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NEW YORK (CNN) -- I like it when I'm right, especially about naked men. Especially about naked cowboys.
A federal judge's opinion includes side-by-side photos of the key players in The Naked Cowboy case.
When I wrote in April that the lawsuit filed by Robert Burck "may be the end of the era of the "naked" cowboy and predicted he would be able to afford some "very nice duds," my fellow lawyers laughed at me.
One close friend -- let's call him Larry -- said as he snickered, "I read your article. You can't be serious. You really think that the Naked Cowboy is going to cash in? Well, I predict he is going to get thrown out of court. If he doesn't, maybe I will start walking around my office in my tighty whities."
Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin didn't throw the cowboy from his steed. In fact, in a lengthy decision, Judge Chin ruled against the makers of M&Ms, rejecting Mars, Inc.'s attempt to dismiss the Cowboy's lawsuit. And it seems that Judge Chin has a sense of humor.
On the first page of his decision, the judge pasted photos of the litigating parties side by side and wrote, "This is the case of The Naked Cowboy versus The Blue M&M."
And what a case it is. Burck sued Mars in April for $6 million in federal court in New York. The central allegation: trademark infringement under the Lanham Act, arising from a video billboard for M&Ms.
Most people, and maybe Mars, thought the Cowboy was just a kooky street entertainer dressed in his underwear. However, I've spoken to Mr. Cowboy, I mean, Mr. Burke, and he didn't seem kooky to me at all. In fact, he seemed kinda smart.
Even Judge Chin recognized that The Naked Cowboy is no ordinary street entertainer. Although he performs in New York City's Time Square in little more than underwear and a smile, he has registered trademarks to "The Naked Cowboy" name and likeness.
And he doesn't just sing in Times Square. He has a Web site http://www.nakedcowboy.com/ with his modeling photos and has a link to nakedcowboy.tv. You can download his music on iTunes. You can buy his tighty whities from his online store for $15. He even has a podcast.
Judge Chin observed that "Burck has appeared as The Naked Cowboy in various television shows, movies, and video games. He has also licensed his name and likeness to companies for endorsements and advertisements. He even appeared in a Chevrolet commercial that aired during Super Bowl XLI.
Judge Chin then explained that "beginning in April 2007, Mars began running an animated cartoon advertisement on two oversized video billboards in Times Square, featuring a blue M&M dressed "exactly like The Naked Cowboy," wearing only a white cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and underpants, and carrying a guitar." And get this -- the video "played on a continuous loop every few minutes over a nine-month period."
Mars tried to defend itself by arguing that the Blue M&M was just a parody of the Cowboy and was protected under the First Amendment.
Although imitation is supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery, Judge Chin didn't agree with M&M's parody argument. Rather, Judge Chin thought it was a question for a jury to decide and wrote that the complaint "plausibly argues that consumers would believe that the M&M Cowboy characters were promoting a product rather than merely parodying The Naked Cowboy, and that viewers would believe that The Naked Cowboy had endorsed M&Ms."
Then Judge Chin ordered the lawyers to appear in his courtroom for a pretrial conference on July 11 at noon. High Noon.
That Judge Chin makes me laugh. Round One to the Cowboy. Larry, maybe you should start walking around the office in your tighty whities.
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CLARK OFF ROAD DUATHLON: JUNE 22, 2008
SCHEDULE OF ACTIVITIES:
6:00am: Race registration, distribution of race kits and body marking (Sacobia
Bridge, near expo filipino)
7:00am: Race Briefing
7:45am: Opening program
8:00am: Race Start
11:30 pm: Awarding and lunch (Fontana Leisure Park)
Those who will be coming on friday and saturday can register early, we'll be at
Clark starting thursday afternoon. They can also check out the race course if
they want.
Pls. check out the map of the race course at this link:
http://mountainrunner.multiply.com/photos/album/108/CLARK_OFF_ROAD_DU_RACE_COURS\
E_MAP
Thumbie O. Remigio
(+63916) 3858322 (mobile)
(+632) 9329071 (residence)
http://diegooos.multiply.com/photos/album/36/_CLARK_OFF_ROAD_DUATHLON
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WOBURN, Massachusetts (AP) -- A police detective testified Tuesday that a laptop computer taken from the home of a British man accused of killing his wife and 9-month-old daughter was used to search online for "how to kill with a knife" four days before the slayings.
