WHAT'S NEW
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BOOS FOR BUSH.
Former President Bush was welcomed to the inaugural podium with boos from the million-person plus crowd. The video below picks up some of the dissenting crowd. If you were watching the ceremony live, the boos were loud and clear throughout the mass of people.
Extract from The Huffington Post.
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Bush Protest: Shoes Thrown At White House (PHOTOS) »
*President Bush was given an Iraqi-journalist-style sendoff on his last full day in office Monday, as tourists and demonstrators lobbed shoes, pumps, boots, sandals and Crocs from Pennsylvania Avenue onto the White House lawn.
Before launching the operation live, the shoe-chuckers took target practice in Dupont Circle on a 20-foot-tall blow up doll of the outgoing president, decked out in the flight suit he wore aboard the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier.
* Rice shame-faced by Bush over UN Gaza vote: Olmert
Buzz Up
JERUSALEM (AFP) – US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.
"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.
The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the three-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza where hundreds have been killed.
Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas.
The United States, Israel's main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.
"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said.
"I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me.
"I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."
Bush has consistently placed the blame for the conflict on Hamas, telling reporters on Monday that while he wanted to see a "sustainable ceasefire" in Gaza, it was up to Hamas to choose to end its rocket fire on Israel.
But a US State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, denied Olmert's claim.
"Mr. Olmert is wrong," the official said.
Even if everything had gone according to plan, "she would have abstained. That was the plan," said the official. "The government of Israel does not make US policy."
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Public Still Hates Bush: Extract from " The Daily Beast "
* President Bush's imminent departure isn't generating many warm feelings among the American public: His approval rating remains in the cellar at 22 percent, according to a new poll by CBS News/New York Times. It is the lowest final approval rating for an outgoing president since Gallup began its surveys 70 years ago. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans still approved of the president, while only 6 percent of Democrats and 18 percent of independents did. Over the course of his presidency, Bush had both the highest and lowest approval ratings of all time—90 percent following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and 20 percent in November 2008.
Read it at CBS News
Posted at 7:29 AM, Jan 17, 2009
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'Miracle on the Hudson' - Flight 1549
by The Daily Beast
"We've had a miracle on 34th Street—I believe now we've had a miracle on the Hudson," New York Gov. David Paterson declared yesterday after all 155 passengers and crew were rescued from a U.S. Airways jet that crash landed in the Hudson River. The plane lost an engine when it hit a flock of geese shortly after takeoff. It began heading for Teterboro Airport, when it hit another flock that knocked out the remaining engine and forced the landing in the Hudson. Within 15 minutes of the crash, 14 NY Waterway ferries were at the site, and they eventually rescued 142 of the passengers. 35 passengers were rescued directly from the water. The man of the hour is pilot Chelsey B. Sulberger III, "a respected authority on safety matters who has been a consultant to NASA and the National Transportation Safety Board," according to the New York Post.
1/16/20
BOOS FOR BUSH.
Former President Bush was welcomed to the inaugural podium with boos from the million-person plus crowd. The video below picks up some of the dissenting crowd. If you were watching the ceremony live, the boos were loud and clear throughout the mass of people.
Extract from The Huffington Post.
*
Bush Protest: Shoes Thrown At White House (PHOTOS) »
*President Bush was given an Iraqi-journalist-style sendoff on his last full day in office Monday, as tourists and demonstrators lobbed shoes, pumps, boots, sandals and Crocs from Pennsylvania Avenue onto the White House lawn.
Before launching the operation live, the shoe-chuckers took target practice in Dupont Circle on a 20-foot-tall blow up doll of the outgoing president, decked out in the flight suit he wore aboard the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier.
* Rice shame-faced by Bush over UN Gaza vote: Olmert
Buzz Up
JERUSALEM (AFP) – US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.
"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.
The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the three-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza where hundreds have been killed.
Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas.
The United States, Israel's main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.
"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said.
"I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me.
"I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."
Bush has consistently placed the blame for the conflict on Hamas, telling reporters on Monday that while he wanted to see a "sustainable ceasefire" in Gaza, it was up to Hamas to choose to end its rocket fire on Israel.
But a US State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, denied Olmert's claim.
"Mr. Olmert is wrong," the official said.
Even if everything had gone according to plan, "she would have abstained. That was the plan," said the official. "The government of Israel does not make US policy."
*
Public Still Hates Bush: Extract from " The Daily Beast "
* President Bush's imminent departure isn't generating many warm feelings among the American public: His approval rating remains in the cellar at 22 percent, according to a new poll by CBS News/New York Times. It is the lowest final approval rating for an outgoing president since Gallup began its surveys 70 years ago. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans still approved of the president, while only 6 percent of Democrats and 18 percent of independents did. Over the course of his presidency, Bush had both the highest and lowest approval ratings of all time—90 percent following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and 20 percent in November 2008.
Read it at CBS News
Posted at 7:29 AM, Jan 17, 2009
*
'Miracle on the Hudson' - Flight 1549
by The Daily Beast
"We've had a miracle on 34th Street—I believe now we've had a miracle on the Hudson," New York Gov. David Paterson declared yesterday after all 155 passengers and crew were rescued from a U.S. Airways jet that crash landed in the Hudson River. The plane lost an engine when it hit a flock of geese shortly after takeoff. It began heading for Teterboro Airport, when it hit another flock that knocked out the remaining engine and forced the landing in the Hudson. Within 15 minutes of the crash, 14 NY Waterway ferries were at the site, and they eventually rescued 142 of the passengers. 35 passengers were rescued directly from the water. The man of the hour is pilot Chelsey B. Sulberger III, "a respected authority on safety matters who has been a consultant to NASA and the National Transportation Safety Board," according to the New York Post.
1/16/20
posted by K.B.Chandra Raj at
5:29 AM
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