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We The People

2009-08-05T05:19:00.002+02:00

MORE PORK !

2008-09-18T06:36:00.007+02:00

Senate Passes 3.9% Military Pay Hike
September 16, 2008
Associated Press - by LAURIE KELLMAN

WASHINGTON - Republicans failed Tuesday to block a major defense bill that included a pay raise for military personnel when one of their own, retiring Sen. John Warner, rallied senators to advance the legislation out of respect for U.S. troops at war.

Republican opponents objected to $5 billion in pet projects that Congress added onto the bill. But proponents characterized "no" votes as showing disrespect for military personnel - a charge no candidate wants, especially seven weeks before Election Day.

Bill Clinton's REAL Legacy!

2008-09-18T06:36:00.003+02:00

2008 Deadliest for US in Afghanistan
September 11, 2008
Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - Militants killed two U.S. soldiers eastern Afghanistan on the anniversary of 9/11, making 2008 the deadliest year yet for American forces in the country that sheltered al-Qaida while it plotted the terror attacks on New York and Washington.

The NATO-led force said one soldier was killed when insurgents attacked a compound. The separate U.S.-led coalition said a second service member died in combat. No other details were released, but a Western military official told The Associated Press that both troops were American.

Thursday's deaths brings to 113 the number of troops who have died in Afghanistan this year, surpassing last year's record toll of 111.

Afghanistan was the launching pad for al-Qaida's terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. In response, U.S. forces invaded in October 2001 and drove the Taliban out of power in a matter of weeks.

At a ceremony in Kabul commemorating the Sept. 11 attacks, Col. Cody Smith said the date is a reminder of the terror experienced by those killed in the U.S. attacks experienced.

"That is what drives me, to fight for freedom all over the world because those people that died were in terror of seeing the fire, of seeing ... their lives being taken from them," Cody said. "We should fight, so that freedom reigns and terror does not."

Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaida network, is believed to be in the lawless tribal belt on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Once derided as a ragtag insurgency after the fall of their regime, Taliban fighters have transformed into a fighting force advanced enough to mount massive conventional attacks. Suicide and roadside bombs have turned bigger and deadlier than ever.

The number of Arab, Chechen and Uzbek militants flowing into the Afghan-Pakistan theater have increased this year, bringing with them command expertise the Taliban had lacked in previous years.

Top U.S. generals, European presidents and analysts say the blame lies to the east, in militant sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan. As long as those areas remain havens where fighters arm, train, recruit and plot increasingly sophisticated ambushes, the Afghan war will continue to sour.

Some 33,000 U.S. troops are now stationed in the country, the highest level since 2001. Overall, more than 65,000 troops from 40 nations are deployed in Afghanistan.

U.S. troops in Afghanistan on Thursday remembered those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks during ceremonies at bases around the country. In Kabul, a top U.S. general said terrorism still remains a threat to the world.

Maj. Gen. Robert Cone told those gathered for the memorial ceremony at Camp Eggers that terrorists have struck in London, Russia and Bali, Indonesia since the 2001 attacks in the United States.

"These attacks are reminders that the threat of terrorism is real and still a danger to the entire world," Cone said.

Cone's command in Kabul trains and equips the fledgling Afghan security forces - the centerpiece of the American strategy of turning Afghanistan into a country that can defend itself and away from the days when bin Laden used it as a safe haven to launch the attacks in New York and Washington.

© Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Global Warming gets the Cold Freeze

2008-09-11T05:45:00.006+02:00

Global warming hoax exposed by record global cold
by F. William Engdahl

Global Research, April 7, 2008

The media and governmental hype over a danger from global warming that already is allegedly causing the polar icecaps to melt and threaten a global climate catastrophe, looks more and more like the political hype it is. This year to date, snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

According to the US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) many American cities and towns have suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was - 0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 average."

China is surviving its most brutal winter in one hundred years. Temperatures in the normally mild south were low for so long that some middle-sized cities went weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has been hurt as home buyers have stayed home. In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, breaking the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in 1950.

Arctic Ice Melt has Reversed

One of the most dramatic results of the record cold over much of the planet is the reversal of the much-reported melt of the icebergs in the Arctic Ocean. Last autumn the world was alarmed to hear from certain climatologists that the ice in the Arctic had melted to its "lowest levels on record.” What was carefully omitted from those scare stories was the fact that those records only date back as far as 1972, and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

Now, as a result of the recent record cold weather, the ice is back. According to Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

What few people know and what the Global Warming lobby seems at pains to keep known is the fact that there is considerable seasonal variation in how much pack ice of the Arctic ice pack covers the Arctic Ocean. Much of the ocean is also covered in snow for about 10 months of the year. The maximum snow cover is in March or April — about 20 to 50 centimeters over the frozen ocean. The thickness is not one of the universal constants, never was.

Admit flawed Climate Model

There is also admission by several intellectually honest climatologists that their predictive models are flawed. Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona, two very prominent climate modellers, recently admitted that the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (as in the fictional movie The Day After Tomorrow) are wrong. In a recent interview Russell said, “It's not ice melt, but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of man-made warming on polar ice melt.” Now that’s very interesting.

When professors Toggweiler and Russell reprogrammed their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator, then back towards it again, the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the recent Arctic warming.

Russian climatologists believe recent weather changes around the globe are results of solar activity and not man-made emissions. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, calls the argument for man-made climate change "a drop in the bucket." His research shows that now the recent very active solar activity has entered an inactive phase. He advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

Kenneth Tapping of Canada’s National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon. The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

The Global Warming Geopolitics

The recent Global Warming hysteria is in reality a geopolitical push by leading global elite circles to find a way to get the broader populations to willingly accept drastic cuts in their living standards, something that were it demanded without clear reason by politicians, would spark strikes and protest. The UN’s latest IPCC report on Global Warming calls for diverting a huge 12% of global GDP to “prevent the harmful effects of climate change.” The UN report, for example, estimated that its recommendations to reduce certain manmade emissions would cost about $2,750 per family per year in the price of energy.

Today there are two principal policy options of the Anglo-American power establishment to impose their further control over a world that is rapidly slipping out from under them. We might call them Plan A and Plan B for short.

The first, Plan A, was the option represented by Bush-Cheney and the big oil and military industrial complex behind them. Cheney and his close Houston friend, Matt Simmons, propagated the myth of Peak Oil to lull populations into accepting the inevitability of $100 a barrel or even higher oil prices. In the meantime, the relative strength of the Big Oil and the related US military establishment grew with higher oil prices.

Their global War on Terror provided a cover or pretext to justify military control over the major oil reserves and oil transit passages of the world. From Iraq to Afghanistan to Kosovo, the US and NATO agenda was aimed at future control of the extraordinary economic powers emerging from Russia to China to India to Brazil and Venezuela and beyond. Through China’s effective diplomacy in Africa, many African countries are on the brink of slipping out from under the US or British control into Chinese or more independent status.

If John McCain becomes the next choice of the US power elites to be President, that will signal that that military and oil agenda will escalate.

The second broad faction of maintaining their control over the greater part of the world economy, Plan B, sees Global Warming and “soft power” as embodied in the organs of the United Nations and IMF and World Bank as the more suitable vehicle to convince people to willingly accept drastic reduction in living standards.

Barack Obama, the apparent choice of the same elites as a “breath of change” to allow them to regroup after the debacle of the Bush-Cheney years, would likely opt for the second faction of the global elite—the Global Warming option to lowering general living standards, ‘Plan B’ of the Anglo-American establishment. In a recent campaign speech in Wallingford Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama replied to a question about Al Gore, the hero of Global Warming. As President, Obama said he would consider putting Al Gore in a Cabinet-level position—or higher. He stated, “I will make a commitment that Al Gore will be at the table and play a central part in us figuring out how we solve this problem. He's somebody I talk to on a regular basis. I'm already consulting with him in terms of these issues but climate change is real."

The two major global factions

Today there are two major factions within the Western political power establishment internationally. They cooperate and share broad elitist goals, but differ fundamentally on how to reach these goals. Foremost is their goal of sharply controlling global economic growth and population growth. The first faction is best described as the Rockefeller Faction. It has a global power base and is today best represented by the Bush family faction which got their start, as I document in my book, as hired hands for the powerful Rockefeller machine. The Rockefeller faction has for more than a century based its power and influence on control of oil and on use of the military to secure that control. It is personified in the man who is since 2001 de facto President in terms of decision-making—Dick Cheney. Cheney was former CEO of Halliburton Corp., which is both the world’s largest oilfield services company (now based in Dubai for tax reasons), and the world’s largest military base constructor.

The second faction might be called the Soft Power Faction. Their philosophy might be summed up that they think its “possible to kill more flies with honey than with vinegar.” Their preferred path to global population control and lowering of the growth rates in China and elsewhere is through promoting the fraud of global warming and imminent climate catastrophe. Al Gore is linked to this faction. So is British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. They see globalist institutions, especially the United Nations, as the best vehicle to advance their agenda of global austerity.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created by the United Nations Environment Programme. Its reports have been demonstrated to be fundamentally flawed in scientific methodology, yet they are aggressively being promoted as revealed truth by the powerful media behind this faction. Others in the circle include billionaire speculator George Soros, parts of the British Royal family and representatives of European “old money.”

With the meteorological evidence of their claims for global warming dissolving as the ice forms anew, it is not surprising that news of the Arctic refreeze and other contrary evidence to their doomsday thesis are kept from mainline international media.

F. William Engdahl is a Research Associate of the Center for Research on Globalization and author of the recently-released book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (www.globalresearch.ca). He also author of ‘A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics,’ Pluto Press Ltd. He may be contacted at his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

So Wrong, So Often, For So Long, Yet It's Europe We Want To Copy

2008-08-31T06:06:00.003+02:00

By THOMAS SOWELL
Posted Tuesday, June 24, 2008 4:30 PM PT

If anyone suggested that Tiger Woods should try to be more like other golfers, people would question the sanity of whoever made that suggestion.

