The Singapore government can be a stifling when it comes to free expression, but what will this mean for the blogosphere in Singapore?

sgblogs.com is an aggregator and search portal for Singapore news, brought to us by Singaporeans. While the government can be restrictive when it comes to things like the arts and public behavior, they have been less repressive when it comes to the internet, especially when compared to countries like China.

sgBlogs is still new, so their news sources are not as vast as they are sure to be in the coming weeks and months. If you live in Singapore, or are planning a trip their, it's probably a good idea to check on this site to get up to date on the local news.

The political winds are shifting, and Barack Obama appears to be getting a nice push. Over the past month, Obama has picked up significant numbers in the black community, who previously favored Hillary Clinton. Clinton's lead over Obama in recent polls has been sliced in half from last month.

Obama, who will likely be the strongest black candidate for president in this country's history, was still lacking support from the black community as recently as late January, despite all the buzz surrounding his candidacy. That missing "black rally" is now underway, and it will likely whittle the Democrat race down to just two candidates: Clinton and Obama. That's good news for Dems, as fewer primary contestants means more spotlight on those who remain.

In the Republican race, Rudy Giuliani has gained a big lead over John McCain. That could be bad news for the GOP, as McCain would probably be the better presidential candidate. Giuliani is seen as smarmy and a trickster by many conservatives, and he's got a rather shady past, including affairs and bribery scandals. His police commissioner even had a "love nest" apartment that was paid for by NYC. It was supposed to be used by policemen working around Ground Zero. That may be what it takes to be mayor of NYC, but it won't win points in a race for the White House. McCain is a war hero, but he's been a little too supportive of the war in Iraq. I can't wait to see him defend that position in front of the country in a national debate with Clinton or Obama.
Blacks Shift To Obama, Poll Finds - washingtonpost.com

Labels: mccain, obama

VP Dick Cheney is roaming around the world, trying to drum up support for our war in Iraq and a possible war with Iran. Those efforts are failing, and people are dying around Cheney in the meantime.

An attacker suicide-bombed the base Cheney was staying at in Afghanistan earlier today, leaving 23 people dead. Cheney was uninjured. It was later revealed that he was the target of the attack.

With world sentiment the way it is right now, why is Dick Cheney traveling around the world? It's hard enough to keep him protected in the United States. Does he realize a good percentage of the world hates him? Sure, he may have an entourage of security crews, creating a human cushion around him, but those are human lives. Does he realize that the people protecting him are REAL PEOPLE, with families and children and friends? He's putting those people in danger so he can be a part of this useless PR stunt. For shame.
BREITBART.COM - Cheney OK After Afghan Blast; 23 Killed

In this business, you need to have a place to entertain. Impressing people with your style can be as important as impressing them with your ideas. That's said, but it's true. A good rug or two can really change the look of a room or entryway. I've even seen handmade rugs that look great over carpets, particularly off-white or cream-colored carpets.

I've come across these Rugs for sale Los Angeles area. They also have a sale in New York City. These are handmade rugs from Tibet, and the company that imports them, Tufenkian, assures that they do not use child labor. If you register, you can save an additional 10% the sale prices.


I'm not saying that you need a handmade Tibetan rug, but it is a great way to make a room look great and cover up a floor that has seen better days. Do your home to appear elegant, or like a gymnasium/cafeteria? Next time you've got your local representative or booster over for tea and chat, you'll know what answer you were supposed to choose.

John Gibson has been on a feeding frenzy of late. Ever since the tragic passing of Anna Nicole Smith, a drug-addicted former stripper, John Gibson has been covering the story a little too closely. It's almost as if he's stalking a dead person.

On his radio show Friday night, Gibson attempted to defend his coverage. He accused Anderson Cooper, the CNN host, of being a news "snob" for abandoning the Anna Nicole story to go back to coverage of the Iraq War. 42 American soldiers have died in Iraq since Anna Nicole bit the dust a few weeks ago, but in Gibson's universe none of them are nearly as important as the big-chested B-star. I encourage any of my readers to find evidence that he has mentioned even one of those fallen soldiers by name.

Fox News is not the patriotic news channel it claims to be. They try their best to appeal to the dumbest Americans, and right now those people are all about Anna Nicole.
Think Progress » Gibson: Reporters Who Ignore Anna Nicole Smith To Focus On Iraq War Are ‘Snobs’

Imperial Overlord Dick Cheney has struck back at critics of the Iraq War, which now includes a majority of Americans, saying he is proud of our achievements. This war is Cheney's baby, and a good parent never turns its back on a child. The Bush family didn't turn their backs on the coke-snorting, alcoholic black sheep named George, and he ended up being our coke-snorting, alcoholic president.