Defense attorney Elliot Weinstein, left, sits with Neil Entwistle during Entwistle's murder trial June 17.
Medford police Detective Lawrence James, a computer expert, said the Google search was done January 16, 2006.
Neil Entwistle has pleaded not guilty to murder charges stemming from the killing of his 27-year-old wife, Rachel, and their daughter, Lillian Rose, in their rented Hopkinton home January 20, 2006.
The 29-year-old Entwistle told police he returned home from shopping to find the victims dead on a bed in the master bedroom.
Prosecutors, however, sought to indicate that Entwistle was planning to kill his wife and child, saying he researched methods of murder and suicide in the days before he fatally shot them.
James is expected to testify more about Entwistle's computer use Wednesday. Judge Diane Kottmyer ruled Tuesday that prosecutors will be allowed to present evidence that Entwistle trolled the Internet looking for sex in the days before the slayings.
James testified in previous court filings that Entwistle looked for local escort services using search terms that included "half-priced escorts" and that he joined a Web group called "Adult Friend Finder," where he exchanged e-mails with women saying he was looking for a "discreet" sexual relationship.
A chemist also testified Tuesday that Entwistle's DNA was found on the handle of the .22-caliber handgun used in the shootings, and his wife's DNA was found on the muzzle.
Prosecutors say Entwistle stole his father-in-law's gun from his home in Carver, used it to kill his wife and daughter at their home in Hopkinton and then returned the gun.
Entwistle's father-in-law, Joseph Matterazzo, testified that Neil Entwistle handled his guns when they went target practicing in the months before the killings.
cnn
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philwebsupport.com
!
Apparently, the world is going to end on December 21st, 2012. Yes, you read correctly, in some way, shape or form, the Earth (or at least a large portion of humans on the planet) will cease to exist. Stop planning your careers, don't bother buying a house, and be sure to spend the last years of your life doing something you always wanted to do but never had the time. Now you have the time, four years of time, to enjoy yourselves before… the end.
So what is all this crazy talk? We've all heard these doomsday predictions before, we're still here, and the planet is still here, why is 2012 so important? Well, the Mayan calendar stops at the end of the year 2012, churning up all sorts of religious, scientific, astrological and historic reasons why this calendar foretells the end of life as we know it. The Mayan Prophecy is gaining strength and appears to be worrying people in all areas of society. Forget Nostradamus, forget the Y2K bug, forget the credit crunch, this event is predicted to be huge and many wholeheartedly believe this is going to happen for real. Planet X could even be making a comeback.
2012 related articles:
For all those 2012 Mayan Prophecy believers out there, I have bad news. There is going to be no doomsday event in 2012, and here's why…
The Mayan Calendar
So what is the Mayan Calendar? The calendar was constructed by an advanced civilization called the Mayans around 250-900 AD. Evidence for the Maya empire stretches around most parts of the southern states of Mexico and reaches down to the current geological locations of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and some of Honduras. The people living in Mayan society exhibited very advanced written skills and had an amazing ability when constructing cities and urban planning. The Mayans are probably most famous for their pyramids and other intricate and grand buildings. The people of Maya had a huge impact on Central American culture, not just within their civilization, but with other indigenous populations in the region. Significant numbers of Mayans still live today, continuing their age-old traditions.
The Mayans used many different calendars and viewed time as a meshing of spiritual cycles. While the calendars had practical uses, such as social, agricultural, commercial and administrative tasks, there was a very heavy religious element. Each day had a patron spirit, signifying that each day had specific use. This contrasts greatly with our modern Gregorian calendar which primarily sets the administrative, social and economic dates.
Most of the Mayan calendars were short. The Tzolk'in calendar lasted for 260 days and the Haab' approximated the solar year of 365 days. The Mayans then combined both the Tzolk'in and the Haab' to form the "Calendar Round", a cycle lasting 52 Haab's (around 52 years, or the approximate length of a generation). Within the Calendar Round were the trecena (13 day cycle) and the veintena (20 day cycle). Obviously, this system would only be of use when considering the 18,980 unique days over the course of 52 years. In addition to these systems, the Mayans also had the "Venus Cycle". Being keen and highly accurate astronomers they formed a calendar based on the location of Venus in the night sky. It's also possible they did the same with the other planets in the Solar System.