Why should Tiger Woods try to be more like Phil Mickelson? If Tiger turned around and tried to golf left-handed, like Mickelson, he probably wouldn't be as good as Mickelson, much less as good as he is golfing the way he does right-handed.

Yet there are those who think that the United States should follow policies more like those in Europe, often with no stronger reason than the fact that Europeans follow such policies. For some Americans, it is considered chic to be like Europeans.
If Europeans have higher minimum wage laws and more welfare state benefits, then we should have higher minimum wage laws and more welfare state benefits, according to such people. If Europeans restrict pharmaceutical companies' patents and profits, then we should do the same.

Some justices of the U.S. Supreme Court even seem to think that they should incorporate ideas from European laws in interpreting American laws.

Before we start imitating someone, we should first find out whether the results that they get are better than the results that we get. Across a very wide spectrum, the U.S. has been doing better than Europe for a very long time.

By comparison with most of the rest of the world, Europe is doing fine. But it is like Phil Mickelson, not Tiger Woods.

Minimum wage laws have the same effects in Europe as they have had in other places around the world. They price many low-skilled and inexperienced workers out of a job.
Because minimum wage laws are more generous in Europe than in the U.S., they lead to chronically higher rates of unemployment in general and longer periods of unemployment than in the U.S. — but especially among younger, less experienced and less skilled workers.

Unemployment rates of 20% or more for young workers are common in a number of European countries.

Among workers who are both younger and minority workers, such as young Muslims in France, unemployment rates are estimated at about 40%.

The American minimum wage laws do enough damage without our imitating European minimum wage laws. The last year in which the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate in the U.S. was 1930. The next year, the first federal minimum wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act, was passed. One of its sponsors explicitly stated that the purpose was to keep blacks from taking jobs from whites.

No one says things like that anymore — which is a shame, because the effect of a minimum wage law does not depend on what anybody says. Blacks in general, and younger blacks in particular, are the biggest losers from such laws, just as younger and minority workers are in Europe.

Those Americans who are pushing us toward the kinds of policies that Europeans impose on pharmaceutical companies show not the slightest interest in what the consequences of such laws have been.

One consequence is that even European pharmaceutical companies do much of their research and development of new medications in the U.S., in order to take advantage of American patent protections and freedom from price controls.

These are the very policies that the European imitators want us to change.
It is not a coincidence that such a high proportion of the major pharmaceutical drugs are developed in the U.S. If we kill the goose that lays the golden egg, as the Europeans have done, both we and the Europeans — as well as the rest of the world — will be worse off, because there are few other places for such medications to be developed.

There are a lot of diseases still waiting for a cure, or even for relief for those suffering from those diseases. People stricken with these diseases will pay the price for blind imitation of Europe.

Underestimating The U.S.
It must be a bitter disappointment to those in the media and in politics who have been dying to use the word "recession" that, for the second quarter in a row, there has been no downturn in the economy, though growth has been slow.

Alarmists have been reduced to quoting other alarmists on the supposedly impending recession, but that is still not the real thing.

The definition of a "recession" is very clear and straightforward: Two consecutive quarters of negative growth. We have not yet had one consecutive quarter of negative growth.

The fault-finding brigades of critics of the American economy and society are among the reasons why there is so much talk about how we ought to do things that are being done in Europe.

We need to understand America first, before we start imitating Europe. The American economy produces the largest output in the world — more than Japan, Germany and Great Britain combined. Measured by purchasing power, output per capita in the U.S. is the highest of any large nation.

There are some very small places such as Luxembourg or the Cayman Islands with higher purchasing power per capita. But as professor Benjamin M. Friedman of Harvard put it, places like Luxembourg are "technically countries but are more like large suburbs." Luxembourg's total population is about the same as that of Long Beach, Calif. Wal-Mart has more employees than the total population of Luxembourg.

Some other small places, like the Cayman Islands, are tax havens that attract the wealth of people who are not really Cayman Islanders.

Among countries at all comparable to the U.S. in size or population, none has achieved as high an output per capita. New Jersey produces more than Egypt. California produces more than Canada or Mexico.

Desperate efforts to depict all the prosperity and progress in the U.S. as being monopolized by "the rich" have led to all kinds of statistical mumbo jumbo, such as comparing the changing ratios between statistical categories over time and ignoring the fact that most of the people in those categories move from one category to another over the years.

Studies that follow given individuals over time show the exact opposite of what is being said in the mainstream media and in politics. That is, most of the working people in the bottom fifth of the income distribution rise into the top half, and the rate of increase of their incomes is greater than that of most of the people initially in the top fifth.

Those individuals in the top 1%, as of a given time, actually have an absolute decline in income over time. As they drop out of the top 1%, they are replaced by others, so that the statistical category can be doing great while the flesh-and-blood people who pass in and out of that category are by no means gaining on those further down the income distribution.

None of this is rocket science. But most people in politics, the media and academia insist on using statistics based on the fate of abstract categories over time — households, families, income brackets — even when other statistics, based on following specific individuals over time, are available.

Households and families vary in size from group to group and are generally declining in size over time, but an individual always means one person. Income per household or family can be stagnant, or even declining, while income per person is rising. That has in fact been a general pattern in recent decades, which may be why the nay-Sayers are forever citing household and family income statistics, while ignoring statistics on income per person.

Amid a general undermining of American economic performance, it is hardly surprising that so many people think we should imitate what the Europeans are doing — whether in the economy, in foreign policy or in other areas.

We can always learn particular things from other countries, whether in Europe, in Asia, or elsewhere. But imitating Europeans when they are not doing as well as Americans makes no sense.

A Not-So-Sophisticated Record
Some of the people who are most adamant against outsourcing economic activity from the U.S. to other countries often seem to think we should outsource our foreign policy to "world opinion" or act only in conjunction "with our NATO allies."
Like so many things that are said when it comes to public policy, there is very little attention paid to the actual track record of "world opinion" or of "our NATO allies."

Often there is a blanket assumption that European countries are just so much more sophisticated than American "cowboys." But there is incredibly little interest in the track record of those European sophisticates whom we are supposed to consult about our own national interests — including, in an age when terrorists may acquire nuclear weapons, our national survival.

In the course of the 20th century, supposedly sophisticated Europeans managed to create some of the most monstrous forms of government on earth — communism, fascism, Nazism — in peacetime, and to start the two World Wars, the bloodiest in all human history. In each of these wars, both the winners and the losers ended up far worse off than they were before these wars were started.

After both World Wars, the U.S. had to step in to save millions of people in Europe from starving amid the wreckage and rubble that their wars had created. These do not seem like people whose sophistication we should defer to.

Between the two World Wars, European intellectuals — more so than ordinary people — completely misread the threat from Nazi Germany, and were urging disarmament in France and England, while Hitler was rapidly building up the most powerful military force on the continent, obviously aimed at neighboring countries.

During the Cold War, many European intellectuals once again misread the threat of a totalitarian dictatorship — in this case, the Soviet Union. When they finally recognized the threat, many saw the question as whether it was "better to be red than dead."

They were no more prepared to stand up to the Soviet Union than they had been ready to stand up to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Worse yet, much of the European intelligentsia objected to America's standing up to the Soviet Union.
Many of them were appalled when Ronald Reagan met the threat of new Soviet missiles aimed at Western Europe by putting more American missiles in Western Europe, aimed at the Soviet Union.

Reagan, in effect, called the Soviet Union and raised them, while many of the European sophisticates — as well as much of the American intelligentsia — said that his policies would lead to war. Instead, it led to the end of the Cold War.

Are we now to blindly imitate those who have been so wrong, so often, over the past hundred years?

Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc

NOBAMA

2008-08-04T06:00:00.000+02:00

The Imitators

2008-06-24T23:53:00.005+02:00

By Thomas Sowell

If anyone suggested that Tiger Woods should try to be more like other golfers, people would question the sanity of whoever made that suggestion.

Why should Tiger Woods try to be more like Phil Mickelson? If Tiger turned around and tried to golf left-handed, like Mickelson, he probably wouldn't be as good as Mickelson, much less as good as he is golfing the way he does right-handed.

Yet there are those who think that the United States should follow policies more like those in Europe, often with no stronger reason than the fact that Europeans follow such policies. For some Americans, it is considered chic to be like Europeans.

If Europeans have higher minimum wage laws and more welfare state benefits, then we should have higher minimum wage laws and more welfare state benefits, according to such people. If Europeans restrict pharmaceutical companies' patents and profits, then we should do the same.

Some Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court even seem to think that they should incorporate ideas from European laws in interpreting American laws.

Before we start imitating someone, we should first find out whether the results that they get are better than the results that we get. Across a very wide spectrum, the United States has been doing better than Europe for a very long time.

By comparison with most of the rest of the world, Europe is doing fine. But they are like Phil Mickelson, not Tiger Woods.

Minimum wage laws have the same effects in Europe as they have had in other places around the world. They price many low-skilled and inexperienced workers out of a job.

Because minimum wage laws are more generous in Europe than in the United States, they lead to chronically higher rates of unemployment in general and longer periods of unemployment than in the United States-- but especially among younger, less experienced and less skilled workers.

Unemployment rates of 20 percent or more for young workers are common in a number of European countries. Among workers who are both younger and minority workers, such as young Muslims in France, unemployment rates are estimated at about 40 percent.

The American minimum wage laws do enough damage without our imitating European minimum wage laws. The last year in which the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate in the United States was 1930.

The next year, the first federal minimum wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act, was passed. One of its sponsors explicitly stated that the purpose was to keep blacks from taking jobs from whites.

No one says things like that any more-- which is a shame, because the effect of a minimum wage law does not depend on what anybody says. Blacks in general, and younger blacks in particular, are the biggest losers from such laws, just as younger and minority workers are in Europe.

Those Americans who are pushing us toward the kinds of policies that Europeans impose on pharmaceutical companies show not the slightest interest in what the consequences of such laws have been.

One consequence is that even European pharmaceutical companies do much of their research and development of new medications in the United States, in order to take advantage of American patent protections and freedom from price controls.