Cheney's refusal to admit defeat in Iraq is typical for the Bush administration. They have been living in their own reality for the past 7 years, making decisions based on a plan developed long before Bush took office. "Stay the course" isn't a call for patriotism, it's a signal to the developers of this plan that nothing has changed despite its many failures. By not reacting to failures and making policy changes, the Bush administration continues to dig us deeper and deeper into this rut.

If the Bush administration is so wrong, so often, why is there still strong support for him in some parts of the country? The answer is simple. Our political system is so polarized, people have become "fans" of one political party or the other. They don't care if one of their own makes an error, they still root for their favorite "team". A recent documentary demonstrated this. An interviewer asked Texas residents if they supported our war with a country whose name he had just made up. He described the war as "Bush's plan". Without exception, the interviewees said they supported Bush's decision to go to war with this country, which they did not realize was fictional.

The Republicans success from 2000-2006 can be contributed to the way they won the media battle during the Clinton administration and were able to change the mentality of many Americans. Voters are more ignorant of political issues now than they have been in the past, they just know which party they support and vote the line. American politics has become NASCAR without the beer and southern drawl. We wear badges of our team proudly and publicly mock their opponents.

Politics is no longer about debates and pushing the issues, it's all about creating a loyal fanbase. If you win a fanbase in a particular state, you can exploit those people indefinitely, even getting them to support politicians whose policies will have a negative impact on them. Just look at the entire state of Kansas. Look at the average income, look at Republicans policies towards people with those incomes, and look at their cutbacks to government programs that were aimed Kansas residents. Still, Kansas votes GOP. At least they have those Bush/Cheney bumper stickers to tell us how proud they are of their team.
Feisty Cheney fires long-distance shots - Yahoo! News

I came across a news forum today that seems to have a focus on the Iran war. There are hundreds of other topics as well, but this forum seems to have one of the top threads on the topic of the Iran invasion possibility.

It seems that Bush has already conceded the fact that he will be seen by many Americans as the worst president in our country's history, and now he's doing his best to convince any doubters. With the Iraq war a total failure, a war with Iran would be a travesty. His administration has already been caught forging evidence in an attempt to gain support for this war, just as they were caught doing the same thing with Iraq.

I encourage everyone to sound off on Bush's war plans. Too many lives have already been lost thanks to the carelessness of this presidency. Do not let complacency destroy our country. Join the forum linked to above and tell everyone what you think and discuss plans of action.

Some top US military generals, who have been outspoken in their disagreement with the Bush administration's current rhetoric towards Iran, have threatened to quit if Bush decides to invade that country.

Iran is a very touchy subject, because it is much more powerful than Iraq, it has nuclear weapons capabilities (including long range rockets), and it has pseudo-allies in several very powerful countries, including Russia. If the US invades Iran, the entire Muslim world will unite against America. That is not something any sane person would want.

The reasons for invading Iran are still unclear. Some Iranians have been connected to the insurgency in Iraq, but there has been no definitive connection with the Iranian government. Connections were made with weapons found last month, but it was later revealed that they were doctored and were not truly Iranian-made weapons. In fact, the dates on them were stamped using the American date system (mm/dd/yyyy), not the more common Iranian system. If we have to forge evidence to justify invading Iran, is it really worth it?
US generals ‘will quit’ if Bush orders Iran attack-News-World-Iraq-TimesOnline

Dick Cheney is visiting Australia this week, and there have been widespread protests in cities awaiting his arrival. It can safely be said that most politically-aware Australians do not like Dick Cheney.

A couple of Australians, or possibly Americans traveling with Cheney, made a sign proclaiming their love for the VP. The Drudge Report picked up on a photo of this pair and is now declaring that Australia loves Dick Cheney. Drudge has once again ignored the thousands of people in the streets rioting in protest of Cheney and instead focused on two people who support him.

I urge everyone to stop getting their news from The Drudge Report. I will be the sacrificial lamb. Let me go to that site and gather up information that we can then all use together to mock this pseudo-journalist.
Republican Party on Yahoo! News Photos

Abu Ayyub al-Masri has been wounded in a clash with Iraqi police. His top aide was killed in the fighting. This should put an end to all this violence in Iraq, just as the killing of former Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi did last year.
Iraqi terror leader reported wounded - CNN.com

The President has been trying to bolster support for the war in Iraq and possibly even a new war in Iran by claiming that Iran is making weapons that are being used in Iraq. There were even photos released of supposedly Iranian-made rockets that were found in Iraq. Everything seems to fit, the connection appears to be there.