Using the Calendar Round is great if you simply wanted to remember the date of your birthday or significant religious periods, but what about recording history? There was no way to record a date older than 52 years.
The end of the Long Count = the end of the Earth?
The Mayans had a solution. Using an innovative method, they were able to expand on the 52 year Calendar Round. Up to this point, the Mayan Calendar may have sounded a little archaic - after all, it was possibly based on religious belief, the menstrual cycle, mathematical calculations using the numbers 13 and 20 as the base units and a heavy mix of astrological myth. The only principal correlation with the modern calendar is the Haab' that recognised there were 365 days in one solar year (it's not clear whether the Mayans accounted for leap years). The answer to a longer calendar could be found in the "Long Count", a calendar lasting 5126 years.
I'm personally very impressed with this dating system. For starters, it is numerically predictable and it can accurately pinpoint historical dates. However, it depends on a base unit of 20 (where modern calendars use a base unit of 10). So how does this work?
The base year for the Mayan Long Count starts at "0.0.0.0.0". Each zero goes from 0-19 and each represent a tally of Mayan days. So, for example, the first day in the Long Count is denoted as 0.0.0.0.1. On the 19th day we'll have 0.0.0.0.19, on the 20th day it goes up one level and we'll have 0.0.0.1.0. This count continues until 0.0.1.0.0 (about one year), 0.1.0.0.0 (about 20 years) and 1.0.0.0.0 (about 400 years). Therefore, if I pick an arbitrary date of 2.10.12.7.1, this represents the Mayan date of approximately 1012 years, 7 months and 1 day.
This is all very interesting, but what has this got to do with the end of the world? The Mayan Prophecy is wholly based on the assumption that something bad is going to happen when the Mayan Long Count calendar runs out. Experts are divided as to when the Long Count ends, but as the Maya used the numbers of 13 and 20 at the root of their numerical systems, the last day could occur on 13.0.0.0.0. When does this happen? Well, 13.0.0.0.0 represents 5126 years and the Long Count started on 0.0.0.0.0, which corresponds to the modern date of August 11th 3114 BC. Have you seen the problem yet? The Mayan Long Count ends 5126 years later on December 21st, 2012.
Doomsday
When something ends (even something as innocent as an ancient calendar), people seem to think up the most extreme possibilities for the end of civilization as we know it. A brief scan of the internet will pull up the most popular to some very weird ways that we will, with little logical thought, be wiped off the face of the planet. Archaeologists and mythologists on the other hand believe that the Mayans predicted an age of enlightenment when 13.0.0.0.0 comes around; there isn't actually much evidence to suggest doomsday will strike. If anything, the Mayans predict a religious miracle, not anything sinister.
Myths are abound and seem to be fuelling movie storylines. It looks like the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is even based around the Mayan myth that 13 crystal skulls can save humanity from certain doom. This myth says that if the 13 ancient skulls are not brought together at the right time, the Earth will be knocked off its axis. This might be a great plotline for blockbuster movies, but it also highlights the hype that can be stirred, lighting up religious, scientific and not-so-scientific ideas that the world is doomed.
Some of the most popular space-based threats to the Earth and mankind focus on Planet X wiping most life off the planet, meteorite impacts, black holes, Gamma Ray Bursts from nearby galaxies, a rapid ice age and a polar (magnetic) shift. There is so much evidence against these things happening in 2012, it's shocking just how much of a following they have generated. Each of the above "threats" needs their own devoted article as to why there is no hard evidence to support the hype.
But the fact remains, the Mayan Doomsday Prophecy is purely based on a calendar which we believe hasn't been designed to calculate dates beyond 2012. Mayan archaeo-astronomers are even in debate as to whether the Long Count is designed to be reset to 0.0.0.0.0 after 13.0.0.0.0, or whether the calendar simply continues to 20.0.0.0.0 (approximately 8000 AD) and then reset.
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The businessman behind Boracay’s largest hotel-condominium project is defying orders from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to halt construction of his project, which environment officials said will destroy a wetland in the country’s top beach destination.
The P1.2 billion Boracay Crown Regency Hotel and Convention Center will be the “biggest hotel in Boracay” and will “put Boracay on the world map,” said Richard King, chair of J. King and Sons Co. Inc., the firm behind the project.