By Thomas Sowell

These are the very policies that the European imitators want us to change.

It is not a coincidence that such a high proportion of the major pharmaceutical drugs are developed in the United States. If we kill the goose that lays the golden egg, as the Europeans have done, both we and the Europeans-- as well as the rest of the world -- will be worse off, because there are few other places for such medications to be developed.

There are a lot of diseases still waiting for a cure, or even for relief for those suffering from those diseases. People stricken with these diseases will pay the price for blind imitation of Europe.

The United States leads the world in too many areas for us to start imitating those who are trailing behind.

An Old Newness

2008-06-24T23:20:00.003+02:00

By Thomas Sowell

Many years ago, a great hitter named Paul Waner was nearing the end of his long career. He entered a ballgame with 2,999 hits -- one hit away from the landmark total of 3,000, which so many hitters want to reach, but which relatively few actually do reach.

Waner hit a ball that the fielder did not handle cleanly but the official scorer called it a hit, making it Waner's 3,000th. Paul Waner then sent word to the official scorer that he did not want that questionable hit to be the one that put him over the top.

The official scorer reversed himself and called it an error. Later Paul Waner got a clean hit for number 3,000.

What reminded me of this is the great fervor that many seem to feel over the prospect of the first black President of the United States.

No doubt it is only a matter of time before there is a black president, just as it was only a matter of time before Paul Waner got his 3,000th hit. The issue is whether we want to reach that landmark so badly that we are willing to overlook how questionably that landmark is reached.

Paul Waner had too much pride to accept a scratch hit. Choosing a President of the United States is a lot more momentous than a baseball record. We the voters need to have far more concern about who we put in that office that holds the destiny of a nation and of generations yet unborn.

There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever and ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president -- especially not at a time when the threat of international terrorists with nuclear weapons looms over 300 million Americans.

Many people seem to regard elections as occasions for venting emotions, like cheering for your favorite team or choosing a Homecoming Queen.

The three leading candidates for their party's nomination are being discussed in terms of their demographics -- race, sex and age -- as if that is what the job is about.

One of the painful aspects of studying great catastrophes of the past is discovering how many times people were preoccupied with trivialities when they were teetering on the edge of doom. The demographics of the presidency are far less important than the momentous weight of responsibility that office carries.

Just the power to nominate federal judges to trial courts and appellate courts across the country, including the Supreme Court, can have an enormous impact for decades to come. There is no point feeling outraged by things done by federal judges, if you vote on the basis of emotion for those who appoint them.

Barack Obama has already indicated that he wants judges who make social policy instead of just applying the law. He has already tried to stop young violent criminals from being tried as adults.

Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new things -- using the mantra of "change" endlessly -- the cold fact is that virtually everything has says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s.

Protecting criminals, attacking business, increasing government spending, promoting a sense of envy and grievance, raising taxes on people who are productive and subsidizing those who are not -- all this is a re-run of the 1960s.

We paid a terrible price for such 1960s notions in the years that followed, in the form of soaring crime rates, double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment. During the 1960s, ghettoes across the countries were ravaged by riots from which many have not fully recovered to this day.

The violence and destruction were concentrated not where there was the greatest poverty or injustice but where there were the most liberal politicians, promoting grievances and hamstringing the police.

Internationally, the approach that Senator Obama proposes -- including the media magic of meetings between heads of state -- was tried during the 1930s. That approach, in the name of peace, is what led to the most catastrophic war in human history.

Everything seems new to those too young to remember the old and too ignorant of history to have heard about it.

Barack Potatoe Obama?

2008-05-28T23:01:00.000+02:00

by L. Brent Bozell III
May 28, 2008

Imagine that John McCain named a young running mate to campaign with him, and this national rookie suggested America had 58 states, repeatedly used the wrong names for the cities he was visiting, and honored a Memorial Day crowd by acknowledging the “fallen heroes” who were present, somehow alive and standing in the audience. How long would it take for the national media to see another Dan Quayle caricature? Let’s raise the stakes. What if it was the GOP presidential candidate making these thoroughly ridiculous comments? This scenario is very real, except it isn’t McCain. It’s the other fellow.

ABC reporter Jake Tapper follows politicians around for a living. On his blog, he suggested Barack Obama has a problem: “The man has been a one-man gaffe machine.”

Just in the last few days, in Sunrise, Florida, Obama said, “How's it going, Sunshine?” He did the same thing in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, calling it “Sioux City.” Some of his geographic struggles seem calculated. When asked why Hillary Clinton trounced him in Kentucky, Obama claimed “I'm not very well known in that part of the country...Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it's not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.” But Obama’s home state of Illinois is more than “near” Kentucky – it borders Kentucky.

In Oregon, there was a doozy. Obama said of his long campaign, “I’ve been in fifty-seven states, I think, one left to go.” No one in the press made much of this. As former ABC political reporter Marc Ambinder, now with the Atlantic Monthly magazine, admitted: “But if John McCain did this — if he mistakenly said he’d visited 57 states — the media would be all up in his grill, accusing him of a senior moment.” If you doubt him, remember how most media outlets noted, then underlined McCain’s error about al-Qaeda being trained and funded by Iran.

In New Mexico, Obama suggested he was like a young Haley Joel Osment in “The Sixth Sense,” with the ability to see dead people: “On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.” Fallen heroes in the audience? Is this Barack Potatoe Obama? This is precisely the kind of misstatement that Dan Quayle-bashers would run ad infinitum.

But there have also been gaffes on more serious matters. ABC found that campaigning in Rush Limbaugh’s hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Obama argued that our military’s Arabic translators in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan: “We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then its harder for us to use them in Afghanistan,” he claimed. But Afghans don’t speak Arabic; they speak several other languages. That’s a lot like McCain’s gaffe – except for the degree of media attention, which in the Democrat’s case was virtually nonexistent.

McCain also would have enjoyed more media focus on Obama’s completely muddled analysis of South America last week. He told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday that he would meet with Chavez to discuss “the fermentation of anti-American sentiment in Latin America, his support of FARC in Colombia and other issues he would want to talk about.” But on Friday in Miami, he insisted any country supporting the Marxist guerillas of FARC should suffer “regional isolation.” This left Obama advisers scrambling to suggest that these two opposing statements can somehow be put together, that he can meet Chavez and isolate him at the same time.

Sometimes, Obama invents Bosnia-sniper-style whoppers about his personal history. In Selma, Alabama, Obama claimed that the spirit of hope derived from the civil rights protests in Selma in 1965 inspired his birth – when he was born in 1961. He also has inaccurately claimed that the Kennedys funded his Kenyan father’s trip to America in 1959.

While he was making boo-boos in New Mexico on Memorial Day, Obama also (according to CBS reporter/blogger Maria Gavrilovic) talked about post-traumatic stress disorder by claiming he had an uncle “who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz,” and then came home and spent six months in an attic. Gavrilovic didn’t note that the prisoners at Auschwitz were liberated by the Red Army. Obama earlier made the claim on his campaign site that his grandfather knew American troops who liberated Auschwitz and Treblinka (also liberated by the Red Army).

Everyone should grant these candidates a little room for error in the long slog of presidential campaigning. But what about some balance? The same national media that turned Dan Quayle’s name into an instant joke are now working over time to present Obama as Captain Competent.

It's true: Iraq is a quagmire: But the real story is not something you have heard

2008-05-09T01:09:00.001+02:00

Sunday, November 18, 2007
By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

We're floundering in a quagmire in Iraq. Our strategy is flawed, and it's too late to change it. Our resources have been squandered, our best people killed, we're hated by the natives and our reputation around the world is circling the drain. We must withdraw.

No, I'm not channeling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. I'm channeling Osama bin Laden, for whom the war in Iraq has been a catastrophe. Al-Qaida had little presence in Iraq during the regime of Saddam Hussein. But once he was toppled, al-Qaida's chieftains decided to make Iraq the central front in the global jihad against the Great Satan.

"The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this third world war, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation," Osama bin Laden said in an audiotape posted on Islamic Web sites in December 2004. " It is raging in the land of the Two Rivers. The world's millstone and pillar is Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate."

Jihadis, money and weapons were poured into Iraq. All for naught. Al-Qaida has been driven from every neighborhood in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, the U.S. commander there, said Nov. 7. This follows the expulsion of al-Qaida from two previous "capitals" of its Islamic Republic of Iraq, Ramadi and Baquba.
Al-Qaida is evacuating populated areas and is trying to establish hideouts in the Hamrin mountains in northern Iraq, with U.S. and Iraqi security forces, and former insurgent allies who have turned on them, in hot pursuit. Forty-five al-Qaida leaders were killed or captured in October alone.

Al-Qaida's support in the Muslim world has plummeted, partly because of the terror group's lack of success in Iraq, more because al-Qaida's attacks have mostly killed Muslim civilians.

"Iraq has proved to be the graveyard, not just of many al-Qaida operatives, but of the organization's reputation as a defender of Islam," said StrategyPage.

Canadian columnist David Warren speculated some years ago that enticing al-Qaida to fight there was one of the reasons why President Bush decided to invade Iraq. The administration has made so many egregious mistakes that I doubt the "flypaper" strategy was deliberate. But it has worked out that way. It may have been a mistake for the United States to go to war in Iraq. But it's pretty clear now it was a blunder for al-Qaida to have done so.
You may not be aware of the calamities that have befallen al-Qaida, because our news media have paid scant attention to them.

"The situation has changed so unmistakably and so swiftly that we should be reading proud headlines daily," said Ralph Peters, a retired Army lieutenant colonel. "Where are they?"

Richard Benedetto was for many years the White House correspondent for USA Today. Now retired, he teaches journalism at American University in Washington, D.C.

When U.S. troop deaths hit a monthly high in April, that was front-page news in most major newspapers, Mr. Benedetto noted. But when U.S. troop deaths fell in October to their lowest levels in 17 months, that news was buried on page A-14 of The Washington Post and mentioned on Page A-12 in The New York Times. (The Post-Gazette put the story on the front page.)

