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 <title>Sarah Schacht&#039;s blog</title>
 <link>http://betterdonkey.org/blog/219</link>
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<item>
 <title>Just when you thought it couldn&#039;t get any worse...</title>
 <link>http://betterdonkey.org/node/1009</link>
 <description>&lt;p&gt;Let&#039;s be honest.  It&#039;s painful listening to the news right now. It&#039;s not just our imaginations, things &lt;strong &gt; are &lt;/strong&gt; getting worse, and this &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4765854.stm&quot;&gt;recent report&lt;/a&gt; from the BBC provides even more damning evidence that we&#039;re on a slippery slope in Iraq.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote &gt;&lt;p&gt;Hundreds of bodies showing signs of torture or execution arrive at the Baghdad mortuary each month, a senior UN official has told the BBC. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;John Pace, until recently UN human rights chief in Iraq, told the BBC News website that up to 75% of the corpses showed signs of extrajudicial death.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Mr Pace blamed an &quot;endemic&quot; breakdown of security for increasing violence.&quot;Anyone with a gun who is reasonably well organised can do whatever they want with impunity,&quot; he said.   &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;...But Mr Pace played down suggestions that Iraq was heading towards civil war, blaming a political vacuum and the collapse of law and order - rather than a generalised Shia-Sunni split - for the escalating violence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
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 <category domain="http://betterdonkey.org/taxonomy/term/7">Iraq</category>
 <pubDate>Thu, 02 Mar 2006 11:44:09 -0800</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
 <title>And you thought your credit was bad.</title>
 <link>http://betterdonkey.org/node/954</link>
 <description>&lt;p&gt;I was going to make my first blog post on Better Donkey a cheerful one about interesting political and news podcasts that are rocking my iPod right now.  But while reviewing a recent podcast of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/now/podcast.html&quot;&gt;NOW&lt;/a&gt;, I heard an interview with Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper, of Tennessee. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;NOW&#039;s commentator remarked that a conversation with Cooper was &quot;a downer.&quot;  --That&#039;s because &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cooper.house.gov/&quot;&gt;Rep. Cooper&lt;/a&gt; is a realist and a fiscal conservative who is understandably concerned about our federal fiscal situation.  So concerned, that Cooper created &lt;a href=&quot;http://cooper.house.gov/multimedia/032805_budgetmain.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;The Budget School&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, a Power Point presentation that effectively (some might say devastatingly) explains the national debt, it&#039;s significance, and the deep threat it poses to our generation.  If you&#039;ve been wondering why your American greenback hasn&#039;t been stretching as far recently, click the link to get informed.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
 <category domain="http://betterdonkey.org/taxonomy/term/25">National Politics</category>
 <pubDate>Thu, 22 Dec 2005 19:27:52 -0800</pubDate>
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