The project will add 457 hotel rooms in Boracay, and its convention center will accommodate 1,800 people. The whole hotel complex, which includes a water park, is scheduled to be completed in 2010.
“I won’t stop the project. I have all the necessary permits,” King told reporters Wednesday.
That’s bad news for Boracay’s eco-system, which is already under threat from pollution and congestion brought about by heavy tourist inflows and tourism facilities development. An average of 50,000 tourists visit Boracay monthly.
No ECC
Bienvenido Lipayon, regional director of the DENR-Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) Region 6, told abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak that Mr. King’s hotel-convention project will have a negative impact on a nearby wetland. “The wetland, or a portion of the wetland, will be destroyed,” he said in a telephone interview.
According to the conservation group Wetlands International, wetlands “provide services of great value to society” since “they control floods, protect coastal zones and they host a great diversity of species.”
Lipayon has already sent J. King and Sons Co. Inc. a letter advising the company to “cease and desist” its construction “until an Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) is secured from this office.”
The DENR’s Provincial Environment and Natural Resources (PENR) officer Raul Lorilla, in a February 11, 2008 letter to J. King and Sons Co., said “some concerned residents of Boracay island” have complained about the project.
Lorilla said construction of the hotel is already destroying the wetland since water used in the construction is filling it up.
“In view of the adverse impact of this undertaking to our wetland and our environment, you are hereby advised to cease and desist from further filling up this wetland areas until after an authority from the DENR is secured,” Lorilla said.
“Be advised further that this body of water serves as the recharge area of the aquifer that maintains the balance and quality of the ground water,” he said.
Not a wetland
Richard King disagreed with DENR officials, saying the project will not have a bad impact on the wetland.
Rafael King, vice-president of J. King & Sons Co. Inc., even disputed the DENR’s contention that the affected area is a wetland. In a February 13 reply-letter to Lorilla, he said: “The ‘wetland’ that you referred to was created due to stormwater run-off from the nearby properties being diverted to our project site.”
Asked to comment on this, Lipayon told abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak that experts from the DENR’s Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau (PAWB) have attested that it is a wetland area.
Richard King admitted his firm’s hotel project does not have an ECC, but said this was due to the failure of DENR to act on their ECC application.
J. King & Sons Co. Inc. submitted its Environmental Impact Assessment Study (EIAS) and application for ECC in September 12, 2007, but the DENR returned them on September 17, 2007 after DENR Secretary Joselito Atienza called for a moratorium on new construction of structures in Boracay.
Lipayon said the regional office had no choice but to return the ECC application after Atienza’s pronouncement.
Moratorium
After a consultation with stakeholders in mid-2007, Atienza proposed a moratorium on new construction activities, except government public utilities projects, on Boracay in light of the island’s environmental degradation
The moratorium was passed in October 2007 by the local government of Malay, Aklan, where most resorts are located. It took effect January 2 and will end on July 2, 2008. The local government is supposed to enforce the moratorium.
The six-month construction ban on structures such as hotels and apartments is also intended to give Boracay’s stakeholders time to complete its land use plan and a master development plan to “forestall and reverse environmental degradation.”
“Rapid growth threatens the viability of Boracay as a tourist destination,” Atienza said in January this year after the moratorium took effect. “Aside from the nagging problems of lack of water supply, overcrowding and waste disposal, the problem of flooding now also haunts Boracay.”
“Even the forests in Boracay have been depleted, and several residential and tourism facilities have been constructed on mountain slopes. These activities will eventually compromise public safety,” he said.
The master plan is seen as a “comprehensive strategy to keep excellent air and water quality, ample forest cover, solid waste management, and even containing floods in the resort island,” the DENR said.
It also said that “Boracay resort owners welcomed the total stop in construction activities and the moratorium on the issuance of construction permits.”
Not covered by moratorium
King told reporters Wednesday his hotel project is not covered by the six-month moratorium since they secured the necessary building and other permits in October 2007 or three months before the start of the moratorium on January 2, 2008.
King said DENR’s failure to act on their application for an ECC means an automatic approval of the permit as provided under a DENR administrative order in 2003. This order says that ECC applications “not acted upon within a specified time frame from the date of filing are deemed approved automatically.”
NGOs support moratorium
In an interview with abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak, Raul Barbarona, executive director of the Cebu-based Environmental Legal Assistance Center, lamented that despite the moratorium on new construction, projects such as the Crown Regency Hotel and Convention Center are still being implemented.
