All European Union states except Britain moved toward setting up a new treaty Friday, giving up crucial powers over their own budgets in an attempt to overcome a crippling debt crisis.

Q: Who’s in it?
A: All 17 countries that use the euro are definitely signing up. Nine non-euro states — Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Sweden and the Czech Republic — said they would consult their parliaments before joining in. In some of those countries, however, parliaments are less than enthusiastic.

Q: Who’s not in it?
A: The U.K. gave a clear “no” after it failed to get the eurozone to approve special safeguards for its financial center from EU regulation.

Q: Why did Europe need a new treaty?

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crisis, economics, economy, foreign affairs, government

(Reuters) – - Iran announced a nuclear fuel breakthrough and test-fired a new radar-evading medium-range missile in the Gulf on Sunday, moves that could further antagonize the West at a time when Tehran is trying to avert harsh new sanctions on its oil industry.

U.S. President Barack Obama signed a law on Saturday imposing tougher financial sanctions to penalize Iran for a nuclear research programme that the West suspects is aimed at developing nuclear weapons.

The move could for the first time hurt Tehran’s oil exports, and the European Union is due to consider similar steps soon.

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diplomacy, foreign affairs, politics, wmd

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bureaucracy, foreign affairs, government, health care, medicine, nanny state, public policy, tragedy, unintended consequences

REPORT: ‘OCCUPIERS’ BLOCKED AMBULANCE TRYING TO TRANSPORT STABBED POLICE OFFICER
January 2, 2012 by Mike Opelka

As reported earlier, the Occupy Wall Street movement’s New Years Eve effort to retake Zuccotti Park was blocked by the NYPD. However, something else reportedly happened when an ambulance tried to take a stabbed police officer to the hospital.

According to the New York Post, at least one officer was injured in the clash with the swarm of protesters. The unidentified member of the NYPD was slashed on the hand with a pair of scissors and required medical treatment. However, the ambulance carrying the officer experienced some difficulty in getting the wounded man to the hospital.

The Post reports:

Hundreds in the crowd of occupiers then surrounded the ambulance as it tried to leave with the wounded officer, the source said.

The ambulance was eventually allowed to take the police officer to Bellevue Hospital where he is said to be in stable condition.

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abuse, bullies, culture, extremism, hypocrisy, ideology, left wing, liberalism, political correctness, protests, relativism

April 2, 2007: Well, Isn’t This Special? Munitions Found Last Year Were Officially WMDs

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August 14, 2006: “The ‘No WMD’ Lie (with Linked Proof)” The Sequel

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June 22, 2006: MORE WMD Findings Revealed (Adding to Richard Miniter’s October 2005 List)
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November 2: This post was moved to the top for the remainder of the business day to show that full sourcing of claims made has been done, and because I’m sick and bleeping tired of the absurdity of the “no WMD” argument, the failure of the Mainstream Media to read their own news reports over the past two-plus years our forces have been in Iraq (and the 7-plus years since The Clinton Administration made the same WMD claims–See Updates 4 and 5 below), and the failure of this administration and the congressional majority to defend itself on the topic.
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I really don’t like to repeat posts after 5 days, but the Democrat leadership’s temporary hijacking of The United States Senate, unprecedented in my memory of at least in my 35 or so years of following the news, makes it necessary.
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The “No WMD” Lie

Did you know this? From Atlas Shrugs (scroll to end of post), based on member-only information at Human Events Online (external links added in response to Comment 1 below):

Did you know WMDs have been found in Iraq?
* 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium (Aug. 1, 2006 Note: link has moved; updated with saved text from original)
* 1,500 gallons of chemical weapons agents (also updated with saved text from original)
* 17 chemical warheads containing cyclosarin (a nerve agent five times more deadly than sarin gas) (May 7, 2006 Note: link has moved; will update with saved text shortly; May 8 – fixed)
* Over 1,000 radioactive materials in powdered form meant for dispersal over populated areas
* Roadside bombs loaded with mustard and “conventional” sarin gas, assembled in binary chemical projectiles for maximum potency

This is only a PARTIAL LIST of the horrific weapons verified to have been recovered in Iraq to date. Yet, Americans overwhelmingly believe U.S. and coalition forces found NO weapons of mass destruction.

The question is… WHY do they believe this (“No WMD”) lie?

Hmm. Maybe The New York Times should be nominating Judith Miller for a Pulitzer instead of considering firing her.

read full article with lots of links

Where Are the Cries of ‘Obama Lied, Jobs Died’?
May 21, 2009 by TOM BLUMER

His and his administration’s whoppers are super-sized, yet the press still focuses on Bush.