"I asked the class if burying or ignoring the story indicated an anti-war bias on the part of the editors or their papers," Mr. Benedetto said. "While some students said yes ... most attributed the decision to poor news judgment. They were being generous."

Mr. Peters suspects the paucity of news coverage from Iraq these days is because "things are going annoyingly well."

Rich Lowry agrees. "The United States may be the only country in world history that reverse-propagandizes itself, magnifying its setbacks and ignoring its successes so that nothing can disturb what Sen. Joe Lieberman calls the 'narrative of defeat,' " he wrote in National Review.

If what Mr. Peters, Mr. Benedetto and Mr. Lowry suspect is true, it must have pained The Associated Press to see a correspondent write Wednesday: "The trend toward better security is indisputable." It'll be interesting to see which newspapers run the AP story, and where in the paper they place it.
"We've won the war in the real Iraq, but few people in America are familiar with anything other than its make-believe version," said the Mudville Gazette's "Greyhawk," a soldier currently serving his second tour in Iraq. It's true: Iraq is a quagmire
But the real story is not something you have heard
Sunday, November 18, 2007
By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

We're floundering in a quagmire in Iraq. Our strategy is flawed, and it's too late to change it. Our resources have been squandered, our best people killed, we're hated by the natives and our reputation around the world is circling the drain. We must withdraw.

No, I'm not channeling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. I'm channeling Osama bin Laden, for whom the war in Iraq has been a catastrophe. Al-Qaida had little presence in Iraq during the regime of Saddam Hussein. But once he was toppled, al-Qaida's chieftains decided to make Iraq the central front in the global jihad against the Great Satan.

"The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this third world war, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation," Osama bin Laden said in an audiotape posted on Islamic Web sites in December 2004. " It is raging in the land of the Two Rivers. The world's millstone and pillar is Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate."

Jihadis, money and weapons were poured into Iraq. All for naught. Al-Qaida has been driven from every neighborhood in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, the U.S. commander there, said Nov. 7. This follows the expulsion of al-Qaida from two previous "capitals" of its Islamic Republic of Iraq, Ramadi and Baquba.
Al-Qaida is evacuating populated areas and is trying to establish hideouts in the Hamrin mountains in northern Iraq, with U.S. and Iraqi security forces, and former insurgent allies who have turned on them, in hot pursuit. Forty-five al-Qaida leaders were killed or captured in October alone.

Al-Qaida's support in the Muslim world has plummeted, partly because of the terror group's lack of success in Iraq, more because al-Qaida's attacks have mostly killed Muslim civilians.

"Iraq has proved to be the graveyard, not just of many al-Qaida operatives, but of the organization's reputation as a defender of Islam," said StrategyPage.

Canadian columnist David Warren speculated some years ago that enticing al-Qaida to fight there was one of the reasons why President Bush decided to invade Iraq. The administration has made so many egregious mistakes that I doubt the "flypaper" strategy was deliberate. But it has worked out that way. It may have been a mistake for the United States to go to war in Iraq. But it's pretty clear now it was a blunder for al-Qaida to have done so.
You may not be aware of the calamities that have befallen al-Qaida, because our news media have paid scant attention to them.

"The situation has changed so unmistakably and so swiftly that we should be reading proud headlines daily," said Ralph Peters, a retired Army lieutenant colonel. "Where are they?"

Richard Benedetto was for many years the White House correspondent for USA Today. Now retired, he teaches journalism at American University in Washington, D.C.

When U.S. troop deaths hit a monthly high in April, that was front-page news in most major newspapers, Mr. Benedetto noted. But when U.S. troop deaths fell in October to their lowest levels in 17 months, that news was buried on page A-14 of The Washington Post and mentioned on Page A-12 in The New York Times. (The Post-Gazette put the story on the front page.)

"I asked the class if burying or ignoring the story indicated an anti-war bias on the part of the editors or their papers," Mr. Benedetto said. "While some students said yes ... most attributed the decision to poor news judgment. They were being generous."

Mr. Peters suspects the paucity of news coverage from Iraq these days is because "things are going annoyingly well."

Rich Lowry agrees. "The United States may be the only country in world history that reverse-propagandizes itself, magnifying its setbacks and ignoring its successes so that nothing can disturb what Sen. Joe Lieberman calls the 'narrative of defeat,' " he wrote in National Review.

If what Mr. Peters, Mr. Benedetto and Mr. Lowry suspect is true, it must have pained The Associated Press to see a correspondent write Wednesday: "The trend toward better security is indisputable." It'll be interesting to see which newspapers run the AP story, and where in the paper they place it.
"We've won the war in the real Iraq, but few people in America are familiar with anything other than its make-believe version," said the Mudville Gazette's "Greyhawk," a soldier currently serving his second tour in Iraq.

TRASH TALK

2008-04-16T02:05:00.005+02:00

Gim'me a break!

EVERYONE (!) Dem & Rep wants to "Trash Talk" the ecconomy! Why?

Today, we learn that Retail Sales were UP last month!

BUT, the "Sub-Prime" crap continues . . .

"Sub-Prime" was a "Drug Deal" from the "Get Go".
It didn't stop GREEDY people from taking FULL atvantage of the "program".
Now they are in dire straights . . .
TOO BAD!

U R SCREWED! Get Over it!

Have a Good Day.

But What Do I Know . . .
JD

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

2008-02-29T01:02:00.001+01:00

Lorne Gunter, National Post - Canada
Published: Monday, February 25, 2008

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.
The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."
China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.
There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.
In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.
And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.
Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.
OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.
But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.
And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.
According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.
"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.
But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.
Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."
He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.
The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.
It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.

lgunter@shaw.ca

RUSH LIMBAUGH'S AUCTION OF ORIGINAL "HARRY REID SMEAR" LETTER GOES FOR $2,100,100: A RECORD-BREAKER ON EBAY FOR CHARITY AUCTION

2007-10-23T23:06:00.000+02:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

-- Mr. Limbaugh Matches Philanthropist Betty Casey's Winning Bid: $4,200,200 Goes to The Marine Corps – Law Enforcement Foundation --

LOS ANGELES, October 19, 2007 – Last week, Rush Limbaugh announced the eBay auction of Senator Harry Reid's letter that was signed by 41 Democrat Senators and sent to Clear Channel CEO Mark Mays. The auction closed today with a record-breaking winning bid of $2,100,100 for charity through eBay Giving Works. Previously, the most expensive item sold through eBay Giving Works was the celebrity-signed Harley-Davidson from Jay Leno in 2005, which sold for $800,100. All proceeds, including Mr. Limbaugh's matched donation, totaling $4,200,200, goes to the Marine Corps - Law Enforcement Foundation, a registered charity that provides financial assistance to the children of fallen Marines and federal law enforcement officers. Mr. Limbaugh serves on the Board of this organization and has been active on its behalf since its inception.

Mr. Limbaugh stated on his nationally syndicated radio show today, "Our winning bidder, subject to the receipt of funds, is a wonderful woman named Betty Casey. As trustee of The Eugene B. Casey Foundation, she gives significant sums to hospitals, hospices, colleges and private schools. These include The Eugene B. Casey Diabetes Education Center, The Eugene B. Casey Swim Center, The Eugene B. Casey Academic Center and The Casey Home Hospice. She has also donated tens of millions from the foundation and her personal funds to the Washington Opera."

He continued to share that, "Betty has been a listener to my program since its inception, and we can't thank her enough for her support. We'd also like to thank eBay Giving Works for allowing us to break their website in the closing moments of the auction, and Auction Cause, who was our consultant in prequalifying bidders and developing the auction."

"The Eugene B. Casey Foundation believes freedom of speech is a basic right of every citizen of this country. Their purchase of the smear letter was to demonstrate their belief in this right, and to support Rush Limbaugh, his views and his continued education of us," said a foundation spokesperson.

eBay Spokesperson Catherine England commented, "eBay Giving Works can confirm that Rush Limbaugh's listing has set a new record as the most expensive item sold for charity on the site. Unique items such as Rush's letter are what make eBay a one-of-a kind experience. eBay Giving Works is exceptionally pleased to see such a generous donation going to support the Marine Corps – Law Enforcement Foundation and the good work that they do."

Mrs. Casey receives the original "Harry Reid Smear” letter with 41 signatures; the Halliburton briefcase in which the letter is secured 24 hours a day; a personal letter of thanks from Mr. Limbaugh; and a photograph of the radio personality displaying the letter on stage in Philadelphia on October 11.

For video link of Mr. Limbaugh's announcement on his radio show today, go to the homepage of www.RushLimbaugh.com.

Nationally syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show is heard by approximately 20 million weekly listeners and airs on nearly 600 radio stations.

Poor Pittiful DEMS - What A Joke!

2007-10-22T23:14:00.000+02:00

Philanthropist Betty Casey won the Harry Reid "phony soldiers" smear letter with a $2,100,100 donation to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation (MC-LEF.org). Rush matched that donation with $2,100,100 of his own money. The Democrats donated $0 to the children of our fallen heroes.

The WAR WEARY Public

2007-10-06T15:44:00.002+02:00

The phrase, "war-weary" public, is perhaps the most overused I've seen concerning any serious discussions about our adventure in Iraq. There are two problems with that phrase, the first is that we aren't in a "war" and second the public is not "weary" of the "war."

To make the point crystal clear that we aren't in a war (I did not say someone wasn't at war with us) a few simple comparisons to other conflicts we have also called wars. At our current annual loss rate, say 800 KIA a year, it will be another 18 years before we surpass the losses the British suffered on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, another 37 years before we surpass our losses in the Korean Conflict, another 68 years before we surpass our losses in the Vietnam Police Action, another 477 years before we surpass our losses in WWII, 746 years before we surpass our losses in the Civil War. It's going to be a few more years before we exceed our losses on D-Day 1944 or get near our losses in the Battle of the Bulge. If you adjust these comparisons for proportionate populations of the times, what is already ridiculous goes right off the chart. You really don't want to see what a proportionate comparison to our Revolutionary War losses is. To the miniscule portion of our adult population "at war" in Iraq and elsewhere this is just a real as anything that has come before but to the Nation as a whole this isn't a flee on the back of an Elephant by comparison to what a real war could look like. A single crude nuclear device exploded on the ground in some U.S. population center will make all this rhetoric about "war" seem trite by comparison. We are not at war; someone is at war with us.

