, after a bit of on-line reading, that her folks weren’t BAD people, they didn’t raise her to be what she has become, it appears that Spears has become a product of her own chosen environment, a proud member of the world of hip-hop and rap, drugs and parties, that girl is as close to WHITE CHOCOLATE as it gets, she does, in MY opinion, personify the expression Trailer Trash with Money, and Spears also makes it very apparent, at least to me, money does NOT buy class…

Spears, a child of Louisiana that was given talent, sort of, if you call that talent, parlayed that talent into MILLIONS yet seems to be dead set on being the living personification of a lifestyle that she was NOT raised in, and after shes screwed up her life, SHE has the gall to say, “Life is cruel”, well here’s the deal little girl, and this is something Momma and Daddy might not have told you, life isn’t cruel, life is a bitch, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be a whigger bitch and show the world just how much class you DON’T have…

Spears is setting herself up to use that God given Louisiana birth right, “I am a victim”, when all she truly is, as far as I am concerned, is a victim of her own ignorance, SHE can change her life, she can be a mother to her children, she can lay off the booze and any other substance she may be using or abusing, she can STOP the party life, she can try acting like a GROWN woman with 2 children and not some hot little party chick…

For someone that’s been given the money, the love and adoration that this little tramp has to sit there talking like a spaced out ghetto slut, complaining about how life is so cruel, well, she deserves no sympathy from ME, and BTW, this will likely be the one and only Britney story you’ll ever see on this blog, so save it for posterity…

Yo dawg, read the story, listen to her talk yo, you’ll see exactly like, you know, what I am trying to convey with this story, I guess now that little faggot-boy yo, on YouTube, yo, like you know, will like make another yo, like ‘Leave Britney Alone’ video… Yo… Word up! Peace out…

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Chocolate City Revisited: An Op/Ed by TexasFred

October 30th, 2007 . by TexasFred

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The view from Kinh Nguyen’s front door these days is nothing like the “abandoned cemetery” she saw upon returning to her New Orleans neighborhood two months after Hurricane Katrina.

Gone are the blue tarps and plywood boards that covered storm-damaged homes in Village de l’Est, a mostly Vietnamese-American neighborhood. Nguyen’s lawn, which turned dark brown after briny floodwaters killed her grass, is now a lush green. Streets once littered with storm debris are as clean and pothole-free as any in the city.

“They’re all back,” Nguyen, a 45-year-old mother of four, said of her neighbors. “Every home looks nicer, newer.”

Village de l’Est’s rebound has been a remarkable success story in this misery-stricken city. At the same time, for better or worse, the hurricane has brought profound political and cultural change to the community.

Amazing, simply amazing, the work that can be done, the stride that was taken, the initiative shown and the accomplishments these folks realized, in New Orleans of all places, a city that was inundated by Katrina, a city that for the most part, still sits in ruin, many sections a veritable ghost town.

But the Vietnamese community is clean, fresh, attractive and thriving, doesn’t that strike you as a wonderful picture of the Great American Success Story?? It does me and I tip my hat to those folks for their hard work and proud spirit.

Language and cultural barriers long kept Vietnamese-Americans on the sidelines of the city’s civic scene after they began flocking to New Orleans upon the fall of Saigon in 1975. Since Katrina, however, they have been emerging as a force in a city where politics is customarily viewed in black-and-white terms.

“In a short period of time, they’ve had a major impact in the community,” said Jefferson Parish Councilman John Young, who represents a New Orleans suburb with a significant Vietnamese population.

The Vietnamese can and do adapt to a new environment quite well, and in rapid fashion, they work in a fluid situation better than any group of people I have ever seen and I am guessing that they are going to become a force to be reckoned with in the New Orleans and Orleans parish government in the near future, and I have to say, I think that’s a wonderful emergence of community and dedication on their part.

An estimated 90 percent of the 25,000 Vietnamese-Americans who lived in southeastern Louisiana before Katrina had returned within two years of Katrina’s onslaught, according to community leaders. They were among the first to start rebuilding their homes and reopening their businesses, and their community is recovering much more rapidly than some other parts of New Orleans.

Like many of her neighbors, Kinh Nguyen didn’t wait for the government’s help to repair her home, a modest, ranch-style house. She moved her family back in in March 2006, about 18 months before she received a federal housing grant.

And now I have to ask the really big question, WHY in the HELL haven’t the CHOCOLATES in New Orleans done the same thing??

You’ll need to read the rest of this story to see for yourself what the Vietnamese people of New Orleans have done to help themselves and see how they did it, and in MY opinion, if they can do the job that they have done, with minimal federal help, without the BILLIONS that the CHOCOLATES believe that they are owed and entitled to, then anyone that WANTS TO can do the same thing, IF they have the initiative and motivation in them.

But the CHOCOLATES that inhabit New Orleans don’t have that drive and determination, the CHOCOLATES of New Orleans are professional welfare slugs, the CHOCOLATES of New Orleans wouldn’t throw a bucket of water if their house was on fire, but the CHOCOLATES of New Orleans will sit back and complain about how the federal government ignores them because they are CHOCOLATES, well, that’s not the truth of it, the feds have ignored New Orleans because of WHAT it is, corruption incarnate, and that corruption is not all because of New Orleans being a CHOCOLATE city.

New Orleans was corrupt long before any CHOCOLATE came to power, but if they didn’t help the Vietnamese rebuild and the Vietnamese were able to rebuild on their own, bigger and better in many cases, WHY can’t the CHOCOLATES in New Orleans get off of their lazy CHOCOLATE asses and do the same?

Anyone?? Bueller??

And for damn sure, the CHOCOLATES can’t say it’s because the Vietnamese are rich, white and Republican, it’s because the CHOCOLATES aren’t going to do anything other than be CHOCOLATES, that’s all they know how to be.

Full Story Here:
Vietnamese Rebound in New Orleans

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