“They’ve not been able to stop all construction,” he said.
Barbarona said there has been “too much construction” on Boracay, and the moratorium was based on Boracay island’s “carrying capacity.”
Environmental lawyer Maria Paz Luna, president of Tanggol Kalikasan (Defense of Nature) told abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak that in the case of Boracay, “obviously the state of water quality and resources there” already show the island has exceeded its carrying capacity.
Barbarona said the continued construction of the Crown Regency project and of other projects on Boracay shows “lack of political will” especially by the local government, which is supposed to implement it.
He also disagreed with King’s view that the ECC is deemed approved if not acted upon within a certain period. “The ECC is a list of conditions that the project proponent must comply with,” he said. “If there’s no ECC, there should be no construction.”
Although there is a DENR order which streamlines the ECC applications, Barbarona said it does not mean that a project can proceed even without an ECC. This circular should also not be used to “pressure the DENR into approving the ECC.”
Barbarona said the DENR can impose penalties on J. King & Sons for not following the proper procedures.
Lipayon said J. King & Sons has already asked a regional trial court in Aklan to issue a restraining order that seeks to stop the DENR from enforcing its order to the firm to stop construction of the project. A hearing has been set on May 29.
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(CNN) -- Sen. Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic primary in Kentucky by a wide margin, CNN projects.
Sen. Barack Obama campaigns Monday in Montana, while Sen. Hillary Clinton seeks votes in Kentucky.
With 55 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton was leading Barack Obama by 28 percentage points.
According to exit polls in Kentucky, Clinton won among men, 62-32 percent, and among women, 67-27 percent.
She also beat Obama across all age groups, income groups and education levels.
Eighty-nine percent of Tuesday's voters in Kentucky were white, according to the exit polls. Among them, Clinton won 72-22 percent. Nine percent of the voters were African-American and they overwhelmingly broke for Obama, 87-7 percent.
The exit polls from Kentucky also suggest a deep division among Democrats.
Two-thirds of Clinton's supporters there said they would vote Republican or not vote at all rather than for Obama, according to the polls.
Forty-one percent of Clinton supporters said they'd cast their vote for John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, and 23 percent said they would not vote at all.
Just 33 percent said they would back Obama in the general election, according to the polls.
Those numbers are even worse for Obama than in West Virginia one week ago, where 36 percent of Clinton voters said they would back him in the fall.
The results come as Obama is poised to take a majority of the pledged delegates after voters weigh in Tuesday in Kentucky and Oregon.
A majority of Democrats in both states think Obama will be the party's nominee, according to exit polls.
Obama's campaign sees the two contests as a milestone in the protracted fight with Clinton, who continues to campaign hard.
"This is a very important threshold today, having the majority of pledged delegates. ... We're excited about it, but it doesn't mean it's the end," said Tom Daschle, former Senate majority leader and Obama's campaign co-chairman. Daschle called the pledged delegates "the core of the convention."
"To say that we have the majority of the core of the delegates that are going to be making the decisions at the convention and selecting our nominee, that's a critical milestone," he said.
There are 3,253 pledged delegates, and Obama, even with a poor showing Tuesday, should easily top the 1,627 delegates needed to gain a majority.
A candidate needs 2,026 delegates to win the Democratic nomination. Obama has 1,929 total delegates, while Clinton has 1,741.
The Kentucky and Oregon primaries hold 103 delegates combined. Obama needs 15 more to achieve a majority of the pledged delegates -- the delegates won either in state caucuses or primaries.
Obama is the favorite in Oregon, where a CNN poll of polls indicates that he has a lead of 10 percentage points. Oregon's primary is a mail-in only contest, which means voters must mail in or hand in their ballots in person by 8 p.m. PT. I-Reporters: Send us your voting experiences
Both Kentucky and Oregon's primaries are closed, so only registered Democrats can vote in the Democratic contests.
"We still have some contests left, but if Kentucky and Oregon go as we hope, then we think we will have a majority of pledged delegates at that point, and that's a pretty significant mark," Obama said at a rally Sunday in Oregon.
"That means that after contests in every state, or almost every state and the territories, that we have received the majority of the delegates that are assigned by voters."
Obama also leads Clinton in the number of states won and in the popular vote in the primary and caucus contests this campaign season.