The second part "weary" glosses over the fact that a genuine 50% of our voting population are cowards to the bone, afraid of lifting a finger to do anything that threatens their narcissistic, welfare state existence. What these people are "weary" of is 4+ years of 24/7 one-sided defeatist propaganda coming from the domestic friends of those at war with us. Those waging a war against us get away with murder, both literally and figuratively by not having to spend the funds necessary to fuel their own propaganda machine. A Nation at War does not let the enemy within get a free ride if it takes itself seriously. FDR seemed to understand this. I suspect he thought the Japanese and Germans might be serious about War after 12/07/1941. I could be wrong about that however. It is pretty clear the bulk of our population doesn't take any of this seriously and talk is in incredibly cheap in this matter.

While William Tucker makes some valid points about Vietnam he misses the larger lesson about both Vietnam and its template Korea. If you kill enough of the enemy fast enough it takes a generation before the threat can return. South Vietnam would have probably fallen even if we had provided assistance. Air Power did not dominate the ground war in Vietnam. It might have stopped them in 1975 but South Vietnam was far from being able to stand on its own with North Vietnam still being able to fight like it did. If you want to win a war you first got to be in one. Serious people understand this.

-- Thom Bateman
Newport News, Virginia

"E-Mail Tax"

2007-10-06T14:21:00.000+02:00

By The Prowler
Published 10/5/2007 12:08:40 AM

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has signed off on a legislative plan that he thinks will both lead to his party winning an additional seat in the Senate, and new tax revenue for his party to spend in the coming years.

With the clock literally ticking on the Internet Tax Moratorium's expiration, Republicans, led by Sens. John McCain, John Sununu, and Mitch McConnell, have been pressing for permanent extension of the moratorium that would bar states and localities from taxing peoples' use of the Internet.

"It would essentially make the Internet a toll road, with taxpayers paying as much five to six dollars extra a month on their bills just for the use of the Internet," says a GOP Senate leadership aide.

Last week Sununu had pulled together enough votes -- including two Democrats -- to push a permanent extension of the moratorium to a vote by the full Senate. But Senate Commerce Committee chairman, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI). [8 term (!) Democrat from Hawaii] pulled consideration of the bill Sununu and others wanted amended.

Inouye has been supportive of a temporary extension, telling some advisers that he'd go as long as six years.

---------------

Keeping in mind that the Government's roll in the internet is insignificant, how is it that the Demecrats want to tax us for it's use? This isn't like building roads or sewer systems!

But, what do I know
JD

Phoney Soldier Phlap - Crazed by Rush

2007-10-06T14:00:00.000+02:00

By The Prowler
Published 10/5/2007 12:08:40 AM

IGNORANT AS USUAL
Senate Democrats who've spent the week attacking Rush Limbaugh received much of their information about the controversy from David Brock's Media Matters as well as from MoveOn.org, which jumped on the attack-Rush bandwagon when it saw some potential for fundraising. That Democrats had not done their homework became clear on Wednesday, when Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid had his staff call over demanding that the Pentagon put liberal radio hosts on Armed Forces Radio. The problem: Armed Forces Radio already broadcasts extensive shows from National Public Radio, as well as the Ed Schulz radio show.

"They didn't believe us," says a Pentagon staffer based in the media affairs office.

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark was also unaware that Schulz and NPR were staples of the military's entertainment and information broadcasts. And Clark headed the NATO command.

Reid and other Democrats in the Senate are now planning to start trouble for Limbaugh and other conservative broadcasters at the Federal Communications Commission, where current chairman Kevin Martin has been looking for issues to hold hearings on that would assuage Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Promote the Fundraiser: Be A Part Of Something Good

2007-10-05T12:38:00.001+02:00

Put this on your blog or in an email to all your friends.

"MoveOn recently strong armed small shopkeepers on CafePress with a threat of litigation for designing shirts critical of their Petraeus ad. In response, the PoliStewCafe is selling merchandise which not only steps up for Petraeus, but also underscores the importance of the First Amendment, and highlights MoveOn's hypocrisy.

All profits go directly from Cafe Press to the National Military Family Association, Inc., which Charity Navigator designated as a 4-Star charity. The funds never come to the shopkeeper. Your contribution will send kids whose parents have been deployed to camp next summer. Our goal is to send 1000 kids. Read up on them by visiting http://nmfa.org.

Just go to http://cafepress.com/polistew
Thank you."

MoveOn.org Bullies Crack Down on Critics

2007-10-05T12:18:00.000+02:00

MICHELLE MALKIN
Wed Oct 3, 3:00 AM ET

MoveOn.org, the left-wing extremists who bashed the commander of American forces in Iraq as a traitor, should get out of the political kitchen. The George Soros-funded hitmen can't stand even a bit of heat from Mom-and-Pop retailers who tried selling T-shirts and mugs on the Internet critical of the "General Betray Us" smear ads against Gen. David Petraeus.

I heard from one of the independent T-shirt sellers targeted by MoveOn.org last week. The seller is a lifelong Democrat and member of the military. Incensed by the attack on Gen. Petraeus, the retailer opened up a shop at online store CafePress. The homemade designs at the PoliStew Cafe (www.cafepress.com/polistew) were stark and simple: "Move Away from Move On!" "MoveOn.org NoFriend to Dems." "General Petraeus has done more for this country than MoveOn.org."

For daring to raise a voice and raise some money for the troops (all proceeds from the sale of his items go to the National Military Family Association charity), this T-shirt seller earned the wrath of MoveOn.org's lawyers. MoveOn.org chief operating officer Carrie Olson brought down the sledgehammer. She sent a cease-and-desist letter to CafePress demanding that PoliStew Cafe's items and other anti-MoveOn.org merchandise be removed from the store.

Olson warned: "We have been alerted to an entire page of items on your website that infringes on our registered trademark, and we request that you remove all items immediately, and ask the poster to refrain from shipping any items purchased on this webpage. We also request that you give us contact information for the company / person who posted the items. This content has certainly NOT been authorized by anyone at MoveOn.org, nor anyone affiliated with MoveOn."

Acceptable speech to MoveOn.org: Likening President Bush to Adolf Hitler, as they did in 2004.

Unacceptable speech: Little old mugs and hoodie sweatshirts gently satirizing the thin-skinned, left-wing mafia.

The pretextual copyright infringement claims are downright laughable. This isn't about protecting MoveOn.org's property rights. It's about shutting up citizens who don't have the deep pockets to defend themselves against frivolous claims by bullies in progressive clothing. Sane liberals should be ashamed at such free speech-squelching efforts. As Los Angeles Times blogger Jon Healey, the only other mainstream journalist to cover the crackdown, notes: "Trademark law doesn't confer monopoly rights over all uses of a registered phrase or symbol, however, and it wasn't created simply to protect the trademark owner's interests. Instead, it's designed to protect consumers against being misled or confused about brands. The courts have repeatedly ruled in favor of parodies and critiques; that's why www.famousbrandnamesucks.com doesn't violate famousbrandname's trademark. And most, if not all, of the items targeted by MoveOn were clearly designed to razz it, not to trick buyers into thinking they were the group's products."

CafePress refused to give in on several of the items. But the speech-chilling message is clear: Parody MoveOn.org and they'll threaten to hunt you down and sue you. The PoliStew Cafe operator took down the pro-Petraeus, anti-MoveOn.org shirts and replaced them instead with merchandise referring to "THE GROUP THAT SHALL NOT BE NAMED." An army of MoveOn mockers online has published photoshopped logos ("MoveOut.org," "MoveOn.org: Surrender in Action") in solidarity — daring the far-left lawyers to sue them.

Edward Padgett, a Los Angeles blogger who spread the word about MoveOn's attempt to silence critics, laments: "For several years I have found MoveOn.org to be an inspirational anti-war group, but the past few weeks they have been an embarrassment to all Americans with their attacks upon President Bush and General Petraeus. I subscribe to the MoveOn newsletter, and even considered hosting an anti-war rally in San Dimas, but now I want no part of this radical group and will remove my name from their newsletter subscription . . . I guess to MoveOn, the First Amendment is only for the rich."

Dissent-silencing tactics approved, apparently, by the MoveOn.org Democrats who are too busy bashing Rush Limbaugh to notice the gagging of ordinary citizens on their own side of the political aisle.

Welcome to George Soros's America.

Michelle Malkin is author of "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild." Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

NEVER (!) Forget!

2007-09-11T23:59:00.000+02:00

NEVER (!) Forget!

2007-09-11T23:51:00.000+02:00

NEVER (!) Forget!

2007-09-11T23:34:00.000+02:00

Ben Stein Says Craig Was Lynched Twice

2007-09-05T23:18:00.000+02:00

(CBS) Sunday Morning commentator Ben Stein has a few words for the Minneapolis police's behavior in the arrest of Sen. Larry Craig, and for the Republican leadership's response - and they're not very flattering.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The whole story of Senator Larry Craig, the Republican of Idaho who announced his resignation yesterday, is a nightmare of out-of-control police and weak politicians.
Senator Craig has been the innocent victim of a set-up by the evil-minded police of Minneapolis-St. Paul that Stalin would have admired.
Here's the deal: Senator Craig went into a men's room at the Twin Cities airport. He entered a lavatory stall. He tapped his foot. He may or may not have reached his hand down under the lavatory partition to pick up a piece of paper or to make a signal.
That's it. That's the whole thing. There was no sex act of any kind.
So the policeman who happened to be in the next stall walks Senator Craig off, starts bullying him, accusing him of lying and, implicitly, threatens to ruin Senator Craig's career.
ALL FOR A MAN TAPPING HIS FOOT IN A PUBLIC BATHROOM.
This is insane.
If a police officer can wreck a man's career over this trifle, then we might as well not have a Constitution or a Bill of Rights.
Look, I spend a lot of time in Idaho. These are good people. I can readily see why a Senator from there would quietly plead guilty to a small charge rather than risk a public fight - even though the police seem to have wrecked Craig's career anyway.
What I don't understand is why the GOP is tossing Senator Craig overboard as if he were a terrorist.
Even if it turns Senator Craig is gay, so what? Barney Frank is gay and he's one of the best members of the Congress. There are lots of fine gay public servants.
Senator Craig has been the victim of a police lynching. A party that believes in individual rights should be rallying to his defense, not making him walk the plank.
Shame on the GOP leadership, and utter disgrace to the airport police and their thug behavior.
These are security people in airports. Hello! An airport? Don't they have anything better to do?