If you look at what the Left continues to insist are Bush’s five biggest “lies,” you’ll realize that he and his administration never even got to Step 1, let alone the rest of the Three Steps of Super-Sized Lying:

• Most crucially, there is the assertion that there were weapons of mass destruction in pre-war Iraq. Critically, the Left’s claim has been and still is that “there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” Please note that the critics’ claim was not “no stockpiles,” “no large caches,” or “only a few.” Their claim, frequently stated to great applause, was that there were none, with no exceptions, no qualifications, and no redefinitions. But the truth is that there were WMDs in Iraq … (This brief pause has been provided so lefties can pick their brainwashed jaws off the floor.) … Heck, I knew that in 2005. Later evidence proved that WMDs were really, officially there. What’s more, in November 2006, aNew York Times article acknowledged the existence of a report showing that “[Saddam] Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.” As Ed Morrissey described it at the time, “Saddam [was] far ahead of Iran in the nuclear pursuit, … [making] it much more urgent to take some definitive action against Saddam before he could build and deploy it.” Oh, and I almost forgot about the 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq after Saddam was overthrown, specifically “the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel.” History will have to tell us why the hapless Bush crew didn’t defend itself against the Left’s long-since-refuted lie.

• The supposedly infamous “sixteen words” (“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”) that made Joe Wilson a temporary media darling were and still are not only true, but doubly so.

• Bush never said that the threat from Iraq was “imminent.”

• The worst that can validly be said about the “Mission Accomplished” celebration in May 2003 is that it was overconfident; it doesn’t change the fact Saddam’s ouster had indeed been achieved.

• Finally, the hope expressed by Dick Cheney in 2002 that “my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators” was just that — a hopeful prediction.

None of the above items from the Bush era qualifies as a “lie” as any normal person who recognizes that intent is the key would define the word.

government, history, iraq, politics, saddam hussein, scandal, war, wmd

AP’s Pace Perpetuates Pathetic Claim That National Debt’s Rise Is Due to Wars and Bush Tax Cuts
December 30, 2011 by Tom Blumer

Another meme which won’t die and fails to pass the truth test was in an AP item by Julie Pace about President Obama’s decision to defer raising the debt ceiling by $1.2 billion today.

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The AP’s and establishment press’s party line about why the national debt has increased by over $9 trillion during the past decade is flat-out wrong. They won’t change their tune, and yours truly won’t stop refuting it every time it’s seen.

read the article, with links to data

bias, budget, economy, false, fraud, funding, government, ideology, indoctrination, left wing, liberalism, lies, news media, pandering, politics, propaganda, scandal, spending, taxes

Andrea Mitchell on Iowa: ‘Too White, Too Evangelical, Too Rural’
January 2, 2012 by Noel Sheppard

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on New Year’s Day made it clear to Nightly News viewers that her Obama-loving network will continue using the race card to assist the current White House resident’s reelection.

In a brief segment about Iowa, Mitchell said “the rap” on the Hawkeye state is that “it doesn’t represent the rest of the country – too white, too evangelical, too rural”

bias, bigotry, culture, discrimination, diversity, hate speech, hypocrisy, ideology, indoctrination, left wing, liberalism, news media, pandering, philosophy, political correctness, politics, propaganda, racism, racist, relativism

Imagine the media attention that would be garnered if any non-Muslim in the U.S. did something as sensationalistically violent and dramatic as to dress as Santa Claus and commit a mass murder against his own family at a Christmas gathering.

But this past weekend, a Muslim man in Texas who was reportedly angry at his family for becoming too westernized committed just such an egregious act, resulting in the deaths of seven people, as documented this morning by FNC’s Fox and Friends.

watch the video

abuse, criminal, extremism, hate crime, ideology, islam, religion, tragedy

After debating a couple of socialists at Occupy Wall Street on the realities of communism Vladmir Jaffe was interviewed on Fox Business.

Before October 2011, Lorna Mendoza and her nurse colleagues at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey served patients every day in the same day surgery unit without any hint that the hospital’s respect for the nurses’ religious beliefs was about to come crashing down around them.

But a few weeks ago the hospital suddenly announced it was imposing a new policy under which all same-day surgery unit nurses must assist in abortions or be terminated.

Twelve nurses represented by the Alliance Defense Fund have responded by filing a lawsuit to have the new policy overturned. And yet the hospital is planning to force Lorna and her colleague Julita Ching to assist abortions this Friday, Nov. 4, despite the hospital’s crystal-clear legal obligations not to coerce them.

Federal and state laws both prohibit forcing any health-care employees to take part in abortions.

For example, federal law prohibits hospitals that receive certain federal funds from forcing employees to participate in abortions (and UMDNJ receives approximately $60 million in federal health funds annually). Additionally, New Jersey law states, “No person shall be required to perform or assist in the performance of an abortion or sterilization.”

Yet when one of the twelve nurses objected to assisting abortions on the grounds of her religious beliefs, a supervisor responded that UMDNJ has “no regard for religious beliefs” of nurses who object to participating in abortions, even though the supervisor admitted that the abortions are elective.

The hospital’s message to these nurses, in not quite so many words, is “You’re going to help kill these pre-born children whether you want to or not.”

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abortion, abuse, freedom, health care, hypocrisy, ideology, intolerance, oppression, political correctness, pro-life, prolife, scandal