Obama has been careful not to declare victory in the Democratic contest, but he has focused much of his attention in recent weeks on McCain.
Obama doesn't have enough delegates to capture the nomination outright; Clinton still has a chance, if a slight one, to win the nomination if enough of the roughly 800 superdelegates were to back her.
Superdelegates are elected and party officials who have votes at the national convention. They are not bound by the primary or caucus results from the states they represent.
If the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination is almost over, Clinton isn't acting like it.
"I'm going to make [my case] until we have a nominee, but we're not going to have one today, and we're not going to have one tomorrow, and we're not going to have one the next day," Clinton said Monday in Kentucky.
She argues that she leads in the popular vote. "Right now, more people have voted for me than have voted for my opponent," she said. "More people have voted for me than for anybody ever running for president before. So we have a very close contest."
But her argument is debatable. For Clinton to claim such a lead, primary states but not caucus states -- which Obama mostly won -- would only be counted, plus the popular vote totals in Florida and Michigan.
Florida and Michigan were stripped of their delegates for scheduling their primaries too early, in violation of Democratic Party rules. Obama's name wasn't on the Michigan ballot, and he received no votes in that state's contest.
linton also argues that she's won the states that she contends would stack up stronger against McCain in the general election.
"The states I've won total 300 electoral votes. If we had the same rules as the Republicans, I would be nominee right now," she said. "We have different rules, so what we've got to figure out is who can win 270 electoral votes. My opponent has won states totaling 217 electoral votes."
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(CNN) -- Sen. John McCain Monday faulted Sen. Barack Obama for downplaying the threat from Iran and again called the Democratic front-runner's judgment "reckless," the latest jabs in a foreign policy fight that could continue to the general election.
Sen. John McCain called Sen. Barack Obama's foreign policy toward Iran "reckless."
Obama's willingness to sit down with the Iranian president demonstrates Obama's lack of understanding of international relations, McCain said during a speech in Chicago, Illinois.
"Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama's inexperience and reckless judgment," McCain said. "Those are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess."
Obama quickly responded during a speech in Billings, Montana, asking why the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was afraid to talk to Iran and that it was the "Bush-McCain" war policy in Iraq, not diplomacy, that would make Iran stronger.
"Make no mistake, Iran is the single biggest beneficiary of a war in Iraq that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged," the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination said.
"Thanks to George Bush's policy, Iran is the greatest threat to the United States and Israel and the Middle East for a generation. John McCain wants to double down on that failed policy."
McCain said Obama did not have an appropriate grasp of the danger Iran poses to the U.S.
"Senator Obama claimed that the threat Iran poses to our security is 'tiny' compared to the threat once posed by the former Soviet Union," McCain said during a speech in Chicago.
"Obviously, Iran isn't a superpower and doesn't possess the military power the Soviet Union had, but that does not mean that the threat posed by Iran is insignificant.
"Should Iran acquire nuclear weapons, that danger would become very dire, indeed," McCain said.
McCain was reacting to a statement Obama made in Pendleton, Oregon, Sunday night while he was defending his view that he would step up diplomatic engagements with Iran -- potentially up to the presidential level -- if he became president.
"Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union," Obama said. "They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us, and yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet.
"We should use that position of strength that we have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen. We might not compromise on any issue, but at least we should find out are there areas of potential common interest, and we can reduce some of the tensions that have caused us so many problems around the world," Obama said.
Obama said he was aware of the "grave" threat Iran poses to the United States, but that it was "common sense" that Iran is less of a threat today to the U.S. than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.
Obama said just as Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan did during the Cold War, the U.S. should engage diplomatically with its enemies.
"Why shouldn't we have the same courage and confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do. That's what strong presidents do," the senator from Illinois said.
"One of the things you have to ask yourself: What are George Bush and John McCain afraid of [in] demanding a country meets all of your conditions before you meet with them?" Obama said.
McCain's attacks on Obama are a continuation of a bitter fight over foreign policy that erupted between the two candidates last week.
In a previous exchange, McCain blasted Obama for what he described as the Democrat's willingness to engage in unconditional talks with Hamas, an Islamic fundamentalist group the U.S. has labeled as a terrorist organization.
Obama denied McCain's claim, saying he would only talk to Hamas if the group renounced its call for Israel's destruction.
cnn
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