© MMVII, CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Personnally, I think Ben's got it right - 100%
Jaded, cynical Cops and a "running scared" spineless Republican party.
What a lame-o combo!

But then, what do I know,
JD

The Great Global Warming Swindle

2007-08-19T23:28:00.000+02:00

Highly reccomended for your viewing pleasure (and to get a good dose of TRUTH!).

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3028847519933351566

OMG! The SURGE is Working!

2007-07-31T00:28:00.000+02:00

The President’s plan and GEN Petraeus' SURGE strategy is WORKING!

OMG!

Even the DEM's admit it!

How can this be possible?

The "Party of Defeat" is stymed!

But what do I know . . .
JD

Some Perspective on Life . . . and Death

2007-05-23T20:06:00.000+02:00

Today, SEVEN (under age) Teenagers DIED in Alcohol Related Traffic Accidents.

Tomorrow, SEVEN more! . . . and the NEXT DAY . . . and the NEXT!

Did you hear about this on CNN? ABC? NBC? FOX? CBS? TWB?, etc.
Didn’t think so . . .

~3,000 Teenagers EVERY YEAR!
Is ANYONE talking about this!!??

It took THREE YEARS to reach the VERY SAME death statistic in Operation Iraqi Freedom!

How many Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors, and Marines died today?
It was on the Evening News! CNN is quick to report that!

Meanwhile, HS students are dying at the rate of 3,000 EVERY year – 12,000 CHILDREN DIED in Alcohol related accidents since the beginning of the War in Iraq.

Did you see ANYTHING about that on “Larry King Alive”?
What the PRESS CHOOSES to report gets Public Attention.
How pathetic is THAT!

But, What do I know,
JD

PS: THIS would be akin to the +30,000 people who will KILL themselves in the next 12 months. BUT, We’d rather bash “W” than do something substantive!

World Bank Jobbery

2007-05-15T21:25:00.000+02:00

The Wall Street Journal
May 15, 2007; Page A16

The World Bank board meets today to consider the fate of President Paul Wolfowitz, and the truth is that the verdict may already be in. The board will consider the report of an investigating committee dominated by the same European nations that have been orchestrating the media campaign to depose him.
As almost daily newspaper leaks have disclosed for weeks -- in violation of bank rules -- the committee concludes that Mr. Wolfowitz violated bank rules in awarding a promotion and salary increase for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza. We've previously reported on the World Bank documents that make it clear this was at worst a misunderstanding -- if not a setup by bank officials who wanted his fingerprints on any raise for Ms. Riza. Mr. Wolfowitz had tried to recuse himself, only to be told he couldn't do so and would have to be the one to give her the raise and new job. (See "The Wolfowitz Files," April 16.)
But we've now seen two other documents that reveal the investigating committee's clear bias against Mr. Wolfowitz. They concern its key witness, Xavier Coll, the bank's vice president of human resources, who has joined those saying Mr. Wolfowitz dictated a raise he knew was excessive and then tried to cover it up. In his testimony, Mr. Coll claims that "there is no doubt that the President [Mr. Wolfowitz] knew or had been made aware of by me that this was outside the rules." The investigating panel relies heavily on Mr. Coll's claims to support its findings against Mr. Wolfowitz.
But to reach that conclusion, the committee had to ignore a pair of August 2005 memos in which Mr. Coll told a very different story. Mr. Coll dictated those memos for his own files and marked them "Strictly Confidential and Personal -- For Xavier Coll's eyes only unless authorized explicitly by Xavier." They are a contemporaneous account of his negotiations with Ms. Riza and Mr. Wolfowitz.
In an August 22 memo, Mr. Coll reports that "I also felt that we were in a very difficult situation -- with no precedent at the Bank -- and that it had enormous potential to damage the Bank's reputation. In balance, I thought that the situation required more flexibility than in other past cases and that there was great risk to the Bank if we could not come to a workable agreement in a few days." Yet the investigating panel now asserts that the situation wasn't all that unusual and that Mr. Wolfowitz should have been allowed no such "flexibility" in how he tried to settle the matter.
In the same memo, Mr. Coll also reports that he had urged a lump-sum settlement with Ms. Riza as she left the bank, and concedes that Mr. Wolfowitz "agreed that I should raise this alternative with Ms. Riza. . . . I felt comfortable that I raised my points of concern with the President and that he has taken these seriously and given due consideration."
And regarding a later conversation Mr. Coll had with Ms. Riza, Mr. Coll wrote, "I indicated that while the President wanted to come to an agreement quickly (he was leaving that afternoon for an overseas trip) he also wanted to make sure that we came to the right solution, both for the institution and the staff." Mr. Coll added that Ms. Riza rejected his proposed "financial settlement."
Only then did Mr. Wolfowitz decide to settle the matter by dictating its terms to Mr. Coll. After Mr. Coll recommended that any future raises for Ms. Riza should be contingent on a review of her work outside the bank by "a committee of her peers," Mr. Coll wrote that "This addition brought the process for potential promotions more in line with current practice at the Bank. I felt that, on balance, this was a reasonable way to move forward and find a solution given the very complex and difficult set of circumstances."
Based on our fast reading late yesterday of the final investigating committee report, we could not find these quotes from Mr. Coll's memos. Yet they clearly show that Mr. Coll thought at the time that Mr. Wolfowitz was trying his best to come to a fair conclusion that would not harm Ms. Riza, would protect the bank from any possible litigation, and would do well by bank rules.
All of this is further evidence that what Mr. Wolfowitz is facing here is a kangaroo court. The Europeans and bank staff thought they could get him to leave quietly if they smeared him and Ms. Riza enough in the press. But now that he has fought back to clear his name, the Europeans led by Dutch politician Herman Wijffels have decided to ignore evidence to justify their one-sided conclusions. They also largely ignore Ms. Riza's own statements to the committee while condemning her for objecting to a process that all but ended her career at the bank.
* * *
So now the full 24-member board will take up the case, even as European ministers try to browbeat the White House and Treasury to get Mr. Wolfowitz to resign as part of some "plea bargain." But what does Mr. Wolfowitz get out of that -- except more leaks saying he left under a cloud?
President Bush should understand that none of this is about Mr. Wolfowitz's "ethics." It is all about the European desire to punish a Bush appointee for his support for the Iraq war and his determination to change the bank's policies to fight corruption rather than simply push taxpayer money out the door. If the board really wants to oust Mr. Wolfowitz, the White House should insist on a recorded vote. We wonder if Europeans really want this showdown.
And oh, yes: President Bush could also help by declaring that, if the Europeans do oust Mr. Wolfowitz, his likely choice as a successor would be Paul Volcker, the former Fed Chairman who has made a recent career of fighting corruption. There is certainly a lot of that to clean up at the World Bank.

Death in Blacksburg, VA

2007-04-19T01:35:00.001+02:00

I have a unique connection to VPI (VA Polytechnical Institute)/VA Tech.

Blacksburg is a quite little College Town - much like Bloomington, IN – where my daughter is completing her Sophomore year at IN University.

The psyche of these communities revolve around “The Campus” and their 1960-esk notions of "Middle Town Americana". Little wonder that the VPI/VT Campus Police or the Blacksburg City Police did not immediately shift into the frenzied, “find the "Crazed Whacko"” mode when the first 2 murders occurred. They were no more “prepared” for this catastrophe than NYC was prepared for the events of 9/11.

BLAME is NOT the game we want to play with this event.

It’s just a simple fact that you and I do NOT spend our days exploring the extremes of deviance that confronts us all too often. That deviance grows more horrific with each passing day. We are hard pressed to make sense of the mayhem, and we are optimistic enough to believe that “most people are good”.
Oh, that this were true!

But, what do I know
JD

Global Warming - HOAX!

2007-04-17T23:23:00.000+02:00

Well, if the title didn't dissuade you, then you must be a skeptic, too.

Here is an Irrefutable FACT (Even the Left admits this TRUTH-FACT): Annual CO2 emissions from HUMAN activity amounts to . . . FIVE PERCENT of ALL CO2 emissions – ON EARTH!.
FIVE PERCENT!

Could you take-over MicroSoft with a FIVE percent stake?
Could you topple General Motors with a FIVE percent stock holding?
Could you make the UN General Assembly do ANYTHING (!) with a FIVE percent constituency?

But, then, LOOK who is telling you that "Global Warming" is "Coming"!
AL GORE! Mister - "I invented the Internet!" (Sorry Al, it was the Dept of Defense that gave us the Internet = Redundant Communications in the face of a Nuclear War. The whole "Electro-magnetic discharge "THINGY" from the detonation of an ATOMIC bomb.)

What Arrogance!
Pitiful little humans can affect Global climate?!?

We can’t even get the “14 Day” Weather Forecast RIGHT!
And these clowns want to tell me what’s going to happen . . . a DECADE from now?!?!?! Give me a break!

But, what do I know.
JD

Check out the Links:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4941
http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_3899807
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2007/090307warminghoax.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305_pf.html

USS Nimitz Forced Iran's Decision

2007-04-06T01:52:00.000+02:00

Kenneth R. Timmerman
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.