A closer inspection reveals that these rockets are dupes. They are American-made, and here's the proof: the date. The rockets are labeled with the date 5-31-2006. That seems reasonable, to an American. It would not seem reasonable to an Iranian or an Iraqi. Why? Because that's an American date code. Neither Iran nor Iraq use our month/date/year date code system. Oops. Looks like another intelligence mistake for our unintelligent president.
The TPM DOCUMENT COLLECTION - Iran In Iraq

The world of politics and the world of finance often collide, with some interesting results (read any political scandal sheet from the past 5 years). It can be hard to find a good website with a focus on financial news. Lombard Direct is a news site with a focus on finance.

A good politician needs to understand finance, possibly more than any other subject matter other than law. Taking a stance on hot topic issues can win and lose voter support, but doesn't require any level of expertise. Knowing where the money is going and where it needs to go is the one issue that constantly makes or breaks a political career. Following the news is an important first step.

I'd like to see a little more content on this site, but I'm sure it will grow over time. Perhaps they can open it up a little more to the community with some voting and user submissions, like Digg (a personal favorite site of mine). Oh well, I guess we'll see.

What is the purpose of our government? There was a time when people would have answered that the government is here to protect us. They keep us safe from each other and from our enemies. They fund projects that might not be profitable, such as medical research. With what has happened in the past few years, can anyone claim that the current US government is doing this?

The Iraq is going to end up costing us trillions of dollars, not to mention thousands of American lives. If it escalates into a war in Iran, you can make that tens of thousands of lives, and possibly over 10 trillion dollars. Meanwhile, government money for cancer research has been cut. Cancer kills millions of Americans. How many Americans were killed by Iraq between 1992 and 2002? You could probably count them on two hands. So why are we there?

We were told that we had to fight Iraq, because they posed a threat to us. We now know that the evidence wasn't there, so the explanation was changed. We were taking out an evil dictator. Saddam Hussein was evil, and we did take him out. Mission accomplished.

Except things are not better now. Like JFK assuming that the Cubans would take sides with the militants we planted on their beaches, it was foolish to believe all we had to do was take out Saddam and everyone in Iraq would celebrate in the streets and make statues of George W. Bush. It ignored a thousand years of Islamic history.

The government needs to pull out of Iraq now and get its priorities in order. Yes, it would be a sign of weakness to our enemies. What do you think our current situation in Iraq looks like to our enemies? There is no way to avoid the fact that Iraq is a failure. We can't fix it. A war with Iran would be catastrophe. For the love of God, Christian or otherwise, pull out of Iraq now!
Scientists: Cuts Hurt Cancer Research, Cancer Researchers Worry That Progress Will End Because Of Proposed Budget Cuts - CBS News

Senator Barack Obama has made it official: he wants to be the next president of the United States. No candidate has been so hyped in recent months, although poll numbers still show him far behind the likes of Hillary Clinton.

Obama has a tough challenge ahead. Can he break through the highly-financed guard surrounding Hillary Clinton and demonstrate a difference between himself and the former first lady? He and Hillary face many of the same challenges. They tend to be loved within their own party, but for reasons that are not entirely their fault they are not liked by Republicans. They do particularly poor in the south and midwest.

For Obama, race is clearly an issue. Some polls have shown a general dislike of him by people who can't name one issue he stands for or against. These numbers are particularly alarming in certain parts of the country, such as states ending with "lahoma" and "issippi". Looks like a lot of people are pining for the pre-civil rights days.

Hillary faces a common problem among female politicians. She has to be assertive, it's part of her job. But women today are still labeled with the "B-word" when they show assertiveness. Like Obama, Hillary has very high dislike numbers among people who have no idea what her political views are.

Breaking through the ignorance in this country cannot be done in the next 18 months. Some people refuse to judge a person based on anything beyond skin color or sex. No public service ad campaigns are going to change this. All these candidates can do is make sure the people who do know what they stand for go out and vote. The voting numbers in this country are atrocious, but it leaves a lot of room for good candidates to find a way to win despite the existence of ignorant people who manage to find their way to the polls.
My Way News - Sen. Obama Launches White House Run