Dick Cheney is at it again...The man is a gem.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080309/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_contaminated_water&printer=1

Is America the new Rome?
Noel Malcolm reviews The New Rome: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy

The American edition of this book, which came out a few months ago, bore the title Are We Rome? Apparently that was the sort of question for which ancient Romans would have used the word 'nonne', expecting the answer 'yes'; for the British edition is baldly entitled The New Rome.




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/03/09/bomur109.xml

America needs intellectual and well-educated politicians and advisers.
He who loves fine arts, literature, history, calculus, sociology and philosophy is a good politician.
Read these books=

1- "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" by Prof. Paul Kennedy, Yale University.

2- "The Clash of Civilizations and Remarking of World Order" by Samuel P.Huntington, Harvard University, Albert University.

3- "The Grand Chessboard" by Zbigniew Brzezinski",John Hopkins University.

4- "The Choice" by Zbigniew Brzezinski",John Hopkins University.

I am available as a fiercely moustached adviser. What is the deal?

No daggers, just my oriental charm !

THE FULL TEXT OF OBAMA'S SPEECH
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/18/778950.aspx

Obama puts race at heart of election campaign
18/03/2008 - 15:23:46

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama bluntly addressed anger between blacks and whites today in the most racially pointed speech yet of his presidential campaign.

Mr Obama confronted America’s legacy of racial division head on as he tackled black grievance, white resentment and the uproar caused by incendiary statements by his long-standing pastor.

Drawing on his half-black, half-white roots the would-be Democratic candidate asserted: “This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.”

Mr Obama expressed understanding of the passions on both sides in what he called “a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years.”

“But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races,” he said in a speech at the National Constitution Centre not far from where the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

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Mr Obama rarely talks so openly about his race in such a prominent way, but his speech covered divisions from slavery to the OJ Simpson trial to the recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina.

He also recognised his race has been a major issue in the campaign that has taken a “particularly divisive turn” in the last few weeks as video of his pastor spread around the internet and on television.

Mr Obama said the sermons delivered by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright now circulating on the internet and television “rightly offend white and black alike.” Those sermons from years ago suggest the United States brought the September 11 terrorist attacks on themselves and say blacks continue to be mistreated by whites.

While Mr Obama rejected what Wright said, he also embraced the man who inspired his Christian faith, officiated at his wedding, baptised his daughters and has been his spiritual guide for nearly 20 years.

“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” Mr Obama said, speaking in front of eight American flags.

“I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

I heard from a political analyst commenting on Obama's elections performance that there are still segregated schools in the US for black and white students. This drove me crazy. How can this be possible in this century? If the sorting out of this problem is left to time then there is no better time than today.

There are certainly no publicly funded racially segregated schools in the U.S. Public schools form the great majority of schools in the country.

I know of no privately funded U.S. schools that are racially segregated although a very few may exist.