WASHINGTON -- The announcement Wednesday by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that his government would release the 15 captured British sailors and marines came after an intense and often bitter internal debate, sources in Tehran told NewsMax.
The capture of the British naval inspection team was clearly a coordinated effort by the Iranian government aimed at demonstrating Iran's ability to confront the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq and to divert international attention from the nuclear showdown. The decision to release the hostages showed the limits of Iran's power and the fears of some leaders that too much provocation could backfire.
Within four days of their capture on March 23, the 15 Britons were split up into smaller groups and held in different areas, Iranian sources told NewsMax. This was a lesson learned from the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, when all 55 U.S. hostages were initially kept in one place.
That crisis, which occurred during the Jimmy Carter administration, prompted a U.S. attempt to rescue the hostages by force. After that attempt failed at Desert One in April 1980, the Iranians split up the U.S. hostages so it would be more difficult to rescue them.
At one point during the current hostage crisis, the British team was split up into five groups of three, with each group kept at a different military base. The Iranians would then bring several groups together and film them, to give the impression they were being held together.
The order to capture the British sailors and marines was given by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself, NewsMax sources believe.
Khamenei's top advisers argued that by striking out against a U.S. ally in Iraq, they would be sending a message to other European nations to step back from supporting the U.S. strategy of increasing pressure on Iran over its nuclear program. They saw the move as a clear test of Western resolve.
But as Britain refused to apologize for the behavior of its boarding party, continuing to insist that they were operating in Iraqi waters – not inside Iran's territorial waters, as Tehran alleged – some of Khamenei's advisers began to have second thoughts.
Adding to those doubts were reports that the USS Nimitz was steaming toward the Persian Gulf – making it the third Carrier Strike Group in the area.
The Nimitz is expected to join the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS John C. Stennis, both currently in the Persian Gulf, in the coming weeks.
On Friday, March 30, Khamenei's top advisers met in an emergency session of the Supreme Council on National Security, chaired by Ali Larijani. Larijani is the regime's top nuclear negotiator, and is a confidant of the Supreme Leader, while maintaining close ties to President Ahmadinejad.
At that meeting, Revolutionary Guards commander Maj. Gen. Rahim Safavi reported that the deployment of the Nimitz suggested that a U.S. military invasion of Iran was being prepared for early May. He urged the Council to order the release of the British hostages as a gesture to defuse the tension in the region.
The next day, however, the head of the Political and Cultural bureau of the Revolutionary Guards, Dr. Yadollah Javani, called Safavi a "traitor" for proposing the release of the hostages.
While this internal dispute raged, Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers in charge of guarding the hostages continued intense debriefings, aimed at eliciting "confessions" from the British captives that were aired on Iranian television.
The intention was to build a legal "case" against the captives and haul them before a Revolutionary court. During the trial, the regime intended to use forced "confessions" from some of the hostages who alleged they had personal knowledge of British government support for Iranian separatist groups operating in Arab-dominated Khuzestan along the Iraqi border and in Sistan-Balouchestan province, next to Pakistan.
The first inkling that the faction urging release of the hostages was winning appeared on Tuesday evening, when the influential Baztab Web site, run by former Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Mohsen Rezai, reported that the British captives would soon be released.
"It can now be said that the politicians who are for continuing relations with London have got the upper hand," Baztab reported. Fars News Agency also reported on Tuesday that a prominent cleric, Hojatt-ol eslam Ghorbanali Najafabadi, was urging the public prosecutor not to pursue a legal case against the British sailors, but to solve the hostage crisis "through international diplomatic channels."
For now, Tehran's leaders have backed down. Why? My bets are on the USS Nimitz.
Unless Iran already has nuclear warheads, a direct military confrontation with the United States would most likely provoke a popular uprising against the regime. And retaining power is the one thing that Ayatollah Khamenei and his clerical cohorts actually care about.

"Information Needs"

2007-04-02T20:46:00.000+02:00

LORD help me!

PC at its best (sic)!

So . . . I'm listening to NPR (Yes, I do that. It's a cardio "workout" for my aging body - it gets my blood pressure up . . . thru the roof!)
Some "PC" librarian from Utah (?) is discussing the PROBLEM with the "Homeless" seeking shelter from the weather in the local library.

Anyway . . .
He has the audacity to suggest that stinking vagrants and hopped-up druggies are legitimate patrons for the local library! He says: "Homeless persons have information needs".

I'm NOT lying! He actually meant it! "Information Needs"!

Dude!
Like, . . . what's MD 20-20 stock trade at today?
Who's got the best price on Thunderbird?
Is KMart offering a Blue Light Special on Ripple . . . Boone's Farm?

Stinking drunks and addicts . . . with "Information Needs"!
Lord, Help Me!

- - - - - - - - - - -

No.
Lord, help THEM.
The choices they make each day lead them unto paths of sickness and sorrow.
They are too sick to even seek a physician; too addicted to stop the madness that they call thier life, a wretched existence.

Lord, help them.
Use me: my money, my influence, my strength, my power to bring hope into the endless quagmire of their life.

But, then, what do I know . . .
JD

Congress Dumps on the Soldiers, Sailors, Air Men and Marines!

2007-03-30T21:03:00.000+02:00

So . . . surprise, surprise! Congress doesn't supprt the GWOT.
They took a stand and "voted" to "cut and run"!

BUT, who will PAY for their futile, arrogant, pointless gesture?
Those on the front line of the War, THAT's who!

The President will do exactly what he said he will do - before this whole pointless exercise began: he will Veto the bill. And Congress isn't even CLOSE to being able to over-ride the veto, but they know that.

Meanwhile, the Troops will suffer. Equipment purchases delayed, Rotational Units will go untrained and their deployment into the theater pushed-out farther than originally planned. Soldiers who should have departed for home, long ago, will die.

FACT!

Meanwhile, the demagogues will bloviate about the War that they have now interfered with - knowingly - to the advantage and aid of our enemy.

Treason is the word that comes to my mind: Aiding and abetting the enemy. Willfully aiding those who are engaged in killing Americans.

Back on September 11th and today.

But, what do I know.
JD

Larry 'Bud' Melman Dies

2007-03-24T00:14:00.000+01:00

By LARRY McSHANE 03.22.07, 10:32 AM ET

Calvert DeForest, the white-haired, bespectacled nebbish who gained cult status as the oddball Larry "Bud" Melman on David Letterman's late night television shows, has died after a long illness.

The Brooklyn-born DeForest, who was 85, died Monday at a hospital on Long Island, Letterman's "Late Show" announced Wednesday.

He made dozens of appearances on Letterman's shows from 1982 through 2002, handling a variety of twisted duties: dueting with Sonny Bono on "I Got You, Babe," doing a Mary Tyler Moore impression during a visit to Minneapolis, handing out hot towels to arrivals at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

"Everyone always wondered if Calvert was an actor playing a character, but in reality he was just himself - a genuine, modest and nice man," Letterman said in a statement. "To our staff and to our viewers, he was a beloved and valued part of our show, and we will miss him."

The gnomish DeForest was working as a file clerk at a drug rehabilitation center when show producers, who had seen him in a New York University student's film, came calling.

He was the first face to greet viewers when Letterman's NBC show debuted on Feb. 1, 1982, offering a parody of the prologue to the Boris Karloff film "Frankenstein."
"It was the greatest thing that had happened in my life," he once said of his first Letterman appearance.

DeForest, given the nom de tube of Melman, became a program regular. The collaboration continued when the talk show host launched "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS (nyse: CBS - news - people ) in 1993, though DeForest had to use his real name because of a dispute with General Electric (nyse: GE - news - people )-owned NBC over "intellectual property."

Cue cards were often DeForest's television kryptonite, and his character inevitably appeared in an ill-fitting black suit behind thick black-rimmed glasses.
DeForest often drew laughs by his bizarre juxtaposition as a "Late Show" correspondent at events such as the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway or the anniversary Woodstock concert that year.

His last appearance on "Late Show," celebrating his 81st birthday, came in 2002.
DeForest also appeared in an assortment of other television shows and films, including "Nothing Lasts Forever" with Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd.

At his request, there will be no funeral service for DeForest, who left no survivors.

Retreat and Butter

2007-03-23T23:37:00.000+01:00

The Washington Post
Are Democrats in the House voting for farm subsidies or withdrawal from Iraq?
Friday, March 23, 2007

TODAY THE House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill that would grant $25 million to spinach farmers in California. The legislation would also appropriate $75 million for peanut storage in Georgia and $15 million to protect Louisiana rice fields from saltwater. More substantially, there is $120 million for shrimp and menhaden fishermen, $250 million for milk subsidies, $500 million for wildfire suppression and $1.3 billion to build levees in New Orleans.

Altogether the House Democratic leadership has come up with more than $20 billion in new spending, much of it wasteful subsidies to agriculture or pork barrel projects aimed at individual members of Congress. At the tail of all of this logrolling and political bribery lies this stinger: Representatives who support the bill -- for whatever reason -- will be voting to require that all U.S. combat troops leave Iraq by August 2008, regardless of what happens during the next 17 months or whether U.S. commanders believe a pullout at that moment protects or endangers U.S. national security, not to mention the thousands of American trainers and Special Forces troops who would remain behind.

The Democrats claim to have a mandate from voters to reverse the Bush administration's policy in Iraq. Yet the leadership is ready to piece together the votes necessary to force a fateful turn in the war by using tactics usually dedicated to highway bills or the Army Corps of Engineers budget. The legislation pays more heed to a handful of peanut farmers than to the 24 million Iraqis who are living through a maelstrom initiated by the United States, the outcome of which could shape the future of the Middle East for decades.
Congress can and should play a major role in determining how and when the war ends. Political benchmarks for the Iraqi government are important, provided they are not unrealistic or inflexible. Even dates for troop withdrawals might be helpful, if they are cast as goals rather than requirements -- and if the timing derives from the needs of Iraq, not the U.S. election cycle. The Senate's version of the supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan contains nonbinding benchmarks and a withdrawal date that is a goal; that approach is more likely to win broad support and avoid a White House veto.

As it is, House Democrats are pressing a bill that has the endorsement of MoveOn.org but excludes the judgment of the U.S. commanders who would have to execute the retreat the bill mandates. It would heap money on unneedy dairy farmers while provoking a constitutional fight with the White House that could block the funding to equip troops in the field. Democrats who want to force a withdrawal should vote against war appropriations. They should not seek to use pork to buy a majority for an unconditional retreat that the majority does not support.

Polls with an Agenda

2007-03-20T19:20:00.000+01:00

This is a Poll?

The USA TODAY/ABC News survey was taken door-to-door in all 18 provinces of Iraq from Feb. 25 to March 5.

It found sharp and sometimes contradictory attitudes toward U.S. troops:

*A 51% majority, including one-third of Shiites and 94% of Sunni Arabs, say attacks on U.S. forces are acceptable political acts. Only 7% of Kurds agree.

*In all, 83% of Shiite Arabs and 97% of Sunni Arabs oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq; 75% of Kurds support them. By more than 3 to 1, Iraqis say the presence of U.S. forces is making the security situation worse.

*Even so, only 35% of Iraqis want U.S. forces to leave immediately. Two-thirds say they should remain until security is restored, the Iraqi government is stronger or Iraqi security forces are better able to operate independently.

- - - -
I'm not very smart . . . but neither am I a moron!
66% of Iraqis want us to remain in Iraq until stibility is restored . . .
And yet this SAME poll tells you that 83-97% oppose the presence of coalition forces.

SORRY boys & girls . . . BOTH statements cannot be true . . .
UNLESS . . . some pollster is skewing the questions to get the answer they want?

AH HA! We may be on to something!

But then, what do I know . . .
JD

Clinton Fired EVERY US Attorney!

2007-03-15T22:11:00.000+01:00

Well, the Senators from the Northeast sure have a short memory! Then Atty Gen J. Reno Fired EVERY US Attorney in the country as part of the "orderly transition of power" to the Clinton regime. . . . 100% Pure Partisan Politics.

I don't know about you, but I think it's time for some major house-cleaning in Washington.

But, what do I know . . .
JD

Party Baffled By Its Own War Plan?

2007-03-10T22:24:00.000+01:00

By Christina Bellantoni
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 9, 2007

For all the fanfare surrounding the announcement of the House Democrats' Iraq war plan, few members seem to understand the specifics in the bill or when it would actually bring troops home.
The confusion added a layer of comic relief to a tense debate between factions of the Democratic Party as groups held dueling press conferences yesterday.
Rep. Maxine Waters, California Democrat, of the Out of Iraq Caucus could hardly keep the details straight as she attempted to excoriate the plan proposed by her Democratic leaders.
"What they say is, if in fact there is no progress that we will pull out, if they can't certify by October, by December, but if there is progress, if they are doing well, we will stay," she said. "This would eventually get us out perhaps by March. The latest we would get out I guess with another progress report, or certification, by August of 1980."
Come again?
"Wait -- August '08," Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Illinois Democrat, quickly corrected her colleague.
"Oh, August '08," Mrs. Waters corrected herself. "That's how confusing it is."
The back-and-forth caused reporters to stifle laughs but also illustrated how few members had a part in crafting the bill and highlighted how it was a working document up to the moment Democratic leaders held their press conference explaining it -- 25 minutes later than planned.
After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi carefully detailed the Democrats' suggested benchmarks and requirements for President Bush to ensure that U.S. troops are fully ready before being sent to Iraq, reporters peppered her with questions to try and get the point.
"I'm confused," one reporter told the speaker.
"OK, well, let's try again," the California Democrat responded. "If the president cannot demonstrate that progress has been made in reaching the benchmarks which he, President Bush, has established by July 1 of 2007, we begin -- the 180-day period of redeployment begins, to be finished in 180 days."
But, what happens between July 1 and Oct. 1? the scribe asked.
"If the president shows that progress is being made on July 1, say he can certify that, then we ..."
"All he has to do is say progress is being made?" the perplexed reporter interrupted.
"Well, he has to certify and demonstrate that it has been. If he cannot -- if he does that, that takes us to October 1, where we want to see the completion of those benchmarks. If that is not achieved, the 180 days begins."
Some in the room giggled.
Exasperated, she concluded: "No matter what, by March 2008, the redeployment begins."
Further adding to yesterday's confusion, the total size of the spending bill was anyone's guess. Surely it was upward of the "roughly $100 billion," most speculated, as Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, rattled off a few million here and there for veterans and as Democrats noted increased funding for Hurricane Katrina relief.
The Appropriations Committee could not even supply the price tag an hour after the Democratic press conference.
"It's a work in progress," panel spokeswoman Kirstin Brost said.
Appropriations Chairman David R. Obey, Wisconsin Democrat, didn't reveal the bill's total, though he did detail some of the benchmarks for progress required of the Iraqi government. Those include having an oil revenue-sharing law and amending the Iraqi constitution to improve relations among Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds.
"If they meet those political benchmarks, then even in that case our troops must be out of a combat role by October -- I mean by August of 19 -- of 2007," he said.
Mrs. Pelosi chimed in, "2008," adding, "If they meet those benchmarks."
"I'm sorry, that's right," Mr. Obey responded.
Other Democrats in the Out of Iraq Caucus were none too pleased with the plan, saying 2008 is not soon enough.
The proposal is "very, very complex" said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, Texas Democrat. "It has waivers, exceptions, ands, ifs, ors and buts, all of which appear to leave the determination over our future in Iraq exclusively in the hands of the decider or the misleader," he said, referring to Mr. Bush.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, California Democrat, made the same 20th-century goof as Mr. Obey. She said the Out of Iraq Caucus plan would "fully fund a safe, orderly withdrawal of American troops and military contractors by Dec. 31, 19..."
Oops.
She caught herself, saying: "Not 19, 2007. I'm back in the olden days."
Mrs. Woolsey paused again, using the gaffe to reconsider: "Actually, we want our troops home with their families by Christmas."
Adding to the confusion is a competing Senate plan to revise the 2002 resolution that authorized the Iraq war and require troops to leave by March 31, 2008.
Still, that chamber's leaders did a better job pleasing a diverse Democratic caucus, with Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin calling it a "strong step toward ending our involvement in this misguided war" and promising to push for Congress to use its "power of the purse" to end the war.
White House spokesman Dan Bartlett, onboard Air Force One as the president headed to Brazil yesterday, gave predictable criticism of the Democratic plan. But he also tried his comedy routine, saying communication with Capitol Hill Republicans has "required almost hour-by-hour communication" because "the Democrats' position has changed by the hour."
• S.A. Miller and Jon Ward contributed to this report.

No Crime, so Libby Should Get No Time

2007-03-08T18:42:00.000+01:00

March 8, 2007
BY ROBERT NOVAK
Chicago Sun-Times Columnist

Denis Collins, a Washington journalist on the Scooter Libby jury, described sentiments in the jury room reflecting those in the Senate Democratic cloakroom: "It was said a number of times. . . . Where's Rove? Where are these other guys?" Besides presidential adviser Karl Rove, he surely meant Vice President Dick Cheney and maybe President Bush. Oddly, the jurors appeared uninterested in hearing from Richard Armitage, the source of the CIA leak.
"It's about time," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, rejoicing in guilty verdicts against Libby, "someone in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics." But Libby was found guilty only of lying about how he learned Valerie Plame's identity. Reid and Democratic colleagues were after much bigger game than Cheney's chief of staff.

Democrats had been slow reacting to my column of July 14, 2003, that reported former diplomat Joseph Wilson's mission to Niger was suggested by his CIA employee wife, Valerie Plame. By September, when the Justice Department began investigating the CIA leak, Democrats smelled another Iran-contra or Watergate. They were wrong. The Libby trial uncovered no plot hatched in the White House. The worst news Tuesday for firebrand Democrats was that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was going back to his "day job" (as U.S. attorney in Chicago). With no underlying crime even claimed, the only question was whether Libby had consciously and purposefully lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned of Mrs. Wilson's identity.

While my column on Wilson's mission triggered Libby's misery, I played but a minor role in his trial. Subpoenaed by his defense team, I testified that I had phoned him in reporting the Wilson column and that he had said nothing about Wilson's wife. Other journalists said the same thing under oath, but we apparently made no impression on the jury.

The trial provided no information whatever about Plame's status at the CIA at the time I revealed her role in her husband's mission. No hard evidence was produced Libby ever was told she was undercover. Fitzgerald had argued that whether or not she was covert was not material to this trial, and U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton had so ruled. Yet, in his closing arguments, Fitzgerald referred to Mrs. Wilson's secret status, and in answer to a reporter's question after the verdict, he said she was "classified."

Her being classified -- that is, that her work was a government secret -- did not in itself meet the standard required for prosecution of the leaker (former Deputy Secretary of State Armitage) under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. That limits prosecution to exposers of covert intelligence activities overseas, whose revelation would undermine U.S. intelligence. That is why Fitzgerald did not move against Armitage.

Some questions asked of me in interviews after the verdict implied that I revealed Armitage's name to Fitzgerald. Actually, in my first interview with Fitzgerald, he indicated he knew Armitage was my leaker. In fact, Armitage had turned himself in to the Justice Department three months before Fitzgerald entered the case, without notifying the White House or releasing me from my requirement of confidentiality.

On Fox's "Hannity & Colmes" Tuesday, super-lawyer David Boies said Fitzgerald never should have prosecuted Libby because there was no underlying criminal violation. Boies scoffed at Fitzgerald's contention that Libby had obstructed him from exposing criminal activity. Boies, who represented Al Gore in the 2000 election dispute, is hardly a Bush sympathizer. Neither is he a Democratic partisan trying to milk this obscure scandal.

Bush lost control of this issue when he permitted a special prosecutor to make decisions that, unlike going after a drug dealer or mafia kingpin, turned out to be inherently political. It would have taken courage for the president to have aborted this process. It would require even more courage for him to pardon Scooter Libby now, not while he is walking out of the White House in January 2009.